logis seigneurial (12.558)

Outside of Vannes (Gwened, the de facto capital of the region) near the village of Sarzeau (Sarzhav), we visited Château de Suscinio, built in the thirteenth century as residence and retreat for the dukes of Brittany and fortified over the next two years until Breton was fully aligned with France as a summer home between the seaside and a well-stocked forest for hunting, this uniquely preserved castle retains the representational elements of the high Middle Ages of the casement, moat and towered gatehouse after the introduction of gunpowder and the canon made such structures obsolete and most were scaled back as estates if not falling into complete disrepair.

Part of the preservation was owing to its role in the War of the Roses, housing a contingent of exiled Lancastrian including Jasper Tudor and his nephew, future King Henry VII, safeguarding the potential heirs from kidnapping and execution by Plantagenet usurpers. Having lent support to the Lancastrian rebellion—in exchange for guarantees of independence from France, the duchy eventually transferred their wards, rebuffing the counter-offer and double-cross of Yorkist king Richard III for the surrender of the Tudors after eleven years in absentia.

Following the death of duke Francis II and the end of the Tudor line, the duchy was ruled by Anne of Brittany, twice Queen of France, before finally being annexed upon her dearh without issue in 1514. Quarried for stone after it was abandoned by the ducal dynasty, Jérôme du Camboult, the cousin of Cardinal Richelieu aspired to convert the Reviere into a tading company but attempts failed and presently the surrounding marshes are used as evaporation pools for salt extraction.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: a visit to the Borromean islands (with synchronopticæ) 

twelve years ago: nuclear waste in our backyard plus Anglicisms on the train

thirteen years ago: throwing good money after bad 

fourteen years ago: defining the meme plus the cost of fuel shipments in America’s forever wars

fifteen years ago: preoccupation with the undead 

château de chinon (12. 546)

For the second leg of our journey, we returned to the Loire valley traveling in the direction of south Bretagne through Sens and Tours, bypassing most of the ensemble of châteaux but found a picturesque campsite on the opposite bank of Vienne with a direct view of the town‘s fortified castle, the last one of its kind in the region. Built on the foundations of a fifth century Gallo-Roman fort, the castle‘s present form dates from the late tenth century when the dukes of Anjou, aligned with the House of the Plantagenets—thus, England, took the town and its defensive bulwark from the king of France, and was expanded under Henry II, securing his favoured residence from his rebellious brother, Geoffrey, the Count of Nantes.

England held this region only util the early thirteen century when Phillip II took back Chinon after a monthlong siege and was thereafter, with some intervening periods of neglect—infamously as a detention facility for the Knight Templar while awaiting judgment and sentencing once they had become too powerful, particularly in the eyes of the French aristocracy—used as the French royal court through the sixteen hundreds.

Joan of Arc was granted an audience with King Charles V during the Hundred Years War over the line of succession and legitimate heir to the throne and presented her vision from God for intervention in the Battle Orléans to expel English influence and political meddling once and for all. After cross examining her sanity and sincerity, Joan was granted command of the army.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Ursula K Le Guin’s webpages (with synchronopticæ) plus assorted links to revisit

ten years ago: the Queen and consort visit Germany plus more links to enjoy

twelve years ago: Western expectations of Türkiye 

thirteen years ago: allowable letters on vehicle registration plates 

fourteen years ago: Chinese copies of European destinations 

hohenwartetalsperre iii (12.497)

Early in the day, we took a trip to the larger town of Ranis to stock up on provisions and revisited the fortified castle, with its Ilsenhöse passage leading from the bailey to the old market recently confirmed to have some of the oldest prehistoric evidence for the settlement of Homo sapiens in the region—more than forty-five thousand years ago, particularly rare for an urbanised area.

The eleventh-century castle on a promontory overlooking the town has been in the ownership of the Germany Red Cross since 1994, the dynasty of von Breitenbuch selling the historic site for a nominal fee. Back at the campgrounds, we followed a trail along the water’s edge to a forest path littered with slate—a common architectural element for the region that afforded us some commanding views of the artistic bends in the watercourse.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a US supreme court justice flies provocative flags (with synchronoptica), a WWII battle for an Aleutian island, the anatomy of a limerick plus Trump found guilty of falsifying business records 

seven years ago: all about Ostheim

nine year ago: a wearable, in-ear translator plus giving Tumblr a try

ten years ago: Swiss cheese goes blind plus Alf’s hip-hop album

eleven years ago: mourning a ruined laptop, semi-conducting cement plus getting ready to travel to Lake Como

taubertal: rundweg (12. 428)

 

Taking a slightly different route through the Tauber valley along the river rather than straight up the wooded promontory where Rothenburg is perched, we passed a collection of small settlements that grew around the many mills including the Topplerschlösschen built by prominent city mayor, Heinrich Toppler (whom orchestrated an alliance with Ulm and two other cities along the Romantikstrasse Nördlingen and Dinkelsbühl and was ultimately executed during a palace intrigue), during the fourteenth century as a summer retreat and to monitor milling enterprises.

