Angers Day 3 - Fontevraud Abbey
Today I ventured down the Loire Valley to visit Fontevraud Abbey, a journey that should have taken an hour but took three due to me being misinformed at the Angers tourist office. Annoyingly I did think last night that my bus timetable said the bus was only at the weekend but I stupidly assumed the woman in the tourist office would know better than me!
Here is Saumur, where I was briefly stranded.
And here is my triumphant arrival at Fontevraud, the sign is possibly not historically accurate.
The abbey is most famous outside France (where it is famous for being a prison from the Revolution to the mid 20thc) for being the burial site of Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine and their son Richard the Lion Heart. Here comes the educational bit! It is their resting place somewhat by chance. Henry II had another tomb spot picked out but due to the circumstances of his death (in the middle of a war with Richard and Phillip) his entourage had little option but to bury him at nearby Fontevraud when he died at Chinon. Richard then asked to be buried at the feet of his father as an act of contrition on his own deathbed. Eleanor in turn asked to be buried with Richard. Which she originally was, the placing of her effigy with Henry is modern.
You wouldn't know this from any of the information provided at the site itself. The information is shockingly poor and what is on offer isn't entirely accurate and I'm talking basic facts such names. The English language books in the gift shop are god awful historical romances, not history books.
Despite this gripe the site is stunningly beautiful and peaceful. The light is amazing.
And it's amazing to think of the history the walls there have seen. King John playing as a child while he lived there with his sister Joanna, who would later also die there in childbirth. Richard arriving to see his father for the final time, laid out in state and of course Eleanor, who spent her final years there, with the graves of her husband, son and daughter, having finally left the stage and the Plantagenet empire's days numbered as Phillip Augustus finally avenged his father's humiliations and forged modern France.
Anyways here they are, together, forever, it's probably their idea of hell. :p The fourth figure is John's wife Isabelle, mother of Henry III.
The spirit of lions still prowls the grounds though.
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