Chapter X: Section VIII: Angoulême to Bergerac, 84 Miles

(135 KILOMETRES)

DISTANCES ALONG THE ROUTE

Kil. Miles. =Angoulême= to Dignac =15= 9½ =Dignac= to Mareuil =21= 13 =Mareuil= to Brantôme =20= 12¼ =Brantôme= to Château-l’Évêque =15= 9½ =Château-l’Évêque= to Périgueux =10= 6¼ =Périgueux= to Vergt =22= 13½ =Vergt= to Bergerac =32= 20

NOTES FOR DRIVERS

=Angoulême to Périgueux.=--A hilly road, with two level stretches
between =La Rochebeaucourt= and =Monsec=, and between =Puy-de-Fourches=
and =Périgueux=.

A long climb out of =Périgueux=, with an easy descent to =Vergt=
through the forest. For a long distance the road winds through a
beautiful valley.

PLACES OF INTEREST ON THE ROUTE

=Angoulême.=--A considerable town on a raised tabular space,
surrounded by boulevards on site of ramparts; Romanesque cathedral,
1110-1130, with ornate west front; _Évêché_ of same period, but
greatly restored and altered; Hôtel de Ville built 1858-1866,
incorporating two towers of the feudal castle, and contains the
museum.

=Dignac.=--A pretty village, with a Romanesque church.

=La Rochebeaucourt.=--Small village, with picturesque château and
Romanesque church.

=Mareuil-sur-Belle.=--Village, with a partially ruined castle of
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; now a farmhouse, and can be
entered.

=Brantôme.=--A very attractive little town on the River Dronne;
ancient monastery, with caves containing rock sculpture; a gateway
and a remarkable Romanesque church, with a detached tower of the
eleventh century; several old houses and a fifteenth-century parish
church, now the market-house.

=Château-l’Évêque.=--A small village, with a very picturesque château
of the fifteenth century.

=Chancelade.=--A village with great stone-quarries, and an abbey
church dating from 1120.

=Périgueux.=--A historic city, founded in Gallo-Roman times;
Cathedral of St. Front, with five domes, eleventh or twelfth
century; ruined church at west end of earlier date; several old
houses in the narrow streets. The Tour Mataquerre, of the
fourteenth century, is a part of the ramparts; St. Étienne,
formerly the cathedral, eleventh and twelfth centuries, with three
domes; Roman amphitheatre of third century A.D., converted into a
castle in twelfth century; Tour de Vésone, part of a Roman temple;
Château Barrière has a Roman base; near it is a plain Roman arch,
called the Porte Normande.

=Lamonzie-Montastruc.=--Feudal château, chiefly of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries.

Angoulême, like Poitiers, occupies an isolated tabular site raised above the Charente, and has beautiful views from the wide boulevards which encircle the town, where the ramparts and towers formerly stood. In medieval times the outline of the town must have been most imposing, with every tower, spire, and crenellation thrown up against the sky. To-day, although some towers have survived, there is no striking silhouette, and Angoulême has a spacious modern aspect, which even the cupolas and fantastic sculpture of its cathedral cannot alter.

_The Cathedral of St. Pierre_ is an exceedingly interesting Romanesque-Byzantine building, begun in the eleventh century, and constructed mainly between 1110 and 1130. From 1630 to 1654 it underwent restoration, and recently Paul Abadie supervised the work which has robbed the building of some of its external picturesqueness. The western façade, however, remains, with all its carved detail, showing the ideas of the Last Judgment prevalent 800 years ago.

Beyond the interest of the Romanesque architecture of the interior, there are on the north wall of the nave some restored inscriptions coeval with the building and the tomb of Philippe de Voivre, Marquis de Ruffec and Governor of Angoulême, who was assassinated in Paris in 1585.

Adjoining the cathedral is the _Évêché_, built at the same time, but restored at different periods, chiefly in the fifteenth century. It was lately bought by the town, and is to be converted into a museum and library.

_The Hôtel de Ville_ was built between 1858 and 1866 by Paul Abadie, on the site of the old castle of the counts, and into it are incorporated two of its great towers. The earlier, called _le Tour Polygone_, was built by Hugues IV. (le Brun), who died in 1303, and the Tour de Valois, in which Marguerite de Valois was born, is a fifteenth-century work. At the present time the museums of painting and archæology are in the ground floor of the Hôtel de Ville. They are fairly interesting.

