Cobbled lanes climbing up to a castle, pale-stone houses clinging to the cliff, a shady square where time seems to have stopped: these villages tell the story of France before cars, that of craftsmen, markets and pilgrims.
From Provence to Alsace, from Aveyron to Mont-Saint-Michel, twelve exceptional towns to explore on foot, ideally early in the morning or late in the day, when the light skims the façades and the coaches have left.
The prodigious architecture of Mont-Saint-Michel and its bay make it the most visited tourist site in Normandy and the third in France (after the Eiffel Tower and the Palace of Versailles), with some 3,200,000 visitors every year.
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Foremost among Séguret's charms shine the Clock Tower topped by a caged bell, the fine Reynier gate, the fifteenth-century belfry, the twelfth- and thirteenth-century Romanesque church of Saint-Denis, the chapel of Notre-Dame-des-Grâces and the seventeenth-century Mascarons fountain, in Baroque style.
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It was around the castle of the barons of Salers that the town grew up, and it was in the fifteenth century that the ramparts were built to protect against the English.
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Of the monastery raised to an abbey in the fourteenth century, the Romanesque chapter house and the Sainte-Madeleine chapel survive.
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Clinging to the foot of cliffs, in the hollow of a fault where a torrent flows and olive trees have grown, with fields of lavender, lavandin, thyme and cork oaks on the horizon, this village at the edge of the Verdon gorges and near the artificial Lake Sainte-Croix is one of the wonders of Provence.
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Mittelbergheim stretches over the vine-covered hills of the Rippellsholz. The village, whose name is mentioned as early as 741, was successively the property of several abbeys.
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Between a dizzying precipice and the impressive ruins of its long-impregnable fortress, the most visited village in France sits on a rocky spur of the Alpilles, between the Vallon de la Fontaine and the Val d'Enfer.
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The great period of Conques, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, coincides with the building of the Romanesque abbey church and the creation of the finest pieces of goldwork in its treasure, including the golden Majesty of Saint Foy.
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A fortified medieval town, with the history of the crusade against the Albigensians, the still-inhabited Cité de Carcassonne lies on the right bank of the Aude.
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Seat in the Middle Ages of one of the four baronies of the Périgord, the castle withstood every assault and was taken only by Richard the Lionheart and Simon de Montfort.
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Vogüé is a tourist village on the banks of the Ardèche. The village is ranked among the most beautiful villages of France. The castle of the Lords of Vogüé and its four round towers overlook this southern town.
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Between the Rhône valley and Mont Ventoux, Vaison is very close to the Dentelles de Montmirail, in hill country scented with vines and olive trees.
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