Rochechouart: The Meteorite Crater, the Castle Museum and the Roman Baths of Chassenon

Required Activities

• Go through the Maison de la Réserve – Espace Météorite Paul Pellas in Rochechouart, then go out and find the impact breccia for yourself: it makes up the cliff under the castle and is built into house walls all over the town

• In the Château de Rochechouart, find the salle des chasses with its early-16th-century polychrome stag hunt painted round the walls and the salle d'Hercule in grisaille from fifty years later, then work through the Raoul Hausmann Dada collection and the contemporary rooms the museum has held since 1985

• Walk the 12,500 m2 of the baths of Longeas at Cassinomagus, among the most important in Gaul, and find where the walls still stand seven metres high, then follow the two separate loops through them — the therapeutic circuit on the south side and the hygienic one on the north, used for ritual washing before entering the temple of Montélu

• Walk the rest of the 20-hectare monumental enclosure at Chassenon, from the octagonal temple of Montélu west of the baths to the amphitheatre, and count the seven cart passages built between the arches of the aqueduct on the south-east side