Melle: The Silver Mines of the Frankish Kings and Saint-Hilaire

Required Activities

• Go down into the mines of the Frankish kings and find the marks of fire-setting on the rock, where vertical pyres were lit in the galleries to crack it, and the ventilation shafts the fires needed; coming out, stop at the metal hood sheltering the three reconstructed furnaces, then walk the Carolingian garden laid out on the mine site and pick out the forgotten vegetables in it — palm cabbage, dolichos, teasel, mandrake

• On the north wall of Saint-Hilaire, find the horseman set in his niche in high relief — said to stand for Constantine's victory over the pagans — with the combat of the vices and the virtues on the outer roll of the arch below him, and look for the join: only the central part is the original carving, the rest is an 1872 restitution

• Walk up to the ochre limestone church of Saint-Pierre, built in the early 12th century over a chapel of 950 that stood in a Carolingian graveyard, and look up at the square tower over the crossing — four narrow openings and a pyramidal roof dated 1466 — then find the sarcophagus of a bachelier out on the place Saint-Pierre

• Complete the triade romane at Saint-Savinien, the oldest of the three and the only one built inside the feudal town: find the Christ ringed in a medallion between two lions on its gable-shaped tympanum, a shape common in Auvergne and rare in Poitou, then read along the corbels of the cornice above the door for the flat-carved stag, fish, bird and wrestling figures