Montsoreau is a French commune located in the department of Maine-et-Loire, in the Pays de la Loire region, in the Loire Valley classified as World Heritage by UNESCO. Montsoreau is classified among The Most Beautiful Villages of France and competed in the 2012 edition of the French television show presented by Stéphane Bern: Le Village préfé des Français.
The name of the locality is attested in the Latinized forms Castrum
Monte Sorello, Mons Sorello in 1086 (cartulary), of Monte Sorello in
1089.
It is a medieval toponymic formation in Mont- "hill,
elevation" which in this specific case designates the rocky promontory,
located on the bed of the Loire, and on which the fortress of Montsoreau
was built. The second element -soreau, from an older one -sorel
represents the personal name.
It was in the sixth century that the first texts
mention the Domaine de Restis. In 990 the count of Blois Eudes I
transformed it into a stronghold, 10 years before the count of
Anjou, Foulques Nerra, attached it to Anjou. We find a mention of
Montsoreau in 1086 in its Latinized form [Castrum] Monte Sorello.
The stronghold then belonged to Guillaume II de Montsoreau, vassal
of the Counts of Anjou and husband of Hersende de Champagné. It was
she who convinced her son-in-law, Gautier Ier de Montsoreau, to give
Robert d'Arbrissel the land which he used to found the Abbey of
Fontevraud. The forms Castellum Montsorelli, Mons Sorelli and
finally Mons Sorel (Montsoreau, Monts Soreaux, Mont Soreau), are
recurrent Latinizations that we find in charters, cartularies and
other documents written in medieval Latin. The castle passed into
the hands of the Savary family in 1213, (Renaud Savary 1325-1368,
lord of Montbazon (Indre-et-Loire), Villandry (Indre-et-Loire)),
Savonnières (Indre-et-Loire), Montsoreau (Maine-et-Loire) and
Moncontour (Vienne), then to the Craon viscounts of Châteaudun in
1374. It then belongs to the Chabot de La Grève family and becomes
the property of Jean II de Chambes during his marriage to the
heiress in 1445. It was the latter who razed the fortress and had
the current Château de Montsoreau built in 1450, in the Renaissance
style.
In the Middle Ages, the village was divided into two
parts: Rest and Mont Soreau (Monte Sorello). Rest corresponded to
the district now clustered around the port and the current parish
church, while Mont Soreau corresponded to the castrum fortified by
Foulques Nerra. In the 19th century, the Château de Montsoreau
became a warehouse where wheat from Loudunais, wines from Chinonais
and those from Poitou were brought. Important markets were held
there thanks to its very active port.
Montsoreau was, until
the seventeenth century, a center of jurisdiction and the seigneury
of Montsoreau extended from the Loire in the north, to
Seuilly-l'Abbaye and the castle of Coudray in the south.
Its
population of artisans, fishermen and small winegrowers had never
exceeded 600 inhabitants. Then a boom in the exploitation of a
building stone, the tufa, suddenly increased this number to more
than 1000 inhabitants, maintained during the first quarter of the
nineteenth century. This stone, easy to work, gradually ran out, and
the stone workers left the region. The population thus decreased to
stabilize again at around 600 people.
However, the galleries
opened for the exploitation of tufa then made it possible to shelter
cultures of mushrooms, known as "of Paris".
With the
construction of the road from Saumur to Candes-Saint-Martin in the
19th century, the appearance of the village of Montsoreau was
changed. Several white tufa houses, from the quarries on the
hillsides, were built in Rest and in the old town.
Commune in the North-East of Saumur, Montsoreau is a small village in
the Loire Valley, in Anjou, located on the left bank of the Loire, 11 km
south-east of Saumur and 15 km north-west of Chinon. It is located on
the border of the department of Maine-et-Loire, adjacent to the town of
Candes-Saint-Martin located in the department of Indre-et-Loire at 1 km
from it.
In addition to the town of Montsoreau, the town also
includes the place called l'île au Than, located opposite the castle of
Montsoreau, on the opposite bank (right bank) of the Loire. The island
of Than, includes, like the village, an administrative border with
Indre-et-Loire.
The village of Montsoreau is located in the heart of the Loire
Valley, directly on the banks of the Loire, at the confluence of the
Loire and the Vienne. It forms the border between the departments of
Indre-et-Loire and Maine-et-Loire, but also the Pays de la Loire and
Centre-Val de Loire regions. The city is divided between two poles of
activity, the district of the old historic port of the mariners of the
Loire, and the district of the Castle, now housing the Philippe Méaille
collection. The village having been an important point of the extraction
of tufa, a large part of the quarries has been reassigned in troglodytic
dwellings.
