Foussais-Payré has preserved its rich past exceptional Romanesque portal of his church, the house and the noble houses of weavers, weavers and merchants who have, in the Renaissance, the prosperity of the village.
Heir to a Gallo-Roman villa, Foussais conceals a masterpiece of Romanesque art: the portal of the Saint-Hilaire church.
During the Renaissance, the activity of drapers, weavers and tanners did with remarkable house, scattered in both towns and the countryside, such as the key, the Riallière, the Fournière or Sérigny... Often acquired the ideas of the Reformation, artisans and merchants, who exported their products to Germany and Holland, rubbed humanist elites Fontenay-le-Comte.
Family François Viète, the famous mathematician, also kept an inn. Who perhaps born François Viète, the inventor of modern algebra...