These are half-timbered houses—maisons à colombages in French.

Half-timbered buildings, maisons à colombages, in Troyes. Photo GLK

They can be found here and there throughout France, mostly dating from the late 15th to the early 19th centuries. Alsace and Normandy are especially known for them. Brittany and Burgundy and Champagne also have some fine examples, as does the town of Angers, just north of the Loire Valley.

The photos on this post were all taken in the town of Troyes (pronounced like the French number three, trois), which is located in the department of Aube in the southern portion of the Champagne region, just north of Burgundy and 110 miles southeast of Paris. Click here for map:
Agrandir le plan

The skeleton of a maison à colombage is made from timbers that are further supported by various fillings such brick, chalk, plaster and most commonly an impermeable mix called torchis. Torchis is a mix of clay, chopped straw, lime, and sand that provides relatively good isolation. The filling or the entire façade may then be covered with roughcast or wooden or slate shingles.

In the 17th, it became fashionable to fully cover half-timbered façades with plaster or roughcast so as to make the building appear less rustic, more luxurious. Nowadays, however, showing the timbers has the edge in terms of charm.

Half-timbered houses on Place Alexandre Israel, Troyes. Photo GLK.

Troyes made its mark on the map of Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries due to major commercial fairs that were held here because of the town’s privileged situation along the north-south trade route (the old Roman Agrippian way) from Italy to northern Europe and because of the relative independence of the Counts of Champagne, who controlled this region at the time.

Favorable trade winds returned to Troyes in the 16th-century and allowed for a handsome reconstruction of the town after a devastating fire in 1524, resulting in many of the half-timbered buildings seen today. The bon-bon colored commercial heart of the town is so attractive today thanks to a vast restoration project launched in the 1960s.

There nevertheless remains a certain rustic charm to the less rehabilitated zones just outside of the commercial center and to its non-restored buildings such as this.

Unrestored half-timbered building in Troyes. Photo GLK

Portions of Troyes’ cork-shaped city center is carfree, allowing for an attractive visit for a 2-3-hours walk-about if passing this way or for a full daytrip or an overnight. Other than the cavernous cathedral, the main views and squares and points of interest are in the body of the cork, including its most notable religious monument, Saint Madeleine Church, which has some beautiful wooden sculptures and intricate stonework…

Rood screen or jubé in St. Madeleine Church, Troyes. Photo GLK.

… but is especially noteworthy for its 16th-century stained glass windows, including this excerpt depicting the creation of the world by a man with a beard.

Detail of the creation of the universe, St. Madeleine Church, Troyes. Photo GLK.

Another man with a beard and a hat associated with Troyes is Rachi (1040-1105), a foremost Talmud and Biblical scholar who lived in Troyes. The Rachi Institute is adjacent to a synagogue which occupies a 16th-century half-timbered former abbey, two blocks from Saint Madeleine. 

La Maison de l’Outil et de la Pensée Ouvrière, a tool museum a library dedicated to “working class thought,” isn’t for everyone, but you know that manly thrill you get when looking for the precise screw or awe in a hardware store? Well, you’ll find it in historic spades when visiting this collection of 10,000 tools particularly from the 17th and early 20th centuries. This is one of the best technical-minded museums in France. “Working class thought” is accounted for in books devoted to working-class life and culture and to technical studies.

As for the feminine thrill of selecting stockings and other knitwear, Troyes’s Musée de la Bonneterie/Hoisery Museum gives a wonderful glimpse of what Troyes was especially known for from the middle of the 18th century until the early 20th century.

Touring tips
Troyes, population 64,000 (120,000 with the suburbs), makes for an excellent daytrip from Paris (about 90 minutes by train) or for a stop while driving between Paris and Burgundy.

The textile industry is still present in and around Troyes, providing about 10,000 jobs, which explains the many factory outlets on the outskirts of the town at three main centers: Marques Avenue, Marques City, and McArthur Glen. 

Though this area is removed from the heart of the Champagne-producing part of the region, a large swatch of Champagne grape vineyards lie 25 miles southeast of the town. If looking to visit a Champagne house in the area, Drappier would be a worthwhile choice, as mentioned in my 3-day Champagne Diary.

I enjoyed an overnight in the fine, central, contemporary 4-star hotel Relais Saint Jean. For good choices in all categories and for further practical information about Troyes, visit the website of the Troyes Tourist Office.

- Text and photos: GLK

You’d be the rare traveler, French or foreign, to have heard of the Val d’Aubois, the Aubois Valley, a largely bypassed portion of Loire country, so it’s best to begin with a look at the map by clicking below.

Agrandir le plan 

I hadn’t heard of the area myself until the local association Aubois de Terres et de Feux invited me to have a look at their heritage sites. That heritage is mainly industrial, particularly the ruins and remnants of 19th-century ironworks in what is now an agricultural region for growing colza and grain and raising Charolais cattle.

As you can imagine from the above description, I came across no breathtaking beauty, no culinary wonders, no picturesque villages or local festivities here.

Oh, I learned a lot over the course of a day-long visit— how iron ore from the mineral-rich soil in the valley was mined and transformed to produce increasingly refined iron thanks to the evolution of furnaces in the 18th and 19th century—but would a traveler venture this way to see the ruins of smelting plants and foundries like this?

