I arrived in Limousin in a rental automobile, which felt unsuitable: it ought to absolutely have been a stretch limo. There are a number of theories as to how a motorized image of wealth and luxurious got here to be named for a rural a part of central France that, whereas lovely, is sort of fully devoid of opulence, however none are notably convincing. One principle is that the limousine was christened in honor of native son Charles Jeantaud, the late-Nineteenth-century inventor of an early type of the motorcar. The opposite is that the hood of the early limo, supposed to guard the chauffeur, resembled the hooded cloaks of Limousin shepherds. Regardless of the fact, it’s amusing to suppose that what was as soon as the popular mode of transportation for celebrities and royalty is known as for a area greatest identified for crockery and cows.

I received an inkling that there was extra to Limousin than beautiful porcelain and scrumptious meat (Limousin veal is known all through France) a few years in the past. Throughout a cross-country journey, I made a quick cease in Limoges, the area’s capital. Having learn concerning the superb practice station, I ducked in. It was wonderful: a palace in pale stone, with an enormous dome embellished with stained glass by Limousin’s grasp glass craftsman, Francis Chigot. Beneath that grand cupola loomed a quartet of sculpted girls, every embodying a area of France. The determine of Le Limousin held a vase representing Limoges’ well-known porcelain in a single hand and reached towards a cover of wheat and chestnuts with the opposite. I’ve seen many provincial French practice stations, and so they don’t usually appear to be this. As I marveled on the spectacular setting, I sensed there was rather more to this area than I had as soon as thought.

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I used to be hardly alone in underestimating Limousin. In truth, since World Conflict I, when a bunch of ineffective military prime brass had been relieved of their posts and despatched to Limoges, somebody who has been laid off or fired is referred to in French as limogé. However locations ignored within the capital are inclined to protect their distinctive charms higher than these inundated by modern Parisians. And including to the fascination of my stone Limousin woman was the truth that she is a ghost: the area is formally extinct, annulled in 2016 on the whim of French paperwork, becoming a member of two different areas to change into the executive space of Nouvelle-Aquitaine. 

So, with no limousine however my husband, Craig, as chauffeur and photographer, I went to discover. I discovered an unkempt wilderness so lovely that, I realized, Nineteenth-century painters risked freeway theft to go to. I found an historic abbey with a historical past of heroism, vigorous meals markets, and wonderful bistros and fine-dining eating places, due to native produce that goes far past Limousin veal. 

We arrived at Domaine des Étangs by way of Angoulême, a metropolis of gray-white stone that appears so precisely as a French metropolis ought to that it served because the city of Ennui-sur-Blasé in Wes Anderson’s 2021 movie “The French Dispatch.” The Domaine, a Thirteenth-century château surrounded by wealthy pasture, was embellished by the designer Isabelle Stanislas, who lately up to date a number of the rooms within the Élysée Palace. The resort, which has been owned by the Primat household (who made their fortune in oil) because the Nineteen Eighties, turned the primary French property within the Auberge Resorts Assortment in April. 

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The two,500-acre property is dotted with ponds (the eponymous étangs), and there are rowboats accessible for company to make use of. The spa is in a fantastically refurbished water mill with indoor and out of doors swimming pools and a sequence of thermal baths. Even the lakeside tennis court docket appeared to drift, which appeared beautiful however had one main downside: after one too many balls sank with out a hint, Craig and I set off to discover, beginning with the gallery within the transformed dairy. Proprietor Garance Primat is a real devotee of artwork, and there are sculptures in every single place on the grounds, together with Vénus de l’Étang, which Chinese language artist Wang Keping carved from a 100-year-old purple oak, and Ugo Rondinone’s eerie Solar, comprised of tree branches solid in bronze.

We roamed the château, strolling by means of the huge recreation room underneath the eaves and chic salons the place company can noodle on grand pianos. The principle constructing’s seven visitor rooms and suites had been embellished in impartial colours that quietly showcased limestone partitions and huge fireplaces. The restaurant, the place the menu featured an extended checklist of native suppliers, served Limousin veal so tender I barely wanted a knife.

