Larchant

Situated to the east of the Gâtinais plateau in a vast basin called a gulf, the village has flourished in an exceptional natural environment.

Thanks to its marsh, now a fragile and protected nature reserve, and the rock shelters, the site has attracted man since the dawn of time. Numerous rock engravings attest to its presence since prehistoric times. Larchant is home to the largest number of decorated caves in the entire Paris Basin. At the beginning of the Christian era, it was undoubtedly an ancient place of water worship, whose sanctuary was probably on the edge of the Marais. It was destroyed, like many others, in the second half of the 4th century, by the barbarians at the end of the Roman Empire.

Dominated by the Chapter's farm situated on a spur, the town developed around the church of Saint-Mathurin, a saint who is said to have lived in the 3rd century and whose tomb was the object of an important national pilgrimage in the Middle Ages. People came to ask for the saint's intercession to cure the insane and the possessed. In the heart of the village, the church of Saint-Mathurin, built in the 12th century by the Chapter of Notre-Dame de Paris, Lord of Larchant, was a stopover on the road to Santiago de Compostela. Over the years, it was completed with a 50-metre bell tower, a sacristy topped by a treasure room and then the Notre-Dame chapel, and stretches out over 57 metres in length. Several kings of France came here on pilgrimage. The village and its surroundings still preserve the vestiges of the medieval period: fortifications, crosses, farm, fountain…

Its natural setting, the Commanderie forest, with its expanses of white sand deposited there by the Stampien Sea, surrounds the village. Its rocky chaos offers an exceptional playground for bouldering and attracts climbers from all over the world. Hiking around Larchant means walking through a mineral circus made up of ledges, remarkable rocks, secret caves, old quarries returned to nature and marshes with an exceptional biotope.

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