Big castle

I swear there was no doctoring of this photo after the fact. Just point and shoot with my little disposable camera. I must be a natural or something

Roof

The Burgundy region of France, and maybe others, was never beset by the scourge of asphalt shingle. (I’m being dramatic, but you’ve got to admit asphalt is kind of bogus.) The French built with tile and slate, which lasts for a century or so. Plus, moss grows and the pigeons find little critters to eat…

Cormatin Castle

This fairy-tale castle sits in an unassuming town in southern Burgundy. It is surrounded by moat and acres of formal gardens. Insane pruning goes on in France. They even have a tower in the middle of the garden that is enclosed with mesh so the parakeets can fly around in side while you climb the stairs.

August 4, 2011

Getting down to the end of this vacation in France, and we are all beginning to turn our thoughts toward the U.S. and Milton, Mass.

Yesterday, we took our long-overdue trip to Dijon, by far the largest town we’ve visited on this trip. Dijon has a big-town feel, with a thoroughly modern urban sprawl on the outskirts (KFC anyone?) and an old section in the center of town that attracts all the tourists (like us).

Pictured above is a room in a palace that belonged to the Dukes of Burgundy. Pretty swanky! But the old section of Dijon also offered a dazzling array of pastry shops (pictured here), bread shops, etc. I swear I’ve gained 10 pounds in two weeks!

Also interesting to us were all the medieval carvings that adorned the buildings in the old part of town. These faces were everywhere on wood-framed buildings. And what I also find fascinating is that these monuments to antiquity — each at least two hundred years older than the oldest structures we have in the United States — are not assigned museum status, but rather are used for every kind of commercial enterprise you can think of, every day, with folks living on the top floors.

August 3, 2011

Here’s a well-kept secret about this town of Beaune: on nights when the weather is clear, several short films are projected on the facades of specific buildings and other architecture around town. The projectors are housed in these unassuming silver things that resemble ATMs.

The images are kept precisely within the outline of the building or wall, as you can see in the picture here, which is displayed on the front of a medieval tutor-styled building.

Each one is different. This one seems to be an introduction to Beaune, but others detail the changing seasons or the history of the cathedral here. Very cool. Everyone stops and watches for a moment then moves on. Just a little joi de vivre courtesy of the town.

We went to see a showing of three silent films last night. They were housed in an old barn (timbers shown here) and the movies were accompanied by solo pianist.

Unlike the overpriced restaurant we stumbled into off the main square in Beaune (full of Americans), this event was attended mostly by French people. And how French it was: Silent movies of Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, and Harry Lloyd. Who else is trying to preserve that little slice of film history?

The kids loved the movies, by the way. Laughed right along and didn’t miss a beat. Tiny snippet here. Excuse the shaky cam and the brevity and the sideways view; the phone was bright, and I didn’t want to tick off the French!

Charlie Chaplin intro

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August 1, 2011

We went to visit the Abbaye de Fontenay yesterday. The drive was pure Burgundy: white cows, green rolling hills, and picturesque stone villages.

The abbey is 1000 years old and was founded by St. Bernard. It thrived until the French Revolution, when, as usual, all hell broke loose. Before long it was a paper mill.

As is typical of these historic buildings throughout France, this one was taken on by a forward-thinking benefactor and restored to its original condition, which is stunning.

The grounds are so severely pruned and picked over that not a pebble is out of place. With my own backyard labors as a benchmark, I’d say it takes no fewer than a dozen people to keep this place looking so pristine.

Alas, the religious history was lost on me, but I loved the grounds.

July 30, 2011

Here’s a thing I learned about castles and French history while exploring the Chateau Du Rochepot (pictured here), which belonged to the Duke of Burgundy in the 1700s:

During the revolution (1789), if you were an aristocrat like the Duke of Burgundy, you got out of dodge as fast as you could, and you didn’t look back. Mobs roamed the countryside and looted/destroyed many of these abandoned castles. This particular castle lost its keep, the largest tower, when a mob pulled it down over the side of the cliff.

Many townspeople incorporated architectural elements from the looted castles into their much more modest homes. So you might see an unassuming cottage with an insanely ornate window.

Beginning around 1799, after a decade of looting, the new French government seized all these abandoned estates and, to raise money, sold them to demolition companies, which extracted timber and stone and what not. Piece by piece, a good number of France’s castles were dismantled around Napoleon’s time.

Estates that were spared typically belonged to someone who either flew under the radar (as opposed to the Duke of Burgundy) or who was notably kind to the local folk prior to the revolution (apparently, the castle Chananceau was saved that way).

The Duke’s castle pictured here was restored beginning in the 1870s. It took about 25 years. It took two full years just to re-excavate the 72-foot well!

That’s all for today’s history lesson. There will be a quiz tomorrow.