I would soon learn that the cereal plain (wheat, colza, barley, rye) is indeed part and parcel of Auvergne. The current owners of the hotel, the Monier family, were formerly in the flour business. After nine generations as millers (Monier is a transformation of meunier, meaning miller) they sold the business to a large competitor and entered the hotel business with the purchase Chateau La Canière.

The term “chateau” covers a wide range of large residences in France and La Canière belongs more to the mansion than the castle portion of that spectrum, but like any respectable chateau it’s reached at the end of a long tree-lined alley.

Replacing a previous structure on this site, the chateau was built in the 1880s to showcase the instruments, portraits and library of the chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) that had been inherited by a member of the Bérard de Chazelles family, and presumably to hold elegant parties. Lavoisier is considered the father of modern chemistry and credited with naming oxygen and hydrogen and developing various theories about air, combustion and other matters that I started forgetting soon after taking the Chemistry AP exam in 12th grade.

To support his passion for scientific research, Lavoisier had a job in Paris with the tax farming office known as the fermier général in pre-Revolutionary France. His research and analysis made him famous, but having “worked for the man” noted on your resumé tends to get noticed in times of revolution. Lavoisier tried to keep his head low during the Revolution, but was nevertheless sent to the guillotine during the Terror along with his fellow tax farmers. In response to attempts to save his head for its scientific smarts, a member of the revolutionary tribunal is said to have declared, “The Republic doesn’t need scientists” (La République n’a pas besoin de savants).

Chateau La Canière fell into disrepair after the last owner of the Bérard de Chazelles family was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 for her role in the Resistance and deported to Ravensbruk in 1944. Purchased by a Dutch group in 2006 and rehabilitated as a hotel and restaurant, the the project had barely taken off when the group sold it in 2010 to the Monier family. The Moniers have now upgraded La Canière to its current 5-star status.

La Canière is not as heavily staffed as a city 5-star, so employees are necessarily at your immediate beck and call. Nevertheless, the infrastructure of well-being is present. A gastronomic restaurant called Lavoisier occupies an outbuilding (to the right, above) that is partially a remnant, vastly transformed, of the chateau that preceded the current mansion. A 17th-century orangerie (citrus greenhouse) is found on the opposite side of the chateau. There’s also a swimming pool (open summer only) in the back. In addition to some handsome wood-paneled reception rooms, including one that serves as the breakfast room, the mansion/chateau has a chapel and, more interestingly, a cozy library where one can read, write and/or drink, day or night.

La Canière is now operated by two brothers, Pierre, 24, and André, 28, whose grandfather, Denys, who bears the title “manager,” can be seen puttering around the place. That sounds like a great set-up for a British sitcom, but the French are better at chateau-hotels than at sitcoms.

There are 26 rooms and suites of high comfort. Prices run 130-600€ depending on size, split into six categories, making the hotel accessible for moderate as well as higher budgets. The ground-floor rooms are spacious and wheelchair accessible, though I preferred the upper rooms, particularly the “traditional” rooms that recall (with mostly contemporary furniture) the style of what would have been the heyday of the private chateau here in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. My own airy room on the top floor had more contemporary character—lively carpet, its ceiling beams and its bathroom partially open to the room—and a clear view over the surrounding cereal fields. Craning my neck to the south I could see a milky view of the mountainous region of the Volcano Park and the peak of Puy de Dome visible on the horizon.

The Lavoisier collection was sold in 1925, including a famous portrait by Jacques-Louis David of the scientist and his wife, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. If I continue to speak of Lavoisier here it’s because he can’t be ignored. A copy of that portrait can be seen at La Canière along with other portraits of the chemist, reproduced ad nauseam throughout the hotel. Lavoisier is everywhere. The restaurant is named after him. Portraits, nearly always the same, line hallways and overlook beds. I was reminded of what Oscar Wilde, referring the wallpaper in his rundown hotel room in Paris, said as he lay dying, “One or the other of us has to go.”

Nevertheless, there were nice things to stay for.

Over a fine dinner in the hotel’s gastronomic restaurant, Pierre Monier, the young director, informed me that his family had actually removed a number of the Lavoisier portraits since purchasing the property and that I might only have been overwhelmed by those that remain because, unlike other clients, I took a complete tour of the hotel and its hallways. Most guests would only see a few. Be that as it may, and without suggesting that a traveler not come this way because of an overdose of Lavoisiers, they might consider removing a few more.

