Église Notre-Dame des Laves (Piton Sainte-Rose)

Église Notre-Dame des Laves stands on Rue de l'Église in Piton Sainte-Rose, a small community on the east coast of Réunion, a French overseas department in the Indian Ocean. The church was built in the late 19th century, in 1887, as the parish church of a coastal village that lies in the path of lava from the Piton de la Fournaise volcano. Its fame dates from April 1977, when an eruption sent a flow down the slopes and through the village. The lava approached the church and, according to the local account, divided around the building and stopped at the entrance, leaving the church standing while surrounding houses were destroyed. The event gave the building its name of Our Lady of the Lavas and made it a place of pilgrimage and of local devotion. The architecture is modest and typical of rural colonial parish churches on the island: a simple nave, a white and pale facade, a small bell tower and a covered entrance, set in a landscape of black basalt. Inside, the church holds religious images and ex-voto offerings, and the cooled lava is still visible in its immediate surroundings, with the black rock forming a stark contrast to the building. The flow left the church preserved rather than damaged, and subsequent work has been limited to maintenance and repainting; the building remains an active place of worship, so visits are made with attention to services. The church is also a stop on the east coast route known as the Route des Laves, where visitors can walk across lava fields from later eruptions and see how the coastal landscape has been shaped by successive flows. A visit to the church itself usually takes 20 to 40 minutes, and is often combined with the lava fields and the Anse des Cascades.