The best road cycling routes around Arçay

great place

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.

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Classified as a "Grand site du Val de Loire", the Château de Brézé is a unique historical monument built between the 11th and 19th centuries. The castle stands proudly in a magnificent neo-Gothic style, but it is actually beneath the surface that the building's particularity lies, since it houses an entire underground network that constitutes a real fortress hidden under the rock. Initially built to protect against Viking invasions, the fortress has one of the deepest dry moats in Europe. Under the castle, there is a 3 km network of tunnels and rooms. These were in a way the first protective bunkers known in history, and housed bakeries, stables, dormitories, kitchens, a barrel room and even a silkworm farm.

The Market Square is lined with houses whose construction dates from the 14th to the 19th century: the oldest house in the town (probably 1399) at no. 3, the old town house at no. 15 and the old Barony Registry (16th century) at no. 42.

The first mention of the château dates back to 889. In 1881, General Delaveau settled there and made architectural modifications. Today, the property belongs to the Marteling family, who have reconstituted the vineyard. The 15 hectares of vines benefit from clay-limestone soil and several forms of intervention – disbudding, de-suckering, leaf thinning, etc. The harvests are manual and the cellars are dug into a chalky stone called tuffeau. The result: renowned wines, including the red Saumur Cabernet Franc – the main grape variety.

Montreuil, or small monastery, and Bellay, named after Lord Berlay installed in 1025 by Foulque de Nerra, founder of the rich province of Anjou, has been a walled town since the 13th century. Located at the crossroads of Anjou, Touraine and Poitou, the city became a strategic and commercial issue from the Middle Ages. This interest is reflected in the construction of fortified enclosures. A first belt (11th century), direct protection of the castle, is completed by an impressive rampart (13th century) encompassing the upper and lower towns, while a third enclosure ensures control of the ford. Six monumental gates, four of which still exist, were opened by the lords of Harcourt. These great builders endowed Montreuil-Bellay with exceptional architecture, which characterizes the appearance of the town even today: tuffeau lacework on the facades of the houses, the bossage of the towers of the Porte Saint-Jean, the tangle of the roofs of the house of the castle, turreted manors, castle chapel turned collegiate church, castles, Saint-Jean hospital... The 15th century is undoubtedly the golden century of Montreuil-Bellay, which can now be discovered in this preserved setting.

The Château de Coussay, inspired by the Italian Renaissance, is one of the first examples of the French Renaissance. Armand-Jean Duplessis, then bishop of Luçon, lived there before becoming the famous Cardinal de Richelieu in 1622.