Oingt and the Pierres Dorées: The Golden-Stone Villages of the Beaujolais

Required Activities

• Climb the keep of Oingt's chateau Neuf, rebuilt in the 13th or 14th century, for the view down the whole Azergues valley, and inside it find the collections of fossils and worked stone and the records of the village kept there

• Walk through the porte du Nizy, probably 14th or 15th century and reworked in the 18th, the one piece of Oingt's walls still standing: the rest was pulled down after the baron des Adrets sacked the village in 1562 and was never rebuilt

• At Theize find the old church, whose Romanesque nave of the 12th and 13th centuries was given a flamboyant Gothic choir with a pendant keystone dated 1536, and the spiral stair that once let the lords of Rochebonne walk from their castle straight into it

• At the Chateau de Jarnioux, built of Beaujolais golden stone from the 13th century, count the six towers and find the 30 m cylindrical keep set on the side an attack would come from, then look at the monumental entrance for the scars of the drawbridge that a stone bridge replaced

• Go into Oingt's church, which was the castle chapel, count the eight carved corbels holding up the vaults of the Gothic choir and pick out the gilded wooden statues, then walk down the paved rue Trayne-Cul, one of the oldest lanes in the village

• Walk up to the Chappe tower on the Bansillon above Theize at 570 m, the 56th of the 116 semaphore stations on the Paris to Toulon line, and try to pick out the two it signalled to, the chapel belfry of Saint-Bonnet at Montmelas and the tower at Marcy