The pool, the restaurant, the lounge areas, the breakfast room, the atrium lobby, the library, the nearly 20 acres of lawn and wood, and the wifi undoubtedly make La Canière an attractive place to relax, reflect and romance or for a work retreat.

Château La Canière is about 10 miles from the hot springs/spa town of Chatel-Guyon by way of the Riom region. Though Riom is larger than Chatel-Guyon, it’s lesser known beyond the region. The director of the Riom tourist office was kind enough to meet me at the hotel to tell me about the treasures of the area such as the Renaissance buildings in the center of Riom and the cute neighboring villages of Mozac and Marsat.

As we shook hands to part I promised her that I would consider getting up at 6am to have a quick look at those Renaissance buildings and cute villages before heading into the volcanic landscape, but after a drink in the library, then a late dinner in the restaurant, then a long gaze up at the stars from my bedroom window, I looked long into Lavoisier’s eyes above my bed and admitted to myself that I had lied.

Château la Canière. Rue de la Croix Blanche, 63260 Thuret. Tel. 04 73 97 98 44. Member of Chateaux & Hotels Collection. The hotel is 2 miles outside the center of the village of Thuret. The Riom train station is 9 miles away.

Riom Tourist Office. 27 place de la Fédération, 63200 Riom. Tel. 04 73 38 59 45.

© 2012, Gary Lee Kraut (text and photos)

Continue to:
Part V: Mont Dore, Saint Nectaire, Chaudes-Aigues and Yu.
Or return to:
Part I: From Paris to Clermont-Ferrand
Part II: An Introduction to Spa Towns and Hot Springs By Way of Royat
Part III: Chatel-Guyon

The post 5 Days in Auvergne, Part IV: Château La Canière, a Luxury Hotel appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Since most of my trip was dedicated to visiting old spa towns and hot springs, I wouldn’t be doing any hiking (despite my luck of a warm, sunny early spring week) or otherwise exploring the domes and craters that so define the landscape. The chain of puys begins at the western edge of Clermont. I wouldn’t be visiting Vulcania, a family-friendly museum and park explaining the existence, extinction and erosion of the volcanoes, the last of which erupted here about 7,000 years ago. Nevertheless, ever since arriving in Clermont-Ferrand and now throughout the day, I had views of the highest of the peaks, the 4806-foot Puy de Dôme, one of the major natural markers of France.

The roads that I drove along on the first hills of the Regional Nature Park of the Volcanoes were of the winding kind that would that make me feel ill as a passenger but that made me feel like a race car driver behind the wheel—at least until third gear. It was a short race. Twenty-five minutes after leaving Royat I was passing Volvic, famous for its bottled water, and the view of its 15th-century fortress castle (Tournoël), and 15 minutes beyond that I was descending into the narrow valley of Chatel-Guyon’s “thermal park,” where the hot springs are found.

Chatel-Guyon lies on the first bump out of the cereal plains of Auvergne, which is why a count named Guy II built his castle (castrum guidonis) there in 1185. Nothing remains of guy’s castle but it’s name, which is that of the town that grew around it.

Like the hiking season and the grazing season that awaited greener pastures, the season for medical thermal cures (April-October) was a week away as I traveled in Auvergne, so Chatel-Guyon was in a sunny slumber while awaiting the arrival, medical prescription in hand, of the first curists.

Today, a weekday, there was no competition for a seat on the patio of the restaurant of the town’s casino (in France, water-oriented resorts such as hot springs/spa towns are authorized to have a casino). I lunched there with Elisabeth Bertrand, director of the Chatel-Guyon tourist office. I faced out to the old thermal treatment center, les Grands Thermes (photo above), which closed in 2004, after nearly a century of use. The area didn’t seem abandoned, though in part it was, so much as waiting to be rediscovered.

