When we applied for this house sit, it was advertised as being in Seillans. We are in fact about 4 km outside this village and today we decided to explore it a bit further.

Seillans is classed as a 2 Flower Village Fleuri.

What is this you may ask if you have not been over this way before. Well, each year a contest is held in France to encourage villages to make themselves attractive for both their residents and their visitors. The results are indicated by flowers (similar to Stars for Michelin Restaurants). The maximum is four.

Our first stop after the tourist office where we collected a walking tour map, was in this shaded square – La Place du Thouron.

We sat in front of the fountain that was filled with the cleanest water.

I was very pleased with myself as I ordered our morning tea, and asked for help in the tourist office, using my very broken French.

This little village has the cutest streets, many of them navigable only on foot.

Max Ernst, the German painter / artist, made Seillans his home and lived out his final years here. The museum has a collection of his lithographs which we will visit another day.

Here Mick is standing outside the Seillans Marie (the mayor’s office).

A few steps further on was the Eglise Saint-Léger. It is a Catholic Church which was built in the early 12th Century. I couldn’t find much out at all about Saint Léger, except from the map we were using where it stated he was a bishop who was tortured in 671. The church itself was very simply decorated, quite different to many we’ve seen in Germany for example.

Of other historical significance for Seillans is the fact a perfumery was created here by a wealthy Vicountess in 1881. She improved employment in the area by having hundreds of thousands of flowering plants (Jasmine, roses, violets, etc) established on her estate, which we walked past on our tour. She built a factory to make the perfume but converted that to a hospital during WWI. She sounded pretty amazing.

Not far from here we spotted a small shop / cave, and after a short while in there, we left with honey, prize-winning local olive oil (very expensive too at €22/0.5L), and a bottle of local red wine from a vineyard (Val d’Iris) we hope to visit tomorrow. We’ll sample the wine this evening just to be sure though.

The annual music festival (Musique Cordiale) will start here on Saturday and will run for two weeks. If I can find out where to park, we want to return to enjoy some of the program, plus we spotted a Michelin starred restaurant on the way back to our car. It’s called La Gloire de Mon Père – and the prices looked pretty good as well.

We’re looking forward to a few more visits to Seillans while we’re here. And, if Seillans is only a Two Flower village, we can’t wait to see a Four Flower Village.