Marcolès

Marcolès is a medieval village in the southern Cantal, in the heart of the Châtaigneraie (chestnut country), listed as a Petite Cité de Caractère (a heritage label for small towns). A fortified village perched at around 650 m, it has cobbled carriérons (lanes), old houses and two rampart gates still standing.

You enter by the lower gate or the upper gate, the two doors of the walls rebuilt in the 15th century. Inside, everything is done on foot: the carriérons (the cobbled lanes), the Rue Longue and its Renaissance façades, the Maison Carrée, the Saint-Martin church in southern Gothic style, the old fountains.

Marcolès lives to the rhythm of the chestnut, long the staple of the peasant diet in this corner of the Cantal. On the craft side, a mechanical clog workshop from 1925 still makes wooden clogs. In November, the Art'isanales bring craftspeople and fine-craft makers together in the lanes.

In practice: free car park, pedestrian centre, allow 45 min on foot to go round the village. Market on the place de la Fontaine. Aurillac is about twenty minutes away, the Château de Conros very close, Salers about thirty: enough to fit Marcolès into a morning within a bigger circuit.