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Basilique Notre-Dame de la Fin des Terres, Soulac-sur-Mer
Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, this is a magnificent church
The origin of this church can be traced back to the legend of the Sainte-Véronique. In the first century AD, after the death of the Virgin, Sainte-Veronica, Saint Amadour and Saint Martial from Palestine, come to live in Soulac.
Veronica then starts up a modest order to the memory of the Virgin after evangelising the people of the Médoc and Bazadais. She died in Soulac and was buried in AD 70. It was probably in the eleventh century, when the pilgrims of Saint-Jacques from England landed at Soulac and built the Benedictine abbey. The construction of the Romanesque church was not completed before the beginning of the twelfth century.
The dune erosion in the eighteenth century caused the almost total silting of the church and this was not cleared until the mid-nineteenth century. Now it is a classified as a protected monument under UNESCO World Heritage.
