Fontevraud Abbey
I failed to do my research.
My head was solidly stuck in the 12th century. I knew this place as the retirement home of Eleanor of Aquitaine, and the location of the monumental tombs she'd supervised for the Angevin dynasty she and her husband Henry II fought to establish. I'd stared at plaster casts of those tombs for years in London's Victoria and Albert Museum, and was keen to see the real things and to feel a bit closer to one of my favourite women in history.
Elevated by that
great queen, Fontevraud became one of the most powerful abbeys in France and a home to a long line of rich and powerful women. It was the abbey of choice for an illustrious line of royal daughters (both legitimate and not) who conducted influential careers from this religious power base.
Typical of me, however, I had lost interest with the modern age. So I missed the fact that the religious order had been kicked out at the revolution and had not returned. The buildings were gutted and put to civil use. Five floors had been inserted into the great abbey church and the whole complex turned into a prison in which the incarcerated worked as factory labourers. It wasn't restored and opened to the public as a historic site until 1985. The church restoration wasn't complete until 2006. Part of the complex has been turned into a hotel and conference centre.
All of which means that there's not much to see. The church is a mostly-featureless white box with clear glass windows. The four surviving Angevin tomb figures (Eleanor and Henry II, their son Richard "the Lionheart" and their son John's wife Isabella of Angouleme) sit on modern plinths in the middle of the nave; their reproductions in London, lying in filtered light amongst copies of Northern Europe's greatest architecture, are arguably more dramatic. The cloisters and their garden are pretty, but unremarkable. An impressive beehive-style cloister kitchen is unrestored and not open to the public. The most interesting site is probably the chapter house, where the stations of the cross are painted in lunettes with high-ranking nuns of the time included in the action. Some are at quiet prayer, but others look directly at you. Obviously intelligent, witty and formidable ladies, I would have liked to have known more about them but explanatory materials stuck to the art.
These drawbacks don't deter the French, who have an admirable skill at mixing the historic and the modern (I give you the Louvre pyramid) and at using technology to make something more than it is. In the church, you can "draw" scenes on a computer screen and then project them into a frame of gothic arches to replace the long-gone wall paintings. There's a fascinating exhibit in the cloisters exploring power in organisation and architecture, comparing the days of the abbey to those of the prison. As at Chaumont, they've added modern art installations throughout. The light sculpture in what was the nuns' dormitory is striking, though I wonder if the artist meant to make the room look like a chill-out lounge at a high end spa?
Musée des Blindés - Saumur
In an unimpressive series of old industrial buildings in suburban Saumur you'll find the world's largest collection of armoured fighting vehicles. More than 880.
There's plenty in this world I'd happy to explore in that quantity. Old Master paintings. Boulle furniture. Herbaceous perennials. Cooking ingredients. I'd even go for historic arms and armour (as I have happily in Vienna and at London's Wallace Collection.) But modern tanks and their cousins would have never seen my footfall had it not been for my husband. Who was happier than the proverbial kid in a candy shop. I, on the other hand, had the salutary experience of understanding how my husband feels when he's been persuaded to accompany me on a garden visit.
Even the uninterested will admit this is an impressive collection, especially of the WWII stuff. That's because many of the machines could be dragged in from the surrounding fields where they had been abandoned. It's a sobering reminder of how the pastoral paradise outside was once a horrific battleground. I liked the WWII photos of the tanks as they were found displayed next to the real thing. I also appreciated the dioramas that put the tanks in contemporary scenes, and a handful of displays that talked about the people involved.
But there wasn't nearly enough of this kind of thing for the casual observer. This is a resolutely old-style museum, with rooms of machines in their serried ranks, identified with technical specifications on labels beside them. The first room gives the early history of the tank in Europe. After that, each country gets its own section for armoured vehicles from WWII to the present. My husband says the German collection is particularly impressive. The real machine geek can even linger in a hall of engines. Lord help us. There is a hall of WWII luminaries, where awkward wax figures try to expand the story, but neither the style of display nor the information provided are very successful.
Bottom line: if you're mad about tanks or WWII, this is heaven. But the museum needs to do a lot more to make it an interesting and enjoyable experience for the less enthusiastic visitor.
Musée Poire Tapée - Rivarennes
By the 1980s, just one very old lady named Leontine Guillon maintained the traditions: briefly poach the pears, peel them, seal them for two days into a pre-heated bread oven, then smash each flat with a custom-designed wooden press. In 1987, a group of locals decided to try to revive production as a hobby. It caught on. Thirty years later, they've replaced the bread ovens with commercial machines but the rest of the process is the same. Rivarennes now markets itself as the regional capital of the pressed pear, with seemingly every farm in the village advertising them for sale.
Even the uninterested will admit this is an impressive collection, especially of the WWII stuff. That's because many of the machines could be dragged in from the surrounding fields where they had been abandoned. It's a sobering reminder of how the pastoral paradise outside was once a horrific battleground. I liked the WWII photos of the tanks as they were found displayed next to the real thing. I also appreciated the dioramas that put the tanks in contemporary scenes, and a handful of displays that talked about the people involved.
But there wasn't nearly enough of this kind of thing for the casual observer. This is a resolutely old-style museum, with rooms of machines in their serried ranks, identified with technical specifications on labels beside them. The first room gives the early history of the tank in Europe. After that, each country gets its own section for armoured vehicles from WWII to the present. My husband says the German collection is particularly impressive. The real machine geek can even linger in a hall of engines. Lord help us. There is a hall of WWII luminaries, where awkward wax figures try to expand the story, but neither the style of display nor the information provided are very successful.
Bottom line: if you're mad about tanks or WWII, this is heaven. But the museum needs to do a lot more to make it an interesting and enjoyable experience for the less enthusiastic visitor.
Musée Poire Tapée - Rivarennes
This is an impressive story of a tiny village re-connecting with its history to create a tourist attraction.
In addition to vineyards, the Loire is thick with apple and pear orchards. Until the 1930s, that meant it was also a renown centre of dried fruit production ... one of the main ways to preserve and market those crops before the advent of refrigeration and long-distance distribution. With the modern age came a rapid collapse of the dried fruit industry. Within a generation, the village's status as a prosperous, esteemed provider to luxury grocers around the world disappeared.
By the 1980s, just one very old lady named Leontine Guillon maintained the traditions: briefly poach the pears, peel them, seal them for two days into a pre-heated bread oven, then smash each flat with a custom-designed wooden press. In 1987, a group of locals decided to try to revive production as a hobby. It caught on. Thirty years later, they've replaced the bread ovens with commercial machines but the rest of the process is the same. Rivarennes now markets itself as the regional capital of the pressed pear, with seemingly every farm in the village advertising them for sale.
At the village's heart you'll find a one-room museum which is essentially a marketing centre for all the producers of the village. There's not a great deal to see ... a short video, a collection of wooden presses, packaging from the industry's 19th century heyday and some posters explaining the process and the pear varieties used (Curé, Japoule, Queue de Rat, Colmar). Admission is free, but you'll want to spend the 3.25 euro for a tasting to complete your visit. Mine included bites of dried Colmar and Japoule to compare the difference between varieties, dried pear puree and a whole dried pear re-hydrated with sweet wine. The last, if served on a pool of custard with a few biscuits, would be a delicious dessert on its own. Rivarennes' pressed pears are recommended not just for sweet dishes, but considered a perfect accompaniment to duck and game. You can, of course, buy the pears here. They're slightly cheaper than in gourmet shops around the region, though still premium priced ... as you'd expect from a product that's both rare, and entirely hand-made.
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