Here's a flashback to the fall of 2003, shortly after we moved to France. A friend was visiting and we spent a lot of time tooling around our region exploring châteaux and churches and villages. And cafés and restaurants. I posted a smaller, more severely cropped, version of this photo back in 2010.
Inside the Fontevraud abbey, September 2003.
I don't know what it is, but it's inside the abbey church at Fontevraud, not far from Chinon. I liked how the candles mimicked the columns on the sculpted stone. If I remember correctly, we had our dog, Collette, with us. Ken stayed outside the abbey walking the dog around and sipping wine in a café while our friend C. and I went inside for a look. We had visited this place once before, so he wasn't missing out.
What a fascinating structure and ornamentation. I wonder what it was built as.
ReplyDeleteI just remembered, Fontevraud Abbey is where Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitane are entombed... Jerry's great-grandparents (25x).
ReplyDeleteI am a nut for the Plantagenet history surrounding Eleanor of Aquitaine (I do a big unit in French 3), and I don't remember knowing this about SG!
DeleteJudy:
DeleteHis ancestry is fascinating and all verifiable. There's a researcher using SG's DNA to try to trace the origin of a specific heraldic family. We've got books on Plantagenet Ancestry and Magna Carta Ancestry on the shelf. I, on the other hand, can go back to a 5-greats grandfather in Poland whose occupation was listed as BEGGAR! He has a website: connectedbloodlines.com
Maybe it was intended to be a tomb? The plain bit below the columns would be where the dedication would be carved.
ReplyDeleteYour clock widget is most impressive. I thought at first it was a countdown, and that you are going to get to midday of the 20th before those of us over here. :-)
ReplyDeleteThat abbey whatever is intriguing -- the broken pediment, so common on English furniture, and all the Greek styling. I'd guess some kind of tomb, or altar.
mitch, Cool! Have you and/or Jerry been to the abbey?
ReplyDeletejudy, do you show "The Lion in Winter?"
chris, I think that's a good guess.
emm, I was thinking the same. About the stone work, not the widget. LOL
Not yet. We'd love to do a historic dead grandparents tour as a way of seeing these fascinating places in Europe.
Deletelovely
ReplyDelete