In our trip to France we have been to the beautiful village of Saint-Émilion, the biggest of the jurisdiction, that is 7846 ha big, includes eight communes and is situated on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela; its boundaries were established during the English rule, in the 12th century, by John Lackland, king of England, and coincide also with the Barbanne, a tributary of the Isle, and the Dordogne. The relief has a stratum of limestone defined by shelves that crisscross the landscape. This disappears to the north, along with the sandstone that it overlies, and is replaced by a mixture of clayey sands and gravels, dipping towards the south. There are two slopes: one is gentle and cut by valleys, the other steeply plunging in the Dordogne valley and forming also concave valleys, in one of which is Saint-Émilion. The climate is suitable for the viticulture (the jurisdiction is famous for this), that was introduced by the Romans and intensified in the Middle Age, so the landscape has a monoculture of vineyards, that occupy 5400 ha (the 67,5 % of the area). The small village of Saint-Émilion, situated on two limestone hills, has nice squares and stone houses in small groups especially of the first half of the 19th century, that have no more that two storeys and that were used for the vineyards workers. The large rectangular wine storehouses are made of stone or a mixture of brick and stone with tiled double-pitched roofs; they began to be built in 1930 as new constructions or adaptations of earlier buildings. The monuments are almost all originally Romanesque or earlier, sometimes reconstructed in Gothic style. The walls include the Bourgeoise Gate, the Brunet Gate, the Watch Tower, the Bouqueyre Gate, the St. Martin's Door, ditches and an enclosure. The Gothic Collegiate Church has a cloister, a beautiful isolated tower with a high spire, frescos and stained windows. Very particular, on the main square, is the Monolithic Church, carved in the rock, with a nice Gothic portal with a relief. The Chapel of the Holy Trinity was constructed by the Benedictines to protect the hermitage of St. Émilion, where he lived, and the catacombs with an ossuary. The Castle has a big keep and a palace on a high rock. In the town there are also many minor monuments: the Chain Gate and House, the Franciscan convent, that has a cloister with double columns, the Dominican convent, the Ursuline convent, the Chapter Chapel, the Chapel of St. Mary Magdaleine, the commendam, the markets, the House of the Magdalene, the town hall, the Wine House, the Cardinal's Palace, the deanery, two laundrettes and a medieval tower.

I liked the town very much because of its nice architecture and its beautiful landscape of vineyards. It's one of the nicest wine regions in France, it's worth to be visited if you are in Aquitaine (if you go there you must leave the car out of the centre) and justifies the inscription also because there aren't many landscapes of this type on the WHL.

Photo: Saint-Émilion – Monolithic Church