Sunday, August 03, 2003

By Donald Miller, Post-Gazette Senior Editor

CLERMONT-FERRAND, France -- Benjamin Franklin, American ambassador to France, wrote, "Everyone has two countries: his own and France."

	If you go... Obtain free brochures from: Maison de l'Auvergne, 194 bis, Rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris. France (www.maisondelauvergne.com). Auvergne Regional Tourist Board, 44 Avenue des Etats-Unis, 63057 Clermont-Ferrand, France (www.crt-auvergne.fr). Vollore: www.au-chateau.com/vollore.htm; e-mail chateau.vollore@wanadoo.fr. -- Donald Miller

But you, having visited Paris several times, may now feel the need to explore further.

A visit to ancient Auvergne, in central France, offers visitors a wealth of interesting and often delightful cultural, culinary and sportive experiences.

Here in what the French call the Massif Central, the southern center of France, you will find mountains, rivers, lakes, forests and stone villages so picturesque they take your breath away.

There is also superb food in small restaurants, featuring excellent local cheeses -- Saint-Nectaire, Salers, Cantal, Fourme d'Ambert and bleu d'Auvergne. Of course, the region may be most famous for its volcanoes, probably the most numerous in Europe.

My reason for visiting the province, which in outline resembles a woman's torso, was to experience the birthplace of Gen. Gilbert Lafayette, a hero of the American and French revolutions.

His home, Chateau Chavaniac Lafayette in Auvergne's southern area, is now a sound and light museum depicting his life story.

The stone chateau lies in a remote area of Haute-Loire, one of Auvergne's four regions that include Allier, Puy-de-Dome and Cantal. "Puy" means a peak in the Auvergnat dialect. A smattering of your college French will help enormously in getting around, so brush up. Regardless of what you may have heard, the French were extraordinarily helpful throughout my three-week trip.

Those who love turreted castles -- many of which welcome paying guests -- will find them dotting the countryside, often in spectacular locations. Auvergne also has in towns large and small 250 Romanesque churches with their distinctive style of Roman arches, side chapels and crypts. This is one of the largest and purest collections of 11th- and 12th-century architecture in Europe.

Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne's capital, rises on a hill dominated by the Basilica of Notre Dame du Port, built with carved black volcanic stone. It is famous for its sculptures such as the many storytelling capitals and south portal lintel. Nearby is the Romanesque Art Center, offering an introduction to the region's architectural heritage.

Romanesque art began at the end of the 10th century in Clermont-Ferrand after the style had reached maturity in northern France and Germany. Simple and pure, its homogeneity is attributed to the swiftness of the churches' construction in a few decades. The city's Bargoin Museum displays treasures and figures excavated at two archeological sites.

Nine miles west of Clermont-Ferrand is Vulcania, a new volcano park devoted to some of Auvergne's best-known natural wonders. From the summit of Puy-de-Dome (908 feet), you can see the rounded shapes of about 100 volcanoes and the urban center of Clermont-Ferrand, home of the Michelin Tire Co. The Auvergne Volcanoes Regional Nature Park consists of five main areas, beginning with the spectacular craters of the Puys chain, within easy reach of visitors because of a good network of sign-posted paths.

To the south, overlooking the Haute-Dordogne valley is the Sancy Massif, the highest point of central France. The towns of Besse, La Bourboule, Le Mont-Dore, Murol, Chambon-sur-Lac, Chastreix, Picherande and Murat-le-Quaire offer a wide choice of accommodations, leisure activities and visits. From peaks in the Caudefour valley nature reserve, which can be reached by cable car, you can spot wild sheep and chamois. Farther south are the peat bogs of Cezallier. Occupying glacial hollows, the bogs hold unusual botanical life, such as drosera, a carnivorous plant.

To the southeast, and 22 miles from Chavaniac, is the ancient and unusual city of Le Puy-en-Velay. Not only was it in earlier centuries a starting point for pilgrims on their holy way to Santiago de Campostella in northwestern Spain, but Le Puy is also memorable for its volcanic pipes, vertical cores with their former sides weathered away. They stand tall in the heart of the city.

The tops of these needles of hard lava sometimes hold small chapels and large statues high above the busy mercantile scene and auto traffic below. Just out of town on another hill rise the ruins of a chateau once owned by the Polignacs, one of France's great political families.

I booked my train tickets to and from Paris/Clermont-Ferrand on the Internet, and they were delivered the next day in Naples. The train from Paris' Gare de Lyon reached Clermont in 3 1/2 hours. I could have rented the car on the Internet but took my chances in Clermont-Ferrand. The Avis office outside the train station had no cars immediately available, so I walked a block to Hertz with my wheeled suitcase and rented a new five-speed Renault.

At first I was not sure of the reverse gear in the car -- you lift a ring on the stick, then shove it forward a bit to the left. With my map, I found my way to Chateau de Vollore, south of Thiers, where, through the Internet at my Paris hotel, I had made a two-night reservation (100 euros a night). Lafayette descendants own the chateau, which boasts 12th- and 14th-century towers at either end. Vollore also has a magnificent view of the valley, woods and farms below. In the bright morning light, coming after a rainy night, curtains of mist rose like plumes from the woods.

After cafe au lait, baguette and confiture (bread and jam), I shot south from tiny rustic Volloure-Ville, a hamlet, for nearly four hours to Chateau Chavaniac Lafayette. The country changed from rich farmland to the fir forests of the Livradois-Forez regions. Soon I drove down a seemingly endless narrow valley with stone outcroppings, passing only one or two cars.

Toward the end, the road shrank to one lane. Along the way, quiet villages poked their red tile roofs out of the woods, looking as though time had forgotten them. I imagined how long it would have taken Lafayette, on horseback or in carriages, to reach Paris so far to the north.

In the 1760s, a large wolf, called to this day "the beast of Gevaudan," killed 54 women and children. Lafayette, then 6, wanted to slay it to save his village, but others finally killed the wolf. Today, a chateau museum in nearby Saugues-en-Gevaudan tells the story of the beast, once rumored to be a "hyena" or werewolf.

It is not surprising that later in his active life Lafayette visited this region only occasionally. But Auvergne today offers its curiosities, its spa towns, foods, bottled waters and castles to visitors of all kinds. Its cities bustle. But its villages seem lost in time just as they were centuries ago before automobiles and tourists.

Donald Miller, retired art and architecture critic of the Post-Gazette, lives in Naples, Fla. He is the author or co-author of six books on artists and architects.

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