Attractions and Places To See around Les Gonds - Top 20

The Abbaye-aux-Dames is built around the church of Sainte-Marie, built in the twelfth century. Famous for its facade and its characteristic "pinecone" bell tower, it is one of the emblematic monuments of Saintonge's Romanesque art. After several wars and fires, the place was restored in the 1970s and 1980s and is now a hotel. When you walk through the long corridors you feel like you have been transported back to the time when the abbey was still alive.

The Saint-Pierre Cathedral is located in the heart of the old town on the left bank of the Charente. According to tradition, the founding of this episcopal see goes back to Saint Eutrope. The construction of the first Christian building on the site of the current cathedral could not be dated with any precision. It probably dates back to the 6th century.

A former Benedictine abbey created in 1047, Abbaye-aux-Dames was the first women's monastery in Saintonge. These powerful women were nuns, that is to say, nuns living cloistered and having taken a vow of piety, occupying their lives in contemplation. They carried the crosier, in other words the pastoral staff of a bishop, and minted coins. Richly endowed, the abbey carried its influence well beyond the borders of the county and over time it became one of the most powerful women's monasteries in all of South-West France. With up to a hundred nuns at its peak, it was entrusted with the mission of instructing young girls, often from the French nobility, and counted among its most illustrious residents the future Marquise de Montespan, favorite of Louis XIV. The Abbaye-aux-Dames is structured around the Sainte-Marie church, built in the 12th century, famous for its facade and its characteristic “pine cone” bell tower. The premises were restored during the 1970s and 1980s and now house a Cité de la musique in which the Saintes Festival dedicated to classical music takes place each year. You can also stay in a wing of the building, the cells having been converted into hotel rooms, and leave your bike in a secure room.

The La Dixmerie estate was once owned by the Brémond d'Ars family. The tradition wants that there would have been then, in this place, a barn with the tithes and a castle. This family seems to have succeeded each other in La Dixmerie for almost two centuries. On the eve of the Revolution, this land would have belonged to Pierre-René-Auguste, knight, lord and baron of Saint-Fort-sur-le-Né, Dompierre and Orlac. Born in 1759, he was the son of Pierre de Brémond d'Ars. Pierre-René-Auguste was deputy of the nobility of Saintonge to the Estates General of 1789. He emigrated in 1792, after having served for some time in the army of the Princes. Defender of the monarchy and religion, he had signed, in 1790 and 1791, the protests against the decrees on the nobility and the clergy and on the forfeiture of the King. Returning to France at the beginning of the 19th century, he would have retired to the Dixmerie where he devoted himself to work in history and numismatics. He had published in 1778, Literary Amusements. Pierre-René-Auguste de Brémond d'Ars married Jeanne-Marie-Élisabeth de La Taste in 1785. In 1809, the La Dixmerie estate belonged to Paul Letors de Larray, former infantry captain, husband of Suzanne Billard. In 1923, La Dixmerie was owned by the Comte de Brémond d'Ars; then it passed to the Comte de Pressac de Lioncel, married in second marriage to Jeanne-Marie-Caroline Goudenoue d'Aldenhove. The latter died there on May 17, 1936. The current castle, dating back to the 1880s, was built near an old mansion. It is a residence of harmonious proportions adopting a rectangular plan and flanked on either side by short slightly projecting wings. Despite a certain architectural unity, it is nonetheless provided with a few decorative fantasies, such as the segmented pediments topped with a ball and surmounting the dormers of each wing, and more particularly the richly worked dormer window which dominates the central bay of the building. Château de la Dixmerie 17100 La Chapelle-des-Pots, private property, cannot be visited.

A particularity is located in the gallery of arcature which overhangs the portal. Indeed it has three arched windows on one side of the central window and two semicircular on the other. Note that the two bays on the right occupy the same width as the three on the left. The bell tower, like many others in the region, has a pyramidal roof. Simple columns come to partition the two windows which cover each face. Inside the church, archival documents prove that the nave with two bays was originally vaulted with warheads. Unfortunately, this vault was destroyed during religious wars. Still according to archival documents, it would seem that at the beginning of the 20th century, a narthex, where the catechumens were held, leaned on its facade. Today, it has completely disappeared. The church was classified as a historic monument in 1913. The building underwent a complete restoration in 1935. To admire just next to the church a magnificent and majestic period residence.

The Church of Saint-Martin de Coucoury was built around the 11th century. It is a pretty example of a Romanesque church.

The current cathedral is the successor to an early Christian sanctuary built under Bishop Palladius in the 6th century (Wikipedia).

The cathedral in Saintes was dedicated to Saint Peter (Saint Pierre). Simon, nicknamed Petrus (rock), was a fisherman on Lake Genesareth when he - together with his brother Andreas - was called by Jesus Christ to be a "fisherman of men". According to the Catholic understanding he is the highest apostle, and the two millennia long line of popes - currently Francis - are in his successor. On statues and paintings Peter is almost always shown with two keys in his hand, this attribute refers to the Bible verse in Matthew: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; what you will bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and what you will loosen on earth will be loosened in heaven ”(Chapter 16, verse 19). Together with Paul, Peter is also known as the "princes of the apostles", their common feast day in the saints' calendar is on June 29th.