The Collégiale Saint-Émilion was built, in part, because the monks next door were misbehaving.

By the 11th century, the clergy tending the Monolithic Church had grown lax: some reportedly had wives and children. The Archbishop of Bordeaux's response, in 1110, was to commission a new church staffed by Augustinian canons, men whose very name derived from the Greek for 'rule'. They would set standards. And given that the Collégiale became one of the largest churches in Gironde, they clearly meant it.

Romanesque in origin, it was reshaped in Gothic style between the 13th and 15th centuries. Its 14th-century cloister, a thirty-metre square of twin columns and carved capitals, doubled as the canons' political base: they taxed locals and reserved burial plots for nobility.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tour weaves the Collégiale into Saint-Émilion's story of pilgrims, power and wine, explaining how competing institutions shaped one of France's most extraordinary UNESCO-listed villages.