The vernacular architecture of Conques has emerged over centuries from the creativity of man in his natural environment: hills of sandstone and schist, oak, chestnut and walnut trees, red clay...

The village wakes in a bed of mist and lays to rest in a slowly setting sun. Great imagination invented here the most vivid forms of art, such as the tympanum of the Romanesque abbey church of Sainte-Foix. This venerable 12th-century church with its two stone bell towers is an important stage on the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Every day, dozens of pilgrims stop at Conques for a night or two. Both single walkers and groups of friends come from every continent to strengthen their souls through contact with nature and to get away from the hustle and bustle of the world for a few days. In the evening, tired from a long walk, they linger on a restaurant terrace to contemplate the dying rays of the sun as they sink into the forest across the valley. Conques is plunged into darkness. And the shadows that dance across the stone facades as night-time strollers go by conjure up long-lost legends.

The village resonates with stories of days gone by, when the monk Aronidse stole the relics of Sainte-Foy d'Agen to give them to his abbey in Conques, or when the armies of the King of France devastated Occitania in search of the Albigensian heretics... These resounding tales of crusades, pious petty theft, knight-poets, cavalcades and Romanesque devotion have shaped the history and identity of the village of Conques. Its architecture, both modest and endearing, bears the hallmark of peril, courage and piety in the Middle Ages.