The following day we drove out into the velvet-green hills, watched warily by a herd of Limousin cows — 600 of them, in line with common supervisor Vincenzo Iaconis. “I’m going to change into vegetarian,” he mentioned, laughing. “They’re exterior my home, and so they’re too lovely to eat.” Iaconis confirmed us round one in every of six cottages which were repurposed as guesthouses, their stone partitions and wood beams softened by deep sofas and freestanding baths. A number of have fireplaces sufficiently big for an in-house chef to prepare dinner a spit-roast, if a visitor ought to ask. 

 The drive to Brive-la-Gaillarde took us by means of the wooded Périgord Limousin Regional Pure Park, after which we made a quick photograph cease at Uzerche, a village so postcard-perfect it was nicknamed “Pearl of the Limousin” within the 18th century. Brive is greatest identified immediately for a saucy music by the French singer Georges Brassens, recorded in 1952, a couple of combat breaking out between feminine buyers and the police within the meals market. The market, now named in Brassens’ honor, nonetheless had the earthiness he described, however the market-goers, fortunately, had been immediately extra chatty than confrontational. Tables teemed with cheeses, dripping honeycombs, and the most important cabbages I’ve ever seen. I discovered bread by the kilo, plump prunes, and the season’s first mushrooms. 

A market this good acts like a siren, luring again native cooks who went to Paris to make their names. Nicolas Eche, initially from a village south of Brive, is one: his vigorous En Delicacies restaurant serves bold dishes, together with prawns with cauliflower sauce and a veal trilogy: filet, head, and crispy sweetbreads.

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Maybe probably the most charming of Brive’s eating places is Chez Francis, not due to the meals — though Francis Teyssandier serves a scrumptious terrine and an ethereal soufflé with raspberries — however due to the cheeky hand-drawn cartoons that gambol throughout the partitions. They’re the work of the authors who eat on the restaurantduring Brive’s annual ebook truthful in November. 

A ten-minute stroll throughout city took me to the Denoix distillery, which appeared prefer it hadn’t modified a lot because it opened for enterprise in 1839. In giant copper pots, proprietor Sylvie Denoix-Vieillefosse stirred the juice of pressed inexperienced walnuts, blended with brandy, orange peel, curaçao, fennel, and juniper, which might be aged in oak for 5 years. “We don’t make alcohol,” she defined. “We’re extra like parfumiers, utilizing alcohol to extract the flavour of vegetation.” 

There are two sorts of magnificence in Limousin. One is wild and unkempt — what the Nineteenth-century novelist George Sand, who grew up simply north in Nohant-Vic, referred to as the “savage and joyous” panorama — the opposite is manicured to an nearly uncanny prettiness. Uzerche fell into the latter class: a cluster of towers and turrets rising steeply from the river Vézère just like the layers of a marriage cake. So did Collonges-la-Rouge, a village constructed nearly fully of the native purple sandstone, from its chapel to the bread oven within the market. At Le Cantou, a restaurant in a Fifteenth-century constructing, we ate a superb mushroom omelette, served with free cooking ideas (“an omelette ought to solely ever be overwhelmed with a fork or the feel gained’t be proper,” instructed our waitress), then wandered the slender streets.

Nonetheless, like Sand, I used to be extra enchanted by the wildness. The Monks’ Canal at Aubazine was carved from sheer rock by Twelfth-century Cistercians, a largely silent order. The stroll alongside it was superb, the tree-coated vistas of the Dordogne Valley barely disturbed by any proof of humanity. The canal water fed their huge abbey, which after the French Revolution turned a convent and orphanage. Right now there’s a plaque thanking the nuns who risked their lives to cover Annette and Jeanne, two Jewish women, from the Nazis. Annette grew as much as be the mom of Michel Hazanavicius, the Oscar-winning director of the silent movie “The Artist,” and I appreciated the thought of a thread connecting these mute monks to a contemporary murals that’s intentionally soundless, by way of a refusal to speak that truly saved lives. 

Within the abbey, the sunshine filtered by means of the stained-glass home windows, every one a research in elegant restraint. Their interlocking circles appeared acquainted, nevertheless it was solely when the information started to speak about one other resident of the orphanage that I noticed why: Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s well-known emblem could have been impressed by the home windows of her poverty-stricken childhood. 

