GR 36 – De Germond-Rouvre à Beauvoir-sur-Niort – Chemin de Saint-Jacques de Compostelle
Route details
Description
At the crossroads, let yourself be transported by the discovery of Romanesque heritage and landscapes of plains and forests as you travel along the Germond-Rouvre – Beauvoir-sur-Niort section.
Find the accommodation sheet on the Way of Saint-Jacques de Compostela in Deux-Sèvres in PDF of this sheet.
Your itinerary
Step 1
Germond-Rouvre is located on the secondary road to Santiago de Compostela via Deux-Sèvres used by the English, Normans and Bretons. It included a maladrerie united in 1695 at the Château-Bourdin hospital (Saint-Pardoux-en-Gâtine) and two chaplaincies, one of which still existed in 1786.
In the 1804th century, the first bay of its church, built in the XNUMXth century by Poitevin monks, is topped by an enormous bell tower-porch, a late and clumsy imitation of that of Secondigny and Parthenay-le-Vieux. The southern facade was flanked in the XNUMXth century by a funerary chapel with flamboyant Gothic vaults. After the Concordat of XNUMX, one of the baroque altars of Saint-Antoine-de-la-Lande was transferred to the sanctuary.
Deprived of its original vaults, only the framed apse and part of the nave remain. Did you notice the sculpted bat?
Step 2
An impressive fortified castle attributed to the legendary fairy Mélusine, at the heart of the struggles between the kings of France and England, it controlled the crossing of the Sèvre Niortaise, the southern border of the lords of Parthenay-Larchevêque.
It is classified as a 13th century castle. the best preserved in France and England. An architectural model for the time, it has unique features: 1 rooms in an exceptional state of conservation; pointed barrel vaults, ribbed vaults or dome pierced with an oculus; vast archer niches; sheath (corridor in the thickness of the walls) unique in Europe... Educational replica of a trebuchet (siege engine), self-guided tours (show up XNUMX hour before closing for the last one) or guided tours (school or not, all year round , by reservation), monthly activities for young and old.
Communal picnic area.
Step 3
This manor house, today a garden of ruins classified as a Historic Monument, was in the 1576th century the stronghold of Agrippa d'Aubigné, grandfather of the Marquise de Maintenon, great poet of the Baroque period and squire of the future Henri IV who passed through there in XNUMX the happiest days of his life. Moreover, the Allée du Roy, an avenue of lime trees three hundred years old, bears this name in memory of his stay.
Located on the left bank of the Sèvre, on a terrace placed on stilts out of the floods, below the Gallic path known as Magné, close to a ford, the old castle serving as an outpost at Coudray-Salbart has been transformed from 1596 to 1613 as a pleasure castle by Agrippa d'Aubigné who basty it strongly and conveniently new.
Step 4
The oldest church in Niort built on the site of a temple dedicated to Thor, rebuilt in the 2003th-XNUMXth centuries, remodeled in the XNUMXth century. in the XNUMXth century. and registered in XNUMX.
At the time of Clovis, Pezenne fled to Aquitaine from his native Spain where abuses reigned. She died of exhaustion on a hillside in the Sèvre Niortaise. Miraculous healings around his tomb are the origin of a popular pilgrimage. In 1147, during the Second Crusade, Eleanor of Aquitaine donated the remains to the Count of Vermandois who took them to the north of France, to St-Quentin. The city was taken in 1557 by the army of Philip II of Spain. The emperor gives the relic to his sister, Empress of Germany. This, upon her death, returns her to her country of origin. His body was placed in a chapel in the royal palace of the Escorial in Madrid. A phalanx of the nun was offered to the Pexin parish in 1955.
Step 5
At the foot of the cemetery, rectangular in shape and without a roof, the 19th century fountain of the dead was restored and highlighted by the Pexinois Animation Committee.
Placed below the village, it avoids pollution of public waters and spares laundry rooms the steepness of the path tumbling down to the Sèvre Niortaise.
It was used until the 1893th century, a period from which water supply became widespread in every home. The last professional washerwoman in Sainte-Pezenne is called Marie-Madeleine Denis, nicknamed “Mother Denis”, “Star” of “bujhaille” (laundry in Poitevin-Saintongeais dialect). Born in 100, she lived to be over XNUMX years old!
Step 6
This artificial concrete cave was built by the widow (-1914) of Jules Marot, a Niort-based manufacturer of grain sorters, following a train accident transporting mainly Niort residents in the direction of the Lourdes pilgrimage; described as miraculous, as it resulted in only a few minor injuries.
