The best road cycling routes around Chauvigny-Du-Perche

Placed under the patronage of Saint Hilaire, this parish was given by Gannelon de Montigny, lord of the place, to the abbey of Marmoutier around 1042. Its reconstruction probably dates from this period; it then became a priory. The church has a rectangular nave ending in a choir with a flat chevet. An examination of the masonry easily reveals two distinct periods of construction: the Romanesque period and the Renaissance. Built of flint rubble with rendering, the western part of the building appears to date from the 11th or 12th century. A limestone cornice supported by rather crude corbels underlines the base of the roof. To the south, two narrow Romanesque windows flared inwards light the nave. To the north, the bays were later reworked and enlarged. On this same side, a Romanesque doorway was walled up; It allowed the church to connect with a building whose traces of detachment remain. The bell tower was built to the north of the Romanesque nave, extending the western façade. The absence of a connection between the east and west walls of the bell tower and the north wall of the nave clearly indicates that it is an entirely later construction. However, its crowning is much later, as evidenced by its cornice, whose molding is in the classical style. Flanked by obliquely angled buttresses, it is covered with a saddleback roof. The eastern half of the church appears to be an extension built during the Renaissance period. Its ogee-shaped cornice and the decoration of the eastern gable, as well as the moldings of the buttress bands, attest to this dating. A vast rectangular choir then appears to have replaced a semicircular Romanesque apse; the eastern gable and the southern and northern façades were then pierced with networked bays. In the lower part of the north façade, projecting ashlars appear to have supported the roof of a lean-to building. To the south, a sacristy was built in the 19th century. Inside, the entire building is covered with a paneled vault with exposed tie beams and kingposts. The 18th-century high altar is surmounted by an Assumption of the Virgin inspired by Murillo's. For the restoration of the roofs and façades, the Sauvegarde de l'Art Français (French National Art Protection Agency) awarded a grant of €30,490 in 2001.

The Church of Saint Sauveur La Trinité, probably built in the 12th century, is notable for its Romanesque windows with columns and capitals. On its walls, alternating with the consecration crosses, one can admire a Stations of the Cross in blue enamel on earthenware. The choir is lit by five Romanesque windows decorated with stained glass depicting Our Lord and the four Evangelists.

The church dates from the 12th century and was remodeled in the 15th or 16th century, its buttresses and bell tower date from the 19th century. It houses a wrought iron communion table from the 18th century.

The Saint-Barthélémy church dates from the 12th century but was restored and enlarged in the 17th and then in the 19th century. The elegant bell tower, formed of a square tower, becomes octagonal at 20 m high. Small loophole-type windows light the belfry. It is topped by a dome, itself topped by a campanile and a lantern. It is considered a case study by schools of architecture. This church also contains several movable objects classified as Historic Monuments including Christ on the Cross, a polychrome wooden statue from the 17th century, two oils on canvas from the 17th century, a funerary plaque from 1674 by Michel de Verthamon, Knight of Malta, in stone and marble (epitaph in Latin and coat of arms) and a bronze bell, tuned in F, from 1580.

The church of Notre-Dame de l’Assomption stands on a hill, a little away from the village of Chauvigny from which it is separated by the cemetery. It is built on the site of a former priory dependent on the abbey of Marmoutier, founded between 1116 and 1136 by Barthélemy de Vendôme. In 1342, Marmoutier abandoned the priory to the bishop of Chartres while retaining the appointment to the parish. It is a large church, whose initial core, probably from the 12th century (?), was considerably enlarged in the 16th, then in the 19th century. Originally, it consisted of a single nave supported by buttresses, whose flat chevet was later pierced by a large window with a pointed arch axis. In the 16th century, a first aisle was added to the south, separated from the central nave by four semicircular arches resting on circular pillars. In the 17th century, the choir was shortened by the erection of the large altarpiece of the high altar which isolates the space of a sacristy. Finally, in 1860-1863, the church was again enlarged by the construction of a north aisle, identical to the one that existed to the south. The district architect Édouard Marganne, responsible for this enlargement, also designed a new western façade in order to harmonize the gable walls of the three naves. The church is distinguished by a large set of paneling covering the walls of the three sanctuaries. Seventy-seven sculpted panels from the 16th and 17th centuries are inserted there, representing biblical characters and scenes from the life of Christ. As indicated by an inscription in the south chapel, they were donated to the parish in 1938, after the destruction of the chapel of the Château de la Gaudinière, which stood in the Fréteval forest. They were apparently brought back from Menton in 1867 by the Duke of La Rochefoucauld to adorn his château, which was then under construction. The church also preserves a small stone group from the 16th century representing the education of the Virgin, a painted wooden Saint Gildéric from the 17th century, and a beautiful portrait of Mgr Fleuriau d’Armenonville, Bishop of Orléans, commemorating his solemn entry into the city of Orléans in 1707. To participate in the restoration of the church roof, the Sauvegarde de l’Art français granted a donation of €5,000 in 2011.

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.

The Saint Hilaire church is a vast building from the end of the 11th or 12th century which originally consisted of only a nave with choir and semi-circular apse supported by slightly protruding buttresses made of grison, an extremely hard ferruginous agglomerate which does not allow any work. of sculpture. You can see the primitive work in the walls of the nave and the choir with its small windows and the exterior buttresses in gray. Its appearance was considerably modified during the Renaissance period, when a transept was added, then during a second campaign of transformations, the small side chapels of the choir covered with ribbed vaults with vines and tiers which would have had to be topped with a pavilion roof. The entire monument is covered with a paneled vault with visible beams and hallmarks; above the sanctuary the shingle decorated with arabesques and painted cherubs' heads bears the date 1561. In the 17th century, like many churches of the time, the glass roof at the bottom of the apse was closed to build an altarpiece then fashionable, as it is today with the woodwork that accompanies it. On the west side of the north transept, above the small shed, we can clearly see in the masonry a stone arch which is perhaps the beginning of the cloister mentioned in the archives. In addition to the charm of its Renaissance parts, this church is fortunate to have beautiful furniture from the 17th and 18th centuries which preserves the appearance it had under the Ancien Régime: a lectern dated 1754, modified in 1784 with a antiphonary and a Chartres gradual from 1784. It is in perfect condition, as the cantors must have used it before the revolution. Another valuable piece, the solid oak work bench, cleaned a few years ago of the paint with which it had been decorated, and which now serves as an altar to meet the new standards of the liturgy for the mass facing the faithful.

The 12th century church of Saint Jean-Baptiste de Courtalain, already repaired in 1592, was rebuilt in 1809, increased by an aisle in 1838, then by a remarkable porch bell tower topped with a twelve meter spire. height, thanks to the generosity of the Montmorency family, owner of the castle. It is to Guillaume Davaugour and Perette de Baïf, his wife, that we attribute the erection of the Courtalain chapel into a parish church; The church is located in the immediate perimeter of the castle. The entire building is partly covered with flat tiles for the roof of the nave, the bell tower, the staircase turret; the three cut sides of the apse and the lower north side are covered in natural slate. Inside the nave is a Mutin Cavaillé Coll organ dating from 1936. It contains several interesting paintings.