In 1050, one of the first major pilgrimage churches in the Western world was built at Conques, in the middle of the wild Aveyron landscape. This was the birth of "Romanesque" architecture. The abbey church - i.e., a church belonging to an abbey - at Conques is one of the most important structures built in 11th-century France. Its coherence, its location - a small village in the Rouergue region, far from the main medieval traffic routes - its innovative aspect, its state of preservation and the fact that the relics for which it was built are still in situ, make the church at Conques the best work of art for approaching Romanesque architecture in France. In other words, to try and understand how architecture was made at that time in our history, and to dismantle not only the building itself, but also a number of preconceived ideas about Romanesque art, starting with its very name, which is an intellectual construct of the 19th century, or to put it another way: those who built Conques didn't think they were making Romanesque art, but contemporary architecture.