Chapelle Saint-Sauveur

The Chapelle Saint-Sauveur stands on the island of Saint-Honorat, in the bay of Cannes. Olive groves surround it on the northwest side, close to the main landing place. It is one of six chapels surviving from the seven originally raised around the abbey of Lérins. Saint-Pierre, Saint-Caprais, Saint-Michel, Saint-Porcaire and La Trinité are the other five.

Honorat and Caprais withdrew to the island around the year 400, and archaeology traces settlement from the fifth century. The first chapel on this spot was a rectangular building of about seven metres, with a semi-circular apse. A masonry bench around it hints at gatherings, possibly with a funerary purpose. A refuse pit inside marks a spell of abandonment. A coin from Al-Andalus dates that abandonment to the eighth century. Saracen raiders killed Saint Porcaire and his monks in the raid of 732. Monks returned around the year 800 and raised a new chapel on the ruins. The building you enter today probably dates from the early eleventh century, an octagon about eight metres across. Six of its sides open into semi-circular niches, and the eastern one holds the apse. A round-arched doorway faces the apse from directly opposite. Overhead, a vault of rubble masonry and radiating ribs gained its star shape in the twelfth century.

The abbey's secularisation in 1787 left only four monks, and Jean Alziary de Roquefort purchased the property in 1791. An Anglican pastor, Henry Belmont Smith, held it later. Bishop Henri Jordany of Fréjus bought it back in 1859, and restoration of the abbey began in 1869. The chapel has been a classified historic monument since 1886. The building's first purpose remains a matter of debate. Excavations in 1948 found no baptismal font, which leaves a martyrium, a shrine to martyrs, as the likelier answer.