The Romanesque bell tower of the parish church of Saint-Maurice is the oldest thing to see in the main village of Sarre: the hamlet sits on a shelf above the valley floor, while the town hall now stands lower down at Tissoret. Beside the church, work to enlarge the cemetery turned up traces of a medieval building and, below it, of much older settlement.
What to see
Inside, the church keeps frescoes from the workshop of Giacomino da Ivrea and houses the municipal museum of sacred art. Until 1783 Sarre had two parishes, Saint-Maurice and Saint-Eustache, and the division was not only a religious one: they matched two separate comuni, so that after Chésallet was absorbed the village was called Sarre-Chésallet until 1799.
Our editors' tip
Come for the tower and the frescoes. The museum of sacred art takes very little time and works well at the end of a visit to the royal castle, a few minutes down the road: morning light is best, when the whole slope is lit.