Steenboskapel is a prayer chapel in the hamlet of Schophem in the Belgian municipality of Voeren, which is dedicated to the Holy Cross. It consists of two bays, with the choir bay being slightly higher than the nave, under a gable roof with a bell tower.
It was built in 1846 using, among other things, spolia from the Roman villa excavated there. The Steenbos road runs past the chapel, which is located on the spot where there was already a road in Roman times. Further to the west, this highway ran south of the Nagelboom of 's-Gravenvelden, where the new residential area with the street name Heirweg is now located.
It is maintained by the Crosses and Chapels Foundation of 's-Gravenvoer. She was classified as a monument in November 2016. Gregorian chant is played in the chapel. It is appreciated as an element in the study of the reuse of Roman spolia in younger buildings.
Steenboskapel is a prayer chapel in the hamlet of Schophem in the Belgian municipality of Voeren, which is dedicated to the Holy Cross. It consists of two bays, with the choir bay being slightly higher than the nave, under a gable roof with a bell tower. It was built in 1846 using, among other things, spolia from the Roman villa excavated there. The Steenbos road runs past the chapel, which is located on the spot where there was already a road in Roman times. Further to the west, this highway ran south of the Nagelboom of 's-Gravenvelden, where the new residential area with the street name Heirweg is now located.
It is maintained by the Crosses and Chapels Foundation of 's-Gravenvoer. She was classified as a monument in November 2016. Gregorian chant is played in the chapel.
The chapel was built with five different building materials. The bottom layer is made of bluestone, which is quarried in various places in the Ardennes and which is not Roman. The second layer is made of Roman brick or tegulae. Entire sections of the wall of the Roman villa have been incorporated into this layer, including red mortar made from broken tiles or tiles. The third layer consists of square blocks of sandstone, which was also widely used by the Romans. The top layer also consists of square blocks, in this case of tuff, which was probably brought here from the Eifel by the Romans. The Roman brick roof tiles, the fifth building material, were replaced by modern roof tiles in the 1990s, because tourists liked to take an authentic roof tile as a souvenir.
From the 1st to the 3rd century AD, a Roman villa stood in the adjacent meadows. This is said to have been destroyed at the end of the 3rd century. In the 7th or 8th century, a Frankish palace was built on the foundations. There "in loco qui vocatur Furonis" (in the place called Voeren) the Treaty of Voeren was signed in 878 between the cousins Louis III the Younger and Louis the Stammerer. Their fathers Louis the German and Charles the Bald had divided the middle kingdom of their deceased brother Lothair I in 870 at the Treaty of Meerssen (in Aspide, probably Eijsden) after his sons Charles of Provence and Lothair II had also died in 863 and 869. The signatories, the brother