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Art Churches

Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe

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On the way back from our city break in Angoulême today we visited the Abbey Church of Saint Savin with its stunning frescoes and painted pillars. It was rebuilt in the 11th century and restored numerous times. It has been on the Unesco World Heritage list since 1983. Below are somoe of the frescoes in the apse and the church seen from behind. We will be back to explore the area further on our bikes as soon as we can.
En revenant de notre petit séjour à Angoulême aujourd’hui nous avons visité l’abbatiale de Saint Savin avec ses merveilleuses peintures murales et piliers peints. Reconstruite au XIème, l’église a été restauré plusieurs fois. Elle est inscrite sur la liste du Patrimoine Mondiale de l’UNESCO depuis 1983. Ci-dessous quelques peintures dans l’abside et l’arrière de l’église. Nous avons l’intention de retourner dans la Vallée des Fresques avec nos vélos dès que possible.
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11 replies on “Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe”

I found them absolutely stunning. Fortunately, there was enough space to take decent photos (and no one around!).

Would the colours of the interior have been vivid and bright when first the church was built? We look at our UK interiors that are muted now and think of them as suitably religious. Those pillars do look fabulous.

I gather the colours correspond to the originals. They are made with natural pignments. It’s amazing to think that they had such “modern” patterns. Some of them look like Australian aboriginal paintings.

We also visited Antigny which was open. Unfortunately Montmorillon was closed (it looked like it was partly collapsed). I don’t know about the Merovingien graveyard. I’ll look that up. I see from your blog that you have visited all these places.

We’ve never seen the interesting painted bits of Montmorillon. They only do guided tours at 3pm or something. The Merovingien graveyard at Civaux is gobsmackingly amazing, and enhanced by the bizarre surroundings (nuclear power station, crocodile zoo, etc). Speaking of Merovingiens we’ve just got back from Paris, where amongst other things we went to the Merovingien exhibition at the Cluny.

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