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Southwest France
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Join award-winning sculptor and VCCA Program Director Craig Pleasants and Sweet Briar College Professor of Medieval Art Tracy Hamilton, for an insightful exploration of this unspoiled region of the south of France that will delight history and art enthusiasts, wine aficionados and Francophiles. Our home base will be the medieval village of Auvillar, and we will draw heavily upon the charm and beauty of this quaint village. | 
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Arrive at Toulouse Blagnac Airport or Valence d'Agen train station where you will be met by VCCA representatives for the trip to Auvillar. After settling into the hotel, stroll the village and meet at VCCA's Le Moulin à Nef , a 17th-century villa in the port section of the village for a welcome dinner in the courtyard. Auvillar, (high village) is situated on a high bluff overlooking the Garonne River between Toulouse and Bordeaux, just three hours north of Barcelona. A stopover on the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, Auvillar has a well-earned tradition of hospitality. Designated as one of France's "100 Most Beautiful Villages," Auvillar has an abundance of interesting sites, including a distinctive circular central market that dates from the seventeenth century. The region is noted for medieval villages, Faience pottery, troubadour singing, cassoulet, roasted chestnuts, strawberries, exquisite wines and tantalizing cheeses. |
On Tuesday morning, we will tour the large open market of neighboring Valence d'Agen, a village famous for its pruneaux. The colorful market attracts vendors from all over southern Europe and North and West Africa, selling baskets, spices, fresh and dried fruits and other assorted delicacies. In the afternoon, we will tour the old port section of Auvillar, including the VCCA's 17th-century studio center, and will be treated to an insider's tour of the 9th-century Chapel of St. Catherine, originally built for sailors on the Garonne River. At the end of the day we will sit by the Garonne with a few bottles of the local black wine, Brulhois, and dine on the locally renowned paella while Tracy Hamilton prepares us for the next day's trip to Moissac.
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| Wednesday we'll meet in La Halle, the circular market of Auvillar for café au lait and croissants before setting off for the famous 12th-century cloister of Moissac, a major pilgrimage church. Its cloister is home to one of the most extensive collections of Romanesque sculpture extant and is the subject of numerous scholarly studies. Besides the 76 unique capitals atop the columns of the cloister, there is the trumeau of the portal, which local legend insists is a product of miraculous origin, far too beautiful to be sculpted by human hands. We return to Auvillar and dine at the Hotel de L'Horloge's lovely restaurant, enjoying regional specialties.
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| We'll begin the day Thursday with a walking tour of Auvillar's upper village. After a welcome talk from the Mayor, we'll visit the 12th-century church, local shops, and the museum of Faience pottery. From there, we'll take a short drive to Lauzerte, a nearby medieval hilltop village. We'll lunch in Lauzerte and spend the afternoon touring the village and its hillside garden, including a mini-pilgrimage route with a re-creation of the trek from France to Santiago de Compostela. On the way back to Auvillar we'll stop for dinner at the four-star L'Auberge de Bardigues, which will include wine from the vineyard of Thierry Combarel, Auvillar's local vintner.
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| Rocamodour, officially "France's second most beautiful village," clings to the side of a sheer cliff and towers hundreds of feet above the Alzou River. St-Cirq-La Popie rivals Rocamadour but is far less well known. Towering 200 feet above the Lot River, this picturesque medieval village also rises from the very rock it rests upon. The surrealist Andre Breton claimed to have re-discovered it and St-Cirq-La Popie has become the home of artists and craftsmen who have carefully renovated its houses into studios and workspaces. We'll end the day with cassoulet and wine from Fronton, favorite specialties of the region.
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Whether you choose to linger or return home immediately, VCCA representatives will see you back to the train station at Valence d'Agen or the Toulouse Blagnac Airport. For more information on Auvillar, visit the village online at www.auvillar.com or www.auvillar.net.
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Includes: All instruction, all housing (double occupancy), all breakfasts and lunches, four dinners, pick up and drop off at transportation centers in Toulouse or Agen. Single occupancy requires a $200 supplement.
Craig Pleasants is the VCCA's Program Director and former Acting Director and has been at the VCCA since 1989 and has spent many weeks in Auvillar and environs over the last four years. Craig has been an exhibiting artist for the past 30 years. Solo shows of his work have been mounted at The Alternative Museum, White Columns, and Berland/Hall Gallery in New York City, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and Virginia Commonwealth University's Anderson Gallery, in Richmond, the North Carolina Museum of Art, and Musee d'Art Contemporain in Marseilles. He is a huge fan of Meyer Shapiro's treatise on the cloister of Moissac.
 Tracy Hamilton is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History at Sweet Briar College and the author of Pleasure and Politics in the Court of France: The Artistic Patronage of Queen Marie de Brabant (1260-1321) and The Art of Pilgrimage. Dr. Hamilton received her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests include medieval women and their books and the ritual and architecture of pilgrimage. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend and a Samuel H. Kress Foundation Travel Fellowship.
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September 30 - VALENCE D'AGEN and AUVILLAR
October 4 - AUVILLAR