The city of Aubusson has been well-known for its tapestries for 600 years, and its museum, the Cité Internationale de la Tapisserie, homes an impressive assortment. I walked by means of the ages, from a Sixteenth-century depiction of sharp-toothed beasts feasting on placid prey amid swirling greenery to works by trendy painters, together with Alexander Calder, Pablo Picasso, and Georges Braque, whose “Tête Noire,” an eerily lovely lady’s head, was one in every of my favorites. In one other room, I watched two craftspeople weaving a scene from Hayao Miyazaki’s movie “Princess Mononoke.” This huge piece, “Ashitaka Soothes His Demonic Wound,” would take them a yr to finish.

I believed I had noticed one other tapestry above our mattress in La Creuzette, a wonderfully proportioned mansion within the village of Boussac that South African transplants Hardy Olivier and Louis Jansen van Vuuren renovated 20 years in the past. Really, on nearer inspection, the younger man with the artfully positioned draperies was painted: Olivier defined it was a Nineteenth-century cartoon, one of many designs from which tapestries are copied, that he had had restored. The couple, who bought the property to an investor however nonetheless run the day-to-day operations, had been very best hosts: once we felt sociable, they poured champagne and informed anecdotes about buying the mansion, together with the invention, as soon as they’d purchased it, of a tree rising in a single room. After we didn’t, Olivier delivered wine to our room, then vanished. An achieved chef, he may also whip up fabulous dinners; van Vuuren, an artist, leads portray retreats. 

Boussac appeared an unlikely residence for such sophisticates, however they aren’t the primary urbanites to fall for this hilltop village. George Sand used to remain within the close by Château de Boussac, the place she found the medieval “Woman and the Unicorn” tapestries that now stay within the Cluny Museum in Paris. She launched the tapestries to her lover Prosper Mérimée, the creator of the novella Carmen who additionally occurred to be France’s inspector common of historic monuments, which led to their rescue. 

Nevertheless, Sand, born Aurore Dupin, was nonetheless extra influential within the village of Crozant, an hour’s drive west. She went there with varied lovers and the evocative descriptions in her 1845 novel, “The Sin of Monsieur Antoine,” would lure artists together with Francis Picabia and Claude Monet.

“All the things right here inflames the creativeness…all the pieces grips the center,” she wrote, and definitely my first glimpse of the spectacular medieval fortress, its easy rectangular partitions crumbled so {that a} spike jutted towards the autumn sky, took my breath away. No surprise painters had been ready to courageous a journey that, earlier than trains, took per week. 

Our journey to Limoges was far much less arduous. We stopped exterior of city and checked in to La Chapelle Saint Martin, a small Relais & Châteaux resort owned by chef Gilles Dudognon, whose restaurant has a Michelin star. Out entrance was the chapel, which wasn’t a chapel in any respect however a peculiar A-frame construction that appeared like a bigger model of the beehives which are scattered throughout the grounds. At Dudognon’s restaurant, we dined on the sweetest inexperienced beans from the resort backyard, topped with truffle slices and orange flowers, and Limousin veal with native girolles. It was all served on Limoges porcelain so delicate that a lot of it requires hand-washing. 

Visiting Oradour-sur-Glane required solely a fast detour, and it felt vital: I knew it was the place we’d discover a number of the most tragic ghosts on this phantom province. On a single day In 1944, the Nazis murdered 642 unarmed villagers, together with girls and kids, earlier than torching the city. Each little bit of the ruins was intentionally preserved: indicators exterior defunct cafés, rust-brown automobile carcasses, an altar within the roofless church. To today, no person is aware of why this specific village was chosen for such a savage assault. It was straightforward, although, wandering the grassed-over streets and looking out up on the sky by means of empty home windows, to think about the place lively. It made for a robust memorial.

After a lot destruction we discovered aid in magnificence. Limoges was already identified for its painted enamels when a deposit of the particular kaolin clay wanted to make high quality porcelain was found within the 18th century. However there’s extra to the city than its most well-known product, because the grand practice station had hinted. There are enamels and Impressionist work within the Limoges Museum of Fantastic Arts (Auguste Renoir was born right here), an incredible coated market, and slender lanes stuffed with half-timbered medieval homes. At one in every of them, Les Petits Ventres, a comfortable, beamed bistro, we ate flaky pastry topped with black pudding and Limousin apples. Close by cheese maker Jean-Marie Dufour led us all the way down to the Tenth-century cellar the place he ages his cheeses, patting them down by hand or brush to stop rot. 

