Photos

The village of Saint-Cirq Lapopie is perched on a cliff 100 m (330 ft) above the river and is one of the major beauty spots of the Lot valley.
In the Middle Ages, Saint-Cirq Lapopie was the main town of one of the four viscountcies that made up Quercy. It was divided between four feudal dynasties, the Lapopies, Gourdons, Cardaillacs and Castelnaus. The village was dominated by a fortress made up of a number of castles and towers.

Below the fortress, the village streets lead down to fortified gates. Many historic houses have stone or half-timbered fronts going back to the 13th-16th centuries. The houses are norrow and have steep tiled roofs. The gabled houses fronting on the street are separated by a narrow space called an entremi, which carried away rainwater and waste from sinks and latrines.

Some street names have kept the memory of the crafts that were once the wealth of Saint-Cirq Lapopie. Hide merchants in the Rue de la Pélissaria, metalworkers in the Rue Payrolerie, and boxwood turners, or roubinétaïres, with workshops producing button moulds, trenchers, goblets and spigots for casks.
Many painters came to live and work in Saint-Cirq Lapopie. First the Post-Impressionist Henri Martin, then the Surrealists with the poet André Breton, who said he would not want to live anywhere else.

Beneath the Saint-Cirq Lapopie cliff there are watermills, weirs, harbours, locks and towpath to recall the days when river transport was the glory of the Lot Valley.