Cunault

Angers is about half an hour from Saumur. Between the two towns were two very famous abbeys: Cunault and Fontevrault. So it seemed possible to see all three places in the same day.


After a quick coffee and croissant at a nearby cafe, I left Angers under somewhat cloudy skies. I followed the Loire river and the bridge that crossed it and led upstream to Cunault, a short distance away.


The single road from the Loire led directly to a tiny hamlet. The enormous mass of the abbey church rose as I approached; if there were homes nearby, most were invisible from the church.

A romanesque arch in the center of the west entrance framed a simple carving over a wooden door; it was austere. The bell tower rose over the north entrance, framed by a roman arches surmounted by a series of three asymmetrical rows of narrow arches, each one set further back leading to the conical roof. It was beautiful.








When I entered the church I was at the top of several steps. There was a clear view of a barrel-vaulted nave formed by arches rested on towering doubled columns. Charcoal bands of color were visible halfway up the columns on separating the nave from the south aisle. Some turned out to be coats of arms or images of saints; other just traces of paint.

The glory of the church is an astonishing profusion of Romanesque art on the capitals. I was blown away. The last time I had seen such a richly decorated interior was at Autun in Burgundy three years ago (and on another trip long ago. The most celebrated passages in the Bible (here Cain and Abel) were sculpted on the four sides of each capital, almost too high to see, but still recognizable. I followed an outstanding guidebook that described each of the scenes on the capitals.

There was a lot to see. Photographs taken of the nave at the summer solstice show that the axis of the church corresponds to the path of the sunset on that day. Other panels explained the technique of the paint used in the church and on the pillars. A gorgeous painted wood box with a procession of saints and angels carved all around it, supposedly contained the bones of St. Maxenceul who evangelized the region in the 4th century.

I wished I had had binoculars; then, I could have stayed there for hours. At one point I saw a pile of white flowers near the entrance; then I saw two women artfully wrapping white roses at the ends of the rows. I asked if there would be a wedding and was told it was scheduled for 3 pm. I would have liked to wait, but I was looking forward to Saumur, a few miles further along the Loire, and this would be the only day to go there.



SAUMUR

The Chateau of Saumur appeared as in a storybook - on top of a hill. Just then, the sun came out and I took advantage of the moment to capture the vision.

The inside of the chateau is being renovated, but the exterior and the exhibits in someof the renovated parts of the chateau were fascinating enough. The view over the Loire from the terrace was breathtaking. I took a lot of photos as the sun lit some parts of the chateau.

I still had time to go to Fontevrault, but not enough time to take the entire tour. The Abbey closed at 6, but visitors were not chased away from the grounds if they lingered, so I visited the church and the abbey kitchens: the church which housed the tombstones of Eleanor of Aquitaine (@1122-1204) and her second husband, Henri II; their son, Richard the Lionhearted, and their daughter-in-law Isabelle of Angouleme, the wife of their youngest son, Jean sans Terre. Eleanor retreated to the Abbey of Fontevrault in 1200 and died in 1204 in Poitiers.