Trôo, Lavardin and Montoire: Cave Houses, a Talking Well and the Frescoes of the Loir

Required Activities

• Climb the tiers of cave houses cut into the tuffeau, 60 m up from the Loir, to the collegiate church of Saint-Martin that Geoffroy Martel founded in 1050 inside his castle for seven canons — then find, at the centre of the motte, the narrow rock-cut passage that drops steeply into the grands souterrains beneath the village

• Lean over the Puits qui parle — also called the puits de Jacob or de Jacquot — and speak into it: the echo comes back off 45 m of tuffeau, from a well that supplied the whole upper town with water until mains water arrived in 1972

• In Saint-Genest at Lavardin work through three centuries of painting on the walls: north of the choir the oldest, from the end of the 12th century, with the Baptism of Christ and the Tree of Jesse; in the apse the Christ in majesty between the four evangelist symbols, and on the vault the musician angels, from the 13th and 14th; and in the south apsidiole the 15th-century Paradise, Hell, Purgatory and Saint Christopher. Then find Saint James the Less on a nave pillar, dressed as a pilgrim, painted at the start of the 16th century

• Stand under the dome at the centre of Saint-Gilles at Montoire and tell its three Christs apart: east, holding the Book and blessing, ringed by four angels and the evangelist beasts; south, handing the keys to Peter; north, between the alpha and the omega, with red threads running from his left hand to the foreheads of six figures. Then look up at the west arch, where a fifth Christ reaches out to crown two knights in chain mail

• Find Trôo's war memorial, carved by Antoine Bourdelle and listed as a monument in its own right in 2021, then walk out to the Maladrerie Sainte-Catherine below the town — a leper house built in the 12th century by Geoffroy Plantagenêt, count of Anjou and Maine, which is said to have taken in pilgrims on their way to Santiago