The story of this place
In the small Lorraine village of Domrémy, around 1412, Joan of Arc was born to a modest farming family; her plain stone birth-house still stands, one of the oldest domestic buildings in France. It was in the fields and beside the village church here that, from about age 13, she said she heard the voices of Saints Michael, Catherine and Margaret commanding her to drive the English from France and see the dauphin crowned. From this obscure corner of a contested frontier she set out in 1428 on the journey that would take her to Chinon, Orléans, Reims—and ultimately the stake at Rouen. A 19th-century basilica now crowns the hill above her home.