We biked downtown this morning determined to spend one more day exploring Nantes. We headed for the quays, for all the brochures named them as the “Heart of the City” or as “A Place of Beauty that awakes in Every Heart the Desire to Travel.” How could we stay away? But the Quays proved to be a disappointment. They were empty, ugly, the only thing of interest an aging warship trying to be a museum but that was more rust than anything else. We turned back in disappointment and saw a great dome rising over the rooftops of downtown.
Nothing with a dome had appeared in the city guides, only spires and turrets. We cycled towards it with cautious enthusiasm. We were well rewarded. Notre Dame De Bon Port rose from the surrounding buildings like the sun peering over the horizon after the long night. It was a square building, not the cross shape of all the others churches we had encountered. We pushed our way in hesitantly and stood in awe. Great painting hung on the four pillars that supported the dome. Equally great paintings graced the arches of the barrel vaults between the pillars. The dome rose high above us, disappearing into an arch of blue with gold stars. It was easily the most elaborate church we had yet seen. Golden frescoes glittered everywhere and a bevy of saints cast down their stern gazes on those below. A scattering of art students sat among the chairs and on the niches in the walls, sketching frantically in charcoal under the watchful eye of their professor, looking up at us nervously as we approached, as if afraid of any comments we might cast their way or perhaps worried at the damage the addition of two bodies would do to their composition. We left the church feeling strangely satisfied, as if everything that had been missing from the cathedral had been found here.
For the next hour we proceeded to get deliberately lost, randomly choosing streets in this crowded vivacious corner of the city. The buildings pressed in close overhead, filled with bakeries and hairstylists and strange shops selling curiosities. Statues leaped out at us from many sides, surprising us with smiles or scowls or anything in between.
Our goal was the Palace of the family Dobree, now an archeological museum and the collection the family had accrued through years in the tea trade.
But since it didn't open for another hour we meandered happily. Eventually we found it, a long rectangular palace with gargoyles of bears that looked down in curiosity and lizards that clambered up the walls.
What a collection the Dobree family had amassed! Everything you could imagine. Gilded and chased medieval chests, the former property of Saints and Bishops, ancient processional crosses, a roomful of antique weapons, swords, polearms, armour.
There was a sword that had belonged to the dauphin of France and one of the Black Prince of England. A crossbow decorated in Ivy and a flintlock so large it must have taken two men to hold. I looked at the narwhal tusk in the collection sadly, for in its time it was believed to be proof of the existence of the unicorns. Science and discovery have created many wonderful things in their way but they leave behind them a trail of broken dreams. 
Then we found it, the true heart of Nantes, the thing that gave this quarter of the city more life, more verve that anywhere else. The case that had held the heart of Ann of Brittany. In many ways Nantes had not forgotten Ann, nor the period when they, through her, had held the future of a unified France in their hands. When she had died she had been buried, as custom dictated, with all the other kings and queens of France. But, to quote, "her heart had loved Nantes so well that she had commanded her heart to be plucked from her dead body and buried in her home city". The golden case that had held her heart was empty now, poured out during the revolution, but her essence seemed to pervade it.
Upstairs in the museum we found the jewels of the Dobree family. Riveting pieces that defy description.We also found trinkets brought back from China aboard La Fils de France, the Dobree ship. Prominent among the collection was a gilded tea box encircled by two golden dragons on a field of red.
After what seemed like hours we left the palace to explore the museum of archeology across the courtyard. It was stuffed with weapons and tools of the Merovingians, Carolingians and Viking invaders. There was even a huge collection of Egyptian artifacts. It was as if everything that couldn't fit in the Museum of Fine Arts was spread out before us. Swords so rusted that you could scarcely discern their shape, intricate jewellery with detail so delicate it would take magnifying lens to properly appreciated, even a collection of Roman keys that belonged to doors long since turned to dust. Before we were halfway through the collection our minds had gone numb. Our brains became saturated and we leaked knowledge out of both sides of our heads as we walked. We left the palace of the Dobrees and the Museum of Archeology very happy.
We cycled back through town finding the opera as if by chance, actually in fact by chance, only a block or two from the museum.
We found also the largest bookstore and music store in Nantes, swarming with excited students. We looked inside but found no books in English and so instead went to a smaller shop we had passed yesterday and bought Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons. I am very far behind with this journal, however, so it is hard to imagine when we will find time to read.
We bought ourselves food and cycled to the beautiful Jadin des plantes. A walk in the garden always seems best to help us settle our food and to bring what we had seen in the day into context. We walked beside the patterned lawns and found an aviary filled with small birds fluttering excitedly from perch to perch, almost in the same excited and random way we had flittered from exhibit to exhibit among the museums.
We found also a penned herd of deer tucked away in the far corner. The male was very harsh to the does, chasing them away from any food they found but when his attention was distracted the does did the same thing to each other. When the cat is away the mice go back to war.
We cycled home tiredly, full of beautiful images of jewels and riches and palaces. It was interesting settling back into walls of fabric on a floor of covered earth with hardly enough room to toss and turn after seeing the days splendor. Still, we aren’t too badly off. At least we’re here and get to snoop through the treasures of people long dead.
Next Entry: Day 72. Nantes
Previous Entry: Heather's Picasso
No comments:
Post a Comment