The best road cycling routes around Montreuil-Bellay

The contemporary art center of national interest, La Chapelle Jeanne d’Arc de Thouars, is today a leading venue for contemporary art in the western region. Along with the Château d’Oiron and the Syndicat Mixte de la Vallée du Thouet, which runs a program of public commissions for contemporary works, the art center's work is carried out in partnership across the entire territory of the Pays Thouarsais community of communes and, more broadly, in the northern part of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. Within the region, the art center is a recognized player in the Astre plastic and visual arts network. Developing an artistic project that takes into account its geographical location and its architectural envelope, a neo-Gothic chapel, the art center maintains a privileged relationship with the heritage of Thouars. Guest artists, hosted for residencies or exhibitions, appropriate the chapel space by creating an original work designed for the venue. They also bring their perspective to the city, urban planning, landscape, and rural areas of the Thouars region and the Thouet Valley. Since 1993, nearly a hundred artists have been invited for residencies or exhibition projects. In recent years, the art center has paid particular attention to emerging artists from art schools, particularly those from the regional Le Grand Huit network. In addition to its programming, the art center also engages in outreach activities in the form of off-site exhibitions, workshops, and events (meetings, lectures, and workshops). A mobile device, La Mar(g)elle, was created in 2015 by the artist Marie-Ange Guilleminot to offer interventions in partner locations, particularly within schools and structures in the social and medical sectors. For its educational action, the art center benefits from the action of the municipal art school of Thouars, to which it is connected within the visual arts department of the City of Thouars.

Beautiful mansion that is fortunately protected and has survived the test of time.

The Fête du Thoureil, a festival of Loire barges, is an Angevin tradition that takes place every year in spring on the banks of the Loire at Thoureil, in Maine-et-Loire, between Saumur and Angers. The programme includes barges and old Loire sailing ships, and Loire festivities. It is considered the first festival of Loire barges between Nantes and Tours.

City on the banks of the Loire with dazzling white walls and iridescent blue roofs, Saumur tells the chapters of its history to the powerful and majestic rhythm of the river. Royal city and princely castle, place of security and Protestant intellectual centre, equestrian capital with the evocative name of fine bubbles or still wines, it is all these events and all this know-how that the river serenely reflects at the foot of the limestone hill.

We can finally see the Loire! A very pretty passage through the village.

Magnificent 17th century residence.

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