It then becomes every Sunday, in the summer, a place of pilgrimage where residents are invited by the owner of the place to come and pray. The statue of the Virgin has disappeared, but we can see an ex-voto “healing obtained”.
In the 1990s, the chapel of Notre-Dame de la Cressonnière, located near the Lambon grotto and cressonnière, was destroyed.
There are two other Lourdes caves, one in Niort, near the hospital and the other in Bessines.
Step 7
On the banks of the Sèvre Niortaise, stands one of the most beautiful sets of twin Romanesque dungeons in France and the first building in Niort to be classified as a Historic Monument. It formed the central recess of a vast castle in the shape of a quadrilateral 1 m long. It was the King of England, Henry II Plantagenet, who, wanting to put in a state of defense the domains that his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine brought him through her marriage, decided to have it rebuilt, at the end of the 700th century, an impregnable fortress.
Labeled Museum of France. 1 star in the 2018 edition of the Michelin Green Guide.
Permanent exhibition Donjon, 1000 years of history, regional archeology (from Prehistory to Roman times) and Poitevin ethnography (reconstruction of a Poitevin interior and furniture), temporary exhibitions, themed visits and workshops, digital tablets (free loan ), view from the north tower.
Step 8
Reused above a store on the eponymous street, this stone sign appearing to date from the 18th century is certainly that of the former Sainte-Marthe inn.
It represents the patron saint of hoteliers seated next to Mary holding the child Jesus. In the Bible, Martha receives Jesus in her home in Bethany, near Jerusalem. The two figures who frame them are, on the left, Saint Peter who carries the keys and, on the right, Saint James the Greater, protector of pilgrims, recognizable by his long staff called a staff and his gourd in the shape of a pear, dried squash and hollowed out serving as a flask. The scene is blessed by the Holy Spirit symbolized by the dove placed above them.
This bas-relief, restored by the Friends of Old Niort association, still retains some traces of polychromy because, originally, it was painted in order to be seen from afar.
Step 9
This old boilermaker built in 1840, at the corner of rue Saint-Jean and rue du Petit-Banc, has preserved a Virgin and Child placed in a niche with a neo-Gothic canopy and sculpted by the Crèchois Jean-Baptiste Baujault, author also of the “Young Gaul shouting at Gui l'An neuf” whose plaster is today in the Bernard d'Agesci museum in Niort and the marble in the central gallery of the Orsay museum since 1979.
Placed at a crossroads, the Virgin of the house provides protection to the pilgrim who crosses himself in front of her. She recalls that the Compostela path follows the route of the Milky Way, a maternal and indeed Marian symbol.
Marie is serious. Her hair is styled in medieval-style braids. The folds of the coat and dress are very regular. Jesus, a small smiling adult sitting on his mother's left palm, carries a globe.
Step 10
Built from 1491 to 1534 in the flamboyant Gothic and Renaissance style on an old Romanesque chapel, the Notre-Dame church was remodeled and restored in the XNUMXth century, XNUMXth century and XNUMXth century. Placed on the Way of Saint-Jacques de Compostela, it houses the Saint-Roch chapel once dedicated to pilgrims.
It is the highest monument in the Deux-Sèvres department. The Gothic spire of its bell tower rises 75 meters high! It is said to be the work of the fairy Mélusine, half-woman and half-snake, who, surprised in her work, forgot to lay the last stone!
Step 11
An orphan born in Montpellier in the 13th century, Roch left for Rome as a pilgrim. Sick with the plague, he retreats into a forest where he is fed by a dog who brings him every day a piece of bread stolen from his master's table. Intrigued, the latter follows him and discovers the injured saint. Back in his homeland, he is disfigured by the mortifications suffered. Arrested, he refuses to say his name. Mistaken for a spy in a city in the midst of civil war, he is thrown into prison where he dies after five years. The day before his death, he revealed to a priest his identity and his relationship with the lord of the castle where he was imprisoned.
Step 12
This site has always had a hospital vocation since the Middle Ages:
– The secular chaplaincy of Saint-James from 1204 to 1681 for the reception of pilgrims, the poor and the sick outside the city walls.
– The general hospital from 1665 to combat begging by locking up beggars there.
– The Georges Renon hospital center (*) built from 1924 to 44 and the second largest hospital in France at the time due to its dimensions and modern equipment.
(*) Surgeon, professor and renovator of the Niort hospital from 1905 to 42.
The new hospital, opened in 1983, is today the largest employer in Deux-Sèvres.
You are currently in the courtyard of the cloister of the former convent of the Daughters of Wisdom, managers of the establishment from 1729 to 1977!
