Sunday 20th April
First stop this morning was to the porcelain museum in Limoges. The museum has an amazing collection of pieces from all over the world going back to the 12th century. Limoges is not an actual brand but the area where a lot of the porcelain has been made since the discovery of kaolin nearby. I was surprised at how labour intensive is the making of one piece of porcelain. It seems like most of the decoration is individually hand applied. Some absolutely beautiful pieces on display. I thought about buying a coffee mug but they only had one in the gift shop which I didn't really like – just as well as it was 67 euro!
 |
| Just beautiful |
 |
| Porcelain tiles |
 |
| 17th century porcelain |
 |
| Contemporary pieces - these were pretty spectacular |
From there we headed to a village called Oradour sur Glane. This village was completely wiped out by the Nazis during the 2nd world war – 642 men, women and children rounded up and shot. They then set fire to the whole village. France decided that the village should remain as it was on that day as a memoir to the people of the town. It is pretty sobering to see bullet holes in walls and things just left there to fall apart and rust.
 |
| Here a group of men were killed and burnt |
 |
| Bullet holes in the church walls |
 |
| Ruins of the town |
 |
| The car yard |
 |
| Memorial at one family's home |
End of the day - Chinon in the Loire valley.
No comments:
Post a Comment