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Culture

Spend a Night in an Auvergne Hogwarts: The Château de Val

The first Harry Potter film wowed viewers with its portrayal of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the fictional British boarding school where Harry, Ron, and Hermione came of age while foiling a multitude of evil plots. With its soaring turrets, deep dungeons, and geographic situation in the midst of here-be-dragons landscapes (e.g. the Forbidden Forest and the mermaid-haunted Great Lake), Warner Brothers’ Hogwarts is a fine example of escapism done right.

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The Mysterious Lake Pavin

It was out of the ‘bottomless’ Lac Pavin that the sorcerers conjured wind and storm by casting a stone into its enchanted waters… -Margaret Roberts

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The Legacy of the Lord of the Rings in Auvergne

The crag, the precipice, the perilous pass, the castle-crowned hill, the arched bridge, the untutored mountaineer, the ravaging baron, the robber chief, the ugly legendary tale of death, the pretty tale of love and fairyland luck — all these come into the story of Auvergne.

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Superstitions of Auvergne: Part 2

“In Auvergne, too, you will find again the homely farms, with great hearths and cupboard-beds…the strange superstitions and beliefs; the markets, the picturesque processions and dances,

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A Werewolf in Auvergne: A Poem

Auvergne has a long tradition of loups-garous (werewolves). In fact, one of the most famous loup-garou legends first appeared in Discours execrable des Sorciers (1602), a book by

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