Entry tags:
Rouen
Got up sorta-early, had breakfast in our room, took the subway to the train station, and took the train an hour and a half (non-stop) to Rouen, in Normandy.
The closest tourist sight to the train station is the Donjon, a 13th-century round tower that is all that remains of the castle where Jean Darc was imprisoned for a while (months?). The lower 2/3 of the tower is well-preserved, and the top third has been reconstructed, including a pointed roof similar to what it probably had in the 13th-15th centuries (it was replaced in the 16th with a flat roof on which they could mount cannons).
The interior, as the guy at the desk hastened to point out, is not medieval: we don't really know what it looked like in the Middle Ages, but it was repurposed as a German garrison in WWII, and we know pretty accurately what that looked like. The current set-dressing includes occasional bits of 15th-century armor next to 1940's German military uniforms, German typewriters, and printed propaganda. It's open to the public only on weekends; during the week it's an "escape room".
The Musée des Antiquities and the Musée du Ceramique are both closed for renovations, so we skipped them. The Musée des Beaux Arts is open, but we didn't prioritize it.
Our next stop was the Place du Vieux Marché, with a tall cross on the alleged spot where Jean Darc was burned for heresy. The square is surrounded by restaurants, including one claiming to be the oldest in France (operating since 13something). Much of the square is taken up by l'Eglise Sainte Jean d'Arc, built in a swooping, modernist style in 1979 but incorporating a bunch of 16th-century stained-glass windows from a previous church destroyed in WWII. Adjacent to it are the ruins of the Eglise Sant-Sauveur. You can see the floor plan of a classic European Catholic church, with apparent remnants of buttresses, but nothing is more than about a foot above ground.
We walked onward to the Gros Horloge, a 14th-century clock embedded in a Renaissance arch over the middle of the street, and then on to the Cathedral, which is breathtaking despite the substantial weather-and-pollution damage to the stones on the facade over the centuries. Walked around the interior for a while, where we saw four funerary effigies: one for Rollo, the Viking warlord who came to Normandy, liked it, stayed, and founded the Duchy of Normandy; one for his son William the Long, called the Sword of Normandy; one for Henry the Young King, who was crowned King of England, Duke of Normandy, etc. at the age of 15 but whose father Henry II never gave him any actual power; and one for the heart of Richard Coeurdelion (whose body is buried in Anjou). There's reason to believe all those remains are actually there, although the funerary effigies are much more recent.
One of the visually striking things about Rouen is the enormous number of half-timbered buildings, many of whose first floors (second floors, in American terminology) have larger footprints than their ground floors. And since the owners of all these half-timbered buildings have proudly painted the timbers in contrasting colors (indeed, in some cases they've painted timbers in contrasting colors onto walls that were never half-timbered at all), you can see just how far out of true the walls and floors have grown over the centuries. It must be a real challenge arranging furniture in one of these buildings.
Anyway, on one of the narrow streets, lined with half-timbered buildings, behind the Cathedral is the Historial Jean d'Arc, which is less a museum than a multi-media presentation about the Maid of Orleans. They've centered the presentation around the 1456 trial that revisited her 1431 trial, overturned its conclusions, and declared her innocent post mortem. The narrator portrays the chief judge and inquisitor in the 1456 trial, interviewing a variety of witnesses to Jean's childhood, her two years of military action, and her first trial. It's a lot of material to cover, taking over an hour, so (presumably to push tourists through with greater bandwidth) they've pipelined it, with each "scene" of the rehabilitation trial taking place in a different room. In the last room or two they point out how every French political movement since the 15th century, left right or other, has claimed Jean d'Arc for itself, including both the Nazi-imposed Vichy government of WWII (which was, after all, defending France from yet another attack by the English) and its opponents (who pointed out that Vichy, like the French authorities who condemned Joan, were effectively puppets of a foreign occupation force).
She really didn't do anything particularly "saintly", as far as I can tell: she was a charismatic leader who joined the nationalistic resistance against an occupation (which technically had law on its side, since the previous King of France had agreed in writing that the Crown of France would go to the offspring of the union of Henry V and Catherine of Valois), achieved some military victories, and was captured. IIRC, she was initially captured by the Burgundians (allied with the English), sold to the English, and handed over to the local French authorities (variously civil and ecclesiastical) who were presumably under a lot of pressure from the English occupiers to make an example of her. 25 years later, with the English kicked out, the authorities were presumably under equally much pressure to rehabilitate the girl who had helped put the current King on the throne, particularly since she was conveniently dead and wouldn't cause any trouble.
Anyway, from there, we found a gelateria, had some lovely gelato, then visited the Eglise Saint-Maclou, which had closed a few minutes before but was striking from the outside. Next, the huge Abbey Church of Saint-Ouen, of which we couldn't see much of the interior because an organ concert was going on. Most of the Abbey buildings were leveled in the 17th or 18th centuries, one of them was renovated in Baroque style and became the Hôtel de Ville, and only the church building itself remains. We walked around the abbey gardens for a few minutes, then grabbed a quick Thai dinner and walked to the train station to catch our train back to Paris.
