Saumur Underground Tuffeau City

Beneath Saumur lies a second city carved from tuffeau limestone - Roman quarries expanded over 2,000 years. Some galleries extend 40 meters underground. Now these caves age sparkling wine (Saumur Mousseux) and host wine museums.

What to do there

5 things to do

1. 1 Read the Roman Quarry Written on the Cliff Face History · Free

   Before you go underground, read what the cliff tells you. The whole story is written in the rock above the Loire.

   Where: The tuffeau cliff face along the Quai Mayaud, Saumur waterfront — walk west from the city center along the Loire embankment. The cliff is unmissable, rising directly above the road. Look for the dark rectangular cuts in the pale white stone.

   What: You're looking at a Roman quarry. The extraction of tuffeau began in the Gallo-Roman period — soldiers chiseled out this soft white chalk-limestone to build the roads and fortifications of Roman Gaul along the Loire. Then the Benedictine monks of Saint-Florent took over in the 11th century, quarrying to build their abbey (consecrated 1040 AD). Then medieval stonemasons quarried more to build Saumur's château and the Loire's châteaux. The extraction went on for a thousand years — and every cut left a cave behind. Today there are 1,200 kilometers of tunnels under your feet. Not 300. One thousand two hundred. Fourteen thousand underground chambers. Half still abandoned. The stone itself is 80 million years old — compressed sea creatures, ancient organisms turned to rock. When you press your palm against the cliff, you're touching the Cretaceous seabed. That's not metaphor; that's geology.

   How: No ticket needed. Walk to the waterfront. Look up at the pale cliff. Count the rectangular cuts — each one is a quarry entry. If you see a dark horizontal line running through the cliff face about 3 meters up, that's a different geological layer: the zone where the best tuffeau was always found. Then walk to the foot of the cliff and feel the stone. It's warm to the touch in sunlight. Inside, it stays 12°C year-round, forever — which is why every cave down there became a wine cellar.

   Backup: If you want more context first, the Saumur tourist office on the Place de la Bilange has a free map of all the cave sites and a brief history of the troglodyte system.

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2. 2 Descend Into Europe's Largest Underground Mushroom Universe Adventure · Price: low

   The same Roman quarries that produced tuffeau for the Loire's châteaux became mushroom farms in the 19th century. What grows here can't grow anywhere else on Earth.

   Where: Musée du Champignon, Route de Gennes, Saint-Hilaire-Saint-Florent — a 10-minute drive west from Saumur center, following signs toward Gennes. The entrance is cut directly into the tuffeau cliff, no signage visible until you're standing in front of it.

   What: Here's what nobody tells you: this isn't a dusty natural history museum with display cases. You walk into the actual working tuffeau quarry galleries where 12 different species of mushrooms are actively growing on wooden logs, straw bales, and substrate blocks — right now, today, in front of you. The caves maintain 12°C and 80% humidity permanently (no machinery required — the geology does it). This is the only reason mushrooms grow here at all. You can't replicate these conditions above ground economically. The collection gallery has 250+ wild mushroom species preserved in resin blocks: hare's ears, curly sparassi, panther amanita, giant wolf puffball, and a species called 'trumpets of the dead' — a jet-black funnel mushroom that grows in French forests in autumn. At the end, a troglodyte house carved into the tuffeau displays a global collection of mushroom-shaped objects. It's genuinely strange and wonderful. The Roman angle: these are the same quarry galleries where Romans extracted tuffeau for Gaulish construction. The mushroom farmers moved in during the 19th century when Parisian button mushroom demand exploded. Same cave, 2000 years of use.

   How: Buy tickets at the door (€9 adults). Self-guided tour takes 60-90 minutes. Bring a light jacket — it's 12°C in the deepest galleries even in August. Wear shoes you don't mind getting dusty. The caves are narrow in places but not claustrophobic — ceilings are high.

   Backup: If closed, the Ackerman caves (10 minutes away in Saint-Hilaire-Saint-Florent) offer a comparable underground experience with a sparkling wine twist — 500-meter immersive circuit, €7-20, founded 1811 as the Loire's very first sparkling wine house.

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3. 3 Taste Bollinger's Secret Loire Wine for €5 in a Medieval Cave Wine · Price: low

   Most visitors never find this. Langlois-Château has been part of the Bollinger family group since 1973 — same family that makes one of the world's greatest Champagnes — and their Saumur sparkling wine tour costs €5.

   Where: Langlois-Château, Saint-Hilaire-Saint-Florent, Saumur (book ahead at visite@langlois-chateau.fr or +33 2 41 40 21 42). The cellar entrance is in the tuffeau cliffs — dug into the same hillside as Bouvet-Ladubay.

   What: In 1885, the Langlois family started making sparkling wine using tuffeau caves that had been open for wine production since 1800. In 1973, Bollinger — the Champagne house that has been independent and family-owned since 1829, whose wines Winston Churchill reportedly consumed by the case — acquired Langlois-Château. The Bollinger family still runs it. The tour takes you 300 meters underground through the medieval tuffeau galleries where the méthode traditionnelle wines age, then you taste the results. Here's the technical truth that makes Saumur sparkling wine interesting: Chenin Blanc is one of the highest-acid white grapes on earth. Used as a base wine for sparkling, that acidity creates electric, citrus-driven bubbles that age differently from Chardonnay-based Champagne. The tuffeau caves at 12°C make secondary fermentation slow and even, developing complexity that warm-climate bubbles never achieve. It's Champagne logic applied to Loire conditions.

