Pages

Showing posts with label Angers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Angers. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 18, 2018

Touring Angers (France): Viewing the Famous Apocalypse Tapestry with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Touring Angers (France):  Viewing the Famous Apocalypse Tapestry with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget



One day while on the way to celebrate Easter at my in-laws home in Nantes, my husband Laurent and I stopped at the Château d’Angers to go on the tour and view the Apocalypse Tapestry.

We climbed the massive black-and-white striped towers of the Château and admired the gardens at the foot of the tower as well as the Maine River, a tributary of the Loire River below us.

The main item I wanted to see at the Angers Château was the Apocalypse Tapestry.  The tapestry was made for Louis 1st – the Duke of Anjou following patterns made by Hennequin de Bruges between 1373 and 1383.   76 squares form the ensemble.

The guide told us that the tapestry symbolically transmits the original Greek meaning of the word “revelation.”

The guide was referring to the passing from an Old World to a New One.  The New World is represented by a heavenly Jerusalem versus the whore’s town of Babylon as it was referred to in the Bible.

I liked the scene where the Archangel Michael bested the demons in combat:  you could not go to the New Jerusalem with demons in tow.

We walked around town and then went to the grocery store to buy some Easter gifts for the family:

-Quarts de Chaume wine, which is like a Sauternes from Bordeaux, but produced in the Anjou region

-A huge chocolate bell

Bells are the symbol of Easter in Western France not bunnies as in Eastern France, which has German influence

-Foil-covered Chocolate Eggs

-A large, mauve colored Hortensia for the garden

Everything went in the air-conditioned car to go to the French grandparents’ home for Easter.

The next day my French father-in-law tied chocolate eggs to the bushes like Germans do and hid the other chocolate goodies in the garden.

Florence scampered around with her Easter basket and squealed, “Chocolat” as she found some more Easter booty.  We took photos for her American grandmother to put in her company newsletter’s “Cute Grandkids” column.

We went inside and ate roast leg of lamb, green lentils from Puy, steamed potatoes with chopped parsley and garlic on them, and a Bordeaux Haut-Médoc red.  Desserts could vary, but that was the Easter meal.


By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books




Ruth Paget Selfie