Saint-Cirq-Lapopie

Saint-Cirq-Lapopie clings to a cliff about 100 metres above the Lot river, its stone houses and brown-tiled roofs stepping up the rock towards a fortified church and the scattered ruins of castles on the summit. Across the water a cirque of pale limestone cliffs closes the view. Almost the whole village is protected, and it has often been described as a village-museum.

The site was chosen for defence. The spur on the left bank of the Lot was the main seat of one of the four viscounties into which medieval Quercy was divided, and several families held it jointly over the centuries, among them the Lapopie, the Gourdon, the Cardaillac and later the Hébrard de Saint-Sulpice. The co-lords agreed to keep the peace within their shared town, but in 1580, during the Wars of Religion, Huguenots seized the upper castle, which was afterwards demolished. The name joins Saint Cyr, patron of the parish church, with that of the Lapopie family, though a popular explanation derives it from the Occitan word for the rock at the highest point of the village.

The Church of Saint-Cirq-et-Sainte-Juliette, a sturdy fifteenth-century building, kept the Romanesque apse of the castle chapel and has a square tower and a stair turret; it has been a listed monument since 1911. Higher still, a way of the cross lined with box leads to the Chapel of the Holy Cross, rebuilt in 1854, which recalls relics of the True Cross said to have been brought from the Holy Land by a member of the Cardaillac family. From the Middle Ages the village was home to a guild of wood-turners who made, among other things, wooden taps for wine barrels, and the craft still survives here. Around 1920 the Post-Impressionist painter Henri Martin settled in the Lot, painted the village and drew other artists after him; in the 1950s the poet André Breton bought the former boatmen's inn and spent his summers there, and the Catalan-born painter Pierre Daura also lived in the village, his houses now serving as an artists' residence. Below the cliffs, a fourteenth-century mill stands beside a nineteenth-century lock at Aulanac, and the Ganil towpath, cut into the rock face along the river, is one of the most striking walks in the valley. The village lies on a French route of the Way of Saint James and within the Causses du Quercy Regional Natural Park, and it is a member of the Most Beautiful Villages of France.

Getting there

Saint-Cirq-Lapopie is about 19 km in a straight line from Cahors, the nearest city, and around 30 km by road along the Lot valley. The nearest airport is Brive–Vallée de la Dordogne Airport (BVE), about 66 km away.