Martin M. Miles' photos with the keyword: Bollène

The "Notre Dame du Mont Calvaire" (aka "Chapelle des Trois-Croix") was erected after the Wars of Religion, where once had been roadside calvary ("Three Crosses"). After the French Revolution it was sold and for a while in the 20th century, the chapel served as a museum honoring Louis Pasteur, whose statue can be seen to the left.

Bollène, seen from the hill. To the left is the Hôtel de Ville, to the right - in a distant - the "Centrale Nucléaire de Tricastin", a nuclear power plant.

A priory, depending from the well established Benedictine abbey on the Île Barbe (Lyon), existed on this hill overlooking the valley of the Rhone probably since the 10th century. The church of that priory got consecrated around 1115 by Hugues de Bourgogne, then archbishop of Vienne, later Pope Callixtus II. The priory existed upto 1427, when it "morphed" into a collégiale. In 1562 Protestant troops led by François de Beaumont, a commander notorious for his cruelty, took Bollène. They threw the the canons from the tower and set fire to the church. The church got rebuilt. The collégiale recovered and existed upto the French Revolution. Many chapels have been added to the structure over the century - and it would have been interesting to have a look inside the church, but - it was locked.