Aveyron in 3 days

A Romanesque pilgrim church to Saint Foy, whose gold reliquary statue sits in the treasury; its Last Judgement tympanum holds 124 carved figures.

The village street ends at a 400-metre horseshoe canyon almost 100 metres deep, with a 12th-century church on the spur.

Corten steel boxes by RCR Arquitectes holding some 500 works given by Rodez-born Pierre Soulages, from early walnut-stain studies to his late black paintings.

Windswept volcanic pasture at 1,000 to 1,400 metres, with basalt walls, old stone dairy huts and fawn Aubrac cattle grazing from May to October.

Norman Foster and Michel Virlogeux's 2,460-metre bridge across the Tarn valley, opened in 2004, with a mast 343 metres high, taller than the Eiffel Tower.

Natural caves under the Combalou, cooled and ventilated by rock fissures, where sheep's milk cheese must mature to be called Roquefort.

A Templar village on the Larzac, walled by the Hospitallers in the 1440s; walk the ramparts, then find the paved pond where sheep drank.

One stone street along a ridge above the Aveyron, leading to the royal fortress begun in 1253 by Alphonse de Poitiers, brother of Saint Louis.