Sunday, June 10, 2007

France - Angers

I will continue with my posts about my trip to France to see my son with what I consider the gem of the trip.

We had invited Matt to join us for the day. When Zac said we were heading to Angers to see a castle, I thought it was just an another old large residence. Boy was I wrong.
















After exiting the train station, we entered downtown Angers. A very modern city.

So you can imagine my surprise when we walked a few blocks and rounded a corner to see this. A 13th century castle.






















The castle has a "dry mote" as it is about 100 meters above the Maine River. The dry mote kept the enemy from carrying ladders up to the side of the wall.








This is the drawbridge that was used to cross the mote. I really didn't understand what all this meant until we went inside and took the tour.

A thought this was just a wall around a military encampment, like we have all seem in old western movies.
Upon entering, I came to realize this WAS the entire town of Angers.















There was a room with about a dozen models of the castle showing its different configurations over the years.























These are a few pictures of the buildings inside the wall (it ranged from about 110ft to 200 ft high).

























Inside the walls was a self-sustaining city. Fruit trees, vegetable garden, and herb gardens.








The castle overlooks the river to control its waterway.

3 comments:

Ellie said...

Wow! That is an awesome castle..it is a whole town! Thank you for sharing. I now wish to go there and see it for myself.

Blessings,

Ellie

Annie said...

This is just the setting for princess dreaming, I think. This is a female speaking. You might have been dreaming of soldiers in battle, right?

squire said...

I was thinking of all the atrocities that had happened at the castle.

 

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