Riddles turn the medieval streets of Mennetou-sur-Cher into a route of discovery for accompanied children aged nine to twelve. Fortified gates, the church and former merchants’ houses introduce the town’s history and inhabitants. Winding lanes and half-timbered façades provide the setting for a family tour that makes its medieval fabric something to investigate.
Topic: events
Brenne Basketry: From Wild Plants to Woven Hoops
Wild plants gathered in the Brenne become the material for hoop-based basketry with Frédérique Ardibus. The course starts outdoors with collecting, then moves into successive sessions of weaving and making. Organised by the regional natural park, the small-group activity follows the craft from raw vegetation to a formed object, with all sessions forming one learning sequence.
Bourges and the Cher: Architectures Through Time
Romanesque churches and Art Deco buildings share an architectural programme with hospitals, popular housing and eco-neighbourhoods. The Bureau des Guides de Bourges leads these visits with specialist guides across Bourges and other Cher communities. Former industrial spaces put to cultural use add another layer, showing how buildings change through both design and everyday occupation.
Chinon’s Fairy Worlds at the Royal Fortress
Medieval tales supply the fairy world that unfolds through Chinon’s royal fortress. A walking route reveals creatures hidden in the décor, an imagined forest, a cradle under watch and a table laid for celebration. Photographs of the Cottingley Fairies add a different kind of enchantment, bringing questions of belief and illusion into the encounter with these elusive beings.
Poulaines: Gardens, Arboretum and Estate Restoration
The gardens and arboretum of Domaine de Poulaines open to self-guided visitors during its heritage programme. Two endangered outbuildings frame the manor and the most formally designed part of the garden in a U-shaped arrangement. Their proposed restoration, supported through the estate’s heritage recognition, links the visit to the future of buildings that help define this landscape.
Le Rivau’s Pumpkin Festival: Gardens and Gourd Crafts
Pumpkins and gourds from Le Rivau’s vegetable heritage collection become material for food, sound and craft. Tastings and gardening activities share the festival with sculpting, storytelling and jugglers handling ornamental gourds. Cougourdonniers bring specialised gourd crafts to the gathering, while a gourmet market adds flavours to a family programme rooted in Touraine’s gardens.
Forêt d’Orléans: History and Ecology in Images
Projected images and stories open a view into the Forêt d’Orléans with the Société des Amis de la Forêt d’Orléans. Speakers examine the woodland’s history alongside the diversity of its living communities. The talk considers how this extensive forest can be understood and valued, connecting ecological observation with the memory of a landscape close to Chamerolles.
Chartres en lumières: Monuments Retold in Light
Chartres’s cathedral and churches become luminous surfaces in Chartres en lumières. The city’s free illumination programme also reaches the museum, theatre, bridges and washhouses, carrying the route from prominent monuments towards the Eure. Stories and imagined worlds play across the buildings, creating a different way to read the relationship between the upper town and its waterside heritage.
The Regional Symphony Orchestra at Ferrières
The Orchestre Région Centre-Val de Loire/Tours brings symphonic music to Ferrières-en-Gâtinais for the close of its heritage programme. Associated with the Opéra de Tours–Grand Théâtre, the ensemble represents the region’s orchestral life. Its performance brings the sound of a full orchestra into dialogue with the historic religious setting of the Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul abbey church.
Ferrières: Four Decades of Heritage in Photographs
Four decades of research and preservation come together in the anniversary exhibition of the Association Recherches, Sauvegarde et Patrimoine Ferriérois. Photographs draw attention to the Gâtinais heritage it has worked to protect. Archives and discoveries add the story of that continuing effort, placing the association’s accumulated knowledge alongside the places and traces it studies.