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Step 1
Capital of the Deux-Sèvres department, central town of the Niortais Urban Community, capital of mutual insurance companies, the commune of sixty thousand souls tells the story of nine centuries of great and small history. From its historic heart bathed by the Sèvre Niortaise to the new gardens of La Brèche, this perpetual trading city contains a rich eclectic heritage including the imposing twin dungeons erected in the 12th century by Henry II Plantagenêt, King of England. This heart beats today to the rhythm of its many festive events which enliven its city center and its village districts. For several centuries, from the top of its hills, Niort has dominated the astonishing landscape of the Marais Poitevin and opened its eastern gateway. Today it asserts both its urban and natural character by the reclamation of the banks of its river.
Step 2
A village developed around the ancient domain of Bassinius, a rich Gallo-Roman landowner, Bessines is located at the crossroads of Aunis and Poitou. Bordered by the Jaron reach and the Vieille Sèvre, this rural commune is nestled on the side of a hill which dominated the former Gulf of Pictons. Its Romanesque church of Saint-Caprais, a stopover on the Chemin de Santiago, and its three ports open the door to the Marais Poitevin. Its marsh is classified as a Biotope and Natural Area of ecological, fauna and flora interest. In 2011, Bessines adhered to the Healthy Earth charter of the Poitou-Charentes region by adopting alternative solutions to become a municipality of environmental excellence (reduction of pesticide consumption, reasoned mowing allowing the conservation of groves and unique or protected species and the return of insects…).
Step 3
Magné, from the Latin Magnus meaning great, is the ancient name of a rich Roman family established on an island in the Gulf of Pictons. Bordered by the Sèvre Niortaise and the Sevreau, the village has thrown four bridges over the waterways, the most characteristic of which is the metal drawbridge, witness to the golden age of river trade in the 300th century. This traffic made it possible to export pottery, an old local industry fueled by marine debris, clay from the marshes. Today, the pots have given way to exhibitions at the Four Pontet located on the towpath. The third weekend of July, Magné organizes the International Painting Festival in the presence of XNUMX artists and thus occupies the first position in France for this type of event!
Step 4
Le Vanneau-Irleau, a market garden and bocage commune located in the wild marsh, is known for its wood industry specializing in plywood. Lapwing derives from vana aqua meaning vain and vague water preventing any cultivation before the digging of flow channels in the 15.000th century. Irleau is a contraction of Reau Island where the stakes of a prehistoric lakeside city or fortifications from a more recent era have been unearthed. The last Saturday in July, the Water Market is organized at the Grand Port du Vanneau where the products of individuals and traders are sold to more than XNUMX visitors! This festive event reflects one of the most unique Maraîchine traditions: the transport of men, animals and goods on the tangle of wet roads forming the Green Venice, the authenticity of which it strives to preserve.
Step 5
The Grand Port of Arçais was from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 1960th century, one of the main places of trade between the plain and the Sèvre Niortaise valley. Its paved slipway is located in the bend of a conch and the two wooden cranes remind us that in the past the poplar trunks, transported by water, were hoisted onto the bank. On the edge of the river port stands a home built and enlarged in the XNUMXth century (private residence visible from the street). Its first owner was responsible for planting the first poplar in the Marais Poitevin. The eleven stores on the ground floor were used for the storage of goods (wine, wood, fish) in transit to Niort and Marans, then rented until around XNUMX to farmers who stored their equipment necessary for exploiting the marsh there.
Step 6
Palud comes from the Latin palus meaning marsh. Stretching in front of Broue d'Arçais, the street villages of Rivière (name linked to its belonging to the world of water) and Montfaucon were described at the beginning of the 18th century as considerable by the ordinary engineer and geographer of the king Claude Masse also reporting an important river trade. Their houses have a double exposure: on the river leading to the marsh and towards the cultivated fields. As for the hamlets of Névoire, with their old large buildings covering ovens and dryers they recall the long-active brick and tile-making tradition of the town. Formerly dedicated to agriculture and crafts with the trade in wood, milk and tiles, the capital of the Marais Sauvage is today focused on tourism with the Marais Poitevin Birds Ornithological Park.
Step 7
Cited for the first time in 989 in the cartulary of Saint-Hilaire de Poitiers, the town, located in the limestone plain, overlooks a small preserved marsh. Certainly one of the oldest Maraîchine towns, the village developed between a Benedictine priory and a castle on the plain. At a place called Le Prieuré, its manorial and curial church falls under the diocese of Saintes. Thanks to the sale by candlelight of part of the municipal marsh and with the stones of the old sanctuary, a new building was built by the Niort architect Bergeron from 1881 to 1882. Partly acquired by the Regional Conservatory of Natural Spaces of Poitou-Charentes, the Saint-Georges-de-Rex and Amuré marshes present two major ecosystems: 40 ha of ash wooded islands to the west and 125 ha of wet meadows to the east.
Step 8
Amuré has been celebrating nature since 1996. Every year, at the end of November, it organizes the Pollarded Ash Festival. One of its market garden deciduous trees is also classified as a remarkable tree of Deux-Sèvres. In 2001, the Ministry of Sustainable Development and Regional Planning presented a prize to the municipality to reward it for its involvement in upgrading its landscapes by planting thousands of pollarded ash trees and bocage hedges, cleaning out conches and ditches and the installation of tourist signage. This desire for environmental excellence is also reflected in eco-housing as evidenced by the 3 ears communal gîte approved Bébé Confort and installed in an old house in the wet marsh with its period furniture and its boiler using shredded wood chips.
Step 9
The commune includes two villages inhabited since prehistoric times: Sansais perched on a bocaged hillside and La Garette clinging to the side of a mound (31 m high mound), in the heart of the Marais Poitevin. Henri III of Navarre, the future good king Henri IV, staying in Mursay in 1576, hunting and fishing at La Garette. Ten years later, back in the Marais Poitevin, he wrote that...Among these deserts are a thousand gardens where one only goes by boat...Of fish, it is a monstrosity in quantity, size and price... Classified at almost 90%, La Garette, from the French guéret meaning fallow, is a street village laid out between hillside and marsh, between the Jaguin port and the Vieille Auberge port called Grand Port. Until the middle of the XNUMXth century, the latter was an important transit port for goods between Bas-Poitou (north) and Saintonge (south).