Le_Mans

Le Mans - Cité Plantagenêt

(Capital of Maine)

Links to: Cathédrale St-Julien History of the Cathédrale St-Julien Cistercian Royal Abbey of l'Épau

Link to Maps of the Pilgrimage Roads of France

Link to: The Norman, Angevin and Plantagenet Monarchs of England and the Age of the Crusades

As Miss P (that's the generic name for the Dom's Peugeot leased station wagons) and Team Paradox drove into the centre of Le Mans in mid September 2007, we agreed that it showed all the signs of having risen in a very ordinary way out of the ashes of bad WW II damage. Surprise then to find that the guide book says that the city escaped World War damage, and so the town centre is all their own work. Mind you, guide books are not always right are they ........

Le Mans calls itself the "Cité Plantagenêt". Plantagenêt founder Geoffrey, Count of Anjou and husband of Henry I's daughter Matilda (that was a family christian name shared with her mum and grandmum - the wife of William the Conqueror), was born in what is today the Hotel de Ville.

Geoffrey's tomb is said to be in the cathedral, though there is no signage there to identify it and the priest we asked did not know where it was. The Limoges enamelled image of a broomless Geoffrey on the left was linked to his tomb, but is now in the Le Mans Municipal Museum. We discovered nothing else Plantagenêt in our day of wandering the old town.

Of course Le Mans should really call itself the "Cité de la Voiture", and one imagines that this connection attracts far more visitors than the old town or the monica Plantagenêt ever will.

Old Le Mans is on a high, slabby and uninteresting retaining-walled (the biggest retaining wall in the blah blah) long sloping hill beside the Sarthe river, with the interesting Romanesque (west half) / Gothic (east half) Cathédral St-Julien at the top, sitting in the middle of a huge area devoid of cafés, restaurants, shops and humanity.

The old town was partially deserted and falling down until recently when a lot of work was put into renovations (but not into the replacement of rough cobble surfaces which are a pain to walk on), as a result of which there are several attractive half timbered buildings, but little atmosphere and very few people - especially as you climb further up the hill to the Cathédrale St-Julien.

This is the gothic east end of the cathedral. The chapel on the far right of the photo, at the extreme east end of the cathedral, is called the Lady or Chevet Chapel. The descriptors "chevet" and "apse" are both used in relation to "east ends" in French churches. The chapel contains some beautiful stained glass, and on its ceiling are the special reasons for visiting the Cathedral - frescos painted in the mid-1300s portraying 47 delicately beautiful "Musician Angels" - which have avoided the attention of most guide book writers.

More Photos from the Cathédrale St-Julien

History of the Cathédrale St-Julien

More Photos of the Old Town will appear here

The only thing worth seeing in the now suburban Le Mans Cistercian Royal Abbey of l'Épau, which in 2007 was surrounded by a nightmarish maze of roads closed and diverted for the construction of a new tramway, is this gisant of the sad Spanish Princess Berengaria, who had the gross misfortune to be married to the nasty King Richard I of England.

More Photos from the Cistercian Royal Abbey of l'Épau