Brantôme and Bourdeilles: The Cave Abbey and the Castle on the Dronne

Required Activities

• Walk the troglodyte caves behind Brantôme abbey, the actual remains of the 8th-century monastery cut into the cliff, and find the late-15th-century Last Judgement carved in the rock with the Triumph of Death beside it, the dovecote boulins above them, the miraculous spring of saint Sicaire, and the tanks where the monks reared salmon fry

• Find the 11th-century bell tower of Brantôme abbey, reckoned the oldest campanile in France, and work out what is odd about it: its four storeys do not stand on the church at all but on the 12 m rock overhang above it

• Climb the octagonal keep at Bourdeilles, begun in 1283 by Géraud de Maulmont, 35 m high with walls 2.5 m thick, to the terrace on top for the view down over the village, then cross to the Renaissance palace Jacquette de Montbron built from 1588 to her death in 1598 on Serlio's Italian models, and find the Haute époque furniture and Ambroise Lenoble's painted decoration inside