Saint-Martin

The church of Saint Martin on the Place Nicolaï carries the long and eventful story of Ans. A first church already rose here in the thirteenth century, elsewhere in the village, but it was destroyed in 1568 during the religious troubles. A second church, built on the same spot, suffered subsidence from the nearby Loffeld mine and was pulled down in 1792.

The present building was raised between 1816 and 1820 and is among the few churches erected during the Dutch period. It preserves several treasures, notably wooden statues.

One of them, a statue of the Virgin, has been carried each year for more than five hundred and forty years in procession through the streets of Ans on the fifteenth of August — a living thread binding today's community to that of centuries past.