Conques is considered one of the great villages of southwest France, renowned for its picturesque beauty and medieval abbey. It occupies a spectacular position on the sides of the steep, densely wooded gorge of the River Dourdou, a tributary of the Lot. Narrow lanes and old, timber-frame houses follow a hillside along the length of rue Charlemagne. 
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The village of Conques has its origins in a religious hermit named Dadon who chose the picturesque setting to retire around 800 AD and founded a community of Benedictine monks. One of the monks stole the remains of Saint Foy, a young girl who became an early Christian martyr and was known for her ability to cure blindness, from a rival monastery at Agen. Ste Foy’s presence brought flocks of pilgrims to Conques, earning the abbey a prime place on the pilgrimage route to Compostela, Spain. According to legend, it was Dadon who gave Conques its name, from the Latin "concha" (shell), due to its rocky configuration. Protestants ruined the monastery in the 16th century and its rehabilitation began at the end of the 19th century under the guidance of Prosper Mérimée, Inspector of Historic Monuments.
Saint Foy abbey-church is the work of these Conques’ monks, who by that time had gained a solid reputation as builders, and it is a good example of the churches found on the “pilgrimage road”. However, Saint Foy was designed to serve a dual function: a pilgrimage shrine to welcome the many pilgrims who came to visit the relic of Ste. Foy, and an abbey-church to serve as home for the growing community of monks.
Thanks to VR photographer Laurent Thion, you can now take a Virtual Tour of Conques and the Abbey with 10 fullscreen panoramas covering the choir, rectory, nave, cloisters, treasury and a lovely view of the village itself. A friendly interface shows the location of each pano on an architectural diagram of the church, along with some descriptive information. Thion offers two versions for low and high-speed Internet users, but to really appreciate the beauty of the abbey and make the most of the panoramas, I highly recommend you view the fullscreen version (Liaison haut débit).
The panorama labeled “le tympan” highlights the tympanum above the abbey doors, which was sculpted in 1135. The 124 figures, made in partly polychromatic wax, illustrate the Last Judgment, with the devil in hell on the lower right and Christ in heaven in the central position. In the treasury you’ll find the venerated reliquary statue of Saint Foy, along with one of the most important collections of Medieval and Renaissance gold work in Western Europe. Some of the items were made in the abbey's own workshops as early as the 9th century. The 95 stained glass windows inside the abbey are contemporary, completed in 1994 by French abstract painter Pierre Soulages.
“The two most difficult tasks in this job were to keep the good color of the stones and walls and, of course, the Pierre Soulages' stained glass,” Thion says. Thion was commissioned for the project by French TV producer le Jour du Seigneur, the oldest radio and TV producer in France. The photographer spent three days on the project and shot in less than ideal weather, as you can see on the "cloître" panorama. “For this reason, I shot "tympan" very early,” he says, “just before clouds and tourists! In the same idea, "le chevet" was taken later, just before the rain. The very last panorama was "vue sur le village", which I did on the way to the airport. The weather was fine on the last day, of course!” He used a Nikon D70 + 10,5mm, homemade panoramic head, RealViz Stitcher, and a Macintosh Powerbook G4.
Conques was classified as a historical monument in 1838 and remains registered with the Worldwide Patrimony at UNESCO. The village receives approximately 600,000 visitors each year.