The village of Montsoreau is not crossed by any major
road. The departmental road 7 has made it possible to relieve the
traffic of the banks of the Loire and the crossing of the village. It is
thus the passage of one of the sections of the Loire road by bike, from
Candes-Saint-Martin to Thoureil. The particularity of the banks of the
Loire not to be deprived has indeed made it possible to constitute a
bicycle route along the Loire for almost 800 kilometers, in the heart of
two regions rich in cultural and natural heritage of Europe.
Montsoreau is located 250 km from Paris, the zero point of the roads of
France.
In 2010, the climate of the municipality is of the altered oceanic
climate type, according to a CNRS study based on a series of data
covering the period 1971-2000. In 2020, Météo-France publishes a
typology of the climates of metropolitan France in which the
municipality is in a transition zone between the oceanic climate and the
altered oceanic climate and is in the Middle climatic region Loire
Valley, characterized by good insolation (1,850 h / year) and a little
rainy summer.
For the period 1971-2000, the average annual
temperature is 12.1 ° C, with an annual thermal amplitude of 14.7 ° C.
The average annual cumulative rainfall is 624 mm, with 10.2 days of
precipitation in January and 6.2 days in July. For the period 1991-2020,
the annual average temperature observed on the nearest Météo-France
meteorological station, in the town of Savigny-en-Véron 7 km as the crow
flies,16 is 12.6 °C and the average annual cumulative rainfall is 637.8
mm. For the future, the climate parameters of the municipality estimated
for 2050 according to different greenhouse gas emission scenarios can be
consulted on a dedicated website published by Météo-France in November
2022.
Montsoreau is accessible by car by the A85 motorway, with the
"Saumur" exit, then the RD952 from the banks of the Loire for 10 km to
Montsoreau by the Varennes-Montsoreau bridge.
It is also
accessible by Tours, following the banks of the Loire for 60 km to
Montsoreau, 20 km after Langeais.
By train, the three stations of
Saumur (12 km), Angers (55 km), Tours (65 km), are served by TGV,
intercités, TER Pays de la Loire and Centre-Val de Loire.
The
network of the agglomeration of Saumur-Loire Valley makes it possible to
connect Montsoreau to Fontevraud, Turquant, Parnay, Souzay-Champigny,
and Saumur.
The nearest major international airports are
Tours-Loire Valley Airport (70 km) and Nantes-Atlantique Airport (159
km). National connections can be made via the airports of Angers-Loire
(59 km), Poitiers-Biard (80 km).
River shuttles connect Saumur to
Montsoreau.
Montsoreau is a rural municipality, because it is part of the
municipalities with little or very little density, within the meaning of
the Insee's communal density grid.
In addition, the town is part
of the attraction area of Saumur, of which it is a municipality of the
crown. This area, which includes 31 municipalities, is categorized into
areas of 50,000 to less than 200,000 inhabitants.
The land use of the municipality, as it appears from the European database of biophysical land use Corine Land Cover (CLC), is marked by the importance of agricultural territories (72.4% in 2018), a proportion substantially equivalent to that of 1990 (72.5%). The detailed distribution in 2018 is as follows: permanent crops (31%), arable land (20.5%), heterogeneous agricultural areas (16.7%), continental waters (15.3%), urbanized areas (10%), meadows (4.2%), forests (2.1%). The evolution of the land use of the municipality and its infrastructures can be observed on the various cartographic representations of the territory: the Cassini map (eighteenth century), the staff map (1820-1866) and the maps or aerial photos of the IGN for the current period (1950 to today)
The village of Montsoreau is divided into four districts, the old port where most of the commercial and artistic activity is concentrated, the old historic village, around the castle, the vineyard at the top of the hillside, and the island of Than, located on the opposite bank of the Loire, and which is exclusively residential.
Montsoreau is concerned by six major risks: flooding, seismicity (low risk), shrinkage-swelling of the clays (low risk), nuclear risk, the risk of ground movement and the storm.
The number of housing units in Montsoreau changes little, while there were 359 housing units in 2010, there are 362 in 2015. 60.5% of these are primary residences, 20.7% are secondary residences and 16.9% are vacant. In 2015, more than half of households (57.1%) moved into their main residence ten years ago or more.