Lapidary Garden of the Collegiate Church of Saint-Florent

The gardens of the Collegiate Church stretch through the picturesque village of Niederhaslach, at the entrance to the Bruche Valley, at the foot of the Vosges Mountains in Alsace.

To the north, a monumental cemetery borders the facade of the collegiate church. This burial site was reserved for canons and the local nobility. The tombstones, oriented east-west according to medieval tradition, remained in the ground until 1854.

That year, Abbot Kramer arranged them along the wall before restoration work on the building began. Among these heraldic funerary slabs, dating from the 14th to 16th centuries, are those of Albert de Hohenstein (died 1335) and Gisela de Greifenstein (died 1326), wife of Anshelm de Hohenstein. Also present is the tomb of Nicolas Dutschmann, recognizable by his helmet with a bull's head crest, classified as a historic monument. Nearby stands a 14th-century recumbent effigy in a niche, a lying statue in a Gothic niche, and a 17th-century Baroque Stations of the Cross. Against the church wall, a bas-relief depicting the Mount of Olives, dated 1492, illustrates Christ and his disciples' vigil. This masterpiece preserves some of the oldest traces of polychromy in Alsace. Finally, a Lourdes grotto, built in 1930, completes this ensemble.