The Périgord Vert: France's best-kept property secret

While the Dordogne's famous villages draw the crowds, the green northern Périgord remains largely undiscovered: quieter, greener, and still very much itself.

Most people who buy in the Dordogne buy in the Périgord Noir — the southern stretch that runs from Sarlat to Les Eyzies. Golden medieval villages. Cave paintings. Foie gras and walnut oil. It is, justifiably, one of the most famous landscapes in France.

It is also, increasingly, crowded. The villages are beautiful. The car parks are not.

The other Dordogne

The Périgord Vert sits above it — the northern quarter of the Dordogne department, running up toward the Limousin. It takes its name from its colour: an intense, rolling green of oak forest, river meadows and hedgerow country that looks, in high summer, like someone has turned the saturation up to maximum.

This is not a consolation prize. It is a different experience entirely — quieter, more personal, less marketed. The villages here don't appear on the tourist itineraries. The markets are for locals. The restaurants don't have English menus. The roads are empty.

"This is the France that was. Medieval villages, weekly markets, Michelin-starred restaurants in farmhouses, and the finest prehistoric cave art on earth within an hour's drive."

Why people are looking north

For decades, the Périgord Vert was overlooked by international buyers precisely because it wasn't on the radar. That is changing, and for reasons that matter to anyone who wants to live in the place, not just visit it.

Three things are drawing people here. First, buyers increasingly want space, privacy and authenticity over resort amenities, and the Périgord Vert delivers all three. Second, remote working has expanded the pool of people who can genuinely spend longer stretches in France. Third, as the Périgord Noir has become more crowded, the natural move is north.

Character properties (stone manoirs, farmhouses, mills) are finite. They are not building new 18th-century buildings. For owners, that scarcity is about the quality of the place you get to keep coming back to, not a projected return.

Getting there

One of the strongest arguments for the Périgord Vert is how easy it is to reach from the UK. Ryanair flies direct from London Stansted to Bergerac — fares from £35 return, flight time 1 hour 50 minutes. From Bergerac airport, the northern Périgord is an hour and ten minutes by car.

Limoges airport, to the north, is even closer — 45 minutes to many Périgord Vert properties, with regular services from Birmingham, Manchester and East Midlands. This makes the region genuinely accessible for a long weekend, not just a two-week holiday.

The Périgord Vert in practice

Lanouaille, the nearest market town to Manoir de Nanthiat, is 10 minutes away. Nontron — a proper town with everything you need — is 25 minutes. Périgueux, the departmental capital with excellent restaurants, a Roman amphitheatre and one of the best Saturday markets in France, is 45 minutes.

Brantôme — the Venice of the Périgord, built on an island in the River Dronne — is 35 minutes and worth every one of them. The abbey dates to Charlemagne. The restaurant at Le Moulin de l'Abbaye holds a Michelin star. The Saturday morning market is the kind of thing you plan your whole visit around.

For UK buyers specifically

The Périgord Vert has long had a significant British community — enough that French estate agents routinely list properties in English — but not so many that it has lost its authenticity. French is the language of daily life. The food is resolutely local. And the sense that you have found somewhere the guidebooks haven't fully discovered yet remains entirely intact.

Places like this rarely stay quiet forever. For now, the Périgord Vert still feels like a discovery.