Then we went to see the porcelain. I used to be anticipating good tableware, however the Adrien Dubouché Nationwide Museum has flooring stuffed with valuable items celebrating not simply Limoges however the materials’s complete lengthy and various historical past, from terra-cotta vessels made in Greece within the ninth century B.C. to delicate Chinese language items to beautiful espresso providers and artworks by Cindy Sherman and Picasso. I lusted after an enormous porcelain chess set, whereas Craig eyed a Nineteenth-century teacup with a particular inset on which to relaxation a mustache. 

It felt fully proper {that a} materials I had thought-about purely ornamental turned out to have way more to supply. I had gone to Limousin in search of fairly plates and nice produce, however the area had additionally provided me church buildings and tapestries, beautiful landscapes and excessive artwork. Coming right here, I mirrored, was the alternative of being limogé. Earlier than boarding my practice, I appeared up at that carved Limousin woman, who held what appeared by that time to be a moderately meager armful of native specialties, and smiled an apology for my earlier ignorance. And I may have sworn she smiled again. 

Limousin at a Look

The place to Keep

Domaine des Étangs

A 2,500-acre resort dotted with cows, lakes, and artworks. There’s a floating tennis court docket and a spa in a transformed water mill. Doubles from $450.

La Chapelle Saint Martin

This small resort in Nieul has a fine-dining restaurant, a bistro, and lakeside eating “hives.” The out of doors pool is a perfect spot to cross the time between meals. Doubles from $273.

La Creuzette

This once-dilapidated mansion within the village of Boussac is immediately an idyllic five-bedroom lodging the place each textile and furnishing has been chosen with loving care. Doubles from $185.

The place to Eat

Chez Francis

Hand-drawn cartoons, courtesy of the writers who come to Brive-la-Gaillarde for the annual ebook truthful, function a whimsical backdrop for chef Francis Teyssandier’s market- recent dishes, like grilled duck with fennel. Entrées $32$43. 

En Delicacies

The ambiance at this cozy spot in Brive-la-Gaillarde could also be relaxed, however the meals is bold: suppose amuse-bouches like foie gras with truffle gelée and celery, however no white tablecloths. Prix fixe from $29. 

Le Cantou

The Valen household has owned this constructing in Collonges-la-Rouge for generations. A part of it’s now a restaurant that serves hearty dishes like calf’s head, nation pâté, and rump steak. Prix fixe from $24.

Les Petits Ventres

In Limoges, this beautiful restaurant with beams and open fires is a carnivore’s delight providing all the pieces from offal to steak. Entrées $21$31. 

What to Do

Adrien Dubouché Nationwide Museum

The museum homes pottery from antiquity to the current day, together with the most important assortment of Limoges porcelain on this planet. 

Aubazine Abbey

Based within the Twelfth century by a younger priest whose fantastically carved tomb remains to be in situ, the complicated contains a distinctive bell tower and uncommon stained-​ glass home windows.

Cité Internationale de la Tapisserie, Aubusson

The museum’s assortment spans six centuries, with items starting from a 1480 tapestry of a unicorn to works by trendy masters. 

Denoix Distillery

The Denoix household has been making walnut liqueurs in Brive-la-Gaillarde since 1839 and never a lot has modified: waist-high vats are nonetheless stirred with copper ladles. The liqueurs, the results of this area’s abundance of nuts, are scrumptious.

Limoges Museum of Fantastic Arts

This eclectic assortment options antiquities from Egypt, enamel items from the Center Ages, and trendy works by the likes of Henri Matisse and Fernand Léger. 

Museum Hôtel Lépinat

As soon as an inn that accommodated the artists who traveled to “Painters’ Valley,” this museum in Crozant now tells the story of these painters, who vary from the well-known to the obscure.

Oradour-sur-Glane

Throughout World Conflict II, one of many worst massacres on French soil occurred on this village. Although an accompanying museum tells the story in phrases and footage, it’s the ruined village itself that’s nearly unbearably shifting: an peculiar place, made distinctive by cruelty.

A model of this story first appeared within the September 2023 situation of Journey + Leisure underneath the headline “The French Dispatch.”