Purely for variety’s sake we have removed to Sarlat-la-Canéda, a town in the Dordogne inland from Bordeaux. The buildings in the medieval town center date back to the 14th century. It is relentlessly beautiful, astonishingly picturesque, the kind of town … Continue reading
by Brenda W. Clough A rainy day means museum. The museum at Millau is pretty small, but because the Romans had a famous pottery works here they have more pottery than you would believe possible. The factory shipped all around … Continue reading
by Brenda W. Clough Ah, the medieval villages of France! We are staying in Severac-le-Chateau, in the central Averyon district on the central massif. It is almost unbelievably picturesque — the only American equivalent may be found (I regret to … Continue reading
by Brenda W. Clough The tradition in Rome was to bury the dead outside the city. Christians developed the notion of burial in ‘sacred ground,’ which is to say in or around a church. This rapidly became impossible in cities, … Continue reading
by Brenda W. Clough We had not realized the Roman site at Vaison-la-Romaine was so enormous, so we went back. Most of the old Roman town is under contemporary construction, but a tobacco millionaire at the beginning of the 20th … Continue reading
by Brenda W. Clough Roman towns were often named after local dieties, who in turn were in charge of the water. Nimes was originally Nemausus, named after the Gauls’ Nemausus who presided over the artesian spring. And today we went … Continue reading
by Brenda W. Clough Did I mention there are a -lot- of Roman ruins in southern France? The place is called Provence, which means ‘province’ — the Romans needed no other name for it. It was their main and favorite … Continue reading
by Brenda W. Clough One of the most beautiful sites in France, surely, is the great arena at Arles. Everything the Romans built here is made of the local stone, a lovely golden color and cheaply available. As you can … Continue reading
by Brenda W. Clough The town of Nimes is spelled with a cironflex over the ‘i’, but I can’t persuade this Ipad to do accents, so you’ll just have to live with it. It was the center of Gallo-Roman culture, … Continue reading
by Brenda W. Clough This beautiful site is not actually a bridge, as its name indicates. It’s actually an aqueduct, a fantastic work of engineering that supplied water to the regional Roman capital of Nimes. Later on, the medieval residents … Continue reading
