Monpazier was probably our favorite village of all that we visited in Dordogne. There is something about a neat bastide (a fortified village) that we find especially attractive. They are always colorful and pleasing to the eye, even under the rainy skies. The grid plan of the bastide means that there…
It is probably obvious to anyone by now that our Dordogne itinerary was heavily influenced by the list of the Prettiest Villages in France. Dordogne department has 10 of them, the most of all departments in the country. I admittedly subscribe to the notion that existence of a formal recognition…
In between exploring prehistoric caves, we made a lunchtime stop in Saint-Léon-sur-Vézère, another of the Les Plus Beaux Villages de France. The little village has about the same population as La Roque-Gageac, but its more “huddled together” topology makes it feel smaller. Its highlights are the 12th-century Romanesque church, a…
River Vézère is a tributary of the Dordogne. In the late 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, a large number of caves with well-preserved prehistoric art have been discovered in the Vézère Valley, which lays basis for its sometime claim as “the cradle of the European civilization”.…
Domme is the quintessential hilltop village, sitting 250 meters above the river Dordogne. Its elevation gives it a sometime moniker of the Acropolis of Périgord (the latter being the natural region roughly corresponding to the present Dordogne department, so the two names can be almost used interchangeably). A bigger village…
We have already had glimpses of La Roque-Gageac in a couple of recent posts. The small village nestling under imposing rocks along the bank of Dordogne river has got to be considered picturesque even by the elevated standards of Les Plus Beaux Villages de France. Here is another look at…
Château de Marqueyssac is likely part of the quintet that gives “the valley of five castles” its moniker – it has a commanding position on top of a hill overlooking the river Dordogne. But the castle itself is not the main event on its own grounds. In fact, almost no…
Driving along the banks of river Dordogne, it is impossible to miss Château de Beynac. From its perch atop one of the highest hills in the area it presides over the stretch known as “the valley of the five castles”. Here is the main road approach view. And a longer…
We started our exploration of Dordogne with one of the larger destinations in the area, Sarlat-la-Canéda, or simply Sarlat. Its charming medieval core is a maze of honey-colored buildings, narrow streets and passages, and hidden squares. The most photogenic views, as is frequently the case, are found on the few…
Canal du Midi is a feat of civil engineering, all the more remarkable for the fact that it predates the Industrial Revolution. It is hundreds of kilometers in length (240 if you consider the canal proper, or closer to 400 if you add the connecting Canal de Garonne to arrive…
One of the twelve apostles and the patron saint of Spaniards, Saint James the Great lends his name to three separate entries on the World Heritage list. One of them is the town of Santiago de Compostela, which grew around a shrine to St James (Santiago in Spanish). Two others…
Albi, in the southern France region of Occitanie, is hailed on the World Heritage list as a complete ensemble of urban development dating from the Middle Ages. The height of town’s prosperity and importance falls on the later part of the 13th century, when a powerful local bishop built Palais…
The tiny walled town of Villefranche-de-Conflent dates from the 11th century and, owing to its strategic position in the Catalan region of Conflent, changed hands between France and Spain a number of times in its long history. In the second half of the 17th century, French Marshal Sébastien Le Prestre…
Just five minutes of walking from the walls of Villefranche-de-Conflent is one of the most impressive cave complexes I have ever seen. Grotte des Grandes Canalettes is a series of caves full of fantastic calcium and stone formations, with thousands of stalactites and stalagmites reaching for each other from above…
French town of Carcassonne, a little bit over an hour from the Spanish Catalan border, is fairly laconically recognized on the World Heritage list as an excellent example of a medieval fortified town. It truly is very impressive in this aspect and we took a day on our recent stay…
One of my weaknesses as a photographer is a healthy level of attraction to things grand and significant. That’s not to say that I only take pictures of important landmarks, but I tend to favor compositions that include eye-catching achitecture over those that include only fragments or nothing singularly remarkable.…
Our single day-trip to Avignon during our very first voyage to France ended up one of the best days of that itinerary. The tour of the Papal Palace took nearly three hours and exhausted us a little, so we shortened our sightseeing program, leaving quite a few hours until our…
Having had been introduced to Versailles through the works of Alexandre Dumas before I reached my teens, and having had visited modelled-on-Versailles Peterhof in the years before emigration, I had the Sun King’s palace on my must-visit list for our very first trip to France nearly a decade and a…
Pont du Gard was chronologically the very first Roman site that we laid our eyes upon. I cannot help but repeat my customary refrain about being in love with architectural masterpieces, and the ones that survive comparatively intact for 2,000 years get an additional dose of my admiration. Itinerary for…
On any given trip, if your plan is to explore an area with multiple destinations over the course of a few days, you probably pick one of those destinations as your base. Then, it becomes a balancing act to get all of your planned sightseeing around the area while doing…