Belves is a lovely and lively medieval town, it stands on a rocky spur above the Nauze valley on the skirts of the Bessede forest with a typical bastide layout and centre, and a preserved 15th century covered market hall. The town is well worth a visit.

History

Two hundred and fifty years BC it was inhabited by a celtic tribe the Bellovaques, who gave the city its name. The 11th century AD made it a fortified city because of its strategic position. In its most ancient part you find the castrum (fortified village) with its old keep (the “Tour de l’Auditeur”, 11th century), the Hôtel Bontemps (12th century, with its renaissance front), the ramparts, which used to encircle the city with a fortified gate and a tower later to be raised into a belfry (15th century). It towers above the Place d’Armes, nowadays used as a market-place every Saturday morning, with its five hundred years old 23 pillars and the pillori-irons to which the prisoners used to be chained.

In the hollow of the medieval ditch you can see the entrance to the troglodytic caves, once inhabited (from the 13th to the 18th centuries; guided visits all the year round, upon prior reservation). Strolling along the streets and alleys with their poetical names the “rue du Bout du Monde” (end of the world), the “Rue de l’Oiseau qui Chante (the singing bird), you will meet some more architectural treasures, the castle, the former Couvent des Frères Prêcheurs (monastery of the preaching priest)

About

In the centre of the town you can visit some troglodyte dwellings that date from around the 13th century. In the town you can also see the medieval belfry and walls, a 14th century castle, and the city hall. Belves is famous as being the ‘town of seven bell towers’. You will enjoy a pleasant afternoon wandering the streets and alleys of Belves – note that it is listed as ‘one of the most beautiful villages in France’.

The main sights

The old town, called Le Castrum, originates from the 11/12th century and was originally surrounded by ramparts. These were 15 metres high under the hospital! Some of the ramparts are still visible – wander down the rue du Petit Sol and the rue de l’oiseau qui chante (street of the bird that sings!).

The Belfry was built in the 11th century and was originally a defensive tower overhanging a deep moat in which people lived in caves. At the bottom of the moat the troglodytes grew their vegetables. The visit to the “Habitations troglodytiques” is very interesting.

The entrance to the troglodyte dwelling is by the fortified gate in the corner of the square. In the 11th century this had a drawbridge and was the only entrance to the Castrum.

Also from the 11th century is the ‘Tourd de l’Auditeur’. The entrance is high up as guards used to enter by ladder and then pull this up to prevent intruders.

The other main building of the middle ages is ‘La Tour du Guet’, the watch tower which is out of town on the corner of the rue du Bout du Monde (End of the World Street ) and the Pelevade street (named after a menhir which once stood here). The watch tower overlooks the valley and so could warn when the enemy approached.

Moving into the 13th century there is the monastery of the ‘Freres Precheurs’, now the townhall of Belves, and the church of Moncuq whose choir and chapels are 13th century though much of the rest is 15th century.

The chateau on the edge of town was started in the 14th century and altered during the Renaissance and afterwards.

In the 15th and 16th century the covered market was built. Note the pilori chain on one of the pillars. This was put round the neck of wrong-doers and they were held there for two or three days.

The Maison des Consuls which houses the tourist office is also 15th century and was for meetings of the consellors. The ground floor was a guard-room.

One of the highlights of Belves is its position on a rock outcrop, overhanging the valley of the river Nauze, and the views across open countryside from the town. Don’t ignore the surrounding countryside wnen you visit Belves – there is a great deal to explore in the surrounding small villages.

OFFICE DE TOURISME DU PAYS DE BELVES
1, Rue des Filhols
24170 BELVES
TEL/FAX : 33-553-29-10-20
belves@perigord.com

http://www.perigord.com/belves

Périgueux , city (2005 pop. 40,848), capital of Dordogne dept., SW France

Founded more than 2,000 years ago, Périgueux, préfecture or capital city of the Dordogne, is a gracious blend of ancient and modern.

The history of the city of Périgueux began when four Celtic tribes merged to become the Petrucores. They settled on the hills overlooking the river (l’Isle) until they were overpowered by the Romans.
The Gallo‑Roman remains show how magnificent the town would have been in the 1st and 2nd centuries, the Romans having built in the valley Vesunna, an imposing city (between 15 and 20000 inhabitants), which, in the 3rd century, was enclosed by a defensive surrounding wall.
In the 4th century, Vesunna which was but a small town was named after its people “Civitas Petrocoriorum”. The town was no longer prosperous during the Dark Ages. In the 9th century, it withstood the attacks of the Normans several times thanks to its thick defensive surrounding wall.
From the 10th century on, the birth of another town gave new impetus to the valley. As a matter of fact, a chapel and a monastery were built outside the walls were the tomb of the apostle of the Périgord, whose name was Saint-Front, had been erected and which attracted a lot of pilgrims.

