Gargilesse-Dampierre
One of the Plus Beaux Villages de France, eleven kilometres away
Two hundred and sixty residents, a 12th-century Romanesque church, the house where George Sand came to write, and for sixty years now a harp festival. Eleven kilometres by road.
The Église Saint-Laurent-et-Notre-Dame has been a classified historic monument since 1840, the year of the first such list. What draws people here are the capitals: more than a hundred and twenty in the building, twenty-four of them at the transept crossing, in a state of preservation with no equal in Berry. Below, the crypt keeps its medieval frescoes. Entry is free, allow twenty minutes.
George Sand discovered the village in 1857. Her companion Alexandre Manceau gave her a house, which she named Villa Algira, after a butterfly. She would write part of her late work there. The house can be visited from April to October, closed Tuesdays, five euros.
The painter Léon Detroy settled here in 1885 after reading Sand, and others followed: Gargilesse is part of the Vallée des Peintres, like Crozant. The GR 654 trail runs through the village.
In August, the harp festival takes over the church and the château. It is now in its fifty-ninth edition.