Take, for instance, the castle of Montal, a Renaissance jewel. Mainly built between 1523-34, Montal features a double spiral staircase, said to be the France’s most beautiful. (If you visit, you won’t see – and never could see – a famous visitor: the Mona Lisa, who spent World War II hidden here. Poet Paul Valèry also spent much of World War II in a Lot castle—Montal’s sister chateau of Beduér, near Figeac, This castle, open to the public only during its August concerts, boasts a splendid music room with painted rafters.) Or another castle, mostly Renaissance with vestiges dating to the rule of Pepin le Bref: the chateau of Cénevières. If you’re lucky, you’ll have a most knowledgeable tour guide: its charming, historically-steeped owner, Guy de Braquillanges.
Within France, the Department of the Lot is best-known for its splendid river valleys, its Michelin three-star attractions, and events of centuries – even eons – ago. It was on the Lot’s limestone plateaus, for example, that Cro-Magnons may have battled Neanderthals. It was in the Lot that paleolithic humans some 20,000 years ago decorated cave walls at Pech-Merle with still-radiant color in the form of mammoths, horses, bison and human hands. It was here that prehistoric folks left behind dolmen, tombs from stone slabs; discovering a dolmen (or a modern cazelle, a shepherd’s shelter made of dry stone) during a walk in the countryside is part of the fun! More recent residents left their marks, too, including Roman aqueducts, the stately Cahors home of Jean XXII, who became pope in Avignon, and false-front castles that served as British hideouts in the 100 Years War.
Even the Lot’s much-visited attractions retain their capacity to surprise and delight. All three of the Lot’s 3-star Michelin attractions should not missed, but be sure to visit outside of high season (July 15 through August) for maximum enjoyment. Rocamadour, the medieval pilgrimage site built atop a sheer cliff; the caverns at Padirac, visited in a rowboat, and the Pech-Merle caves (the Lot’s “Sistine Chapel,” painted by Paleolithic ancestors) earn their three stars, and are well-worth the trip. Two other must-experience places: The beautifully-preserved medieval village of St. Cirq Lapopie, former home of surrealist André Breton, is a gem of half-timbered houses, a medieval church, museums, art galleries, and the ruins of a castle burned by the Protestant Henri de Navarre (the future Henri IV). Cahors, the beautiful departmental capital (about 20,000 population), on the river Lot, retains its Gallo-Roman and medieval heritage while being very modern at the same time.
Among the many less-touted yet eye-opening attractions, here are a few favorites: the Museum of the Resistance in World War II (Cahors), a display of early automatons (Souillac) and a museum showing the modern tapestries of Jean Lurçat (St. Céré). Amidst the famed vineyards west of Cahors lies a museum dedicated to the works of Russo-Lotois sculptor Ossip Zadkine (Les Arques). Then, in a category all by itself, is the Museum of the Insolite near the cave paintings at Pech-Merle; artifacts here represent the singular vision of the tiny museum’s curator.
On the Food!
And we haven’t even mentioned food yet! Here are just a few unexpected, exciting Lot eateries: La Recrreation, an affordable restaurant where schoolchildren once took recess, in Les Arques (the subject of Michael Sanders’s book, From Here, You Can’t See Paris, 2002); Le Gindreau, a superb one-star restaurant housed in another former schoolhouse, in St Medard-Catus, plus an unrated Tuareg restaurant not far away. For a different kind of experience – a down-home treat – there are “ferme-auberges,” working farms that welcome diners; an organic sorbet maker who serves on the grounds of a wooden medieval priory of unusual architectural grandeur (Espagnac-Ste. Eulalie); and a duck farm/B&B/restaurant that specializes in foie gras dinners (Boissac).
It may surprise music fans to know that here in the heartland (la France profonde), there is a most audacious August festival featuring a midnight jazz fest, experimental music, folk stories and street performers, all holding court in and around the Renaissance courtyard of the chateau of Assier. In addition, there are festivals of the blues (mid-July in Cahors), African/worldbeat music (July in tiny Cajarc), and classical music (including two August concerts in a former command post of the Knights Templar in Espédaillac).
Perhaps most surprising of all is the Lot’s involvement with a bold international idea: the Citizens of the World movement. After World War II, Gary Davis, an American, launched this movement in – of all places – the Lot. Davis and others, including painter André Breton, envisioned a world without borders and passports. Starting in Cahors and continuing along a major route to Breton’s adopted village, St. Cirq Lapopie, towns and villages signed on to the movement’s goals and thus were ”mundialized.” The movement lost steam with the onset of the Korean War, but it lives on among some dedicated followers and several road markers. And, just two years ago, Gary Davis attended the 50th anniversary of the movement in St. Cirq Lapopie. (Ironically, post-nationalist ideas met pre-industrial architecture in St. Cirq Lapopie: It was the first place in France to have a preservation order put on an entire medieval village.)