The history of Angoulême is similar to that of Poitiers in the main events.

On leaving Angoulême the road crosses a common of almost English type, and then a good deal of woodland, until one reaches the village of Dignac, prettily situated on hilly ground, with the tower of its Romanesque church showing prominently. Then follows a wood of oaks and more common-land, succeeded by open country with wide views.

Near La Rochebeaucourt the road goes to the right, and curves downhill to a level-crossing by the railway-station adjoining the village. Close by, on the left, is the château, among trees, with circular machicolated towers and conical roofs. The Romanesque church has a fine rose-window on the south side.

Going to the right, at the cross-roads in the village, there is a pleasant run by the stream called La Belle Rivière, which the road follows almost to its source among the hills above Monsec. On approaching Mareuil-sur-Belle, the first building to be seen is the interesting château of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, to the left in the marshy ground by the river. The big cylindrical towers of the gateway and the round staircase tower at the north-east corner are in excellent preservation, and so are the buildings on three sides of the courtyard; but having fallen from its dignity as a seat of one of the four baronies of Périgord, it is now an unkempt farmhouse. There are some beautifully designed doorways and windows in the courtyard, and one can look into the chapel, which is now given over to secular uses. An inscription to the memory of the troubadour Arnant de Mareuil (twelfth century) was placed over the doorway in 1903 by the Félibres of Périgord.

An old wooden cross and a stone one stand outside the church, which is not interesting.

Huge views appear at intervals as the car follows the windings of the white road, running with great smoothness on a perfect surface.[C] The peasants of the district drive to market in quaint little

donkey-carts, into which three men or women pack themselves in the quaintest fashion imaginable.

After Monsec a watershed is crossed, and there are some considerable hills, in a more or less wild state, heather and juniper growing between small oaks.

BRANTÔME

is a delightfully picturesque little place on the very attractive River Dronne. The chief interest in the town is the monastery, founded by Charlemagne about the year 769. Before that time a small religious community had inhabited the grottoes in the rocky escarpments that rise above the town. These were enlarged natural cavities, and one of them continued to be venerated all through the Middle Ages. Its walls were covered during the sixteenth century with sculptures in high relief representing the Last Judgment and the Crucifixion.

The monastic buildings now include a machicolated gateway; a Romanesque church restored by Abadie, which before the thirteenth century had two cupolas on the roof; a curiously designed tower built in the eleventh century on the rock immediately above the church; and the fifteenth-century cloisters. There are two bridges over the sparkling river, and facing one of them is the fifteenth-century parish church, a picturesque fortified building now used as a market-house. There are some interesting houses of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and others of the Renaissance period, including a manor-house called La Hierse.

Quaint stone well-heads are frequently to be seen in front of the houses; the vine becomes more and more frequent, and the umbrella pine begins to appear here and there as one journeys southwards. Between Brantôme and Château-l’Évêque a light railway crosses the road half a dozen times, and keeps by the road all the way to Périgueux.

At Château-l’Évêque the very picturesque fifteenth-century castle of the Bishops of Périgueux stands out in a most attractive fashion to the right of the road just behind the village. The steep red roof rises above the square and round towers that give great dignity to the pile.

The road drops down the valley of the Beauvronne, a small tributary of the Isle, passing the village of Chancelade, where there are very extensive underground quarries. A recent collapse was the cause of several deaths.

The greater part of the abbey church, founded in 1120, dates from a restoration in 1625, but the Romanesque front remains, with the doorway half concealed by a modern porch of plaster and wood. There is also a twelfth-century chapel at the west end.

PÉRIGUEUX

The first view of the city, through an opening between steep slopes near Chancelade, is full of promise to those in search of romance. If it should happen to be a fine evening, a beautiful light gilds the great Byzantine campanile and clustered domes of the cathedral, as well as all the faces of the buildings turned towards the west, so that the river-encircled city assumes mellowed tones of creamy gold contrasted with the wooded hills overlooking it on all sides.

_History._--The original prehistoric Périgueux stood on the south side of the River Isle, and it afterwards became the Gaulish city of _Vesuna_, the capital of the Petrocorians, whose name survives in Périgueux. When the Romans had occupied the country a new city was built on the site of the present one, and in the period of its prosperity, before the barbarian invasions swept away the Gallo-Roman civilization, the arena, the temple of Vesuna, and other surviving remains, were built.

