Eglise de l'Immaculée Conception

In 1872, the municipality decided to buy a piece of land west of Place Paoli that connected the old and new towns. The people of Roussillon needed a church larger than the church of the Miséricorde, a place where the city was growing. The construction took fifteen years, from the beginning of the works at the dawn of the Third Republic to the inauguration at the end of the XIX century. This great building forms a rectangle of Roman style with its three naves and its transept marking the Latin cross. Its facade is of Palladian type. The crossing of the transept gives the church a monumental aspect unique in Corsica. In 1914, a structural fire caused the fall of a part of the vault. It was rebuilt in 1935, thanks to a public subscription and the Confrérie de l'Immaculite Conception reactivated in 1919 and dissolved in 1936.

Excavations carried out in 2020 by INRAP were able to uncover the existence of a Roman nunnery, of about forty tombs just behind the Church.

In this church, two paintings of the XVIIth century are classified as Historic Monuments. They are The Passion of Saint John and The Temptation of Christ. They would come, according to some sources, from the donation made by Cardinal Fesch and Prince Joseph Bonaparte to the Corsican communes.

The town needed a very large church to accommodate all the faithful. Today, it is the largest church in L’Île-Rousse. in this exhibition, two very old paintings are of historical interest.