Place de l'Église & Église Saint-Jean-Baptiste
Begin on the Place de l'Eglise, in front of the church of Saint John the Baptist. Its story starts with Benedictine monks from the abbey of Saint-Michel-de-la-Cluse, who arrived around 1085 and founded a priory dedicated to Saint John the Baptist. A few traces of the building of 1202 still survive; the church was enlarged in the 14th century, and the nave was rebuilt at the end of the 17th, with work starting in 1687 and finishing in 1692.
Fire runs through the rest of the tale. A blaze may have struck in 1728; one certainly did on 9 November 1754, and it took the bell tower with it. A man from Megève, Muffat de Saint-Amour, saw to its restoration, and the tower was rebuilt in 1809. Later fires swept through the village without touching the church. The façade you face from the square dates from 1879.
Listen for the tower: it holds eleven bells forming a carillon. The bourdon weighs about 3,000 kg, was cast in 1886 by the brothers Georges and Francisque Paccard, sounds a B flat and ranks among the largest bells in the département. The oldest of the swinging bells, cast in 1783 by the Lièvremont brothers of Pontarlier, weighs 650 kg and is itself a listed historic monument.
Go inside: it's free. The painted decoration goes back to the Italian painter Mucengo, after 1827; damp damaged it, and J.B. Ferraris restored it in 1859. Look for the enamelled Stations of the Cross that Georges Gimel made in 1956 with precious metal oxides. A year later the architects Henry Jacques Le Même and Maurice Novarina led a complete restoration, and in 1988 the church was listed as a historic monument.
The Musée de Megève is only 240 m away, about 3 min on foot. On this short stretch you pass the Promenade en calèche, the horse-drawn carriage ride.
