AUCH - Cathedral Sainte-Marie

Reference : FR006

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Size : 10 x 15 cm

"Sainte-Marie cathedral, in the city of Auch, on the routes of Santiago de Compostela"

Location of AUCH in FRANCE :

Auch Cathedral (Cathédrale Sainte-Marie d'Auch) is a Roman Catholic cathedral, and a national monument of France, located in the town of Auch in the Midi-Pyrénées. It is the seat of the Archbishopric of Auch, which under the Concordat of 1801 was suppressed and added to the Diocese of Agen, but restored in 1822.

The cathedral contains a suite of 18 Renaissance stained glass windows by Arnaud de Moles.

As a monument on the way from Arles to Santiago de Compostela,

the Cathedral of AUCH is registered as a UNESCO w.h.s.

UNESCO w.h.s. :
Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France

Date of inscription : 1998

Santiago de Compostela was the supreme goal for countless thousands of pious pilgrims who converged there from all over Europe throughout the Middle Ages. To reach Spain pilgrims had to pass through France, and the group of important historical monuments included in this inscription marks out the four routes by which they did so.

Mont-Perdu - Le Cirque de Gavarnie

Reference : FR005

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Size : 10 x 15 cm

"Hautes-Pyrénées - Le Cirque de Gavarnie"

Location of GAVARNIE in FRANCE

The Cirque de Gavarnie is a famous example of a cirque in the central Pyrenees, in the Pyrenees National Park. The cirque is 800m wide (on the deepest point) and about 3000 m wide at the top.

Major features of the cirque are La Brèche de Roland and Gavarnie Falls.

As one of the three major cirque walls of France side
of the site PYRENEES - MONT PERDU,
the cirque of Gavarnie is registered as a UNESCO w.h.s
(the two other ones are the cirque of Estaubé
and the cirque of Troumouse).

UNESCO w.h.s. :

Pyrénées - Mont-Perdu

Date of inscription : 1997

This outstanding mountain landscape, which spans the contemporary national borders of France and Spain, is centred around the peak of Mount Perdu, a calcareous massif that rises to 3,352 m. The site, with a total area of 30,639 ha, includes two of Europe's largest and deepest canyons on the Spanish side and three major cirque walls on the more abrupt northern slopes with France, classic presentations of these geological landforms. The site is also a pastoral landscape reflecting an agricultural way of life that was once widespread in the upland regions of Europe but now survives only in this part of the Pyrénées. Thus it provides exceptional insights into past European society through its landscape of villages, farms, fields, upland pastures and mountain roads.

BORDEAUX - Le Monument aux Girondins

Reference : FR004

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Size : 10 x 15 cm

"Bordeaux, le monument aux Girondins"

Location of BORDEAUX in FRANCE

Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in southwest France, with one million inhabitants in its metropolitan area at a 2008 estimate. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture of the Gironde department.

The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes one of the largest urban areas of France. The city is among the world's major wine industry centres. Bordeaux wine has been produced in the region since the eighth century. The historic part of the city is on the UNESCO World Heritage List as "an outstanding urban and architectural ensemble" of the 18th century.

The "Monument aux Girondins" is the principal monument on the Place des Quinconces in Bordeaux, one of the largest city squares in Europe (approximately or 126 000 m²). It was erected between 1894 and 1902 in memory of the Girondists who fell victim of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. It is composed of a large pedestal framed with two basins, decorated with bronze horses and troops, and surmounted by a large column with a statue on top that represents the spirit of liberty.

UNESCO w.h.s. :
Bordeaux, Port of the Moon

Date of inscription : 2007

The Port of the Moon, port city of Bordeaux in south-west France, is inscribed as an inhabited historic city, an outstanding urban and architectural ensemble, created in the age of the Enlightenment, whose values continued up to the first half of the 20th century, with more protected buildings than any other French city except Paris. It is also recognized for its historic role as a place of exchange of cultural values over more than 2,000 years, particularly since the 12th century due to commercial links with Britain and the Low Lands. Urban plans and architectural ensembles of the early 18th century onwards place the city as an outstanding example of innovative classical and neoclassical trends and give it an exceptional urban and architectural unity and coherence. Its urban form represents the success of philosophers who wanted to make towns into melting pots of humanism, universality and culture.

Routes Santiago de Compostela - Joining of the french ways close to Pyrenees

Reference : FR003

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"Saint-Jacques de Compostelle"

The Way of St. James or St. James' Way (Spanish : El Camino de Santiago, French : Chemin de St-Jacques) is the pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain, where tradition has it that the remains of the apostle Saint James are buried.

The Way of St. James is said to have originated in France, where it is called Le Chemin de St. Jacques de Compostelle. This is the reason that the Spanish themselves refer to the Way of St. James as "the French road", since most of the pilgrims they saw were French. The origin of the pilgrimage is most often cited as the Codex Calixtinus, which is decidedly a French document. Though in the Codex everyone was called upon to join the pilgrimage, there were four main starting points in the Cathedral cities of Tours, Vézelay, Le Puy-en-Velay and Arles. They are today all routes of the Grande Randonnée network.

The Paris and Tours route

The Paris and Tours route (Latin : Via Turonensis) used to be the pilgrimage of choice for inhabitants of the Low Countries and those of northern and western France. As other routes are becoming overcrowded, that route is gaining more and more favour, owing to the religious and touristic aspects of the monuments on the way.

The official start is Paris-Orléans-Tours or Paris-Chartres-Tours. From Tours, the route passes through Poitiers and Bordeaux, the forest at Les Landes before connecting to the Camino Francés GR 65 near Ostabat, shortly before Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port or to the Camino de la Costa in Irun.

