Domme: The Bastide on the Cliff Above the Dordogne

Required Activities

• Stand at the Belvédère de la Barre, a hundred metres and more straight above the water, and follow the great loop the Dordogne throws below you — the cingle de Montfort — until you can point out where the river comes in and where it leaves

• At the Porte des Tours, find the hundred-odd graffiti scratched into the stone of the gate and pick out the circles, triangles and squares among them, then take the guide's Templar reading of them with care: the coded interpretation rests on survey drawings now known to be a forgery, and nobody can say who cut the marks. Walk on from here along the 13th-century rampart towards the Porte de la Combe, the stretch restored with Loto du patrimoine money from 2021

• Walk the bastide from gate to gate and prove the trapezium to yourself — the streets will not square up, because the wall was bent to follow the cliff rather than the grid — then find both of its market squares, the Place de la Halle and the Place de la Rode, where the fairs of a town that minted its own coin were held

• Go down into the grotte de Domme, which opens under the market hall in the middle of the village, and walk its 450 metres of concretions knowing that the townspeople came down here to hide twice over — in the Hundred Years' War and again in the Wars of Religion