The coming of Christianity is associated with the name of St. Front, around whose tomb an oratory was built in the sixth century. Towards the end of the tenth century an abbey arose on the site, and then, precisely as at Tours, a new town arose alongside the walled Roman _cité_, and the dual towns must have had somewhat the appearance of the Carcassonne of to-day. After being in rivalry for a time, the two portions of Périgueux were in 1240 united by a solemn treaty.

_The Cathedral of St. Front_ only became the cathedral after the mutilation of St. Étienne by the Huguenots. It is a most remarkable building, in the form of a Greek cross, roofed with five huge domes. The similarity of the plan to that of St. Mark’s at Venice has suggested that it was copied from that building, with which it is generally regarded as contemporary, although a considerable conflict of opinion has taken place as to its exact age.

At the west end of the domical building there is a roofless structure consisting of three naves, and whether it is the earlier of the two still remains in doubt. Félix de Verneilh, a distinguished archæologist, holds that the domed building was begun in 984, and consecrated in 1047, and that the roofless church goes back as far as Merovingian times (fifth and sixth centuries); but latterly there has been a tendency to date the complete building between 1125 and 1150, and to regard the ruined structure as the one consecrated in 1047, and burnt in 1120.

The restoration has been so wholesale that, were it not for the domes and the impressiveness of the colossal square piers, the interior would be too bald and bare to be interesting. The arches are only slightly pointed, and this building is, perhaps, the birthplace of French Gothic. The tower is one of the very earliest, if not the only Byzantine campanile in France, while the apse is quite modern.

The Bishop’s offices are above the cloisters of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, and, since the demolition of 1903, are all that remains of the monastery. The site is now an open space, forming a broad terrace, which gives a delightful view of the river and the wooded hills, and to a town with so many narrow streets as this it must be a boon to the inhabitants.

A walk through the old streets of the episcopal town, especially the _Rues Limogeaune_ and _Aubergerie_, reveals some fine domestic architecture of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and there are some old houses defended with machicolation on the quay by the Pont Vieux. The _Tour Mataquerre_, of the fourteenth century, is a part of the ramparts of the city.

_The Roman Amphitheatre_, dating back to the third century, is now planted with trees, and the space inside contains some Roman remains. The Counts of Périgueux made this amphitheatre their château in the twelfth century, and inhabited it till the end of the sixteenth century. In 1644 the town ceded it to the Visitandines, who despoiled it of its stones to build their convent.

_St. Étienne_, the former cathedral, is close to the amphitheatre. It belongs to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and is surmounted by three domes and a tower analogous to St. Front.

The interior has three carved oak altar-screens of the seventeenth century; the largest one, formerly in St. Front, is the work of the Jesuit Laville, who took ten years over it. A richly sculptured tomb on the right on entering is that of Bishop Jean d’Asside, who died in 1169.

_The Tour de Vésone_ is part of a Gallo-Roman temple dedicated to Vesuna, the tutelary goddess of the city. Some specimens of the red-and-green marble which formed the outer casing are preserved in the museum.

_The Château Barrière_ has a Roman base. The highest tower, externally round, dates from the tenth century, while the body of the castle is late Gothic. Near the château is a Roman arch called the Porte Normande.

=Alternative routes from Périgueux to Carcassonne= are (1) viâ
Cahors, Montauban, and Toulouse; and (2) viâ Rocamadour and Albi
(see large folding map at end of this book). In either case the
route takes one to places famed for their architectural and
historic features.

On leaving Périgueux the river is crossed in a south-easterly direction, and the first turning to the right leads one to a steady ascent out of the valley of the Isle, with the site of the original city on the right among the trees. The view backwards over the dome-crowned city in its setting of richly wooded hills is full of romance and charm. On nearly the whole of the thirty-three miles to Bergerac the road winds in and out among steep tree-clad slopes. It is a splendid drive, and on a clear moonlit evening, with the pale shadows of trees thrown across the road, and the dim mystery of the encompassing forest all around, there is left on the mind a vivid impression of a vast uninhabited country--one of those forest areas of the Dark Ages (fourth to tenth centuries) through which chivalrous knights were wont to travel in search of adventure and fair ladies. Between Clermont-de-Beauregard and Lembras, the feudal fortress of Montastruc stands above the River Condeau, and its Gothic towers fall in well with the spirit of its surroundings.

The last two miles to Bergerac are on a very straight open road, which brings one to the east side of the town, and takes one in a fairly direct fashion to the bridge across the Dordogne.