Vauciennes: Holiday Apartments and Holiday Homes

Culture

In Vauciennes, the protection as a historic monument for the Manoir du Plessis-aux-Bois covers the manor house, including the entrance pavilion, enclosure walls and dovecote.

The Église Saint-Léger was largely built from the late 12th century onwards and completed in the 1230s or 1240s. Its façade features a deep Gothic porch, a finely moulded portal and a large rose window decorated with diamond points.

The Église Sainte-Geneviève contains a seigneurial chapel that opens onto the choir through a door and an opening. Its vault has eight ribs radiating from a heraldic keystone. The oldest part of the church is a single-nave body dating from the last quarter of the 12th century; access is through a later-built porch and a carefully executed round-arched portal. The Église Sainte-Geneviève is located in a clearing in the Forêt de Retz.

In the vicinity of Vauciennes lies the Manoir du Plessis-au-Bois, with an old residential building, a keep, a Renaissance wing and gardens enclosed by walls. The estate belonged to Philippe d’Orléans, the brother of Louis XIV, and later to the regent. Since 1999, the Manoir du Plessis-au-Bois has been listed as a historic monument.

Nature

The Jardins du Manoir du Plessis-au-Bois have been continuously developed since 2003. They reinterpret the atmosphere of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance through a sequence of seven green rooms. The gardens include berry bushes bordered by beech hedges, a boxwood bosco, a fishpond surrounded by irises and wisteria, a flowering kitchen garden with grapevines as well as espalier-trained apple and pear trees, a water channel, climbing roses and a boulingrin.

The Jardins du Manoir du Plessis-au-Bois offer self-guided and guided visits for individuals and groups; visits are available year-round by appointment.

The 8-hectare Champ Familier enclave in the municipality of Vauciennes forms part of the Forêt de Retz.

Hiking

In the wider region around Vauciennes, the Forêt de Retz offers 60 kilometres of forest roads as well as 560 kilometres of forest tracks and woodland paths.

In the wider region around Vauciennes, the Forêt de Retz has 12 signposted themed hiking routes, as well as the Parcours des Cotrets discovery trail designed and laid out by the O.N.F. and the long-distance hiking trails GR 11 and GR 11A.

Geographical Setting

Vauciennes is crossed by the Nationale 2. It was formerly a strategic road towards Flanders and is now a transport route between Paris and Belgium.

Travellers planning Vauciennes as a destination may wish to rent a holiday apartment.

Other destinations: Chevrières, Essuiles, Morienval, Breteuil, Cires-lès-Mello, Chelles, Montépilloy, Senots

For the main travel overview: Oise.