Saint-Bonnet-le-Château: The Home of Obut Boules, Painted Chapel and the Mummies
Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France
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200
XP
+100 France
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1 day
Saint-Bonnet-le-Château: The Home of Obut Boules, Painted Chapel and the Mummies
200 + 100 XP
Saint-Bonnet-le-Château, perched on its hill in the Forez, is called the world capital of the pétanque boule: two factories here make 80 per cent of all the boules played with anywhere, and the sector leader, Obut, was founded in the town in 1955 and still has its head office there. The collegiate church, begun on 8 May 1400, keeps a lower chapel painted in the 15th century, the richest collection of old church vestments in the Loire, and a library of incunabula. In a vault beneath the last chapel lie some thirty or forty mummified bodies, preserved by the alum and arsenic in the soil and dated by carbon-14 to the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries: the vault of a family of local notables, seen through a glass hatch.
Required Activities
1
of 5
Pick up the free audioguide at the Obut shop desk and walk the half-hour scenographic route through the company's history, from the two Saint-Bonnet ironworkers, Frédéric Bayet and Antoine Dupuy, who registered the Obut name in 1955, to a factory now turning out three million steel boules a year
2
of 5
Book one of the covered lanes at Obut and play a game with the boules made two hundred metres away — then buy a set in the shop and weigh a few in the hand to find your own
3
of 5
Go down into the lower chapel of the collegiate church, find the date 8 May 1400 cut into the stone of the crypt — the day the first stone was laid, paid for by the cloth merchant Jean Taillefer's bequest of 1399 and built by his executor Bonnet Greyset, an iron merchant — and read the 15th-century wall paintings that cover it
4
of 5
Look through the glass hatch into the vault and find the scraps of fine linen still clinging to the parchment-like flesh, which is why they were taken for nobles — one reading makes them victims of the baron des Adrets, who took the town in 1562, sacked the church, burned its archives and massacred the people
5
of 5
Walk up through the old town to the gates of the double southern rampart — the wall ringed the town until 1820 — and find the oratory of the Virgin set in them, put there after the Black Death of the 14th century made her the town's protector; then find the merchants' houses of the 15th century that the iron trade paid for
Pick up the free audioguide at the Obut shop desk and walk the half-hour scenographic route through the company's history, from the two Saint-Bonnet ironworkers, Frédéric Bayet and Antoine Dupuy, who registered the Obut name in 1955, to a factory now turning out three million steel boules a year
Book one of the covered lanes at Obut and play a game with the boules made two hundred metres away — then buy a set in the shop and weigh a few in the hand to find your own
Go down into the lower chapel of the collegiate church, find the date 8 May 1400 cut into the stone of the crypt — the day the first stone was laid, paid for by the cloth merchant Jean Taillefer's bequest of 1399 and built by his executor Bonnet Greyset, an iron merchant — and read the 15th-century wall paintings that cover it
Look through the glass hatch into the vault and find the scraps of fine linen still clinging to the parchment-like flesh, which is why they were taken for nobles — one reading makes them victims of the baron des Adrets, who took the town in 1562, sacked the church, burned its archives and massacred the people
Walk up through the old town to the gates of the double southern rampart — the wall ringed the town until 1820 — and find the oratory of the Virgin set in them, put there after the Black Death of the 14th century made her the town's protector; then find the merchants' houses of the 15th century that the iron trade paid for
Before you go
The Obut site opens 2 January to 21 December and keeps working hours rather than tourist ones — Monday to Thursday 8 h to 18 h, later on Friday and Saturday, and listings disagree on Sunday, so check the day before you go. The scenographic route is free and the audioguide is free from the shop desk; the covered lanes cost 5 € a head an hour unless you book a table in the restaurant, and must be reserved either way. The mummy vault and the lower chapel are seen on the collegiate church's own visit — ask at the tourist office, as the hatch is not always accessible outside guided hours.
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Challenge Location
XP Breakdown
Challenge XP
200 XP
France country bonus
+100 XP
Potential total
300 XP
Country bonus earned on completion of your first challenge in France.
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