«This chapel is essential for understanding the history of the municipality. It is there that Penvénan was founded, following the dismemberment of the important commune of Plougrescant in the 11th century... Christian Ollivier, the deputy for cultural affairs, appreciates that the small chapel now arouses great interest, since very recently the tumulus of the neolithic was installed on its site. The ensemble, to which one of the tombs dating from the Iron Age and found on the site of the dunes of Port-Blanc has just been added, now looks great. On the site of the chapel there was a monastery founded by Saint-Gonval at the invitation of Prince Judaël. A beautiful legend This one had been struck by the gifts of the young Gonval, or Cunval, who lived in the 6th century and whose life, thanks to a precise manuscript written by an anonymous monk of the abbey of Saint-Jacut, is relatively well known. This one reports among other things that the young Gonval, while walking in the forest, saw a she-wolf arrive at him, crawling in front of his feet, begging. Gonval followed her and noticed that his three pups were blind. With a wave of a wand found on the spot, he restored their sight. The next day, the she-wolf returned to the young man and placed at his feet a gold ring. The story listened to at the gates of the legend of course, but what a legend! Destroyed following the Scandinavian incursions in the early tenth century, the monastery was replaced in the Middle Ages for a chapel with, attached, a small cemetery of four and a half cords (2,735 ares). Demolished again, then rebuilt in 1914-1915, the chapel of Saint-Gonval has retained its furnishings: a splendid wooden pietà, from the 12th century, even if this dating is controversial, a statue of Our Lady of Hope and a statue of Saint-Ivy, from the 16th century, a virgin with a child and a large statue of Saint-Gonval, dating from the 17th century with also a painted wooden panel representing Saint-Gonval in a rural setting, originally placed under the high altar, and also dating from the same period. Since 1825, the pardon of Saint-Gonval has been celebrated every year.

Address
rue de Saint Gonval, 22710, Penvénan, Côtes-d'Armor, Bretagne, France