Old photographs become the beginnings of an invented family in L’arbre photographique. Children aged nine to fourteen handle images from different periods, arranging characters together on a shared timeline. Gwenola Furic, a specialist in photographic conservation and restoration, leads the workshop, combining attention to fragile visual heritage with a collaborative exercise in imagining lives.
Topic: events
Mauvières: A Guided Visit to Underground Heritage
Below the Tour de Mauvières in Loches, a guided visit turns attention to a troglodytic site and its natural setting. The property belongs to AREPS, an association devoted to restoring and studying underground heritage. Groups of no more than twenty-five encounter this less visible part of the town’s patrimony at the foot of the tower.
Maintenon Through Artists’ Eyes and Archive Images
Artists’ views of Maintenon meet photographs from its past in an exhibition produced with the Fondation Mansart. Paintings, drawings and engravings interpret the château, town and surrounding landscapes. Older and archival photographs add a documentary counterpoint, allowing changes in the place to be read alongside the ways artists have chosen to picture it.
Levroux’s Heritage Through Residents’ Photographs
Landscapes and scenes of daily life appear through residents’ lenses in this participatory exhibition in Levroux. Photographs from the community contest join older and more recent views of the Levroux Boischaut Champagne territory. Buildings, details and familiar atmospheres become a collective portrait, shaped by what the people who live there choose to notice and preserve.
Tour de Vesvre: Medieval Heritage and Craft Skills
Successive layers of occupation can be followed through the medieval complex of the Tour de Vesvre. Self-guided visits introduce the site’s history and development, while exhibitions add context to its surviving fabric. Craft demonstrations and exchanges with heritage enthusiasts bring people and practical skills into the encounter with this fortified past.
Briare’s Turbines: Canal Engineering and Old Trades
The turbine workshop reveals the machinery behind Briare’s canal heritage on a guided visit devoted to its technical and human history. Exhibitions and demonstrations introduce trades once associated with this working landscape. Traditional boat towing and music broaden the programme, connecting engineering with the labour and practices that kept waterborne life moving.
Laure Hinckel: Châteaux de Beauce in Black and White
Grain silos become the castles of Beauce in Laure Hinckel’s black-and-white photographs. Metal surfaces, towering forms and stores of wheat give these agricultural structures a monumental presence amid the fields. Shown through the Chemin des Arts programme, the series studies the overlap between rural work and industrial architecture in a landscape shaped by grain.
Châtillon-sur-Loire’s Protestant Cemetery
Steles, inscriptions and symbols trace the memory of Protestant families in Châtillon-sur-Loire. The guided cemetery visit considers funerary practices and the place this burial ground holds within the community. Reading the monuments brings individual lives into the wider religious history of the town, offering a quieter perspective on its cultural and spiritual diversity.
Jacques Cœur: Costumed Readings in Bourges
Volunteers from Les Amis de Jacques Cœur take on period dress to tell the story of the Bourges figure and his era. Their theatrical readings unfold beside the Nuits Lumières displays, adding spoken scenes to the visual setting. Costume, performance and historical narrative combine to bring a familiar name in Berry’s heritage into human focus.
Parc Coligny: A Guided Heritage Walk
Châtillon-Coligny’s château park opens for an accompanied visit during the Journées du patrimoine. The Comité des fêtes leads the outing through the grounds, presenting the park as part of the town’s historical heritage. Families and children are welcome at this free opening, which offers a guided encounter with the outdoor estate.