Google Fit says I (and presumably![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shalmestere) did about 16,500 steps today. Whew.
The closest tourist sight to the train station is the Donjon, a 13th-century round tower that is all that remains of the castle where Jean Darc was imprisoned for a while (months?). The lower 2/3 of the tower is well-preserved, and the top third has been reconstructed, including a pointed roof similar to what it probably had in the 13th-15th centuries (it was replaced in the 16th with a flat roof on which they could mount cannons).
The interior, as the guy at the desk hastened to point out, is not medieval: we don't really know what it looked like in the Middle Ages, but it was repurposed as a German garrison in WWII, and we know pretty accurately what that looked like. The current set-dressing includes occasional bits of 15th-century armor next to 1940's German military uniforms, German typewriters, and printed propaganda. It's open to the public only on weekends; during the week it's an "escape room".
The Musée des Antiquities and the Musée du Ceramique are both closed for renovations, so we skipped them. The Musée des Beaux Arts is open, but we didn't prioritize it.
Our next stop was the Place du Vieux Marché, with a tall cross on the alleged spot where Jean Darc was burned for heresy. The square is surrounded by restaurants, including one claiming to be the oldest in France (operating since 13something). Much of the square is taken up by l'Eglise Sainte Jean d'Arc, built in a swooping, modernist style in 1979 but incorporating a bunch of 16th-century stained-glass windows from a previous church destroyed in WWII. Adjacent to it are the ruins of the Eglise Sant-Sauveur. You can see the floor plan of a classic European Catholic church, with apparent remnants of buttresses, but nothing is more than about a foot above ground.
We walked onward to the Gros Horloge, a 14th-century clock embedded in a Renaissance arch over the middle of the street, and then on to the Cathedral, which is breathtaking despite the substantial weather-and-pollution damage to the stones on the facade over the centuries. Walked around the interior for a while, where we saw four funerary effigies: one for Rollo, the Viking warlord who came to Normandy, liked it, stayed, and founded the Duchy of Normandy; one for his son William the Long, called the Sword of Normandy; one for Henry the Young King, who was crowned King of England, Duke of Normandy, etc. at the age of 15 but whose father Henry II never gave him any actual power; and one for the heart of Richard Coeurdelion (whose body is buried in Anjou). There's reason to believe all those remains are actually there, although the funerary effigies are much more recent.
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One of the visually striking things about Rouen is the enormous number of half-timbered buildings, many of whose first floors (second floors, in American terminology) have larger footprints than their ground floors. And since the owners of all these half-timbered buildings have proudly painted the timbers in contrasting colors (indeed, in some cases they've painted timbers in contrasting colors onto walls that were never half-timbered at all), you can see just how far out of true the walls and floors have grown over the centuries. It must be a real challenge arranging furniture in one of these buildings.
Anyway, on one of the narrow streets, lined with half-timbered buildings, behind the Cathedral is the Historial Jean d'Arc, which is less a museum than a multi-media presentation about the Maid of Orleans. They've centered the presentation around the 1456 trial that revisited her 1431 trial, overturned its conclusions, and declared her innocent post mortem. The narrator portrays the chief judge and inquisitor in the 1456 trial, interviewing a variety of witnesses to Jean's childhood, her two years of military action, and her first trial. It's a lot of material to cover, taking over an hour, so (presumably to push tourists through with greater bandwidth) they've pipelined it, with each "scene" of the rehabilitation trial taking place in a different room. In the last room or two they point out how every French political movement since the 15th century, left right or other, has claimed Jean d'Arc for itself, including both the Nazi-imposed Vichy government of WWII (which was, after all, defending France from yet another attack by the English) and its opponents (who pointed out that Vichy, like the French authorities who condemned Joan, were effectively puppets of a foreign occupation force).
She really didn't do anything particularly "saintly", as far as I can tell: she was a charismatic leader who joined the nationalistic resistance against an occupation (which technically had law on its side, since the previous King of France had agreed in writing that the Crown of France would go to the offspring of the union of Henry V and Catherine of Valois), achieved some military victories, and was captured. IIRC, she was initially captured by the Burgundians (allied with the English), sold to the English, and handed over to the local French authorities (variously civil and ecclesiastical) who were presumably under a lot of pressure from the English occupiers to make an example of her. 25 years later, with the English kicked out, the authorities were presumably under equally much pressure to rehabilitate the girl who had helped put the current King on the throne, particularly since she was conveniently dead and wouldn't cause any trouble.
Anyway, from there, we found a gelateria, had some lovely gelato, then visited the Eglise Saint-Maclou, which had closed a few minutes before but was striking from the outside. Next, the huge Abbey Church of Saint-Ouen, of which we couldn't see much of the interior because an organ concert was going on. Most of the Abbey buildings were leveled in the 17th or 18th centuries, one of them was renovated in Baroque style and became the Hôtel de Ville, and only the church building itself remains. We walked around the abbey gardens for a few minutes, then grabbed a quick Thai dinner and walked to the train station to catch our train back to Paris.
Google Fit says I (and presumably
shalmestere) did about 16,500 steps today. Whew.