“Of course La Tourette is your favorite ‘Corb’ building,” a friend observed. “It is a city.” I had just returned from France, where I visited a chapel and a convent designed by 20th-century architect Le Corbusier: Chapelle Notre-Dame du Haut, completed in 1955 and colloquially known as “Ronchamp,” after its home village; and Couvent Sainte-Marie de la Tourette, completed in 1960 atop a verdant valley outside of Lyon.
Ronchamp is a kaleidoscopic jewel box in and of our earth, a luminous sanctuary visited by everyday souls in search of solace and redemption. By contrast, La Tourette is a city on a hill built for the Dominican order, who inhabit a silent life where chants become prayer and mortality is but a stepping stone. These two architectural masterworks are separated by two hours on the TGV, but the otherworldliness of La Tourette makes the trip interstellar.
