Photo : Wikimedia Commons
Olargues
The site of Olargues was occupied as early as Roman times. Sheltered against a rock at the foot of the Espinouse massif, surrounded by orchards and vines, the village is dominated by an eleventh-century tower, a vestige of the old medieval castle, turned into a bell tower in the fifteenth century. You reach it by the covered Commanderie staircase, each step of which is cut from a single block of stone, and you discover the church of Saint-Laurent built in the seventeenth century with stones from the ramparts, some remains of which can still be seen.
The houses extend south of the rock to the bank of the river Jaur, spanned by the old thirteenth-century Devil's Bridge. They are built of local stone, capped with canal tiles and tighten along lanes paved with pebbles, interspersed with picturesque covered passages. Vegetation is everywhere, softening the brilliance of the stone.
