Photo : Georges Seguin (Okki) / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
La Flèche zoo, in the Sarthe, opened in 1946: it is the oldest private zoo in France and one of the five largest in the country.
Some 1,200 animals live in landscaped grounds planted with a wide variety of trees and flowers, including a remarkable bamboo collection. The route takes visitors from the landscapes of Madagascar to the Arctic, by way of Australia.
A bird park and zoo at Spay, near Le Mans, with some 500 birds of 200 species and a nocturnal animal house.
A forest wildlife park at Le Breil-sur-Mérize, around a château, home to hundreds of animals including wolves, bears, lynx and bison.
Of the old 12th-century fortress, the Château de Gallerande has kept the south façade and its two towers.
At the crossroads of Anjou, Maine and Touraine, Le Lude counts among the great Loire châteaux.
These high walls reveal to the attentive walker that the little priory, founded in the eleventh century, threatened with annihilation at the Revolution, then revived by the Benedictine Order established by Dom Guéranger in the nineteenth century, has become a great abbey, mother of many monasteries in France and beyond its borders.
The Bercé forest lies 11 km north of Château-du-Loir on a plateau at 150 metres' altitude.