Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne and Curemonte: The Carved Tympanum and the Village of Three Castles

Required Activities

• On the south door of the abbey church of Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne, read the tympanum from the top down: Christ with his arms flung wide at the Second Coming, the offset cross behind him, the apostles talking among themselves and the angels carrying the emblems of the Passion — then the lintel, where four monsters with dogs' and birds' heads swallow the damned above a band of beasts that may be the fallen kingdoms of Daniel or the seven-headed beast of the Apocalypse

• Walk the quays along the Dordogne to the chapelle des Pénitents on its rock at the water's edge, count the bays in its wall-belfry, and if the door is open look up at the wooden vault built like an upturned boat hull

• Walk the single ridge street of Curemonte past all three of its castles — des Plas, Saint-Hilaire and la Johannie — then find all three of its churches: Saint-Barthélemy in the village, Saint-Genest, the old parish now a museum of religious art, and Saint-Hilaire de la Combe out below, an 11th-century Romanesque church counted among the oldest in the Corrèze and thought to stand on Merovingian foundations

• Go inside the abbey church and find its treasury: the shrine of the Adoration of the Magi, the two arm-reliquaries of Saint Emilien and Saint Félicité, the lantern reliquary, and the seated Virgin and Child — then walk the ambulatory round the choir, built with radiating chapels so pilgrims could pray without interrupting the office