The story of this place
Rising on a Burgundian hill, the abbey church of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine at Vézelay drew medieval pilgrims by the thousand who believed it held the relics of Mary Magdalene, making it a major starting point of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. From the hill below, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux preached the Second Crusade before King Louis VII in 1146; in 1190 Richard the Lionheart and Philip Augustus set out on the Third Crusade from here. The basilica's carved tympanum and the celestial light of its nave are masterpieces of Romanesque art. Decayed and struck by lightning, it was rescued from ruin by the young Viollet-le-Duc in the 1840s.