Step 13
From the Poitevin word roussea meaning both red and stream, La Roussille is the place where rouches, that is to say rushes, grow.
Its lock was installed in 1394 by Duke Jean de Berry, Count of Poitou, to retain the waters of the Sèvre Niortaise in the canal and the Niort basin. It is the most important of the eight locks from Niort to Marans (Charente-Maritime) and one of the first airlock locks in France. The date of 1808 is engraved in the stone of the old lock keeper's post to recall the passage to Niort of Napoleon I who regulated navigation on the river by decree.
As an extension of the current restaurant, the old barn of the lock keeper's house housed the horse used on the towpath to pull the barges on the small coastal river.
Step 14
St-Liguaire comes from Saint Léger, abbot of St-Maixent and bishop of Autun in the 7th century, the local dialect having distorted this name into Léodogaire.
Its Benedictine abbey was founded in 961 by Elbes, abbot of St-Maixent, on the initiative of his brother Guillaume Tête d'Etoupe, 2nd count of Poitou. Its monks cultivated the fertile alluvium of the Sèvre, drained the Bessines marsh and maintained the La Roussille lock.
Rebuilt many times after the Hundred Years and Religious Wars, the monastery was sold in 1791. The 3th century chapter room. is one of its last vestiges and 1962 bone fragments from the only known reliquary (St-Léger-du-Bois, diocese of Angers) were given in XNUMX to the Ste-Marie-Madeleine church at occasion of its millennium.
Also see: the 2 keystones of the Renaissance cloister representing the heads of emperors reused on the portal of the Ste-Macrine school.
Step 15
The hermit Caprais, a little-known saint, became a saint in the 1th century. the XNUMXst bishop of Agen. Bessines is the only church in the diocese of Poitiers placed under this name.
The church is mentioned for the first time in a charter in 1. The monument from the 988th century. was redeveloped in the 1982th century. Half ruined during the Wars of Religion, it was partially restored in the 1986th century. In XNUMX, following damage caused by bad weather, the building was restored, then returned to worship in XNUMX.
To see: 2th century portal, bell tower, 1982 shell fonts (Bessines is located on the Chemin de Santiago de Compostela), beam of glory representing the resurrected Christ surrounded by Mary and John the Evangelist (made in 2000 by the Niort sculptor Laurent Page and installed in 2002 to celebrate the millennium of the building), neo-Romanesque altar (1771), Hosannière cross from XNUMX in the cemetery.
Step 16
Perhaps founded by the Viscountess of Thouars Aldéarde in 1099, the Saint-Pierre church is mentioned for the first time in 1111 in a charter of the abbey of Nouaillé which, placed under the protection of the counts of Poitou, appointed the priests from Frontenay. Ruined during the Hundred Years' Wars, it was rebuilt in the 1537th century by the successive bishops of Saintes Guy and Louis de Rochechouart (see their coat of arms on the bell tower) and, by royal authorization, the village was fortified (see the bretèche on the facade ). In 1635, the building was equipped with a bell placed today against a pillar of the nave. During the Wars of Religion, it was burned and repaired in 1903. Threatening to collapse, the bell tower-narthex was consolidated in the XNUMXth century and listed in XNUMX.
Step 17
The Romanesque church was built under the patronage of the Poitevine abbey of Saint-Jean-de-Montierneuf, but in the diocese of Saintes. It is dedicated to Saint Eutrope, the first bishop of Saintes martyred in the 4th century.
In the first half of the 1744th century, its bell tower no longer existed or was never built, being reduced today to an unfinished building. Victim of the Wars of Religion, two-thirds of it was destroyed, then repaired in 1877. A total renovation of the nave was undertaken in 1909 thanks to the priest, Father Léon Brisson and the generosity of a few families. The span under the bell tower and the apse, remarkable specimens of the Saintongeais Romanesque style, were classified in XNUMX as Historic Monuments.
Step 18
Located on the highest point of the commune (90 m high) and on the edge of the Chizé forest, it is the only windmill-tower in operation in Sud-Deux-Sévrien.
This old ordinary mill, whose existence is mentioned as early as 1482, depended on the lordship of Raimbault until the Revolution. The last miller, Louis Royer, died in the 70s. From 1973, Les Amis du Moulin de Raimbault restored the roof, the wings, one of the three millstones and the interior mechanism (Berton system). It was included in the inventory of sites in 1975 and its preservation association received the Masterpiece in Danger prize. Since 1989, he has been turning and making flour. The municipality acquired it in 2004.
The site comes back to life today during events and can also be rented for festivities.