Merchants, artisans who wanted to get rich traded with the clerics and travellers and settled down nearby. This population gave birth to the “Bourg du Puy Saint-Front”. In the 13th century, the new town expanded and was surrounded by a wall in a U-shape, a 1.6 km long with 28 towers and 12 gates.
In 1240, in the reign of Saint-Louis, the City and the “Bourg” met and formed one city called Périgueux. For centuries, Périgueux, protected by its defensive wall, remained unchanged. But from the 18th century on, the city began developing. Beyond the wall a modern city appeared and in 1790 it became the “préfecture” of the “département de la Dordogne”.
In the 19th century, the number of inhabitants increased a lot and the city spread along the river Isle as it used to be in the 2nd century. But it is only when the rail went through Périgueux in 1856 that the city really expanded (5700 inhabitants in 1801, 13000 inhabitants in 1850, 31300 in 1890).

The main shopping precinct is a warren of cobbled alleys lined with boutiques, summer buskers and magnificent Renaissance houses, perhaps the most spectacularly ornate being the Maison du Pâtissier on the corner of the Place Saint-Louis. This pedestrian area, with its shady squares and café terraces, is a marvellous venue for open air events like the regular summer night markets, the international mime festival, Mimos, or the free evening jazz concerts, Macadam Jazz, in July and August, as well as more traditional events such as the marché au gras (fattened duck and goose products) during the winter months.

The 18th-century – now administrative – part of the city around the Place Tourny is largely built in white stone, and the saltiest events here are the frequent pétanque (local bowls) tournaments which occupy the elderly – and a large part of precious parking space on the Tourny carpark.
Modern architecture includes the splendid new Archives, opposite the Tour Mataguerre, the Bourse du Travail and the greenhouse-like Lycée Jay-de-Beaufort, successfully adjoining the beautiful Renaissance ruins of the Château Barrière. Near here are the Roman Jardins des Arènes, the entrances to the arena a gloomy reminder of gladiators’ torments. Now it is a landscaped park, a shady haven from the streets, with a children’s paddling pool and playground.

In Paleontology , the term Perigordian industry is given to the tool tradition of prehistoric men in Upper Paleolithic Europe that followed the Mousterian industry, was contemporary in part with the Aurignacian, and was succeeded by the Solutrean. Perigordian tools included denticulate (toothed) tools of the type used earlier in the Mousterian tradition and stone knives with one sharp edge and one flat edge, much like modern metal knives. Other Upper Paleolithic tool types are also found in Perigordian culture, including scrapers, borers, burins (woodworking tools rather like chisels), and composite tools; bone implements are relatively uncommon.

The Perigordian has two main stages.

The earlier stage, called Châtelperronian, is concentrated in the Périgord region of France but is believed to have originated in southwestern Asia; it is distinguished from contemporary stone tool culture complexes by the presence of curved-backed knives (knives sharpened both on the cutting edge and the back).
The later stage is called Gravettian and is found in France, Italy, and Russia (there termed Eastern Gravettian). Gravettian people in the west hunted horses to the near exclusion of the reindeer and bison that other contemporaries hunted; in Russia Gravettians concentrated on mammoths. Both appear to have hunted communally, using stampedes and pitfalls to kill large numbers of animals at one time. Gravettians in the east used large mammoth bones as part of the building material for winter houses; mammoth fat was used to keep fires burning. Gravettian peoples made rather crude, fat “Venus” figurines, used red ochre as pigment, and fashioned jewelry out of shells, animal teeth, and ivory.

Archaeological finds in the Perigord, made another profound impact on the study of religion when in 1841 the discovery of prehistoric human artifacts and later finds gave clues to early man’s magico-religious beliefs and practices. These discoveries, notably the cave paintings in the Dordogne, northern and eastern Spain, and elsewhere, gave scholars encouragement to work out the course of man’s religious evolution from earliest times. Spectacular as prehistoric archaeology was proving to be, however, it could only yield fragments of a whole that is difficult to reconstruct. Even the famous cave paintings of Les Trois Frères, in the Dordogne, for example, which portray among other things a dancing human with antlers on his head and a stallion’s tail decorating his rear, does not yield an unambiguous interpretation: is the dancing figure a sorcerer, a priest, or what? He very likely is a priest presenting himself as a divine figure connected with animal fertility and hunting rites–but this remains as only an educated guess. Hence, it became attractive to many scholars of religion to try to supplement ancient archaeological evidence with data drawn from contemporary primitive peoples–i.e., to interpret the prehistoric Stone Age through present-day stone age cultures. This procedure has several pitfalls–partly because contemporary “primitives” are themselves the product of a long historical process and because their culture may have changed over the millennia in many and various ways.

