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.

History

People were living at Angers as early as 400,000 BC, and burials of 4500-3500 BC have been found on the castle grounds. The Celtic Andecavi settled north of the Loire in the 5th century BC, and the Roman town of Juliomagus had villas, baths, an amphitheatre and a temple of Mithras, until invasions in 275 and 276 drove its people to wall in a small area of about 9 hectares on the highest ground. Angers had its first bishop in 372, and in 851 Charles the Bald and the Breton chief Erispoe signed the Treaty of Angers here; the Viking Hastein seized it in 870 and 873. Fulk I took the title of count around 929, founding the first dynasty of Anjou, and in the 12th century the castle was the seat of the court of Henry II Plantagenet, ruler of the Angevin Empire from the Pyrenees to Ireland, until Philip II of France took Anjou in 1204-1205 (Wikipedia, Angers).

What's there

• 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.

Things to know

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.