   How: The €5 tour fee is refunded if you buy a bottle — making this effectively free for anyone who leaves with wine (you will). The 45-minute visit concludes with a tasting of their Crémant de Loire cuvées. Ask to try the Vintage Brut if available — it's aged 3+ years in these specific caves and tastes like no other sparkling wine in the Loire.

   Backup: Gratien & Meyer (same neighborhood, 40-minute guided tour) offers the same underground-tuffeau experience with a panoramic view over the Loire at the end. Alternatively, Maison Ackerman — literally the first Loire sparkling wine house (founded 1811, when Bonaparte was still Emperor) — has an immersive 500-meter underground circuit for €7-20.

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4. 4 Ride a Bicycle Through 42 Sculptures Carved Into the Cave Walls, 40 Meters Underground Adventure · Price: moderate

   This is the moment the Roman Odyssey becomes something else entirely. Bouvet-Ladubay's underground bicycle tour is the most singular wine experience in the Loire Valley.

   Where: Bouvet-Ladubay, 11 rue Jean Ackermann, Saint-Hilaire-Saint-Florent, Saumur. Book the bicycle cellar tour by emailing accueil@bouvet-ladubay.fr or calling +33 2 41 83 83 83. Maximum 8 people per tour, 1.5 hours.

   What: Here's the full story of what you're about to ride through. In 1851, a 23-year-old man named Étienne Bouvet and his wife Célestine Ladubay bought 8 kilometers of underground tunnels from the ruins of the Saint-Florent Benedictine abbey — the same monks who quarried this system in the 11th century to build their abbey (consecrated 1040 AD). Étienne turned the caves into France's largest méthode traditionnelle producer. By the 1870s he was supplying the British House of Lords. He built a château above ground, a theatre, and his own underground power plant. Then the ownership saga: Bouvet died 1908. The estate sat dormant until Justin-Marcel Monmousseau bought it in 1932 and rebuilt it. Sold to Champagne Taittinger in 1974. Sold to Indian beer baron Vijay Mallya in 2005 (later jailed for bank fraud). Passed to Diageo in 2014. Then — the Monmousseau family bought back 100% of their great-grandfather's company and are now independent again, fourth generation. The wine you'll taste carries all of that. In the deepest section of the cellars, sculptor Philippe Cormand has been carving directly into the tuffeau walls since 2002. Today there are 42 monumental sculptures in a 400-meter underground passage called La Cathédrale Engloutie — The Sunken Cathedral. Columns grow from the cave floor. Cathedral arches emerge from the rock. Light and sound effects activate in the passage. The walls become a church that was never built above ground. You ride through all of it on a retro bicycle with a headlamp. The cellar descends 40 meters below the surface. The ceiling varies from 2 to 15 meters high.

   How: Book in advance (small group, popular). Wear closed-toe shoes. The tour ends with a tasting of four cuvées — try the Saphir vintage brut (Chenin Blanc dominant, aged in these specific caves) and ask the guide about the ownership history. They know it all and love telling it.

   Backup: If the bike tour is full, the heritage walking tour covers La Cathédrale Engloutie on foot and includes 1,000+ oak barrels and the winery's collection of contemporary art. Also available daily.

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5. 5 Eat Fouées by Candlelight in a Cave That François Rabelais Wrote About History · Price: moderate · Optional

   In the 16th century, François Rabelais — France's great satirist — immortalized fouées in 'Gargantua.' Tonight you eat them where they were always made: in a tuffeau cave, by firelight.

   Where: Les Caves de Marson, 1 Rue Henri Fricotelle, Rou-Marson — a 10-minute drive southwest of Saumur center. Reservation required: www.cavesdemarson.com. Open for candlelit dinners since 1987. Adult menu €26-32.

   What: Fouées are small rounds of bread dough thrown directly into a period wood-fired oven. In 30 seconds they puff up into hollow balloons — then you tear them open and fill them with whatever is on the table. At Les Caves de Marson, that means rillettes (pork confited in its own fat), mogettes (slow-cooked white beans with herbs), and fresh goat cheese from the Loire with local honey. François Rabelais described fouées in Book One of Gargantua (published 1534), the novel about a giant who eats everything in France. He was describing exactly this — the bread of the Loire troglodytes, baked in fire ovens in the cave walls. You will eat what Rabelais wrote about. In a cave. By candlelight. After cycling through a subterranean cathedral. The Roman Odyssey has a way of stacking moments. The geological fact to know: you're eating inside a former tuffeau quarry. The cave ceiling above your head was cut by the same Medieval quarrymen whose work built the châteaux visible on the Loire surface above you. The temperature is 15°C. The humidity means the candles burn with an unusually steady flame.

   How: Book ahead — reservation only. Tell them you want to sit in the deepest room (the furthest from the entrance feels most cave-like, and the stonecutters' marks are most visible on the walls there). Order the full menu with wine — the servers recommend a Saumur-Champigny (Cabernet Franc from the same tuffeau terroir) with the rillettes, and a Saumur Blanc Chenin with the goat cheese.

   Backup: If Marson is fully booked, La Table des Fouées in Saumur center seats 200 and serves the same fouée tradition — less intimate, but still underground and still the real dish.

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Insider tips

• Ackerman is the oldest sparkling wine house in Loire (1811) - tours available

• Bouvet-Ladubay has underground art galleries and spectacular caves

• The Cadre Noir (French riding school) offers equestrian shows

• Saumur-Champigny produces Loire's finest Cabernet Franc reds