Classified among the "Most beautiful villages in France", Curemonte, located on a rocky spur, offers an astonishing particularity. So much so that it is called the "Village of the Three". Three churches, three castles, three fountains, three calvaries and three oxen shoeing works .
The three castles and the noble houses testify to the importance of the city between the 14th and 17th centuries, a city which then benefited from large franchises within the framework of the Viscounty of Turenne.
Raymond de Curemonte took part in the first crusade alongside the Viscount of Turenne. His descendants later built the castle of Saint-Hilaire. It is the oldest with its 15th century main building and its two square machicolated towers. The Plas family who occupied another castle gradually supplanted them. Their castle is distinguished by its round towers of the XVIth XVIIth century.
The Escaravage family settled on a third site in La Johannie.
These three castles, de Plas, Saint-Hilaire and La Johannie are private and cannot be visited.
Curemonte is also home to three churches. The Romanesque church of Saint-Barthélémy du Bourg, the church of La Combe, among the oldest in Limousin, probably built on Merovingian foundations, and the church of Saint-Genest, today converted into a religious museum.
The noble houses, scattered all over the village, give an additional interest to the visit with turrets with spiral staircases, mullioned windows, escutcheons, wooden balconies...
Colette, who took refuge in Curemonte, at her daughter's home, during the Second World War, recounts in her diary her impressions of the moment. Her husband Henry de Jouvenel had acquired the castles of Les Plas and Saint Hilaire between the two wars.
Mairie de Curemonte
300, rue Antonin Laumond
19500 Curemonte
tél : 05 55 25 34 76
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator
(free version)