Over chicken supreme, vegetables and a red Châteaugay Cotes d’Auvergne wine, an appellation produced nearby, Mrs. Bertrand explained to me of the rise and decline and transformation of the town over the past 150 years. The general outline follows that described in Part II of this series, with the following specifics:

– 1817: the beginning of timid developments of a small hot springs resort;

– 1855: arrival of the train at Riom, four miles away;

– 1858: opening of the first major thermal center below the old town of Chatel-Guyon in the narrow valley where hot water, having vaporized from deep down in the water table of the plain, pushes up to the surface;

– 1878: a doctor and a banker join forces, setting the tone for the marriage of medicine and luxury that puts Chatel-Guyon on the map of places to come for the thermal cure. During this period, the phylloxera insect was destroying vines throughout France; though not directly related, the rise of the economy of hot springs in the region coincides with the decline of revenue from the vineyards.

– 1890-1910: major developments including the construction, reconstruction and expansion of palatial hotels, the casino-theater complex, the central thermal center, and villas.

– 1912: Chatel-Guyon gets its own train station (now disaffected).

– 1919-1939: The good life continues between the wars, including the construction of another thermal bath and treatment center, the post office, and the Grand Hotel. The springs get additional medical certification particularly with new techniques to use the water to treat intestinal disorders;

– 1946-1970: With planes and more cars, increasingly mobile travelers are drawn to other vacation and resort destinations (the Riviera, foreign lands, etc.) while the medical use of hot springs here, as throughout France, becomes increasingly untethered from the notion of luxury, before losing any connection in the 1970s.

– 1970-2009: Taking the waters is no long associated with leisure and wealth but rather with the national health system’s willingness to provide for all or part of the costs of the 3-week cure. Among the clients sent to take the waters here in the 20th century are soldiers who were stationed in the French colonies and protectorates and sought treatment of intestinal disorders. By the 1960s those colonies and protectorates have gained independence from France, yet another element leading to the decline in the number of medical visitors at Chatel-Guyon from 22,000 in the late 1960s to 3500 in recent years.

What’s so special about this water?
The mineral content of the various hot springs throughout the Massif Central varies. Chatel-Guyon’s water is especially rich in magnesium, which makes it helpful in regulating intestinal transit, treat urinary problems, and healing intestinal wounds and inflammation. The presence of silicon leads it to be used for rheumatologic problems. Less important but also on the list of medical treatments for which doctors may prescribe taking the waters at Chatel-Guyon, is the presence of lithium along with the magnesium, which allows the mineral water to be prescribed for relieving stress, cramps and spasms.

To Americans and Brits, going to a designated faucet every morning for three weeks for a goblet of magnesium-heavy water or for a warm bath or other treatments may not sound very modern, or at least not influenced enough by the Japanese and Indian and Californian techniques that we now associate with spas, and some might prefer pills and other therapies, but there you have it, the Chatel-Guyon cure.

The more recent emphasis on the use of these springs for the treatment rheumatologic pain is expected to boost the number of medical visitors, according to Mrs. Bertrand, but the town isn’t betting the bank on its medical future alone. Instead, Chatel-Guyon’s growth, for this is not a town in decline but in growth, has (and presumably will) come from several other fronts.

– First, though Chatel-Guyon no longer has a direct train to Clermont-Ferrand (a train goes there from nearby Riom), this has become a bedroom community for those working in and around the regional capital. From 3500 residents in the 1970s, when most jobs were related to tourism and the hot springs, the town now as 6500 residents, even though it’s clear from the number and type of shops in town that many of those residents are spending their shopping money elsewhere. Still the numbers are enough to keep the schools and many services active.

– Second, as in all of these towns that developed thanks to their hot springs, there have been recent efforts to promote Chatel-Guyon as destination for that catch-all state of mind called “well-being” via contemporary spas. The 19th-century baths and treatment centers were always spas with a medical imprimatur, so the development of 21st-century spas emphasizing well-being rather than medicine makes good sense. For now the development of spas here and in the other hot spring towns that I visited on this trip are modest enough in size and investment that they’re largely for a local or sub-regional clientele, despite the occasional presence of a more distant visitor looking to enjoy two or three hours of soothing R&R. As far as the spas go, these aren’t international destinations, but as places to visit because of their history and architecture and natural landscape I find them fascinating for explorations off the beaten track.

– Third, more general tourism, particularly in summer, relative to their overall offering (hot springs, sports, nearby hiking, festivals).

