Le Village de Baume-les-Messieurs

Baume-les-Messieurs is a tiny village in the Jura, at the bottom of a dramatic blind valley, and it counts among the most beautiful villages in France. The valley is a reculée, a type of landform common in the Jura in which a river has cut a deep, steep-sided amphitheatre into the limestone plateau, with sheer cliffs on three sides and an opening on the fourth. Here the cliffs rise to around two hundred metres, wooded at the top, and the village nestles at their foot among meadows and small fields, so that its roofs and the old abbey seem to be held in a bowl of rock. The setting alone makes it worth the detour.

The core of the village is the old abbey, a monastery founded in the early Middle Ages. Its monks were nobles, and the name of the village, Messieurs, distinguishes it from Baume-les-Dames, where the community was female. In the early tenth century, a monk from Baume named Bernon founded the abbey of Cluny, which became the great centre of medieval monasticism, and this gives the small village a distant connection with one of the main movements of European history. The abbey's buildings, with its church, cloister and old stone houses grouped around it, give the village its character, and a walk around the lanes shows corners of old stone, roofs of flat tiles and gardens.

The natural attractions are as much a draw as the buildings. The Grotte de Baume-les-Messieurs, a cave in which an underground river flows, can be visited on a guided tour. Nearby, the Cascades des Tufs, a series of waterfalls over mossy tufa, a porous limestone deposit, tumble down the valley wall and make an easy walk, and viewpoints on the cliff above offer views down into the amphitheatre. The long-distance paths and marked trails of the area lead through the Vallée de l'Ain and onto the plateau, and the Parc de la Source is a short walk from the centre.

The surrounding region is rich in food and wine. The Jura produces Comté cheese, made from the milk of mountain cows, and distinctive wines such as vin jaune, which is aged under a veil of yeast for years. The village of Château-Chalon, a short drive away, is famed for its vin jaune, and Lons-le-Saunier, the departmental town, is not far.

A visit to the village takes a few hours, longer if you add the cave, abbey and walks. It suits walkers, families and anyone interested in medieval history and landscape. Summer is the main season, and the valley is quiet and atmospheric in autumn.