The best traffic-free bike rides around Soizé

Magnificent ceiling with the possibility of lighting it up

This ancient fortified castle dominates the Huisne Valley at 360° with its imposing keep. The building, with its troubled history, has undergone numerous modifications in its architecture and functions. A visit is essential to understand the complexity of its history and to observe the architectural evolutions.

The Church of Saint-Pierre, under the Ancien Régime, part of the deanery of Bellême, in the diocese of Sées, is located in the heart of the village of Saint-Pierre-la-Bruyère, in the Perche region. This building features a relatively high nave, surmounted by a slate bell tower, extending into a square-plan choir, much lower, flanked by a rectangular chapel to the south. The façade is supported by four powerful buttresses that appear to date from the late Middle Ages. It features a basket-handle lintel entrance door, dating from the late Gothic period. This door replaced a Romanesque doorway whose semicircular arch appears above the Gothic opening. It is surmounted by a pointed window. The northern drip wall is flanked, where it meets the western façade, by a brick staircase turret leading to the attic. The nave was built in the Romanesque period, as evidenced by the small round-arched windows in the upper part of the north drip wall. The bell tower is supported by four posts set within the nave's volume behind the façade wall. The three bays delimited by these posts are covered by a plastered wooden vault, lower than the nave vault, built in the 18th century. The triumphal arch is quite small. It is flanked by two finely crafted stone altarpieces. The choir is adorned with a large stone altarpiece with three sides delimited by four columns, surmounted by a richly decorated cornice crowned with fire pots. The high altar and side altars, in the same style, were built after the episcopal visit of 1706. They are a representative example of the quality of the renovations carried out in Percheron churches in the 17th and 18th centuries. A seigneurial chapel, built in the late 15th or early 16th centuries to the south of the choir, was converted into a sacristy between 1701 and 1706, to satisfy the observations made during the episcopal visitations. The arch opening onto the choir was walled up for this purpose. Aside from the altarpieces, the church contains few furnishings: an 18th-century stone Virgin Mary and a 16th-century baptismal font. The Sauvegarde de l'Art Français (French Art Protection Agency) granted €4,000 in grants in 2005 for the restoration of the roof.

The Saint-Hilaire church is of Romanesque origin and was built in the 11th century by the monks of Saint-Gratien de Tours. It was remodeled in the 16th century, and disfigured in the 19th.

A must-see that overlooks the valley.

Superb castle in the Perche!

Built on an old feudal motte, which is still visible and was completely destroyed during the Hundred Years' War, it was replaced in the second half of the 15th century by the castle, the remains of which can still be seen today. The Saint-François Tower remains as it was, with its Grisons base and rows of white stone. Halfway up the circle is the Cord of Saint Francis of Assisi, with its coils and knots. A Renaissance building was added in the 16th century, and new buildings were constructed in the 17th and 18th centuries.

We went by very quickly