Eglise Saint-Florent de Niort

This former workers' town of the Rougier plywood plants and the SNCF yard was attached to the municipality of Niort in 1969.
Its 12th-12th c. church is built on the side of the Santiago de Compostela road leading to St-Jean d'Angély. Its almost blind high façade is pierced by a semicircular door and is surmounted by a comb-belfry with two bays. Notice the re-employment in its masonry of four pre-Roman sculptures in the shape of a frame. Is it the representation of the life of man or that of Saint Florent and two figures of the Annunciation and the Visitation?
Saint Florent, a Roman soldier converted and ordained priest by Saint Martin, lives as a hermit in a cave near the Loire. According to legend, he gives sight to the blind, heals the crippled and delivers the demonic. He died at the canonical age of 123 at the end of the fourth century.