Conques is a unique site of cultural heritage, preserving outstanding visual, material, and ritual cultures from the 9th to the 21st century. This small village in Southern France is annually visited by thousands of tourists and pilgrims allured by its breath-taking charm and spirituality, which, however, sharply contrasts with the lack of comprehensive scholarly attention paid to its cultural significance. Its date, level of reconstruction, and place in the history of art have all been disputed, but never studied in a systematic and complex way.

The CONQUES project (2021–2024) thus aims to carry out the first truly interdisciplinary and integrative research on this site, combining expertise from many different fields (art history, history, anthropology, music and performance studies, archaeology, archaeometry, digital technology, and visual studies), and thus to strengthen its currently marginal role in scholarly discourse and popularity among general public. The research team consisting of experts from six European and two American institutions will investigate major stages in the medieval construction of Conques to reconstruct crucial elements in the development of European culture and re-write the story of the 19th and 20th-century “re-invention” of the European Middle Ages.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 101007770. More information under conques.eu.

• Coordinator: Masaryk University, Brno (CZ)
• Principal investigator: Prof. Ivan Foletti
• Acronym: CONQUES
• Project partners:
  • Max Weber Stiftung – Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte Paris (FR)
  • Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte – Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome (IT)
  • Université de Poitiers – Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
  • Association pour le Développement Economique et Culturel de Conques (non-academic; FR)
  • Viella Libreria Editrice (non-academic; IT)
  • The City University of New York (US)
  • Rutgers University (US)
• Project type: H2020-MSCA-RISE-2020
• Project duration: 1. 1. 2021 – 31. 12. 2024
• Total budget: 943 000 EUR