The best traffic-free bike rides around Saint-Agil

We went by very quickly

In 1133, Geoffroi, Viscount of Châteaudun, founded a priory dependent on the abbey of Tiron, in the diocese of Chartres, in this place. When he died, his wife, Helvise de Mondoubleau, built the church around 1140. The church is formed of a long nave ending in a semicircular apse. It has retained several narrow bays, with a semicircular arch, very flared towards the inside. In the 16th century, a chapel was added to the south of the church, a paneling with exposed tie beams above the nave and the choir, and a mass of carpentry to the west which supports the spire of the bell tower on pointed arches. The choir has a trefoiled piscina from the 14th century. In 1660, Jean Gry, a carpenter from Vendôme, executed the altarpiece and the following year, Pierre Janvier, a painter from Mondoubleau, painted the Resurrection which decorates it. The church houses two funerary slabs, one of a priest who died in 1658, the other of François Leboulx, Lord of Chauvellières, who died in 1691.

This church contains 14th century wall paintings. These paintings were discovered in 1895. They formerly occupied the entire width of the western wall of the nave. The central part was destroyed following the renovation of the door. The left side represented paradise. Of the bust of Christ, in a trilobed medallion, which occupied the center, there remains only a fragment of the cruciform halo. The rest of the composition is divided into rectangular compartments, each enclosing, in the surviving part, a figure of a crowned chosen one. On the right, hell is represented by a cauldron in which several characters are immersed, including a pope, a bishop, a monk, a king, a queen. Above, a woman with her legs apart. On the right, an enormous horned demon sticks out its tongue. On the left, another carries a basket filled with the damned and is about to plunge a woman into the cauldron. Construction periods: 14th century

This church was originally supposed to be a simple chapel of the commandery, founded in the 12th century by the Templars, forming one side of the courtyard that groups the buildings. The monumental 15th century porch is flanked by two brick towers. The nave ends with a semi-circular apse covered in a cul-de-four. Construction periods: 12th century, 13th century, 15th century

The church, which remained in the diocese of Chartres in the 18th century, belonged to the Abbey of Saint-Calais. Built in the 12th century, it consists of a single nave continued by a semicircular apse. The semicircular portal is surmounted by a consecration cross. Several pointed bays were pierced in the 15th century. In the 16th century, the church was enriched with paneling with exposed beams. In the sacristy behind the high altar, a beam sculpted with nails, crowns of thorns, fighters, monsters and coats of arms supports the altarpiece. It dates from the 16th century and most likely comes from a half-timbered house.

The parish church dedicated to Saint Anne, perhaps more anciently to the Virgin, depended on the diocese of Chartres. This former possession of Ganelon, treasurer of Saint-Martin de Tours in the 11th century, was undoubtedly part of the important donation made by his descendants Eudes and Rahier de Montigny for the benefit of the chapter of Chartres Cathedral around 1160. This Romanesque building, 35 m long, with a single nave and flat apse, reinforced with buttresses and lit by round-arched windows splayed internally and simply chamfered towards the outside, was never vaulted in stone: it is covered with 'a paneled vault. The masonry is entirely made of Grison stone, including the frames, giving an austere appearance specific to this region of Perche. We enter to the west through a semi-circular door with a double arch into the lower room of a bell tower-porch established later inside the original nave. The upper part of this bell tower was pierced with semi-circular bays. The eastern one was obstructed during the installation of the high roof of the nave and the bells were placed above in a belfry under a frame. The interior of the building was in fact covered as a whole by a paneled vault with molded beams and punches from the 16th century. In the 17th century, the entire back of the choir was decorated with a large altarpiece with columns and pilasters, paintings and sculptures, of great decorative effect. A curious set of carpentry from the same period presents above a confessional a paneled pulpit surmounted by a large sounding board. Note in the furniture a carved Gothic canopy from the beginning of the Renaissance and on the glory beam a carved wooden calvary from the same period. The 19th century. added a gallery, repainted the vault and provided the windows with stained glass.

The church has a very pretty Renaissance-style choir entrance. Certain stained glass windows, the woodwork of the choir, the altarpieces and the font are classified. The current church, rectangular in plan, replaced a 12th century building. The flat bedside and the north wall, equipped with Romanesque windows and slightly projecting buttresses, date from this period. It was rebuilt and probably enlarged in the first half of the 16th century. It was then covered with beautiful paneling, the beams of which bear the arms of the Vove, lords of Saint-Agil. The church is also flanked to the south by a seignorial chapel of two bays opening onto the nave with two molded semi-circular arches: its ribbed vaults, with eight ribs leading to the four peaks of a central diamond, are each decorated with four sculpted pendant keys, one of which also bears the arms of the Vove; the date 1547 can be read on its door. The church is currently preceded by a bell tower built in 1886 by Mr. Travaillard, an architect in Saint-Calais. A window to the south of the choir has preserved a partly restored 16th century stained glass window, representing Saint-Agil and Saint-Fiacre, and one of the windows of the seigneurial chapel has another, representing the Nativity, the Adoration of the Shepherds and the Adoration of the Magi; the other window of this chapel has a modern stained glass window retaining some old fragments in the speckles. The choir was decorated with woodwork including an entrance arcade surmounted by a crucifix, stalls, a communion table and an altarpiece, the latter dated 1734. We can also point out a font decorated with balusters and of a skull (1552), the poetic epitaph of Catherine-Geneviève de Verthamont (1740), a painting representing a martyr (17th century), a Louis XV console and a Venetian glass chandelier.”

The Saint-Denis church in the commune of Mondoubleau is a 16th century building, significantly altered in the 19th century by Abbot Brisacier of Tours. Of the 16th century building, only the nave and the flat apse remain. In the 17th century, a chapel was established to the south, while in the 19th century, the choir and the western facade with its bell tower were added. Inside, the vaults and painted decoration date from the remodeling carried out by the Touraine architect.