Attractions and Places To See around Laurens - Top 20

The castle overlooks Pézènes-les-Mines from the upper part of the village. This castle is private, but its facades, roofs, and enclosure have been protected as historical monuments since 1981. Its history is ancient, but the ensemble we see today is the result of several construction and transformation campaigns. The Romanesque chapel, integrated into the castle, dates back to the 12th century. Its apse was later raised in the 14th century to take on a defensive function. The castle itself underwent significant alterations in the 14th, 16th, and 17th centuries. Two gates were notably built into the enclosure in the 17th century. The defensive elements are still very legible: two gates with arrow slits controlled access to the courtyard and were once protected by a drawbridge. Two towers flank the ensemble, while the enclosure follows the natural irregularities of the terrain. The chapel also retains a rather remarkable detail: its door and some of its bays are decorated with basalt inlays, giving the building a discreet but original polychromy. Pézènes-les-Mines was not always the small village one might imagine today. Pézènes was the capital of a marquisate that grouped the communities of Pézènes, Montesquieu, and Valmascle. The castle was therefore at the heart of a larger seigneurial territory. Little-known information: A plan from 1800 shows that behind the castle stretched a long terrace of about 270 meters, arranged as a garden, promenade, and belvedere overlooking the Peyne valley.

At first glance, three towers standing against the wind are particularly noticeable. However, this site is much more than a viewpoint. The windmills of Faugères were built in the 16th century, at a time when cereals still occupied an essential place in the local economy. Their location is probably no accident: according to tradition and local heritage studies, they were established on older towers, probably of Gallo-Roman origin, which already occupied this strategic position. Already noted in ruins on the Cassini map of 1777, the mills briefly regained their activity thanks to the Rivière brothers from 1829, before being abandoned again. It was not until the 1990s that an ambitious restoration brought the site back to life. Since 1998, one of the mills has been operating again with a traditional mechanism and 19th-century millstones. From the orientation table, the view extends 360° over the Faugères vineyards, the Mediterranean, the Cévennes, the Lozère, and, on a clear day, as far as the Pyrenees.

Les Crozes are one of those places that you only discover by leaving the classic routes. At the end of a small road lined with holm oaks lies a remarkably preserved hamlet. Its main treasure is the Saint-Martin church, mentioned as early as 990 and completed in the 12th century, whose beautiful pentagonal apse makes it a little gem of Languedoc Romanesque architecture. Also take the time to see the communal oven, restored in 1994, a testament to a time when the whole village came to bake its bread there.

The Faugères mill is a superb site that you absolutely must visit. Entrance is €2 and the mill is closed in March.

super nice bump

Superb segment located on the V84 / Véloccitanie which connects Béziers to Bédarieux, as well as in the Haut-Languedoc regional natural park. It crosses 3 of the 18 landscape units of the park: the Coteaux Viticoles du Faugérois, the Serres, valleys, basins and small causses of the Avants-Monts, and finally the Plains and Coteaux de l'Orb Moyen. On this road, fields of olive trees follow arbutus trees, holm oaks, cork oaks, chestnut trees, and shade the vineyards. Aromatic herbs perfume the air, dry stone walls line the path. It is a little-traveled road, which invites meditation. Did you dream of the south? You are there, without concession.

lonely, small road, meandering up and down the creek valley, deep dark forests to the right and left, broom in bloom everywhere

Lonely road without cars.