Saint-Véran and Fort Queyras: The Highest Village in the Alps and the Castle on the Rock

Required Activities

• Among the score of painted wall sundials in Saint-Véran, find the one on the church wall and read its Occitan motto, Lou plus aouto coumunoutas inte se mangeu lou pan de Diou — the highest commune where the bread of God is eaten — and the dial the painter Zarbula signed in 1840 on a house in the Forannes quarter, protected since 1996

• In Le Soum, the museum of peasant life inside a fuste built in 1641, work out the plan of a house-farm where people and animals wintered together: the fougagno or kitchen, the carotto or cellar, and the vaulted peil built against the kitchen wall

• Climb the glacial lock that blocks the Guil valley to Fort Queyras and trace what Vauban added after the Savoyard assault of 1695 — an entirely new enceinte on the north-east with escarp, ditch, counterscarp and demi-lune — then find the casemated batteries cut in during the mid-19th century

• Pick one old house in the village and read it from the ground up: stone walls 50 to 70 cm thick below, the fuste of larch trunks stacked and crossed at the corners above, a roof of larch shingles, and beside it the little stone caset under its lauze slabs