Tournus, Brancion and Chapaize: The Romanesque Heart of the Mâconnais

Required Activities

• Work through Saint-Philibert from the crypt, where Saint Valerian's body was put in 979 to settle a quarrel between two sets of monks, up into the narthex and the Saint-Michel chapel above it, then out to look at the Clocher rose that Count William IV of Mâcon added in ornate late Romanesque and under which he was buried in 1224

• Walk through the medieval village of Brancion on its spur and visit its castle, begun in the 10th century

• Find the statue-column high on the north face of Chapaize's 35 m tower, one of the oldest known anywhere in the West, then go inside and look up through the lantern under the dome — among the earliest in this part of France — at a church begun after the Lombard master-builder William of Volpiano came through in 1021

• Walk right round the outside of Chapaize and see that there is no roof timber anywhere: the stone laves are laid straight onto the vaults. Then stand at the four round piers under the tower, which were taken apart in 1954 and rebuilt in reinforced concrete with every original stone put back on the outside