Reading this site's description is like reading a gazetteer of French towns and villages west of the Paris/Rhone axis – it contains 69 different locations (out of 800 possible ones linked to the pilgrimage route). But think what it would have been like if France had followed the approach of Spain for its “Route” and inscribed its entirety together with 30 metres either side! Instead the “locations” are usually 1 building per town and cover the 4 starting points at Paris, Vezelay, Le Puy and Arles together with places as varied as Mont-Saint-Michel and Bordeaux. 10 cathedrals are included, together with abbeys, churches and hospices. 7 of the locations are already inscribed in their own right, usually because of their role in the pilgrimage route – a nice bit of double counting!

However, as Els’s “themes” section shows, Christian sites are heavily over-represented in the WHS list and this site should surely have been combined with the 2 Spanish Compestela route sites and some of the separate French pilgrimage route sites such as Vezalay and Bourges as well !. All this duplication does seem “overkill”- If the UK can agree to “give up” Hadrian’s Wall and subsume it with a German site under a combined “Frontiers of Rome” how come France was given a separate inscription for this site in 1998?

Leaving aside these issues, there is no doubt that the inscription contains many interesting and even significant buildings. Most of the towns and villages would well justify a couple of hours of the time of anyone touring France. We have, over the years, visited many of the 69 locations but I have chosen Rocamadour as the photo to represent the entire site - and a very pleasant little town it is. The town itself is not inscribed however – only the church of St Sauveur (the tall building at mid level)