Les Montèzes

In the old days vineyards surrounded St-Ambroix. One year during the Middle Ages, the harvest was so abundant that locals did not know what to do with all the wine. To avoid it going to waste, a consul arranged for proclamations in the neighbouring villages that an ox was going to fly in the sky over St Ambroix on a certain evening. The whole day was festive and very hot, with only one refreshment allowed: the sour wine that the town needed rid of! (…) The drunk and cheerful populace was convinced that an ox really had taken off from the cliff. Today, the ox still goes for a flight one evening every summer, after a day of festivities. Be reassured: the winged ox is only an imitation, but a handsome one that is well worth the detour!

Silvery olive trees are everywhere, whether around the houses or on the slope opposite. Olivaie, oliveraie, olivette: all these names refer to an olive plantation. The tree is the symbol of peace and has been cultivated for 4,000 years. It can be recognised by its knotty trunk and silvery green foliage. In November and December, the olives are harvested in a net laid over the ground. Once separated from the leaves, they are transported to the mill and pressed cold to extract their oil.

More than 1,500 women worked in the town’s 21 spinning mills in the 19th century. During a spinners’ congress in 1908, the work was categorised as "female slave labour" because the women (or girls) worked 14 hours a day for miserable pay. One strike followed another all over the region, the first of them taking place in Saint-Ambroix in 1879. The thankless work was among the worst paid in the textile industry, and yet spinners spoke of it nostalgically once they had left the labourers’ life.

Narrow cobblestoned lanes, arched passageways, staircases, and lanes as narrow as paths: this perched area is inaccessible by car and shelters vestiges of the dawn of time. Prehistory, Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the religious crisis of the 16th century Reformation and all centuries since then have left their mark on this slope. A Pagan sacrificial altar, a grandly crenelated 19th century chapel, three 12th century gates, a castle and its ramparts razed in 1629 on the order of Louis XIII...