Abbaye de Fontevraud

Our first major stop after leaving Angers was the Abbeye de Fontevraud, a 12th century abbey, hospital, church, and in the 19th and 20th centuries, a state prison. It is most famous as the final resting place for the Plantagenets, Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Richard the Lion Heart.

Entrance to Fontevraud, quite a large complex, founded in
the 11th

The church, 12th century

Interior; quite large; surprisingly bright for the paucity of
windows; Plantagenet style; not way high

Richard the Lion Heart, Henry and Eleanor's famous son;
next to him the wife of one of his younger brothers whose
name I did not quite catch

Eleanor and Henry 

Interestingly, Eleanor is resting a good half foot higher than
Henry; well, she presided over Fontevraud in her later years,
and designed the tombs herself; she and Henry loathed each
other, yet managed to have four sons; perhaps she's higher
because she was both queen of England and before that
queen of France (it's a long story); she was certainly one
of the leading figures of the age; he is remembered chiefly
for having Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, murdered;
this latter has at least given rise to great literature and a great
movie, of special meaning to us

Apse and altar

Exterior; bow

In one of the halls of the huge cloister

Fontevraud is unique in being the only French abbey with
a roller coaster in the cloister; seriously, this is what I mean
by filling up empty space with contemporary art, and
sometimes it does not work; a few manicured shrubs, flowers,
and a fountain, even a religious sculpture, would have
worked for me; instead you have this ugly wooden thing,
the only point of which is to allow you to better view the
featureless walls, windows, and roofing

Nice Green Man in a hall off the cloister

The abbey dorm area is another case in point, but this time,
I think, it does work; it's a huge empty area; the art work is
a very long row of red neon lights hanging down,
accompanied by tinkly chimey music that wisps through
sort of randomly; on the floor are padded little coffins
(Vicki says they are boats), where you can rest and take it
all in and experience the art and perhaps try to imagine what
it must have been like to have been an inmate here...

So there I am, experiencing the reddish gloom
and the irksome tinkling, trying to imagine
what it must be like to be an actor in a
vampire movie; we were there a good 15
minutes and absolutely no one else tried the
boat/coffin experience

The Refectory; said to be one of the largest of Medieval
secular buildings; no comparison, IMHO, with the Hospital
St. Jean in Angers

The great, octagonal, wondersome kitchen at
Fontevraud, one of its best sights, and
perhaps the best surviving example of such
a mass kitchen

Inside the kitchen, looking up to the central
and (count 'em) sixteen other chimneys