Chapelle des Pénitents Blancs

The Chapelle des Pénitents Blancs stands in the centre of Èze as the commune’s oldest building, with origins dating to 1306.

The chapel is also called Chapelle de la Sainte Croix.

It served as a meeting place for the White Penitents, a lay brotherhood that supported villagers facing plague, poverty and illness.

The brotherhood was neither monastic nor clerical.

The building presents a modest architectural style, with few ornate decorations and a structure visible from outside through a grille.

Visitors cannot enter the chapel.

In 1860, residents of Èze gathered at this chapel and unanimously voted for the village to join France.

That decision gave the building a civic place in Èze’s history.

The chapel also connects the present village with the White Penitents’ wider tradition in Provence and southern France, which reaches back to the thirteenth century.

Its setting places medieval history among Èze’s narrow, winding streets.

Nearby, Notre Dame de l’Assomption shows eighteenth-century Baroque architecture, while the exotic garden rises above the sea.

The Chapelle des Pénitents Blancs remains a small building with a long religious and civic history.