Chatel-Guyon’s architectural heritage

A major sign of local efforts to project the town’s heritage into the future is the current renovation of the 400-seat Casino Theater through public funding and private donations. The theater, once one of the jewels of the Chateau-Guyon, was first completed in 1900 and then expanded in 1910. It’s due to reopen in 2014. Owned by the town, it is expected to earn itself a place on the festival circuit map in the region.

In discussing all this with Mrs. Bertrand, I remarked how different the role of government is in a town like this compared with a similar-sized town (or, likely, any town) in the United States. “For us,” she said, “inteventionism,” meaning the role of the government in the economic life of the town, “isn’t simply the government giving something away.” She spoke of it more in terms of making consensus decisions. “[Interventionism] has a relationship with our roots.” Americans would invariably see this as socialsm. Yet, as noted in Part II of this report, many old spa town lean right at the voting booth, though there’s no fast rule.

All of the spa towns that I visited on this trip were trying to answer the question as to what to do with their architectural heritage now that economic and cultural winds have blown away the original clients of that architecture. Chatel-Guyon, for instance, once had 70 hotels, including a number of luxury establishment. Currently, only 14 of those buildings operate as hotels, with the highest currently rated with three (out of five) stars (e.g. Splendid, Bellevue, Omental Thermalia).

Early in the 20th century, 28 springs were being exploited at Chatel-Guyon; in 1970, fourteen; now just five. You can see some of them, disaffected or closed off from the public, as you walk along the grounds of the thermal park. The luxury hotels of yesterday have been transformed into apartment buildings, their grand entrances, lobbies and ballrooms a bit forlorn without any doorman outside or fancily coiffed women walking with umbrellas on a sunny day. But I wouldn’t want this to sound like a sad portrait for this is indeed a healthy, living town. The valley of the hot springs and surrounding hotels/apartment buildings and villas makes for a pretty stroll.

The new thermal baths and treatment center of the 1980s, up the park from the casino, isn’t very attractive from the outside, but the old thermal center, the Grands Thermes, that I faced while having lunch is a treat for the historic-minded eye. Built 1904-1908, around the same time as other elements of the “thermal park,” as this part of the valley is called, the Grands Termes closed in 2004 and was purchased by the town five years later for a symbolic euro. There is as yet no consensus (i.e. viable project) as to what to do with it. However, its situation beside the casino and theater and its interior lobby are certainly promising.

The architectural heritage of these hot spring towns is part of what makes them so appealing to me. In the view above, taken from the entrance to the men’s wing of the Grands Thermes, you see the arched coffered ceiling, the red marble columns, the central table where those taking the cure would sit to write letters or to read the day’s paper, and the horseshoe staircase leading to the women’s wings. There are handsome details in the mosaic work throughout.

Unfortunately, the Grands Thermes can only be visited on Sundays from 4 to 7pm during the April-October “thermal cure” season. Once the theater has reopened in 2014 some bright and viable (or at least not too heavily subsidized) proposals will likely reach the mayor’s desk. The central space is simply too attractive to keep closed.

Coming up with a new use for the dozens of treatment rooms will be more difficult. Here’s a view of one of the treatment rooms with its ancient installations, in use until 2004.

A sunny walk-about in Chatel-Guyon eventually leads up the hill past several villas from the early 1900s, such at the villa “Les Jeannettes” (1908)…

… and to the site where Guy’s “chatel” once stood. There’s a milky late-afternoon light as I look out over the valley of the hot springs and beyond to the entrance to the volcanic park.

But I left Chatel-Guyon headed in the opposite direction, out into the plain, where Guy would watch for trouble and where I would spend an trouble-free night at the 5-star Chateau La Canière.

© 2012, Gary Lee Kraut

Other articles in this “Five Days in Auvergne” series:
Part I: From Paris to Clermont-Ferrand
Part II: An Introduction to Spa Towns and Hot Springs By Way of Royat
Part IV: Chateau La Canière, a luxury hotel
Part V: Mont Dore, Saint Nectaire, Chaudes-Aigues and Yu.

