Several churches to point out to you first. Majestic and imposing, we expect to see them in a city and we find them in a village, sometimes even away from the village, in the heart of a rural theater. This is the case in Mont-devant-sassey (102 inhabitants), in the Meuse, the Eglise ND de l’Assomption looks like a small cathedral and is clinging to the coasts of the Meuse. In particular, it contains an octagonal porch from the 13th century, the oldest in eastern France.
Also worth seeing – still in the Meuse – in Avioth (151 inhabitants), the one called “the basilica of the fields” and next to it “the recevresse”, a building intended to receive the offerings of pilgrims. This set is unique in the world, “it’s stone lace” say the inhabitants. To tell you the original character of this site, a life-size reproduction of “la recevresse” by Avioth is exhibited at the Cité de l’architecture in Paris. In Aumontzey, in the Vosges, the church is also probably unique in the world. It does not date from the same period, it is relatively recent. Built in 1913, it was financed by textile industrialists, the Walter-Seitz family. What makes it original is first of all its oriental side but it is also its multifunctional aspect: the first floor is a church, the ground floor a village hall and the front of the building is a water tower.
In this register of the unusual in small villages, we can also highlight these two Vosges sites where nature gives man a hard time, because these sites remain mysteries: it is the twisted beech forest of Sionne (144 inhabitants), near Neufchâteau; these beeches are twisted, intertwined and we cannot explain it… any more than the field of rocks of Barbey-Seroux (145 inhabitants), near Gérardmer.
Dozens of other amazing places await you during your walks in rural Lorraine: in Anthelupt (450 inhabitants), near Lunéville, where the hard-boiled egg inn housed Foch’s command post in 1914 (Napoleon would be there also passed, but we are less sure, we have lost the photos!); in Serocourt (84 inhabitants), near Contrexéville, and its oil museum; in Mousson (101 inhabitants), near Pont-à-Mousson, where you can stroll along the philosophical trail; in Clémery where there are still some vestiges of the “Little Vatican” (the story of the false pope, already mentioned in the Vianney Meetings); in Fontenoy-le-château where the stone pulpit of the church is extremely rare… These places have another advantage, other than that of surprising us, they are little known and we are therefore often very alone when we visit them … and it rests!
