Saint-Gilles-du-Gard Abbey: Detail, abbey church of St Gilles, west façade

Saint-Gilles-du-Gard was one of the pilgrimage sites on route to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Former Cluniac monastery; the present building was begun in the first half of the 11th century, when the shrine of the saint became a place of international pilgrimage. The church was consecrated by Pope Urban II in 1096. Constructed over three centuries and never completed, it consists of a large crypt or lower church surmounted by an equally large upper church. The earliest work is in the crypt; the latest, dating from the early 13th century, is in the unfinished east end of the upper church. The sculpted façade, executed in white marble and limestone, is also unfinished. Some scholars have proposed an early 12th-century date for the façade sculpture, seeing Saint-Gilles as the first step in an artistic renaissance that was to lead directly to the development of Early Gothic sculpture at Chartres. A recent compromise opinion is that most of the façade sculpture dates from the mid-12th century.