THE YONNE

Sénonais
SAINT-ETIENNE of Sense is the first on the great Gothic cathedrals. Its still austere facade does not let guess the magnificence of its stained glasses of XIII-th and XVI-th centuries. It constitutes with the synodal palace and the archiepiscopal palace a luxurious architectural set where the Treasury and museums, testimonies of the brilliant past of the city are regrouped. But Sénonais proposes a lot of other evocations of its rich history: the " new cities " based in the Middle Age Villeneuve-sur-Yonne guarded by its strengthened doors and Villeneuve - Archevêque which church shelters the beautiful Putting into grave coming from the neighbouring abbey of Vauluisant - or else the castle of Condé in Vallery and that of Fleurigny.

Puisaye -Forterre
THE PUISAYE is this country of ponds, hollow roads, hedges and forests of which Colette, born in Saint - Sauveur, has never forgotten the magic and the wild charm. It is a ground of clay that the " great fire " transforms into robust potteries turned for centuries by potters' generations. It is an earth the veins of ochre of which allowed, from Moutiers to Ferté-Loupière, a bloom of murals in churches. It is a ground of bricks, which give their colours to villages, to castles and to manor houses, with sometimes the dark touch of the ferruginous stoneware, as in Ratilly. In Forterre, on the contrary, it is the limestone that reigns, extracted from the subterranean careers of Courson or Aubigny.

Fovinien-Pays d'Othe
OTHE'S forest dominates the quiet valley of the Yonne of its woody heights in the East, partially cultivated by medieval abbeys to give place to cultures and to the orchards of apple trees. In the valleys cities and villages settled down : Joigny, decorated by the vineyard of the Saint Jacques coast , classified City of Art and History, rich with beautiful churches and houses with sculptured timber framings, Saint Florentine and surrounding villages where the architecture and the statuary of the troyenne Renaissance triumph , Brienon and its elegant sound laundry of XVIII-th century, Migennes, Saint - Cydroine and its Romanic church, Saint-Julien-du-Sault and its Vauguillain's chapel.

Auxerrois
THE VINEYARD, present since the first centuries of our era on the hillsides of Chablis and Auxerrois, gave charm and character to this region. Auxerre owes it its prosperity, its magnificent churches and its elegant bourgeois houses with the golden tiles dominating the quays of the Yonne. Auxerre, Chablis and its great vineyards, the picturesque villages of the vineyard and Pontigny's Cistercian abbey church constitute an impossible stage to circumvent of any discovery of Burgundy. As for leaks, the Yonne and the canal of Nivernais, which do not any more see the horse-drawn barge to Paris passing, or the trains of floated wood coming down from Morvan, they found in the river tourism a new vocation.

Tonnerrois
THE STONE, the wood and the wine have, during ages, shaped Tonnerrois. The beautiful stone of Tonnerre illuminates cities, villages, the princely castles that the Renaissance built in Tanlay, Maulne, Ancy-le-Franc and At Nuits, everything as the hotel-God of Thunder or the ramparts of Noyers. It glorifies the least laundry of village, the least cross at the edge of the road. The great national and municipal forests of Maulne, Cruzy, of Acorn, Tonnerre, of Ancy offer to the walker their thousands of hectares. As for the vineyard which formerly covered all the hillsides and that the knight of Eon, born in Tonnerre, appreciated by all course of Europe, it is in full flourish.

Avallonnais-Morvan
BETWEEN Burgundian limestone and morvandiau granite, Avallonnass is a country of mountains covered with forests and with meadows, with narrow valleys where the lively waters roam. All the sports of open air are practised there: equitation, ride, VTT, fishing with the fly, canoeing, rafting or hydro speed. And these great natural spaces are strewed with treasures of art and History: Arcy and the prehistoric caves, Vézelay, registered on the world patrimony of Unesco, where emperors, kings, popes, pilgrims and crusaders streamed, Avallon with its ramparts, its bell tower and its Romanic collegiate church, Montreal, Quarré and its sarcophaguses, Holy Father, Chastellux's castle and that of Bazoches where Vauban lived.