Tuesday 22 April 2014

Visit to Angers

15.04.14

We went to Angers the weekend before Easter. This was primarily to visit the Musee Jean Lurcat and the Museum of Contemporary Tapestry, as well as getting to see the medieval tapestry of the Apocalypse that hangs in the Angers castle. Here I will show a few of the pictures I took walking around the old city centre.

To get there we flew to Charles de Gaulle airport and the took the train from there to Angers. The airport and the connecting railway station are new, and the station had interesting angles and surfaces to it:


 
 
 

On the first evening we went for a stroll to get a feel for the city. It is a fairly compact city centre, as old towns are. Being in France you occasionally come across some interesting modern design feature, like a door handle like this -

 
 

 
 
 
The city is medieval and there are views of the old fortress castle across the river Maine. The fortress itself is very photogenic, with French formal gardens in the moat.
 
 

The tapestry of the Apocalypse has a small introductory room that presents the technique of tapestry weaving and samples for visitors to feel. The tapestry itself is an amazing thing - huge and vast, it is a bit of a visual narrative of the Apocalypse according to St John, with beasts and virgins, sinners and angels - all you need for a medieval tale of good versus evil and Devine judgement.



The next couple of pictures are from  our hotel room. There was some interesting wall covering, pretending to be fabric, and shadows, yet being a print, likely digital with a single repeat  moving up and down, first one way up then flipped.


The view from my place on the bed - real shadows.


More pictures from the city



There is a great cathedral in the middle of the city. We visited it at lunchtime and had a fantastic experience as the organist was practicing playing a hugely loud modern sounding piece. The organ took up three-quarters of the end of the church and the volume was all-encompassing. An all-enveloping experience that set your whole body into a thrill with the vibration of the sound, brilliant.





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