River Cruise - Angers

Angers

Angers is a city in France in the département of Maine-et-Loire, 191 miles south-west of Paris. Angers is an industrialized city housing 150,000 people in the city proper, and close to 250,000 within the metropolitan area.

The city traces its roots to early Roman Roman times. It occupies the slopes on both banks of the Maine, which is spanned by three bridges. The district along the river is famous for its flourishing nurseries and market gardens. With its wide, straight streets, gracious public gardens, and ample, tree-lined boulevards, Angers is one of the more pleasant towns in France. It is well known for its fresh produce and cut flowers. The site of a massive and ancient Chateau, the city is also noted for the impressive twin spires of the twelfth-century Cathedral of Saint-Maurice. Other noteworthy churches around Angers include St. Serge, an abbey-church of the 12th and 15th centuries, and the twelfth-century La Trinité. The famous abbey of St. Aubin has a courtyard with elaborately sculptured arcades of the 11th and 12th centuries. The tower there is also splendid. Maison d'Adam, House of Adam, is the oldest house of Angers. Ruins of the old churches of Toussaint (thirteenth century) and Notre-Dame du Ronceray (eleventh century) are also nearby. The ancient hospital of St. Jean (twelfth century) is occupied by an archaeological museum.

The Logis Barrault, a mansion built about 1500, houses the public library and the the municipal museum, which has a large collection of paintings and sculptures. The mansion also contains the collection of Musée David, consisting of works by the sculptor David d'Angers, who was a native of the town. One of his masterpieces, a bronze statue of René of Anjou, stands outside. The Hôtel de Pincé or d'Anjou (1523-1530) is the finest of the stone mansions of Angers. There are also many curious wooden houses of the 15th and 16th centuries. The Palais de Justice, the Catholic Institute, a fine theatre, and a hospital with 1500 beds are the more remarkable of the modern buildings of the town. Angers is the seat of a bishopric, dating from the 3rd century, a prefecture, a court of appeal and a court of assizes. It has a tribunal of first instance, a tribunal of commerce, a board of trade-arbitrators, a chamber of commerce, a branch of the Bank of France and several learned societies.

The first sign of human presence on the site of Angers is a stone tool dated back to 400,000 B.C (Lower Paleolithic). The earliest known inhabitants were the Andecavi, a Gallic tribe that was overrun by the Romans. The city, while under Roman rule, was called Juliomagus. Angers was once the capital of the historic province of Anjou. Beginning in the 9th century, the region was controlled by a powerful family of feudal lords. In the 12th century, it became part of the Angevin empire of the Plantagenet Kings of England. During this time, the Hospital of Saint-Jean was built in Angers by King Henry II of England. The edifice still stands to this day, now housing an important museum. In 1204, Angers was conquered by King Philippe II. The city suffered severely from the invasions of the Northmen in 845 and succeeding years, and the coming of the English in the 12th and 15th centuries. The Huguenots took it in 1585, and the Vendean royalists were repulsed nearby in 1793. Till the Revolution, Angers was the seat of a celebrated university founded in the 14th century.

The prosperity of the town is largely due to the great slate-quarries of the vicinity. Other industries include the distillation of liqueurs from fruit; cable, rope and thread-making; the manufacture of boots, shoes, umbrellas and parasols; weaving of sail-cloth and fabrics; machine construction; wire-drawing; and the manufacture of sparkling wines and preserved fruits. The chief articles of commerce, besides slate and manufactured goods, are hemp, early vegetables, fruit, flowers and live-stock. A centre of learning, Angers boasts two renowned universities and several high schools, together responsible for more than 30,000 students. One of four reamining Catholic universities in France, L'Université Catholique de l'Ouest, is here. Also, UCO calls Angers home and houses le Centre International Des Études Françaises. Along with students from all over the world, Americans from the Universities of Notre Dame, Oregon, Clemson, and Kansas come to Angers to spend time in the CIDEF program, immersed in French language and culture. The program provides immersion courses for foreign students. Courses including literature, politics, theology, philosophy, and grammar (and an unofficial slang course!) are all taught in French. Angers is considered an excellent location to learn French because the Angevin accent is said to retain the regal and aristocratic flavor of the royals who holidayed in the Loire Valley for centuries, and is said to be easily understood throughout the francophone world. Angers' other educational institutions include seminaries, a lycée; a preparatory school of medicine and pharmacy; a university with faculties of theology, law, letters, and science; a higher school of agriculture, training colleges, a school of arts and handicrafts, and a school of fine art. Its education and research institutes are the driving force behind the city's science and technology industries.

Angers calls itself the "most flowered city in Europe," and its cut and its displays of live and cut flowers are stunning indeed. It is also well-known for being the seat of important cultural events, like the film festival Premiers Plans, Tour de Scènes (free concerts in the streets) and Les Accroche-Coeurs. The Chateau d'Angers is located in the city of Angers in the departement of Maine-et-Loire, in France.

The fortress of Angers, on a rocky ridge overhanging the river Maine, was one of the sites inhabited by the Romans because of its strategic defensive location. In the 9th century the fortress came under the authority of the powerful Counts of Anjou, becoming part of the Angevin empire of the Plantagenet Kings of England during the 12th century. In 1204, the region was conquered by King Philippe II and an enormous chateau was built by his grandson, King Louis IX ("Saint Louis") in the early part of the 13th century. Nearly 2,000 feet (600 m) in circumference, and protected by seventeen massive towers, the walls of the chateau encompass 6.17 acres (25,000 m²). In 1352, King Jean II (le Bon), gave the chateau to his son, Louis I. Married to the daughter of the wealthy Duke of Brittany, Louis had the chateau modified, and in 1373 commissioned the famous Apocalypse Tapestry from the painter Hennequin de Bruges and the Parisian tapestry-weaver Nicolas Bataille. Louis II (Louis I's son) and Yolande d'Aragon added a chapel (1405-1412) and royal apartments to the complex. The chapel is a sainte chapelle, the name given to churches which enshrined a relic of the Passion. The relic at Angers was a splinter of the fragment of the True Cross which had been acquired by Louis IX. In the early part of the 1400's, the hapless dauphin who, with the assistance of Joan of Arc would become King Charles VII, had to flee Paris and was given sanctuary at the chateau in Angers. In 1562, Catherine de Medici had the chateau restored as a powerful fortress, but, when the Huguenots threatened to take it over, her son, King Henri III, had the towers and walls stripped of their embattlements. However, the king made it part of the military, maintaining its defensive capabilities by installing artillery on the chateau's upper terraces. At the end of the 1700's, as a military garrison, it showed its worth when its thick walls withstood a massive bombardment by cannons from the Vendean army. Unable to do anything else, the invaders simply gave up. A military academy was established in the chateau to train young officers in the strategies of war. In a twist of fate, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769-1852) who is best known for his defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo was trained at the Military Academy of Angers. Still a part of the French military, the chateau was severely damaged during World War II by the Nazis when a munitions storage dump inside the chateau exploded. Today, owned by the City of Angers, the massive, austere chateau has been converted to a museum housing the oldest and largest collection of medieval tapestries in the world, with the 14th century "Apocalypse Tapestry" as one of its priceless treasures.