Angers

The castle of Angers is a black and white striped drum of seventeen towers built in schist and limestone in the 1230s, and inside it hangs the Apocalypse Tapestry, woven between 1377 and 1382 for Louis I of Anjou. It is the oldest surviving French tapestry set of this scale: about a hundred metres survive of an original that was roughly a hundred and forty, hung in a purpose-built gallery kept dim to protect the wool. The scenes follow the Book of Revelation in panels of red and blue. The tapestry was cut up and used as stable cladding and orchard covering in the nineteenth century before being recovered.

What you actually see

• The Apocalypse Tapestry - about a hundred metres of fourteenth-century weaving.
• The striped castle - seventeen towers in banded schist and limestone.
• The ramparts and gardens - walls over the Maine with planted moat below.
• The old town - the cathedral and half-timbered streets below the castle.

When to go

April to October; the tapestry gallery is deliberately dark and cool year-round, so weather matters little for it. Summer evenings light the ramparts.

Honest expectations

The tapestry gallery is dim by necessity and photography without flash only, which frustrates some visitors. The castle interior is otherwise sparse. Explanation panels reward slow reading.

Nearby

Fontevraud lies southeast; Saumur is east along the Loire.