Animal bones provide clues to epidemics and human practices in this Chartres archaeology lecture. Local discoveries introduce the methods archaeozoologists use to interpret remains left by earlier societies. The talk connects that material with major episodes in the region’s past, showing how the study of animals can contribute to a wider understanding of historical communities.
Topic: events
Loches: Read a Medieval Keep, Then Model One in Clay
Marks in the fabric of the Loches keep become clues to how a fortified tower was built and survived. Children aged four to twelve study those traces before modelling a keep of their own in clay. Accompanying adults can work beside them, turning observation of medieval construction into an exercise in shaping walls and imagining a castle’s form.
A Tours de Bulles: Comics, Creators and Screenings
Comics move beyond the printed page at A Tours de Bulles in Tours. Meetings and signing sessions bring readers face to face with authors, while exhibitions offer another way to encounter their visual worlds. Performances, screenings and participatory activities widen the festival’s programme, connecting the culture of the bande dessinée with other forms of storytelling.
Dammarie-en-Puisaye: Inside the Old Tithe Barn
Dammarie-en-Puisaye’s grange aux dîmes brings a former tithe barn into the heritage programme. Guided visits examine the building’s architecture and recount episodes from its past, giving context to the surviving structure. Admission is free for this encounter with a working building type whose history belongs to the village’s rural heritage.
Legrand Ménestrel: Costumed History in Bourges
The Compagnie Legrand Ménestrel accompanies Les Amis de Jacques Cœur on a promenade through staged readings in Bourges. Period costumes and scenic displays frame the encounters, giving historical characters a presence along the route. The performance draws on the city’s past through spoken scenes, with the company adding its theatrical voice to the association’s heritage storytelling.
Que demain reste: Memory and Possible Futures
Transformed objects and low-tech materials join painting and installation in Que demain reste. Farah Bahhar and Anaël Alaoui-Fdili, graduates of the École nationale supérieure d’art de Bourges, explore memory, inheritance and personal stories. Their works move between contemporary art and science-fiction imaginings, asking how places and past experiences shape possible futures.
Azay-le-Rideau: The Art of Festive Pâtisserie
Festive food becomes a sequence of staged scenes at Azay-le-Rideau, with each room associated with a signature dish. The route explores preparations for celebratory meals through refined settings, some animated, and the culinary skills behind grand tables. Chefs and artisans of flavour receive tribute in a presentation that places pâtisserie and the art of hospitality within the château’s domestic world.
Yèvre-le-Châtel: Producers, Crafts and Castle Theatre
Local produce and handmade work fill Yèvre-le-Châtel as 130 producers and artisans gather through its lanes. Chronos combines live theatre with video projections in a separate encounter with the fortress. A Baludik digital trail adds a family route through the village’s history, linking a market of regional skills and flavours with its medieval surroundings.
Loches: Make Paint the Medieval Way
Traces of colour on the carved walls of Saint-Ours in Loches provide the starting point for a medieval painting workshop. Participants draw a design, learn a historical paint recipe and bring their work to life with colours they have made. Accompanying adults can create alongside children, connecting close observation of the church with practical experimentation.
Clovis at Chartres? History and a Baptism Legend
Could Clovis’s conversion have followed a visit to Chartres? The Life of Bishop Solemnis tells that story, but the account was written long after the events it describes. This archaeological lecture examines how successive retellings shaped memory of the Frankish king, treating the proposed connection to Chartres as a historical question and a legend to investigate.