The Notre-Dame de Liesse Chapel

Lundi 12 juin 1944, Aups est encerclé par la Milice française qui prévoit des représailles contre les FTPF du camp Robert et un camion de l'armée secrète du Lieutenant Vallier tombe sur un barrage de miliciens. Bouet put s’échapper, mais les trois autres occupants du véhicule furent arrêtés. François Duchâtel et le chauffeur Ernest Millet furent fusillé sur le champ après un simulacre de jugement. Roger Donadini, qui s’était débarrassé de l’arme, fut gardé comme prisonnier par les miliciens.

Small chapel, literally hanging over the void. The construction date is unknown, but rural chapels have often been restored or rebuilt on the same sites according to the vagaries of the municipal and religious history. Legend has it that in the Middle Ages, a noble lady of the Blacas family used to ride every day on the hill, to look out for the return of her son on a crusade.

Remarkable viewing points of the hills of the Haut Var

The Saint Priest chapel appears to have been built in 1098. Saint Priest himself lived in the 7th century. He was a bishop of Clermont and was the founder of many monasteries in his diocese. One can also say that unlike Liesse-Notre-Dame, this chapel is located in a more pleasant environment. A full carpet of grass covers the ground and some trees with generous branches provide a shade which tempts a well-deserved nap after so much effort.

The length and diversity of this walk let you discover a dozen species of orchids during spring, they are discreet bulbous plants. The labellum of the ophrys does not have any spurs and looks more or less, by its hairiness, its fleckings and colour like an insect (various Dipterous and Hymenopterans). Orchis have a labellum equipped with a spur, never resembling an insect and their petals and sepals are often gathered in a more or less loose palmate manner.

L’Ophrys des Lupercales doit son nom aux fêtes romaines antiques (qui avaient lieu à la mi- février), en raison de la précocité de sa floraison. Cette orchidée se répartit dans le quart sud-est jusqu'à la Corse. Cette espèce, longtemps confondue avec Ophrys fusca (du Portugal), fleurit de février à avril et se rencontre en général de la plaine à 900 m d'altitude. Présente dans les biotopes de pleine lumière à mi-ombre, elle fréquente garrigues, maquis, pelouses et pinèdes claires ainsi que talus.

One of the defining features of orchids holds in the specialization of their flower where everything tends to ensure the best possible pollination at a lower energy cost. The "best of the best" is reached among the "Ophrys" where one of the petals looks just like (for the average pollinator) the body of a female insect. In wanting to hug the female, the male gets the pollen on its head, which it will try disseminate by attempt the adventure on a nearby flower.