Just 6 or 7 miles southeast of Saint-Aignan stand the ruins of the medieval château-fort and village called Villentrois (pop. 600). The fortress was built by Fulk III (Foulques Nerra in French), a powerful count of Anjou (b. 970–d. 1040) who spent his life fortifying his territory. Villetrois was the easternmost fortification he built, but he built many others, including at nearby Saint-Aignan (on the far right in my blog banner photo above), Montrichard, and Loches. I'd like to know the origin of the name Villetrois, but so far I have found that information. The old town itself is made up not of three but two bourgs (neighborhoods, in this case. One grew up around the old church, and the other at the base of the château-fort.
This is a view from the road as I drove through Villentrois. We usually go through the town on our way to Valençay, which is just 3 or 4 miles farther east.
I took these photos of an old pump and a millstone down at the base of the fortress when I stopped there one day.
This is a mighty fortress. That tower looks enormous.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy so much this revisiting of places where we’ve been together and that I’ll never see again. Thank you.
CHM, you might enjoy the Monumentum site's article about Villentrois.
DeleteAnd also this person's web site, with lots of photos.
DeleteThanks for the links.
DeleteEven in its ruined state the fortress is very impressive and the pump is very interesting.
ReplyDeletePertaining to yesterday, you never know when you might need 400 cds! ;)
ReplyDeleteOnly if they were certificates of deposit.... What can we do with all those music CDs? About half are French and the other half American. When we left San Francisco, I had to get rid of about 400 vinyl LPs. I packed a lot of them in the trunk of my car and drove around the city from used record store to used record store. Hardly anybody wanted them. They said I didn't have anything rare or valuable, and they were right. I'm sure it's the same with the CDs.
DeleteI am a papercrafter/stamper, and many others have suggested using the empty plastic cd/dvd containers to house and store simply our stamps. The prices on amazon for those empty containers lead me to believe you would have a place to at least get rid of them by placing a simple notice on a local website??? Here, there is one called Marketplace that is on Facebook Just an idea.
DeleteIt would be such fun to be right in the middle of all these historic medièvale sites! Very sturdy fortress, indeed!
There's a lot of nostalgia in these photos. Someone I know had a millstone stolen recently. I haven't heard of anyone stealing cd's lol, so you have nothing to worry about with that stash of yours.
ReplyDeleteFoulques Nerra! I didn't realize that he had built a donjon in Saint Aignan! I don't think I saw that one.
ReplyDeleteKen, have you ever read the book by Ina Caro, The Road From the Past: Traveling Through History In France? That's where I first learned about Foulques Nerra. Caro sets up a route to travel around France visiting places in chronological order of when they came into being. So, she starts down in Orange, and works her way around France, stopping in towns with early medieval interesting monuments and history, then later medieval, then Renaissance, etc. She has interesting historic stories for each place (which is each chapter). I loved this book. I have my students read the chapter on Montrichard. Caro also wrote Paris To The Past: Traveling Through French History By Train, which focuses on day trips from Paris (some are, in my opinion, much too far for both the trip and the visit in one day, but the places are good).
I've heard of those books but I haven't read them.
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