Welcome to our beautiful Guest Farm in the Dordogne area in France: for sale

Our Guest Farm

The Dordogne

The magnificent valleys of the Dordogne and the Vézère, the prehistoric sites, the caves and castles..

The gastronomy fed by the local products as strawberries, walnuts, chestnuts, geese and ducks and last but least the very special mushroom the cèpe...

A selection of beautiful Bergerac wines like Monbazillac, Pécharmant, Montravel and Saussignac..

The lovely medieval villages like Montferrand and Limeuil, the Bastides of Beaumont du Périgord, Montpazier and Belvès, the many castles like Château de Lanqais — the Louvre of  the Périgord-, château de Biron, Castelnaud, Beynac and more..

And next to all this stir and conviviality of markets and villages ands towns; the silence, the quietness, the beautiful weather, the amazing starry nights, not troubled by any light or air pollution..

All that makes the Périgord to a region of international fame; a perfect combination of history and nature, as part of a perfect holiday at our Guest Farm.

Some facts about the Dordogne

The Dordogne is a department in Southwestern France.The department is located in the region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine between the Loire Vally and the Pyrenees and is named after the river Dordogne that runs through it. It corresponds roughly with the ancient county of Périgord. It had a population of 416,909 in 2013.

The county of Périgord dates back to when the area was inhabited by the Gauls. It was originally home to four tribes. The name for "four tribes" in the Gaulish language was "Petrocore". The area eventually became known as the county of Le Périgord and its inhabitants became known as the Périgordins (or Périgourdins). There are four Périgords in the Dordogne.

• The Périgord Vert (Green Périgord), with its main town of Nontron, consists of verdant valleys in a region crossed by many rivers and streams;
• The Périgord Blanc (White Périgord), situated around the department's capital of Perigueux, is a region of limestone plateaux, wide valleys, and meadows.
• The Périgord Pourpre (Purple Périgord) with its capital of Bergerac, is a wine region.
• The Périgord Noir (Black Périgord) surrounding the administrative center of Sarlat, overlooks the valleys of the Vezere and the Dordogne, where the woods of oak and pine give it its name.

Dordogne River

The Petrocores took part in the resistance against Rome. Concentrated in a few major sites are the vestiges of the Gallo-Roman period: – the gigantic ruined tower and arenas in Périgueux (formerly Vesone), the Périgord museum's archaeological collections, villa remains in Montcaret, and the Roman tower of La Rigale Castle in Villetoureix. The earliest cluzeaux (artificial caves either above or below ground) can be found throughout the Dordogne. These subterranean refuges and lookout huts were large enough to shelter entire local populations. According to Julius Caesar, the Gauls took refuge in these caves during the resistance.

After Guienne province was transferred to the English Crown under the Plantagenets following the remarriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152, Périgord passed by right to English suserainty. Being situated at the boundaries of influence of the monarchies of France and England, it oscillated between the two dynasties for more than three hundred years of struggle until the end of the Hundred Years' War in 1453. The county had been torn apart and, as a consequence, that modeled its physiognomy.

During the calmer periods of the late 15th and early 16th centuries, the Castillon plain on the banks of the Dordogne saw a development in urban architecture. The finest Gothic and Renaissance residences were built in Périgueux, Bergerac, and Sarlat. In the countryside, the nobility erected the majority of the more than 1200 chateaux, manors and country houses. In the second half of the 16th century, however, the terrors of war again visited the area, as the attacks, pillaging, and fires of the Wars of Religion reached a rare degree of violence in Périgord. At the time, Bergerac was one of the most powerful Huguenot strongholds, along with La Rochelle. Following these wars, Périgord, fief of Henry of Navarre, was to return to the Crown for good and would continue to suffer from the sudden political changes of the French nation, from the Revolution to the tragic hours of the Resistance.

We also encounter the memory of the region's most important literary figures: Arnaut Daniel, Bertran de Born, Michel de Montaigne, Etienne de La Boetie, Brantome, Fenelon, Maine de Biran, Eugene Le Roy, and Andre Maurois; its great captains: Talleyrand, Saint-Exuperv, Biron; and even entertainer and activist Josephine Baker. A number of ruins (La Chapelle-Faucher, I'Herm) have retained the memory of the tragedies that took place within their walls. Several of the castles and châteaux are open to visitors; some of them, such as Bourdeilles and Mareuil, house noteworthy collections.

In addition to its castles, chateaux, churches, bastides, and cave fortresses, the Périgord region has preserved since centuries past a number of villages that still have their market halls, dovecotes, bories (stone huts), churches, abbeys, and castles. Saint-Leon-sur-Vezere, Connezac, Saint-Jean-de-Cole, La Rogue-Gageac, and many others contain important and visually interesting architectural examples. The old quarters of Périgueux or Bergerac have been restored and developed into pedestrian areas. A number of small towns, such as Brantome, Issigeac, Evmet and Mareuil, have withstood the changes of modern times. A special mention should be made in this respect to Sarlat and its Black Périgord area.

Dordogne is one of the original 83 departments created on 4 March 1790 during the French Revolution. It was created from the former province of Périgord, the county of Périgord. Its borders continued to change over subsequent decades.

In 1793 the communes of Boisseuilh, Coubjours, Genis, Payzac, Saint-Cyr-les-Champagnes, Saint-Mesmin, Salagnac, Savignac, Saint-Trie and Teillots were transferred from Correze to Dordogne.

In 1794 Dordogne ceded Cavarc to Lot-et-Garonne. Later in 1794 (albeit during the subsequent year under the Republican Calendar in use at the time), Dordogne gained Parcoul from Charente-Inferieure.

Following the restoration, in 1819, the commune of Bonrepos was suppressed and merged with the adjacent commune of Souillac in Lot.

In 1870, shortly after France fought against Prussia in a war that the enemy was winning, a young aristocrat called Alain de Monéys was savagely tortured and then burned by a crowd of between 300 and 800 people for two hours on 16 August in a public square in the village of Hautefave in the north-west of the department. Details of the incident remain unclear: the leading participants appear to have been drunk, and before the introduction of mass education most of the witnesses would have been unable (and possibly unwilling) to write down what they saw. But at some stage the victim died, and following a trial four individuals identified as culpable were in turn condemned to die by guillotine. The sentence was carried out in the same public square on 13 February 1885.

It was suggested that the victim had reported the (bad) news of the war in a way that implied support for the enemy, although subsequently it became clear that his patriotic credentials were beyond reproach. It was also suggested that the mob had been antagonized when he called out, "Vive la République!" (Long live the republic) at a time when the patriotic villagers valued the imperial regime, which Parisian revolutionaries were in the process of destroying.

The incident was widely reported at the time and has since been extensively researched. This summary relies on the work of Alain Corbin,^[4] a modern historian specializing in the 19th century who analysed the incident and the mass psychology behind it.