Saint-Cirq-Lapopie hangs over the Lot river 30 kilometres east of Cahors, 80 metres of vertical limestone between its lowest houses and the water. It is one of the most photographed villages in France — and in 2012 it was voted Village préféré des Français, which is not a label most places live up to but in this case is more or less accurate. The combination of the cliff, the river, the russet rooftops, and the ruined castles above is unfair to every other village trying to compete.
The village climbs in tiers along a single steep main street. Houses are honey-coloured stone, often with the original 13th–16th-century half-timbered upper storeys, and the lanes between them are narrow enough that two cars cannot pass. At the top sit the ruins of three castles — once defended by the local Lapopie, Gourdon, and Cardaillac families — and the fortified Gothic Église Saint-Cirq-et-Sainte-Juliette faces the void from a small terrace.
The painter and printmaker Henri Martin lived here from the 1900s; the surrealist André Breton bought a riverside auberge in 1950 and wrote that he had "ceased to wish himself elsewhere." That sentiment hits anyone who arrives early enough or late enough to miss the day-trippers. From late morning to about five o'clock in the summer high season the village is jammed; come at breakfast, or stay overnight, and you have it to yourself.
For a real walk, take the Chemin de Halage along the river — a 19th-century towpath cut directly into the cliff face — which loops down from the village and rejoins the road below. It is one of the most unusual short walks in France.