The best gravel rides around Crazannes

beautiful passages along the Charente with pretty monuments and small waterfront cafés in Port d’Envaux and Saintes.

It is an absolutely beautiful village.

He tells us that the chapel of pots was a hub of pottery in other times

Note opening times

Departmental attention next door But it's a great place for a little break

Located on a rocky spur overlooking the Charente, Taillebourg has one of the oldest castles in the province of Saintonge. It was also one of the most important in the region in the Middle Ages. This stronghold will allow the city to assert its power and prosper thanks to its port and control of trade throughout the Middle Ages. According to a chronicler, the Château de Taillebourg hosted the wedding night of Louis, future king of France under the name Louis VII, with Duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine. Louis IX (future Saint Louis) made the castle his fortress to launch the attack against the King of England, Henry III. This victorious battle of July 21, 1242 became famous and was represented several centuries later by Delacroix, whose painting can be seen in the Battles gallery at the Palace of Versailles. The castle which had endured all the sieges during the Hundred Years' War and the Wars of Religion was taken and destroyed during the Fronde in 1652. During the Revolution, it was sold in lots as national property. Having suffered from lack of maintenance, the building was the victim of a fire in 1822 and was largely destroyed. All that remains now are the ruins with the ramparts and a tower standing like an emaciated being. It now houses a park which is a haven of peace. To access it from the banks of the Charente, you have to take a small detour through the town.

Labeled “Small town of character”, but also “Village of stones and water” (an expression which describes this village very well), Saint-Savinien-sur-Charente is a small picturesque village in the Saintonge Romane nestled in a meander of the Charente, nestled between the river and a limestone cliff. The town is remarkable for its houses built right on the water on the banks of the Charente, its district of troglodyte dwellings in the heights, some of which date back to the Gallo-Roman era, its river port, its old buildings and its churches, including the magnificent Romanesque church dating from the 13th century.

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.