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In this post we want to tell you what to see in Cahors through our own experience in the capital of the Lot department. As always, we will tell you everything as we have experienced it, with opinions, anecdotes and advice. In our blog you will not find anything that is not our particular experience, we try to follow the essence of being a blog. Therefore, if what you are looking for is more tourist information and without opinions or experience, we always recommend visiting the official tourism pages, in this case the Tourism of the Lot or of Cahors Tourism, where you will find all the real official information.

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Our experience in Cahors Lot

We started our trip through the Lot department en Cahors, its capital, inside of the Lot Valley, an area that we will totally fall in love with and that we recommend you visit without losing any detail.

Our visit was in eastern and in a route through the Lot with the family and in a motorhome, so we tell you about our experience outside of the super high summer season, but we imagine that it works exactly the same. Only in summer you will find a boat that makes excursions on the Lot River.

In France, Easter is a rather low season, they only have Easter Monday as a holiday, so they don't have as many days as the Spanish.

How to get to Cahors France

In our case we arrived with our own vehicle, motorhome, from near a town in Barcelona where we live.

La AP 7 to Narbonne, then the A 61 towards Toulouse and the A 20 They are the highways that take us to Cahors in less than 5 hours of driving and calmly and safely. Perhaps the worst thing, as always when we travel in France, is the cost of the highways. In this case, between gasoline and tolls, getting to and from Cahors has a cost about 400 euros.

If what you want is to go by public transport nearest airports are the of Toulouse and Bordeaux and then from there you will have to look at train and bus options that are not a panacea, but they are an option.

Park in Cahors to visit the best things to see in Cahors

In Cahors the best place to park, as we did, is the park & ​​ride from the city. A free and very practical parking lot to safely park any vehicle and where there are also water emptying and filling services for motorhomes.

In this car park a navette comes out, free bus, toward the center. From here, also, in 15 minutes walk you reach the center.

In summary, be that as it may, I advise you if you go in your vehicle to park in this park and ride to visit the city, it is most practical, otherwise It is impossible to park inside the old town.

Sleep in Cahors

Accommodation in Cahors

In the case of hotel accommodation in Cahors or apartments, we cannot honestly guide you much. Our experience was in a motorhome and we cannot tell you about any hotel or apartment in particular.

Of course, here we have done a search for you in case you are interested in finishing seeing the options to stay in Cahors:

Cahors by motorhome

Here we can talk to you about where to spend the night in Cahors by motorhome, since this was our experience.

In Cahors we are lucky to welcome motorhomes and we have a free motorhome area and very large, divided into two parts.

First of all, the motorhome area has a part where the water emptying and filling services along with three delimited motorhome spaces with a shaded area of ​​trees that are great. But obviously these three spaces are too small for the city, and those who have seen it, have enabled in the continuous parking lot, which is the same as Park & ​​Ride, a very large area to park and spend the night for motorhomes.

Just in front of this second parking lot you will find the free bus to the center or less than 15 minutes on foot you will reach the center of Cahors.

Cahors what to see in one day at the pace of our visit and experience

From the motorhome, park and ride area, where we spent the night, the next day we set out to visit Cahors on foot quietly. First, we went to the center on foot, crossing a beautiful bridge with views of the cliffs of the Causas Quercy Regional Park in the background.

Our visit to Cahors is for one day, so we explain what to see in one day in Cahors. In fact, we believe that in one day everything can be seen perfectly, and nothing more is necessary.

If you have more days, what we recommend is taking a route through the Lot around Cahors.

What to see near Cahors on a route through the Lot

AboutWhat to see near Cahors or what to see around Cahors We advise you to visit the Lot Valley with towns as beautiful as Saint Cirq Lapopie and Capdenac le Haut, then visit the incredible medieval city of Figeac, discovering the story of Champollion who deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphs and ending up discovering the incredible and little known of the Cele Valley that crosses the cliffs with troglodyte houses of the Causes Quercy.

Cahors France Tourist Office

We start with our visit to Cahors in France. The first thing we saw shortly after crossing the bridge that separated the city from where we parked our vehicle, was a large, spacious square with a fountain where we found the tourist office. An essential first point of visit if you are going to travel to Cahors.

Ruins of the ancient Roman amphitheater of Cahors what to see

Before the tourist office, there is also an obligatory stop. On a street where in the background we find a private parking called the Amphitheater. Well, you should go right there to visit the ruins of the ancient amphitheater.

The remains of a 1st century Gallo-Roman amphitheater are hidden under the Fénelon alleys, in the 1st floor of the Amphitheater parking lot. Access is free so take advantage and see the ruins of this French Cahors amphitheater of Roman origin. They were discovered in 2007 during the construction of the parking lot and there they stayed, what a thing.

Medieval old town, a must see in Cahors France

From the Cahors Tourist Office, right in front, across the street, the Medieval cobbled streets of the historic center of Cahors, our next visit in the city.

There is no alley that is not worth missing in Cahors France. The medieval essence and the small details of the historic streets that you can find are curious. Don't miss those details because suddenly you can find treasures like the secret gardens what is between alleys.

