Email:
info@fayetardeche.com
Distances
By
car:
-approx. 1h30 from Nîmes
- approx. 2h30 from Lyon, Marseille and Montpellier
- approx. 6 hours from Paris, Basle, Barcelona
- approx. 10 hours from Cologne, Munich, Milan
- approx. 12 hours from Amsterdam
Airports:
- approx. 2 hours 30 by car to Lyon, Marseille and Montpellier airports, 1h30 to Nîmes Airport
By train:
TGV trains stop at Valence or Montélimar (pick-up approx. 1h30/ 1h by car, connecting busses to Largentière near Fayet )
Click
here for a location map of Le Fayet.
A human interest place of the world.
Love story.
The merditerranean Ardèche and the Cevennes mountains.
Vigorous, enchanting. With so rich contrasts.
Out of commerce and industry.
A possible island.
Coming to the 'Domaine de Fayet' you will discover
an idyllic hamlet.
Country houses beautifully embedded.
Pure mediterranean nature.
Behind the curtain.
Hiking or biking here - or staying in the hidden gardens -
you will come up by reading the landscape.
Now you are not anymore in a theater of nature
but in an ancient amphitheatre.
In a land entirely built of terraces.
A fantastic human construction
now appears in front of your eyes.
An intelligent territory,
handmade
like an infinite ladderwork.
Stones and humans.
Nacked rock. Often steep slopes. And water.
These were the conditions of the beginning
Terraces cut into pur rock,
thousands of kilometer of walls along the hillsides.
Artificial gardens, artificial woods, artificial irrigation.
Perfectly integrated farm houses and small hamlets.
All this in exceptional density.
' An immense and intense work victorious of the greatest difficulties,
that I have seen nowhere else in France,' reports admiringly the
british agronom Arthur Young in 1787 (*).
Eros.
The result continues to fascinate:
Builders and architects
historians and geographers,
mathematiciens and philosophers,
peinters and writers,
poets and esthetics,
land conquerers and life innovators,
travellers and lovers...
Secret.
'When it is about a heart affair
and consequently about a hand made life,
us is the secret
that contains all the others'.
This entirely artificial,
art made country
may have a thousand years.
It has been commanded
by any emperor, by any authority.
On the contrary.
Each of about 30 generations has created here,
facing hardest conditions,
their life's work.
Each one in its time.
And in human eternity.
(*) See 'Histoire des Cévennes' by Patrick Cabanel. |