Chapelle de Barbizon

Barbizon had no chapel of its own until 1858, when Rousseau's family converted the barn attached to his house into a place of worship for the village. The architect was his brother. The painter himself, deep in the paralysis that would kill him nine years later, watched the transformation of his outbuilding into a community space with the ambivalence of a man who had spent his life arguing that the forest was sacred enough. His son Charles Millet -- Jean-Francois's son -- later designed the bell tower. In 1950 the chapel was consecrated as a full church. The building that began as a barn, became a barn again briefly, then became a place of prayer, is one of the quieter stories of Barbizon.