High furnace of La Guerche. Photo GLK

Or this?

Ruins of the foundry at Torteron. Photo GLK

Would a traveler wander off course from Burgundy to the east or from the royal chateaux to the west to investigate other signs of 19th-century industry, such as this canal-bridge of the 1830s?

Canal-Bridge of Le Guétin crossing the Allier River. Photo GLK

Would a traveler, faced with the knowledge that in the latter half of the 19th-century the iron industry was extinguished due to lack of local coke (coal) for higher-temperature furnaces, depletion of mines, and competition from the larger mines of Lorraine (northeast France), be interested to know that one of the old iron plants has been replaced with a factory making tiles for historical monuments?

I doubt it.

Yet one of the most fascinating aspects of going well off the beaten track in France is catching glimpses of the dedication, stubbornness, vision, and perhaps folly of local individuals trying to preserve something that time and economics have clearly given up on, something of no great beauty that could fall or fade into oblivion without doing any visible harm.

Local associations with this passionate, curious, and/or learned members, the mayors of villages and small towns helping to put or keep their municipality on the map and create a few jobs in the process, the individuals who actually own some of these sites, and their constant and collective search for local, regional, national, and European funding: those are the elements of that the peculiar notion of French heritage.

Among them are the dedicated members of the association Aubois de Terres et de Feux.

There’s also Jacques Chevau, who decided long ago that he wanted to own a castle and in 1998 bought the dilapidated Chateau de Grossouvre.

Jacques Chevau pointing out a detail at Grossouvre. Photo GLK

Grossouvre combines a 12th-century tour with elements of a 14th-century fortress and 19th-century pleasure palace owned by the Marquis Aguado who once hosted Napoleon III and Rossini and other notables of the middle of the century. That was a time when the iron industry flourished in Val d’Aubois. The town of Grossouvre itself is home to a didactic museum concerning the iron industry in the area.

But iron isn’t Mr. Chevau’s concern as much as stone. The eclectic heritage represented by this castle is undoubtedly of limited significance in the vast landscape of manors, palaces, and castles throughout France. Nevertheless, pride in ownership and achievement in its stone-by-stone renewal and repair have now made local and national heritage inseparable from Mr. Chevau’s own. Some day, says Mr. Chevau, the castle will house and display to the public his extensive private collection of old arms and uniforms.

Different approach, different finances, different setting, same distinctly French relation to old stones, there are Monsieur and Madame Mangeot, seen below standing by the ruins on their property of the Abbey of Fontmorigny, which they purchased in 1987. (My apologies to Mr. Mangeot for clicking while his eyes were shut, but I only had one shot before running to catch the train.)

M. and Mme. Mongeot and dog by the Abbey de Fontmorigny. Photo GLK

 “We didn’t pay a lot,” says Mr. Mangeot, who earned his bankroll as an executive in the pharmaceutical industry, “but the cost isn’t in the purchase price.”

Fontmorigny was originally built by the Benedictine order but joined the Cistercian fold in 1149. Its remnants date from the 12th through 18th centuries, and in the 19th century housed workers from the nearby ironworks at Torteron (see ruins above). Mr. Mangeot calls Fortmorigny “a crossroads of the monastic world and the world of industry”—now there’s a proprietor with a sense of heritage!

Given that nature had taken full position of their ruins by the time they bought it, local, regional, or national government were not about to put money in the project to get it going, but the Mangeots have managed to combine their finances, professionally honed business savvy, and personal passion to get the ball rolling so as to rehabilitate in contemporary terms a piece of French heritage and to open it to the public. Occasional classical music concerns are held here, and a portion of the complex is now being turned into a B&B. See http://www.abbayedefontmorigny.com/ for details.

Owning heritage, restoring or reviving it in one way or another, and opening it, at times, to the public, is a particularly French kind of noblesse oblige, whatever one’s birthright. Visiting the Val d’Aubois might require too much of a detour to discover that here. Indeed the traveler finds it in all forms in France—wine, cuisine, chateaux, mills, churches… foundries.

How to meet the dedicated, stubborn, vision, perhaps foolish individuals who would be so passionate about such things? First of all, think of them as heritage rather than things. Then go into a local café or restaurant and ask, “Who owns that ruin up the road?” It might start of a great adventure.
Travel tips: From a visitor’s point of view the Aubois Valley is do-it-yourself territory. Aubois de Terres et de Feux is the best place to begin your research.

However the obscure the area may sounds, we are indeed in the Loire Valley here, albeit far removed from the zone promoted as the Valley of the Kings. Though not a wine-growing area, this area can be situated in Loire wine terms as being 20-40 miles south of Sancerre and Pouilly (Pouilly-Fumé). Most visitors exploring the Loire Valley by bike focus their pedaling on the zone between Saumur and Blois. Nevertheless, the extensive marked cycling routes of the cross-regional Loire à Vélo (Cycling Loire) project will soon reach so far as Val d’Aubois. See http://www.cycling-loire.com/ for more.

- Gary Lee Kraut