Couvent des Jacobins

The Couvent des Jacobins is defined by the palm tree vault, a single slender column that spreads twenty-two stone ribs across the ceiling of the church like palm fronds. Built in the thirteen hundreds for the Dominican order, this brick fortress held the remains of Saint Thomas Aquinas. His bones arrived here in thirteen sixty-nine, turning the building into a major site for medieval pilgrims. The monks prayed here for centuries until the French Revolution emptied the halls and converted the structure into a horse stable.