Vayrac

Daughter of the magnificent Dordogne River, nestled at the foot of the Puy d’Issolud and the cliffs of Mézel,  at the heart of the region Haut Quercy-Dordogne, in the centre of the community of municipalities, Vayrac is a place with incomparable historical, geographical, tourist, economic, cultural and gastronomic advantages.

It has, moreover, on its territory “l’Oppidum gaulois du Puy d’Issolud”,  recently recognised as the official site of Uxellodunum,  last bastion of Gallic resistance to Roman armies of Caesar.

Vayrac is twinned with Questembert in Morbihan (56).

Between the green region of Corrèze and the more rough landscapes as the Causse du Lot, the village of Vayrac offers to those who live there or want to stay for a while all the necessary infrastructure: Elementary school, college, shops, utilities, banks, doctors, pharmacies, municipal or private campsites, guest houses, lodges, restaurants, cinema, and a great variety of social life. 

Taking the walk, we can see the wall of the fort, the width of the old ditches and the location of houses along the old pit with a piecemeal medieval thong. On the fort, houses are proof of the richness of Vayrac especially in the nineteenth century, period of strong rural population, with its fairs and markets.

Many houses attest to the richness  of the village and the former presence of a small middle class( lawyers, doctors...):   Houses with terraces, fences with initials of the owners, slate roofs, ridge ears of zinc, small dovecotes in the roof (streets of Charles de Verninac, Gaillard Bournazel, fountain place)

It was rebuilt after  the Hundred Years’ in the late fifteenth century. Its architecture is typical of the Southern Gothic : Single nave with two rows, chapels between the foothills, large polygonal choir.

The ensemble is arched on cross warheads. Like most churches rebuilt or restored after the Hundred Years’ War, it was fortified. A walk on the machicolation surrounded the abside and watch rooms are situated in the foothills. The facade was changed in the early nineteenth century into neo-classical style.

Inside wall paintings of the nineteenth century, illustrating episodes from the life of Saint Martin, cover the walls of the choir. The altar and the tabernacle is surmounted  by a large golden baldachin of the eighteenth century, richly decorated, the only example in the region. In the church is also kept one of the ancient grain steps of Mediaeval Vayrac used as a font.

The church of Saint-Martin of Vayrac is a classified historic monument since may 3rd 1913.

Exit of the volcanic rocks of the Massif Central, the valley of the Dordogne furrows high Quercy, a such oasis in the shape of lace. It clears a passage through the causses limestones of Quercy (in north, of Martel, in the south, of Gramat). The flow of its water is fast and abundant, it erodes the banks and generates dead arms " couasnes" , insulators of the sandy small islands, fields of the willows and reeds.

This rich person valley does not summarize herself only with his feudal past. It offers a natural ECRIN of more balanced. Joining the parallel 45ème, halfway between pole and equator, under the influence continent and of Ocean, the Dordogne in Quercy, profits d' a particularly moderate climate.

The Hamlet of Mézels, separated from its Vayrac metropolis by the course of the Dordogne, is wound into a ball at the foot of a cliff, refuge of Maurillon saint, bishop of Cahors in the middle of the 1st millenium, which devoted the end of its life to a eremitic existence. The church, extremely modest, include two Gisants.