Looking for churches and other France adventures.
Posted in Ardeche - Churches on Apr 14th, 2008
One of the most astonishing adventures we have had on the Romanesque Church Hunt has been an unforgettable tour of the Cathedral of Cruas in 2007. Befriended by a erudite retired professer and a tourism office employee, we receive a magnificent tour of the edifice when we thought we had arrived too late to [...]
Posted in Ardeche - Churches, Church Previews on Apr 5th, 2008
Southwest of our location in Ardeche is Les Vans, a village at the center of a region with some quite interesting churches. Here is where the land becomes mountain and valley. The gem of this region of interesting churches is Thines, whose magnificent Romanesque church is considered to combine perfectly the elements [...]
Posted in Ardeche - Churches, Church Previews on Mar 31st, 2008
I’ve been trying to find some photos on the web of churches in Ardeche within driving distance and it’s quite difficult. Many of the communes only have rudimentary sites listing services and not much on their fabulous Romanesque landmarks.
St Martin’s is a Romanesque era church and Benedictine priory that was rebuilt in the 19th century. [...]
Posted in Ardeche - Churches, Ardeche - Other Points of Interest on Mar 23rd, 2008
One of our group reports that a colleague will be spending time in France this summer looking for ‘Black Madonnas’.
My curiosity was piqued, since we had seen several of these Black Madonnas on our travels. I wondered the most basic of questions: What are the Black Madonnas? Why are they black? [...]
Posted in Ardeche - Churches on Feb 3rd, 2008
After a bit of research, I was able to pinpoint this lovely Romanesque ensemble that we saw two years ago that I mentioned in yesterday’s post. The group is located in the village of Saint-Thomé. There is a wonderful website by the village of Saint-Thome at http://www.saint-thome.fr
The two churches, located in this charming [...]
Posted in Ardeche - Churches on Feb 2nd, 2008
This beautiful church below is accompanied by a small chapel less than 50 yards away. I took this photo 2 years ago and it’s a mystery only because I have not remembered the name of this dynamic duo of Romanesque landmarks.
What I do remember–the day was sunny, but cool. The type of day when [...]
Posted in Ardeche - Churches on Jan 31st, 2008
I mentioned earlier that our destination this June will be the beautiful and wild Ardeche region of France. We have visited there twice before and the number of Romanesque churches to be explored is endless.
This post will go back to our trip in 2006 going to the perched ancient village of Rochecolombe in central Ardeche. Our friend had told us about this village and as we approached we could see the tip-top of the church, but no apparent means of getting there.
Posted in Ardeche - Churches, Dolmens & Other Archeological Tidbits on May 16th, 2007
This little town seems to have two Romanesque structures, a chapel and a church. There’s also an archeological museum.
Local archeological museums can be very interesting places to visit. Besides the ‘finds’ from the area, they often contain town folkloric articles, history of the village items, science projects and stuffed animals and who knows what [...]