The Saint-Pierre-ès-Liens church:
From the novel to the novel, there is only one step here and not only in the text!
This church holds a special place in the Saintonge Romanesque landscape because it is built on the remains of a Gallo-Roman villa.
The first bay of the choir, which carries the bell tower, reuses part of the walls of this villa and we can still observe fragments of a hypocaust, composed of an octagonal-shaped swimming pool.
The church contains the oldest elements still visible in the religious buildings of Saintonge with masonry made of small regular rubble stones.
Its classic plan has a two-bay nave and a pointed cradle vaulted transept. The choir bay is covered with a dome called “barlongue sur trompes”.
The apse is decorated with an arcade which has beautiful sculpted capitals: a scene of the Holy Women at the Tomb; remains of archaic Romanesque sculpture which reveal lion tamers, a bow and falcon hunting scene.
The front choir is a very old part of the building, dating from the 10th or 11th century, where magnificent Carolingian capitals decorated with fine arabesques remain.
The church has two facades to the West and the South. Note the very curious series of modillions on the western facade, cubic in design.