Tournus
Location: 40km southeast from the cottages, 30km south of Chalon/Saone.
Nearby: Cuisery (Eden Centre and booksellers), the Voie Bleue cycle track, Chapaize, Brancion, National Nature Reserve of Truchère at 10 km south of Tournus)
Why we recommend this place:
- the austere beauty of the abbey of Saint Philibert, at the pinnacle of Romanesque art, with exceptional light brought into the abbey by the double row of openings along the nave. It is the only monastery complex of the XII century still preserved in Europe,
- the annexes of the abbey: the cloister, the cellar, the chapter house, the refectory. At 33m in length the refectory once housed a tennis court, ‘un jeu de paume’, in the seventeenth century,
- the guided walk through the streets of the old town of Tournus, its artisans, its exhibition venues and the ‘almost Mediterranean’ atmosphere in the city. A self-guided tour, where you follow golden triangles on the ground, is available at the tourist office,
- the Hotel-Dieu built between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries became a hospital museum. Inside the museum are rooms with enclosed beds, an apothecary, a room of pots made of tin, gardens of medicinal plants, ...
- the Museum Jean-Baptiste Greuze, housed in a wing of the Hotel-Dieu, presents works by this major artist of the eighteenth century, as well as a collection of paintings and sculptures from all periods and an archaeological collection,
- the bicycle museum with very comprehensive exhibits showing bicycles from the dandy horse to the present day,