Lascaux: A cave containing one of the most outstanding displays of prehistoric art yet discovered, located above the Vézère River valley near Montignac. It is a short distance upstream from another major cave-art site, Eyzies-de-Tayac. The two sites, with some two dozen other painted caves and 150 prehistoric settlements in the Vézère valley, were added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1979. Discovered by four teenage boys in September 1940, the cave was first studied by the French archaeologist Henri-Édouard-Prosper Breuil. It consists of a main cavern (some 66 feet [20 meters] wide and 16 feet [5 meters] high) and several steep galleries, all magnificently decorated with engraved, drawn, and painted figures.
In all there are some 600 painted and drawn animals and symbols, along with nearly 1,500 engravings. The paintings were done on a light background in various shades of yellow, red, brown, and black. Among the most remarkable pictures are four huge aurochs (some 16 feet long), their horns portrayed in a “twisted perspective”; a curious two-horned animal (misleadingly nicknamed the “unicorn”), perhaps intended as a mythical creature; several red deer; bovids; great herds of horses; the heads and necks of several stags (3 feet [1 meter] tall), which appear to be swimming across a river; a series of six felines; two male bison; and a rare narrative composition.The narrative scene has been variously interpreted but is probably based on shamanism. Its central figure is a bison that appears to have been speared in the abdomen; hanging, or spilling, from the animal near the spear is a lined, ovular sack that may represent entrails. In front of the bison’s horns, and falling away from the animal, is a bird-headed man–the only human figure depicted in the cave–with an erect phallus. Just below, or beside, the man is a stick with a bird ornament as a finial. Another spear is near the man’s feet, and off to the left a rhinoceros seems to be walking away from the scene. Archaeologists have theorized that the cave served over a long period of time as a centre for the performance of hunting and magical rites–a theory supported by the depiction of a number of arrows and traps on or near the animals. Based on carbon-14 dating, as well as the fossil record of the animal species portrayed, the Lascaux paintings have been dated to the late Aurignacian (Perigordian) period (c. 15,000-13,000 BC). The cave, in perfect condition when first discovered, was opened to the public in 1948. Its floor level was quickly lowered to accommodate a walkway, destroying information of probable scientific value in the process–and the ensuing pedestrian traffic (as many as 100,000 annual visitors), as well as the use of artificial lighting, caused the once-vivid colours to fade and algae and bacteria to grow over some of the paintings. Thus, in 1963 the cave was again closed. In 1983 a partial replica, “Lascaux II,” was opened nearby for public viewing; by the mid-1990s it registered some 300,000 visitors annually.

The inhabitants of what was to become the Perigord region have left so much evidence of their existence and way of life that the valley of the Vézère has become a sanctuary to their memory and a prestigious prehistoric site. Industrious and prosperous tribes of Gauls who lived in the hills and already knew the secrets of iron joined together and became known as the Petrocores. Under the Romans, they built in the valley the important town of Vésone which became a city in the first century AD and part of the Roman Empire. After the invasions, the antique Civitas Petrocorium became the province of Périgord and played an important part in the struggle for the independence of Aquitaine, before coming under the French monarchy. The French king Henri IV was the last Count of Périgord.

During the Hundred Years War , the region marked the boundary of French and English possessions and was thus the scene of incessant combat, resulting in the many castles which were the bastions of rival factions. Feudal struggles were fierce and the spirit of liberty was evident from early on. The towns were administered by consuls and walls were built to protect the cities.
After the destruction and massacres of the Wars of Religion (1562 – 1598), these military defences were used for the last time during the troubles known as “La Fronde” (1649 – 1652).
During the French Revolution , the Périgord region changed its name in 1790 and became known as the
Dordogne, with the capital changing successively from Périgueux to Bergerac then Sarlat before finally becoming Périgueux again.

Canoeing & Canoe / Hike

Both the Dordogne and Vezere are named after the rivers that cut through the area.  A lot has changed over the years, 1000′s of years to be precise.
Ever since “Man” came and settled in the Vezere Valley, the sheer limestone cliffs have been ideal spots to use as shelters, safe from the dangers that our ancestors faced, wild animals, severe weather, and other tribes.
Some of Dordogne’s best kept secrets are still to be found along the rivers, and only accessible by canoe or canoe / hike.

Our canoe trips leave at the crack of dawn, chances are you will spot deer, wild boar, otters, buzzards, kingfishers, fox and plenty of other wildlife.
We will pass Chateaus, ancient farmhouses, troglodytes and caves, and this is all on the way to our exploring grounds.

For more info visit : www.walkingdordogne.com 

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