To be clear: I don’t believe in ghosts, I don’t care much for ghost stories, and I’ve never written about one for this blog. Still, if any of the places I’ve visited in the deep heart of France ever had a legitimate claim to harboring a ghost, it must surely be the lovely Chateau du Puymartin in the Périgord Noir, only 6 km (3.6 miles) from Sarlat-la-Canéda. Karen and I spent a pleasant morning there in June, and even though the site exploits the incredible story of “the White Lady” to the max, the castle is an interesting and rewarding place to visit for plenty of other reasons. As with so many of the fortified châteaux in this part of […]
Tag: Dordogne
Visit Limeuil – it’s officially one of the “Most Beautiful Villages” in France
I’m not even halfway up the steep principal street and already I’m gasping for air as I approach the center of Limeuil. Fortunately, there are plaques telling the story of the village’s history every few yards, so it’s easy enough to stop and read one to mask my lack of physical fitness. I can’t remember an approach to a town’s center this physically demanding since my visits to the great fortress at Beynac, or the upper reaches of the castle keep at Commarque. But already I can tell that this town is worth the effort. There are two very good reasons they ask all visitors to park at the bottom of this steep hill. The first is practical: Limeuil is […]
Visit Commarque – an incredible ruined castle with prehistoric roots
Since 2016, I’ve written more than 160 posts exploring the exceptional places I’ve seen in the deep heart of France, so I don’t say this lightly: the Château de Commarque is unique among the most moving experiences I’ve had traveling in this region. I’ve taken hundreds of detours down country roads and visited dozens of other old castles over the last 25 years; by my count, I’ve written about 34 of them just for this blog. But after a while, many of them start to look similar – they are piles of rocks where the outlines of a castle remain, perhaps, or slightly shopworn old family manors. Don’t misunderstand — just about every château is interesting in some way. But […]
See why Uzerche is one of France’s “most beautiful detours”
When you first see Uzerche* you’ll think you’re looking at something lifted from a postcard – a striking visual of authentic medieval buildings and streets laid out like a layer cake rising up from the Vézère river. That image matches the town’s nickname, “the pearl of the Limousin”, and you’ll know instantly why it merits a place in the official list of “the most beautiful detours in France”. (And it’s not even that onerous a detour; Uzerche lies off the A20 autoroute, just 40 minutes south of the porcelain-making center of Limoges and 30 minutes north of my favorite town in the Correze, Brive-la-Gaillarde.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZdOzH-hTZU *I know that not everyone can go to France right now. And with Covid-19 infections […]
Visit HAUTEFORT – a classic castle in the deep heart of France
Not long ago we visited the excellent Museum of Medical History at Hautefort – a fascinating (sometimes scary) collection of medical instruments and treatment methods from medieval to modern. But that’s definitely not the main reason to visit the little village of Hautefort in the Dordogne in the deep heart of France. Most people come here for the castle. In fact, this whole area is noted for its spectacular castles – the great defensive fortresses at Castelnaud and Beynac are testaments to the violence and instability that wracked this region during the Hundred Years War and the Wars of Religion. But even in an area where there are many spectacular chateaux, the Chateau de Hautefort stands out as one […]
At Hautefort: Walk through the history of medicine
The main reason to come to Hautefort in the Dordogne region of the deep heart of France is to tour the great Chateau at the top of the hill overlooking the town. It’s an hour-and-a-half southwest of Limoges, and an hour northwest of Brive-la-Gaillarde, but well worth the drive to see this gorgeous example of how a medieval fortress evolved into an elegant country mansion over the centuries. I’ll be doing a detailed report on my visit there in a future post – but for me the trip down the hill to the Musée d’Histoire de la Médicine was in many ways the most interesting part of my day in Hautefort.
Visit Saint Amand de Coly – officially one of the “most beautiful villages” in France
Some people are put off by the French tendency toward self-criticism and self-deprecation, but I find it somewhat charming. When I got to Saint-Amand-de-Coly (officially one of the “most beautiful villages in France”), I went straight to the massive Abbey of Saint-Amand in the middle of town. It’s a medieval wonder combining a long religious history with a commanding presence as a military fortress. But I was brought up short by its historical marker, which describes, in big letters, “the grandeur and the decadence of an abbey. […W]ars, epidemics, and the abuse of the Abbey’s provisional management mark the steps of a progressive decline.”
TURENNE is officially one of the “most beautiful villages in France”
When you travel around the countries we call “France” or “Germany” or “Italy”, it’s easy to forget that these national entities are fairly recent constructs in the grand scale of history. As Graham Robb points out so well in The Discovery of France, 80% of that country’s population still lived outside towns and cities even as late as the Revolution; even with a King as the “head of state”, the country was still a collection of old provinces and fiefdoms far from the government of Paris. “Being French was not a source of personal pride, let alone the basis of a common identity. Before the mid-nineteenth century, few people had seen a map of France and few had heard […]
Belvès is officially one of France’s “Most Beautiful Villages”
Most towns on France’s official list of “Most Beautiful Villages” are meant to look pretty from the first moment you see them. (Some cynics would say that at least some of the plus beaux villages de France are actually “engineered” to give a good first impression.) My initial experience in Belvès was the exception to that rule. I came to Belvès (in the Dordogne region, east of Bordeaux, about halfway between Limoges and Toulouse) on a blazing hot summer afternoon…and found the town over-run with visitors. Clearly some kind of street market was underway, and I had to park just over a mile away from the center of town and walk back. The sun bore in on the back […]
At Les Eyzies – 400,000 years of human history in the Deep Heart of France
I’m bent over to half my height, but it’s not enough to protect my head from a hard thump from a stone hanging in the dark reaches of the cave at the Font de Gaume. The light flickering on the wall is from the guide’s flashlight; we try to imagine how much darker it would have been 15,000 years ago, when one of our ancestors crawled deep into this hillside with nothing more than a smoldering torch to cut through the perfect blackness. As the smoke collected in the narrow spaces around him, he somehow must have wormed his way onto this shelf and, lying on his back, started to daub pigments in the image of a bison on the […]
Monpazier is officially one of France’s “Most Beautiful Villages”
Lots of French towns are surrounded by walls. Some of them look easy to breach; they were meant mostly to control access to the town so taxes and tolls could be collected and outsiders could be excluded. Other walls, though, clearly mean business – they were put there centuries ago for more obvious military purposes, in a time when even remote places lived under constant threat of pillage and destruction. It’s true that our current age is an anxious age. A quick reading of any online forum reveals the concerns felt by people in France (and many other countries, too) about their physical security in the face of terrorism, crime, and escalating conflict. But try imagining a time when threats […]
