Saorge: The Village Hanging Over the Roya Gorges

Required Activities

• Work up through the stacked lanes and collect the three penitents' chapels by their colours: Saint-Jacques of the White Penitents, up the stair to the right of the church of Saint-Sauveur, Saint-Sébastien of the Red Penitents on place Georges-Clemenceau, and Saint-Claude of the Black Penitents on rue Périssol — and find the sundial on the way

• On the south wall of the church of Saint-Sauveur, find the Roman funerary stone carried here from the château de Malemorte and pick the names off it — an aedile, and members of the Falerna tribe

• Climb through the olive terraces at the top of the village to the monastery of Notre-Dame-des-Miracles, founded in 1633 by the Reformed Observant Franciscans — the Récollets — finished around 1660 with its church paid for by the commune in 1681, and go inside to its Italian baroque church and the cloister walk around the garden

• Walk out to the Madone del Poggio below the village and count the six storeys of the Lombard bell tower the people of Saorge put up in 1511 — the church is a listed monument but privately owned, so this one is from the outside

• Test the village's oddity for yourself: the route des Châtaigniers, the D138 off the D6204, dies at the Madone del Poggio quarter, while the main entrance at quartier Ciappea can only be driven by going up the valley to Fontan and back on the D38 — walk the footpath that is the only link between the two