Painting and architecture

Depart from the town of Montmorillon, latitude 46.4256500 (N 46° 25’ 32”), longitude 0.8683200 (E 0° 52’ 6”)

• Departure from the tourist office of Montmorillon

• This small town houses in its streets a group of artisans around the professions of writing and books. To visit the city of writing, ask for the pedestrian circuit at the Tourist Office which will take you on a walk through the medieval streets of the city.

• The Sainte-Catherine Chapel

• (15th century)
• It was the seignorial funeral chapel. It probably replaces an older construction. If its architecture is very simple, the interior contains several centers of interest that have classified as a Historic Monument, such as the paintings that adorn the vault and walls.
• These paintings (fifteenth century) are part of a set of the same inspiration and the same invoice which we find two other testimonies in Antigny and the castle of Boismorand (no longer visit).
• But the chapel of Jouhet is the only one to make begin his paintings by the Genesis. We also find the childhood of Christ, particularly developed, the Dict of the Three Dead and the Three Vivid, ("What you are we were, what we are you will be), Christ in glory and Judgment latest. These decorations cover the entire vault and part of the walls.
• To see also in this chapel, the stone altarpiece (XVth century), the oldest of the diocese of Poitiers, and three funeral slabs probably older than the chapel.

• Notre-Dame Church

• (Eleventh, thirteenth and nineteenth century)
• It was a priory cited from 1093, depending on the abbey of Saint-Savin. To see inside a small column whose base at height of man is adorned with a grotesque head with bulging eyes and pulling a long tongue, (sculpture dating from the Middle Ages).

• View of the Château de la Contour (private can not be visited)

• Neoclassical building at the beginning of the 20th century.

• View of the Roche Mill

• The Roche Mill (16th and 19th century) was already part of the House of God's possessions from the 15th century to the 15th century. In the sixteenth century, it became the property of the abbey of Saint-Savin and in the seventeenth century, it is the family Scourion Castle Bois-Morand, Antigny, who owns.

The peasants of all the neighboring villages brought their corn to grind. This mill has kept all its internal mechanism, including the vertical paddle wheel and grinding wheels. (Private property can not be visited).

• The Saint-Pardoux church

• It has parts of the 11th century, but its condition required repairs in the 18th and 19th centuries. There are modillions of the 11th century. which support the cornice of the barrel vault preserved under the belfry. The wooden frame dates back to the 17th century. It is one of the few churches to have kept its cemetery in its environment.

• Château de Pruniers (private does not visit)

• Twelfth, fifteenth century
• It is a small castle-fortress built on the hillside overlooking the Gartempe. In the Middle Ages, the transport of people, goods or animals was mainly by water, the state of the roads (Roman roads not maintained) does not allow it. Like others built along the river, Pruniers Castle housed a garrison of soldiers to watch the traffic and prevent looters from intervening. It has a rectangular silhouette flanked by four full turrets. A chapel (restored in the nineteenth century) and common complete the complex with a dovecote sixteenth century. which houses 1024 boulins and which has the distinction of being half buried. The number of boulins was fixed according to the area of ​​the lands belonging to the castle.
• The mill of Pruniers, mentioned since the 16th century. has retained its mechanism, its impeller, its engine and four pairs of grinding wheels. (can not visit)
• Please respect the private property and not to enter the perimeter of the castle.

• Wall painting of the Château de Pruniers

• In a room on the first floor there is a mural consisting of checkerboard motifs, coats of arms and a decorative band. It is dated from the 14th or 15th century.
• (can not visit).
• Many murals are present in several religious buildings located along the Gartempe Valley of Saulgé in Saint Savin. For more information: www.abbaye-saint-savin.fr

• Concise- the old chapel

• Concise is the birthplace of Montmorillon. Concise is attested from 967 in the archives of the abbey of Saint-Savin whose father abbot named the priest of the village. If successive churches and chapels have disappeared, the statue of Saint Paul (or Pou in local patois) has stood the test of time. This painted wooden statue is still surrounded by veneration and, in the 1990s, the inhabitants of the village mobilized to build a monument using part of the wall of the last chapel, topped by an arch supporting the bell of this chapel. In a niche, the statue of Saint Pou and one of Our Lady of Lourdes.