The towers and steeples of the city were visible on the horizon during the walk and grew as we approached the double stone bridge. The skyline, the most developed and articulated one which is breathtaking and must have been nothing sort of transfixing for medieval people seeing it for the first time, had earned Rothenburg the title of the “Franconian Jerusalem” since the age of the Crusades. Back in the city, we visited the spacious Burggarten and walked along the medieval walls back down to the Tauber valley, with a view of Detwang in the middle distance.

 synchronoptica 

one year ago: foreign movie titles in Norway (with synchronoptica), an AI beauty contest from 1964, steaming footage from the International Space Station, wistful nostalgia for a a time and place one has never known plus a banger from Robert Palmer

seven years ago: transit fare-strikes plus the Swiss cheese cartel

eight years ago: an executive order to protect bigotry, crossing paracosms plus the unacknowledged privilege of not having to sit to pee

nine years ago: US-EU trade accords plus bursts of activity

twelve years ago: the European Space Agency explores Jupiter’s moons

taubertal: rothenburg ob der tauber (12. 427)

 

Well preserved and one of only four cities in Germany with intact medieval defensive walls, and recognised as a free and immediate Reichstadt—Heinrich V appointed a nephew of the Hohenstaufen branch after the original dynasty died out in the twelfth century as a successor to the counts’ property—Rothenburg ob der Tauber was threatened with destruction during the Thirty Years’ War, the Catholic League field marshal Johann t’Sercalaes, County of Tilly, fresh from a string of victories, wanting to quarter forty-thousand troops there, much to the the resistance of the populace, prepared for a siege rather than takeover in pitched battle. The popular though certainly apocryphal legend of the Meistertrunk gives the account that Tilly would spare the city and its governing council if any one of them could drink a flagon (roughly a gallon, three and a half litres) of wine in a single sitting. Burgermeister Georg Nusch was up to the task—which is heroic enough but does not seem like an impossible ask and the fact that there was no contemporaneous chronicle suggests rather the city lost its strategical importance due to a bout of plague which led to the preservation of its seventeenth century state. Nonetheless the feat is commemorated hourly with a clockwork recreation from the Ratstrinkstube near city hall. Romanced by landscape painters from the nineteenth century onwards, Rothenburg gained special significance in ideological terms as representative of Heimat with many field trips there organised through the Kraft durch Freude programme.

 

The city was destroyed by one-third, sparing the oldest parts, during an Allied bombardment campaign but rebuilt true to form—see also—the cityscape was also used in the film Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang and the inspiration for fictional hometown of the animated feature Pinocchio, with the Plönlein, the small square at the intersection of two streets at a fountain, being one of the more photogenic spots. On the way back out, through the former Jewish quarter and back over the hill, we learnt that the future pontiff Francis had stayed here for several months in 1986 whilst learning German at the local Goethe Institute chapter.

*     *     *     *     *

synchronoptica

one year ago: the beautifully dissociative nature of the Japanese language (with synchronoptica), Saturation 70 plus the US National Day Reason

seven years ago: commemorating the Berlin Airlift, humorist Grant Snider plus animated sketching lessons

eight years ago: the origins of the .mp3 format, disaster capitalism, the matte paintings of Star Wars plus the geographic centre of the EU shifts

nine years ago: an animated filmography plus food colouring’s unqualified reputation

ten years ago: an avatar-making app, Fearbook! plus divided America/divided Germany

taubertal: detwang (12. 426)

For the long Labour Day weekend (see also), H and I returned to the Tauber valley and stayed at a campground just outside of the Kirchdorf Detwang, just a leisurely twenty minute walk along the river from Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

After setting up camp, we discovered the little village on the crossroads of the Franconian Marienweg and the Jakobsweg (the pilgrimage trail of el Camino de Santiago de Compostela) to be quite a historic jewel itself. From the Old High German for someone’s field (=Det’s Wang), it was first mentioned in a lease contract in 1335 when the local chapter of the Teutonic Knights, bought later in the same century by the imperial city of Rothenburg. The Gothic parish church of Sts Peter and Paul was founded in the tenth century and features an altar retable hewn from wood by Tilman Riemenschneider (see previously).

 

The small neighbouring castle is from the end of the 1200s and was built for the hereditary office of Reichsküchenmeister (magister coquinae, Master of the Kitchen) held by the ennobled lords von Nordenberg, kept in the family through the end of the Holy Roman Empire. There was an ensemble of historic houses and mills, formerly the site of a working cloister.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Carl Linnaeus’ binomial nomenclature (with synchronoptica), the BASIC programming language (1964) plus assorted links worth revisiting

seven years ago: ancient debt-forgiveness, a roasting in the press, more links to enjoy plus Witchcraft through the Ages

eight years ago: no lapse in appropriations, five decades of IKEA catalogues, more Brexit omnishambles, an animated version of the Rex Factor plus Trump’s Diet Coke buzzer

nine years ago: film set crossovers, strategic cheese stockpiles, a weasel sabotages CERN, WiFi rustico, letter-carriers lend a helping hand in Finland plus a history of trademark applications

ten years ago: comment is free, a stationary bike for washing up plus universal