Chapelle Saint-Roch

Chapelle Saint-Roch stands in Cannes, in France’s Alpes-Maritimes department, within the city’s historic religious landscape. Its origins reach back to the fourteenth century. Its preserved facade and structure offer a clear view of a building shaped by centuries of change. Municipal archives reference its entrance on Rue Saint Dizier.

Religious life once connected the chapel with Cannes’s penitents, brotherhoods known for processions and charitable work. Several colours had their own chapels and traditions. Inside, a wooden statue of Saint Roch recalls devotion associated with protection during plague or illness. Nineteenth-century agreements linked the chapel to the local hospital and bishop, while early twentieth-century newspapers mentioned it. Nearby railway plans also brought the old building into discussions about urban change.

Today, religious services no longer take place there, as the building is being repurposed as a museum. It will house Jean Pigozzi’s collection of contemporary African art. That change places a medieval chapel beside Cannes’s continuing cultural life, with the wooden saint as its most tangible detail.