À Vouvant, en Vendée

In 2018, Walt, Tasha, and I took a car trip to the Vendée, an old province on France's Atlantic coast, just south of the mouth of the Loire river. One of the places we went to see is the 11th century village of Vouvant (pop. 850). We were staying in a gîte in the nearby town of Fontenay-le-Comte, which is a three-hour drive from Saint-Aignan.

One of the landmarks in Vouvant is, of course, its church, Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption. It was built in the 11th and 12th centuries, and like most of these old monuments in France, it continued to be modified, repaired, and maintained over the next five or six centuries.

The lower part of the church's north portal is Romanesque (12th century).

The upper part was added in the 15th century and is decorated with Gothic-style sculptures.The upper row depicts the apostles witnessing the ascension of Jesus into Heaven. The bottom row represents The Last Supper — closer view below.