Route details
Description
A route starting from the Port Boinot reception base to discover Niort and its streets and alleys. Secret places and little-known viewpoints! This route is an immersion in the built heritage and history of the city. A course for trail running in the heart of the city of Niort and its history while working on your strength and muscular resistance.
-> Marked trail Trail Station
Your itinerary
Step 1
Former chamois factory until 2006, then National Center for Street Arts from 2010 to 2015, Le Port Boinot is between the Main and Sèvre Niortaise bridges:
– A large urban park connected to the Marais Poitevin Regional Natural Park (2020)
– A variation of 6 thematic gardens
– The conversion of industrial buildings: the employer's house into a restaurant (2023), the factory into an event venue for businesses and the general public (2023), the large dryer into a counter for roaming and hiking (Tourist Office in 2021), information space and awareness of the heritage riches of Niort Agglo and place of memory of chamois making (2021), the port workshops in a space dedicated to sports leisure practices (rental of bicycles and light boats) and events (bar- contemporary art restaurant-concert-exhibition L’ilôt sauvage)…
Step 2
The Moulin du Roc, national stage and cinema in Niort hosts in its two rooms varied shows around its three disciplinary fields which are movement, dramaturgy and music and voice.
Find during the season: theater, circus, classical or contemporary dance, music, concert, story, opera, lyrical, orchestra, jazz, classical music, song, humor, performance, film concert...
The shows are intended for all audiences: young audiences, teenagers, families, adults, groups by reservation. Performances are dedicated to schools in Niort, Deux-Sèvres and neighboring departments all year round.
Step 3
In 2021, new equipment is released. It is made by the equipment manufacturer 3R Factory based in Limerzel, in Morbihan (recognized by the community of riders). Replacing the one from 2005, it is more up to standard: larger development space of 1.900 m2 including ramp, half-pyramid, double steps, 3×3 curb and slide bars.
Step 4
The public garden is a place for walking laid out on terraces by the city's Charity workshops at the end of the 1763th century. Among the diggers, there were former chamois workers who were unemployed after the loss in XNUMX of Canada, the main supplier of skins.
From 1890 to the war of 14, on June 23 and 24, the corporate festival of "Saint-Jean", patron saint of chamois-glove makers, took place on the Quai de la Regratterie, at the Jardin des Plantes and at the church Saint Andrew.
The Garden is illuminated by lanterns. The bonfire lights up opposite, in Pré Leroy. Boats adorned with flags parade on the Sèvre to the sound of musical societies.
Step 5
Proudly erected on the highest hill in Niort, the church of Pierre-Théophile Segrétain, first architect of the Deux-Sèvres Historical Monuments, looks like a cathedral with its two 70-metre-high spiers.
Present since the 11th century, it experienced the Wars of Religion and the Revolution before being completely rebuilt in the 19th century in the neo-Gothic style.
The Saint-André church was, it is said, at the end of the 17th century, "the most beautiful and largest in the province" and also historically older than Notre-Dame.
During the Revolution, largely destroyed, it was renamed and named the “Temple of the Mountain”.
In 2015, like the Saint-Hilaire church in Niort by the same builder, it was included on the additional list of Historic Monuments.
Step 6
Built from 1530 to 1535 by the master mason Mathurin Berthomé on the foundations of a XNUMXth century building, this fortress of municipal freedoms is the former Town Hall of Niort from the Middle Ages to the Revolution. It bears this name to remind us that in the past the mayor had the right to administer justice. As such, two iron collars, fixed in the wall of the building, made it possible to pillage the offender wearing a sign on his neck on which his offense was mentioned.
A lapidary and numismatic museum from 1887 to 1987, the Historic Monument is today the Visual Arts Space (place for temporary exhibitions on contemporary works).
Step 7
1st prize in the national Victoires du Paysage 2014 competition, in the Urban Public Space category.
La Brèche, after hosting agricultural fairs from 1750 to 1972, then a roundabout with a parking lot in the middle, has become the green lung of downtown Niort thanks to its gardens created between 2012 and 2013.
It takes the name of a breach opened in the urban wall during a flood; the Bouillounouse stream forming a basin at its base and flooding during heavy rains.
You will find a multitude of restaurants and atmospheric bars all along it!
Step 8
This 85th century church in the Byzantine neo-Romanesque style, financed in part by Emperor Napoleon III and designed by Pierre-Théophile Segrétain, first departmental architect of Deux-Sèvres, bears the surname of the evangelizer of Poitou, first bishop of Poitiers in the XNUMXth century, Doctor of the Church who gave his name to XNUMX French communes including Saint-Hilaire-la-Palud (Marais Poitevin).
A large statue of the saint is depicted on the facade, the general shape of which resembles that of Notre-Dame la Grande in Poitiers. He is supervised by Saint Ambrose, Doctor of the Latin Church, and Saint Athanasius, Doctor of the Greek Church, both contemporaries of the bishop. Saint Hilary makes the sign of blessing with his right hand, holds the book of the Trinity in his left and treads a monster.
Step 9
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!
To see: the north portal, the large stained glass window of the Tree of Jesse, the Renaissance gallery and the large listed organs.
Step 10
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 Plantagenêt, who, wanting to put in a state of defense the domains that his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine brought to him through her marriage, decided to rebuild, at the end of the 700th century, a impregnable fortress.
Labeled Musée de France, the museum offers a permanent exhibition Donjon, 1000 years of history, regional archeology sections (from Prehistory to Roman times) and Poitevin ethnography (reconstruction of a Poitevin interior and furniture). The extras: temporary exhibitions, themed tours and workshops, free loan of digital tablets, view from the north tower.