The medieval houses, walls, towers and medieval gates of Cahors are beautiful, worth admiring and photographing for hours. You'll see.

Near the neighborhood of La Barre there is a large open tower next to the walls of Cahors, the St-Jean tower, facing the cliff, sometimes nicknamed Hangman's Tower. Nearby is a 16th century guardhouse, improperly called the Barbican, don't miss it!

The Cahors market to see and taste

In front of the Cathedral today, Saturday, there was a market of those who speak so well of Cahors. Flowers, cheeses, olives, salted meats, foie, vegetables, fruits and the typical market products involved us for a good time taking the opportunity to make some purchases of fresh products that we need.

The Santa Sofia of Cahors, the essential cathedral to see in Cahors World Heritage Site

La Cathedral of Saint-Étienne Cahors is a majestic Gothic cathedral from the 12th century, found just behind the market. Its architecture and stained glass windows are impressive, it is UNESCO World Heritage, and is definitely worth a visit. The rounded domes of the Cathedral remind us of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, how beautiful!

The French Camino de Santiago passes through Cahors, so this cathedral is a mandatory pilgrimage site for pilgrims along the way. So stop and observe, you will surely see some pilgrim marveling at the Romanesque art of this cathedral, of its gothic cloister spectacular and perhaps visiting the relics that are here of the Sainte Coiffe, of the Holy Shroud.

The secret gardens and parks of Cahors that are essential to see with Malbec vines

After wandering around and discovering some secret gardens between alleys, we walked through larger parks, full of Malbec vineyards, famous for their good wine.

Next to the Pont Valentré, we even found a garden with Malbec vines that they call the beautiful Garden of Drunkenness.

We can say that these gardens and parks surprise us in Cahors. They seem precious to us and beyond their beauty, finding secret gardens, as they call them, walking through the narrow streets of the old town is something that captivated us during our visit.

These gardens are all different, each with its own story, theme, flowers and plants. Everyone has their own explanatory panel and their curiosities, there is something for everyone!

An example of a secret garden: just behind the Cathedral, in a narrow alley you will find an entrance to a house with an archway, enter there and marvel at the secret garden.

If you want, on the Cahors tourism website you have a 4-hour route through all the secret gardens of Cahors, You will see that it is impressive how Cahors takes care of these gardens and that from May to October they are precisely beautiful and a must-see.

The must-see in Cahors: The Pont de Valentré, UNESCO Heritage Site

At the end of the visit to the old town we arrived at the Lot River, where there are usually boats that take you around, but in the low season everything is extremely calm.

There we went up and crossed the Valentré Bridge, an iconic medieval bridge of fortified towers, World Heritage Site by UNESCO. We are surprised. Is price quotation Access to the Pont d'Avignon is paid and is very similar, so the surprise is doubly good.

The Valentré Bridge is a symbol of Cahors, built from 1308 at the initiative of the city consuls.

Built entirely of carved stone, it consists of eight arches and three towers, the latter rises more than 40 meters above the water.

It was completed around 1380 and has survived to this day. In 1998, the bridge that passes under the Camino de Santiago de Compostela was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

They also call him the devil's bridge The imp seen in the central tower reminds us of the legend of this magnificent bridge.

The Water House of Cahors what to see

When crossing the Valentré bridge, on the left in 1 minute going down next to the river we find the Water House. On our way we found it closed, but we see that it is usually open, we have had bad luck.

The old Cabazat pumping station, from the 19th century, near the Pont Valentre, preserves its original machinery. There they have made a small museum and Cahors interpretation site and his land around the world of water that revolves by his passage of the River Lot.

Here they celebrate permanent exhibitions and specials on the topic of water and are usually free. A shame not to be able to enter during our visit.

Roman fountains at Chartreaux Cahors France

After the visit to the water house we continued walking along the banks of the Lot River and in 3 minutes we arrived to marvel at the Roman pools with turquoise water under some rocks, this being our last visit and returning to the motorhome walking around banks of the Lot along the greenway in the city of Cahors.

The Chartreux Fountain of Cahors is a limestone spring that was once the place of worship of Divona, the Celtic water goddess after whom Cahors is named (Divona Cadulcorum). By the way, in the city you can also find an arch called Divona in the old Roman baths area of ​​the city, although it is in quite poor condition.

The discovery in 1989 of a large number of Roman coins attests to the cult of wells in the XNUMXst century BC and XNUMXst century AD and that this source is already of Roman origin.

In the Middle Ages and Modern Age, factories used the water from this spring on the banks of the Lot and currently it can also be said that its waters are used by the municipality of Cahors. Whatever the color of the waters under the limestone rocks, they make it a beautiful place.

End of our visit to Cahors what to see for its essential for a day

And that's it for our visit to Cahors. In our case we returned to the motorhome walking banks of the Lot awarded by the greenway in the city of Cahors.

We wanted to go to Saint Cirq Lapopie, our next stop on the route through the Lot Valley, and we didn't take the bikes to do the green route along the river, but we were eager, it looked very good.

We hope that our experience visiting Cahors has been useful to you and that you enjoy your visit as much as we did.

If you have questions, we will read them below in the comments, hugs Kucavaneros friends!