The post 5 Days in Auvergne: Part III, Chatel-Guyon appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

I knew from experience that rental agencies in or near train stations and airports in France simply give you the keys, once you’ve signed the necessary forms, and send you on your merry way to hunt for the vehicle at the far end of the parking lot. And since one of those forms is an inevitably incorrect sheet indicating the agency’s version of pre-rental dents and scratches to your vehicle, your failure to re-inspect may come back to haunt you when you find yourself being asked to pay for someone else’s fender bender.

Having returned to the agency to correct the error, I then set off with a slightly scratched but correctly recorded compact and headed to Royat, the first hot springs/spa town on my list on this exploratory trip to Auvergne.

I assumed that Royat would be bucolically removed from the city, and my assumption had been reinforced by the fact that a tourist official had told me to give myself 30 minutes to reach Royat from the train station. She must have guessed, though, that I’d spend the first 20 minutes correcting the rental car scratch sheet though, because after only a 10-minute drive my GPS told me that I had arrived. But I didn’t appear to have arrived anywhere other than a slope on the edge of the city. It felt like being in Yonkers after leaving the Bronx, suburban yet still city.

Furthermore, my GPS, I discovered by the end of the day, would accept street names but not numbers, so it would abandon me at the start of a boulevard or avenue and leave me to rely on direct sighting to find my actual destination. My first destination, the Hotel Princesse Flore was indeed at the start of the avenue, but I went up and down the full length twice before feeling sufficiently confident behind the wheel on these narrow, winding streets to raise my eyes high enough to see “Princesse Flore” written on the side.

Timeline for hot spring towns in Auvergne

I’d come to visit this 5-star hotel and the adjacent spa and water park because they represent the latest step in the town’s economic evolution, an evolution that began nearly 200 years ago with the discovery of its hot springs.

Though not the case at Royat (aka Royat-Camalières), some hot springs in the region were already exploited during Gallo-Roman time (e.g. Le Mont Dore). Some supplied hot water and even heating to villagers in the Middle Ages (e.g. Chaudes-Aigues). And some were already attracting visitors in the 18th century (e.g. Chatel-Guyon).

For the most part, however, the development of these hot springs medical/leisure “resorts,” as we would now call them, largely occurred during the 19th century according to the following schema.

1. a trickle of visitors following the discovery of the spring (1822 at Royat);

2. the arrival of developers with a vision (1845 at Royat);

3. an increasing stream of visitors including some fashionable French or European aristocrats, who put the destination on the proverbial map (in 1862 the most notable of French aristocrats visited Royat: Emperor Napoleon III, who suffered from rheumatism, and Empress Eugenia, who suffered from his incurable philandering);

4. the construction from 1880 to 1913, the Belle Epoque period, of ever-grander hotels and villas and buildings with furnished rooms to rent;

5. a restyling, after WWI, of water towns and their installations for the evolving high-end curists (patients taking the cure), their entourage and other vacationers; at the same time, further studies were showing the medical benefits of the waters, whether through bathing, drinking and/or inhaling vapors (mostly for rheumatism at Royat);

6. an attempt to keep on a happy face after WWII despite increasing competition from beach resorts and jet vacations;

7. a fall from grace through the 1960s as thermal baths lost their luster and the state health system pays lesser fortuned visitors to come for a 3-week medical cure, and

8. an attempt since about 2000 for local government to encourage the arrival of medical curists while trying to find ways to develop other forms of tourism with or without the thermal baths themselves.

(There are no luxury resorts among the hot springs that I visit in this series, but that doesn’t mean that Auvergne can’t appeal to luxury travelers seeking rural pleasures.)

Royat, Princesse Flore, Royatonic

Royat itself was never a major spa town despite Napoleon III’s visit—the emperor showered most of his imperial thermal favors to Vichy—, but for a time it held its own. Its medically prescribed thermal facility still welcomes about 9000 “curists” per year with a prescription to take the waters for rheumatism and certain cardiovascular diseases.

The hotel across the street from Royat’s medical thermal center entered the scene at Phase 4 of the timeline above. Built in 1883, it was renovated in the 1920s, as can be seen from the Art Deco styling of the public areas, but fell into decline in the final decades of the century. It closed altogether in 1999 (another half-dozen hotels would close over the following decade), took a deep breath when it was purchased by its current owner, Isidore Fartaria, in 2001, and reopened in 2009 as Le Princesse Flore, named for the owner’s youngest daughter. It is now a 5-star hotel, which places it a couple of notches higher than any of the hotels in the Clermont-Ferrand.

