The cloister has completed its work on the facade it shares with the church square, initiated by the private funds of the owners of the Madeleine cloister.
It took nearly ten months to complete this project, from the chipping away at the foundation of the staircase at the end of February to the final installation of the new railing at the beginning of December. A Heritage Foundation label was awarded in June 2025 for the staircase section.
This work gives the church square a fresh new look. The parish adapted and showed great patience, especially towards the end of the project, during October and November, when the square was inaccessible and the professionals’ work was postponed week after week due to bad weather or technical issues.
We would also like to thank the Raymond and Lucie Aubrac school and all the residents of the Madeleine-Pont Vieux neighborhood, who may have been affected, for their understanding. Local craftsmen carried out this renovation work, with guidance from the UDAP 81 (Tarn Departmental Unit of Architecture and Heritage). The teams of Guillaume Cuq, a mason from Réalmont, and Jacques Versigny, a metalworker from Saint-Juéry, produced remarkable and landmark work, thanks to the specifications of Patrick Gironnet, architect of the Buildings of France, and Pierre Novella, the technical engineer who assisted him.
All choices were made solely to preserve the heritage, which resulted in significant additional costs, particularly for the immense facade wall that runs alongside the church. The aim was to create greater unity in the churchyard, respecting the existing architectural lines and highlighting the building’s history. Thus, traces of former openings (possibly connecting the old Capuchin chapel to the cloister) were preserved, and even reinforced, sometimes through the interplay of brick arches and plaster. The stair railing, which had no heritage value, was replaced with a model designed by the French Heritage Buildings Authority. This new piece echoes the ironwork already installed on the other side of the forecourt.
Finally, the choice of colors was important: the mortar joints were lightly tinted pink to harmonize with those of the recently renovated Old Bridge. The plaster’s color was a compromise between these pink joints and the existing facade. The railing paint had to be a fairly dark matte gray to highlight the understated and elegant curves of this piece of fine craftsmanship. A line of brickwork for the drip edge at the base of the staircase ultimately explains the programmatic ambition of this project. Two of the owners, retired art gallery owners, and the third, originally a historian, sought a balance between preserving the past and embracing modernism. And this is precisely what has been happening since the beginning of the 2000s at the Madeleine cloister: a play of contrasts between ancient and contemporary. Now, to the great pleasure of the public, the building is open every year for the European Heritage Days, and on the occasion of concerts in the summer.
