The best traffic-free bike rides around Favières

Of Romanesque origin, the church, surrounded by a cemetery, has a curious bell tower supported by machicolations and uprights of sandstone, making it one of the most unique in the region. Perhaps it was originally a bell gable, later augmented by a platform supported by these machicolations? In front of the entrance, a small building called a "caquetoire" (a small meeting place) allows the faithful to gather and converse. Inside the church, the furnishings date from the 18th and 19th centuries: a marble high altar and its gray-painted wooden altarpiece (18th century) – a painted wooden altarpiece of St. Joseph (late 18th or early 19th century) an altarpiece for the altar of the Virgin Mary (19th century) a baptismal font in red-veined marble (19th century) a waxed wooden pew (18th century) a waxed wooden choir stall upholstered in velvet paintings: the Assumption of the Virgin Mary by Octave Hauser (1839) and the Annunciation (18th century) The stained-glass windows date from 1874. The church and the eclipse A bit of history: The parish, established in the 13th century, was part of the deanery of Courville. The church's patron saint, Luperche or Luperchius, gave his name to the village. We must go back to the 4th century to find the first trace of this saint: At that time, Dacius, governor of the part of Spain that included Catalonia, Aragon, and the Kingdom of Valencia, was one of the most cruel ministers of persecution. Incited by the emperors Diocletian and Maximilian, he had eighteen confessors of Jesus Christ executed in the city of Zaragoza. In their honor, the poet Prudentius wrote hymns, and among these confessors, a certain martyr named Luperche became the patron saint of our church.

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Located on the banks of the Blaise River, southwest of Dreux in the prestigious Crécy-Couvé district, the Marquise de Pompadour's residence from 1746 to 1757, the seigneury of Saulnières came under the Marquise's ownership in 1754. Some remarkable elements of the church's furnishings are undoubtedly due to the generosity of this patron of the arts. The Saint-Pierre church, built on the heights of the commune of Saulnières, is believed to have originally been the church of a Benedictine convent, which ceded it to its inhabitants in 1571 after the sack of their place of worship in 1562, during the First Battle of Dreux. While the cartularies of Saint-Père, Beaulieu, and Belhomer mention the town from the first half of the 12th century, we have no documents on the church before its transfer to the commune. The building (34 m by 11.5 m), oriented, with a single nave of four bays extended by a choir bay, ends with a three-sided chevet extended along the axis by a sacristy. The walls are made of cobblestone and grison rubble, while the twelve buttresses are sandstone. The steeply pitched roof is covered with tiles, and, practically in its center, stands a bell tower with a hexagonal base crowned by a spire of the same shape. The western door is framed by two buttresses: it is surmounted by a rose window that probably dates from the 19th-century construction campaign. In the south wall, at the level of the first bay, a blocked, semicircular-arched entrance door suggests a Romanesque construction. From the second bay, light streams in generously through eight openings: semicircular arches for those in the nave and Gothic-style for the four choir bays; a fifth, axial, was blocked when the altarpiece was installed. The 16th-century stained-glass windows were destroyed during a bombing raid during the Second World War; only a few elements, listed as Historic Monuments, remain in the sacristy. The vault, covered with shingles, must have been painted, as evidenced by the hallmark decorated with black and white diamonds and chevrons, likely from the 16th century. The great simplicity of the architecture is offset by the relative richness of the furnishings. The late 15th-century stone statues representing Saint Barbara, a religious figure without attributes, and two angels from the same period constitute a fine example of Gothic sculpture, albeit lacking the two angels purchased in the early 20th century for the Louvre, where they are now on display. The choir's layout could date back to the time of Madame de Pompadour: the doors, open on either side of the central section, are surmounted by two painted and gilded wooden statues, Saint Peter and Saint Sebastian. The central section is crowned by God the Father, and the canvas depicts Saint Peter freed from his chains by an angel. A fragmentary funerary liter is still visible inside and outside. In 2003, the Sauvegarde de l'Art Français (French National Art Foundation) granted €10,000 in aid to help repair the structure and roof of the building, whose condition had been aggravated by the 1999 storm.

The parish church of Saint-Remy de Vérigny, located in the current new commune of Mittainvilliers-Vérigny, has been documented in the archives since 1126 as being dependent on the abbey of Saint-Père in Chartres. Its construction probably followed shortly after this date, as evidenced by the use of grison for both the buttresses and the frames of certain bays and the large west portal with a grison roller. The proximity of the manor and then the castle of Vérigny, owned by the prestigious families of O and Vieuville until the early years of the 18th century, encouraged donations and legacies in favor of the parish church. It is to Charles II of O that we owe the construction of the north aisle as well as the family chapel in the right bay of the choir, on the north side. The ribbed vaults and the hanging keystones sculpted with little angels evoke the creations of the second quarter of the 16th century such as those of the church of Bérou-la-Mulotière. If the only vestiges of stained glass windows preserved date from the

The cathedral is the seat of the bishop of the Roman Catholic diocese of Chartres

A dream of a cathedral 🥰 you should definitely visit it at two different times of the day, as the glass windows look completely different depending on the position of the sun - phenomenal

Very beautiful church and the public toilets next to it are perfect, even for filling water bottles too large for the classic sinks.

This country church stands out for its pretty little water pump on the side, as well as its cemetery where we find the grave of a Canadian aviator who died during the Second World War.