As noted at Phases 6 and 7 above, the moneyed crowded increasingly turned away from hot springs such as these in the decades following WWII. Competition from more modern coastal or foreign resorts coincided with moves to include medical water therapy among those treatments to be covered partially or fully by the French public health system.

It was a double-edge sword. Medical coverage of taking the waters meant that certain thermal facilities would continue to function and perhaps flourish by attracting patients of the national health system, but it also led the well-to-do to spend their well-being funds elsewhere. After all, the latter were not about to hang out with the general and elderly population that could now enjoy (or suffer in) the same the hot springs thanks to a doctor’s prescription that meant that some or all of their expenses covered or reimbursed by the state system (le Sécu) and the rest by complementary insurance.

Several times during the course of my stay in the region I would be told that the Sécu killed the high life of the hot springs in France. While that’s somewhat true (as I’ve noted, coastal resorts and foreign resorts also played a role), the Sécu has also allowed helped these towns to survive.

But no spa town wants to live by Sécu alone. For all its positive effects on the well-being of citizens and long-term residents, doing so could a town into a socialist retirement home. (Interestingly, spa towns tend to vote rightward rather than leftward.) So in recent years Royat (pop. 4500) and other towns have sought ways of giving some economic umph to their aquatic heritage by coupling local or regional public investments with private investients.

The Princesse Flore, privately owned, and the adjacent spa and water park Royatonic, owned by the municipality, are a case in point.

As the top hotel in the immediate Clermont-Ferrand region, the Princesse Flore is primarily (at 85%, according its director) a business hotel. There’s no good reason for an upscale leisure traveler to stay here (might as well leave the urban environment altogether) unless transiting as a family through Clermont-Ferrand on an overnight. However, if I were a business traveler who’d just spent the day at one of those French meetings that end with everyone promising to think about the situation some more and to call each other in another week or two, or three or four because vacations are coming up, I wouldn’t mind coming home to this 43-room hotel. In addition to the visible comfort of the rooms and suites, guests have free access to the watery playground of Royatonic next door and can purchase some spa treatments there.

I did not stay the night since I had a chateau-hotel in the country to look forward to that evening. But I took the time to relax for 15 minutes on a hydro-massage bed (Hydro-Jet) in Royatonic’s peaceable Sanhoa-branded spa treatment area and then made the rounds of steam, baths (cold, warm, hot, scented) and basins of its water park. At Royatonic, the water springs from its source at 86F (30C) and his heated several degrees for the indoor pool and several degrees more for the outdoor pool, which is open year-round.

Royatonic is a public project (with plans for expansion), publicly funded and operated, that, according to its director, turns a profit. How it’s public investment and operation is actually calculated with respect to that profit I leave to French journalists to investigate, but the figure that I was given of 165,000 visitors for last year is indeed significant.

Royatonic is certainly a nice place for locals and for business travelers to gather and relax—except when there’s an underwater spin class going on and the music is pumped up in contradiction of the sign asking visitors to respect the calm.

The group was cycling to the tunes from “Grease”: “Grease lightning, go grease lightening…,” “Tell me more, tell me more, did you get very far…”

So much for relaxation.

Anyway, I’d come for research rather than zenitude, and I had a lunch appointment at Chatel-Guyon, the next spa town on my list.

So I plugged Chatel-Guyon into the GPS, with Anywhere for a street name, and drove into the hills.

© 2012, Gary Lee Kraut

Hotel Princesse Flore, 5 place Allard, 63130 Royat. Tel. 04 73 35 63 63. Princesse Flore is the first French member of Best Western’s Premier association of hotels.

Royatonic and Spa SanHoa, 5 avenue Auguste Rouzard 63130 Royat. Tel. 04 73 29 58 90.

Return to Part I: From Paris to Clermont-Ferrand by clicking here.
Go to:  Part III: Chatel-Guyon.
Part IV: Chateau La Caniere, a luxury hotel.
Part V: Mont Dore, Saint Nectaire, Chaudes-Aigues and Yu.

The post 5 Days in Auvergne: Part II, An Introduction to Spa Towns and Hot Springs By Way of Royat appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.