A guide-conférencier of the Pays d’art et d’histoire Auray Quiberon Terre Atlantique opens this chapel once the light has gone. The decoration is picked out of the dark in the faisceau de la lampe torche, leaving the rest unlit. Notre-Dame de Locmaria is listed as a Monument Historique, and its polychrome roof frame and paintings are exceptional for their rarity. Les Incontournables open megaliths and chapels nearby the same way.
Topic: events
La colline aux clochers, Quimperlé’s upper town
Place Saint-Michel has been the heart of Quimperlé’s upper town since medieval times, under the bell tower of Notre-Dame. From its four corners a guide leads walkers towards other monuments of the town’s history, the Ursulines convent among them and the Saint-Eutrope chapel. Archaeological digs on the route have just revealed new secrets, and the walk takes them in. It sets off from the parvis of the église Notre-Dame de l’Assomption.
Il était une nuit: night visit to the Prieuré Saint-Etienne
Night settles over the Prieuré Saint-Etienne and the site opens for an unusual guided visit. Visitors are led through the priory after dark, a moment outside time between imagination and the waking of the senses. The building at its heart is the oldest chapel in Morbihan, a listed Historic Monument raised in the tenth and eleventh centuries above the Oyon valley. Around it lie Gallo-Roman remains, polychrome wooden statues and wall paintings.
Le Savon Breton, cold saponification up close
Le Savon Breton opens its workshop at Saint-Brieuc-des-Iffs so that visitors come away hard to catch out on soap. The route runs through the laboratoire, the ingrédients and the méthode de fabrication, which here is saponification à froid. The savonnerie is an entreprise artisanale of the Bretagne romantique and works only with ingredients it selects itself. The boutique opens at the end of the visit.
Chrétientés celtes, une Histoire des saints bretons
The Christianization of Brittany is the subject of this film-lecture: migrants out of Cornwall, Wales, Ireland and Scotland, and the Celtic form of worship they inspired. The account passes magical fountains and majestic cathedrals, and the many churches and chapels of the region. The famous enclosures are what that history left standing in the Breton landscape. Connaissance du monde programmes it as one date of its season at this hall.
Les ateliers de la biscuiterie Joubard
The Biscuiterie Joubard opens its doors at Saint-Thuriau and takes visitors into the making of Breton biscuits. The route runs through the workshops, past the machines and along the production lines. It ends in the factory shop, where the biscuits are sold loose by weight or packed into coffrets cadeaux. The Pontivy Communauté tourist office carries the booking, and what is on show is a Breton biscuit trade still at work in its own commune.
Visites du Petit Théâtre – La Passerelle, en famille
La Passerelle keeps a small théâtre à l’italienne, one of the 170 historic houses of that form counted in France. The guided visit takes families into the room: the parterre, the baignoires, the balcony and the boxes of the two upper floors, and the poulailler above them, also called le paradis. Two age groups go round separately. The house is listed, and its 250 places have carried jazz, classical and current music.
Solidus Liquidus: Nicolas Desverronnières at L’aparté
L’aparté, the contemporary art centre beside the lac de Trémelin, shows what came of a residency by Nicolas Desverronnières. He cuts wood in taille directe, sculpts bas-reliefs, lays installations on the floor and draws with charcoal powder on panels. The work takes hold of the building’s exterior cladding, so each piece is read against the architecture. Its matter is the natural patrimoine of the lake and the artisanal savoir-faire around it.
Guided walk in the forest of Coatloc’h, Scaër
A guide from the Pays d’Art et d’Histoire leads this walk through Coatloc’h, a preserved massif on the edge of Scaër. The route follows the traces left by the sabotiers who cut clogs here and by the charbonniers who burned its wood. It passes the vestiges of a prétendu château, a castle nobody has proved stood there. Quimperlé Communauté runs it: four kilometres on reservation, closed to anyone who walks with difficulty.