The Vézelay route

The Vézelay route passes through Limoges and joins the GR 65 near Ostabat.

The Le Puy route

The Le Puy route (Latin : Via Podiensis, French : route du Puy) is travelled by pilgrims starting in or passing through Le Puy-en-Velay. It passes through towns such as Espalion and Cahors before coming to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. It is part of GR 65.

Also from Le Puy is GR 70 which Robert Louis Stevenson travelled along for 12 days with his donkey Modestine, as described in his book Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes.

The Arles Way

The route from Italy, the Via Tolosana, becomes the Arles Way (French : La voie d'Arles or Chemin d'Arles) in southern France, named after that principal cathedral city. It goes through Montpellier, Toulouse and Oloron-Sainte-Marie before reaching the Spanish border at Col du Somport in the high Pyrenees. There it connects to the Aragonese Way, and as such is the only French route not to connect to the Camino Francés at Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port.

UNESCO w.h.s. :
Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France

Date of inscription : 1998

Santiago de Compostela was the supreme goal for countless thousands of pious pilgrims who converged there from all over Europe throughout the Middle Ages. To reach Spain pilgrims had to pass through France, and the group of important historical monuments included in this inscription marks out the four routes by which they did so.

Le Mont Saint-Michel

Reference : FR002

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Size : 10,5 x 15 cm

"Le Mont-Saint-Michel"

Location of MONT-SAINT-MICHEL in FRANCE :

One night in October 708, the Archangel Saint Michael appeared to Aubert, the Bishop of Avranche, ordering him to build a sanctuary on Mount Tombe, an island of granite standing in the middle of the bay.
From the Xth Century, the Dukes of Normandy began constructing a new Church and in 966 the Benedictine Order was established on the Mont Saint Michel.
Under their supervision, the Romanesque Abbey was constructed in the XIth Century.: construction was to take sixty years.
Partially destroyed by fire, it was rebuilt, with the help of the French King, Philippe Augustes, in the XIIIth Century: this construction and those that followed until the end of the XVth Century display a new architectural style, soaring skywards with the help of immense buttresses and wrought stonework: the Gothic style was born.
Mont Saint Michel was then at its apogee and its spiritual and intellectual influence was immense throughout the whole of Christendom.
Kings, princes, dukes, and knights, as well as ordinary men and women, came from all over France and Europe on pilgrimage to Mont Saint Michel, "the marvel of the West".

The Mont Saint Michel is situated in a bay of 40 000 hectares, traversed by three rivers, the Couesnon, the Sée and the Sélune, and washed twice a day by the tides.
The tides are caused by the Moon's gravitational pull which inflates the surface of the seas and oceans as well as changing the configuration of the coast and sometimes, as in the case of the bay of Saint Michel, accentuating currents and waves.
When the pull of the moon is at its strongest, at full moon, we find ourselves in the period of high seas and high tides.
At such times, the sea covers the more than 15 kilometres from its low point at the coast as far as Saint Michel, repeating this incessant movement twice a day.
A magnificent natural spectacle, but also dangerous for careless people venturing into the bay, who can be swept away by the sudden rising of the tide which can move at the speed of a galloping horse or engulfed by moving sands.
From the Middle Ages on, pilgrims to Saint Michel, well aware of the dangers, talked of the Mont as being "at the mercy of the sea". However, today yet another danger threatens the Mont Saint Michel "at the mercy of the earth".

UNESCO w.h.s. :
Mont Saint-Michel and its bay

Date of inscription : 1979

Perched on a rocky islet in the midst of vast sandbanks exposed to powerful tides between Normandy and Brittany stand the 'Wonder of the West', a Gothic-style Benedictine abbey dedicated to the archangel St Michael, and the village that grew up in the shadow of its great walls. Built between the 11th and 16th centuries, the abbey is a technical and artistic tour de force, having had to adapt to the problems posed by this unique natural site.

PARIS - Cathédral Notre-Dame (view from the Seine)

Reference : FR001

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Size : 11,5 x 17 cm

"PARIS - La Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris"

Notre Dame de Paris (French for Our Lady of Paris), also known as Notre Dame Cathedral, is a Gothic, Roman Catholic cathedral on the eastern half of the Île de la Cité in the fourth arrondissement of Paris, France. It is the cathedral of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Paris : that is, it is the church that contains the cathedra (official chair), of the Archbishop of Paris. Notre Dame de Paris is widely considered one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture in France and in Europe. It was restored and saved from destruction by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, one of France's most famous architects. The name Notre Dame means "Our Lady" in French, and is frequently used in the names of Catholic church buildings in Francophone countries. Notre Dame de Paris was one of the first Gothic cathedrals, and its construction spanned the Gothic period. Its sculptures and stained glass show the heavy influence of naturalism, unlike that of earlier Romanesque architecture.

Notre Dame de Paris was among the first buildings in the world to use the flying buttresschoir and nave. After the construction began and the thinner walls (popularized in the Gothic style) grew ever higher, stress fractures began to occur as the walls pushed outward. In response, the cathedral's architects built supports around the outside walls, and later additions continued the pattern. (arched exterior supports). The building was not originally designed to include the flying buttresses around the

The cathedral suffered desecration during the radical phase of the French Revolution in the 1790s, when much of its religious imagery was damaged or destroyed. During the 19th century, an extensive restoration project was completed, returning the cathedral to its previous state.

As a monument on banks of the Seine in Paris,

the Cathedral Notre-Dame is registered as a UNESCO w.h.s.

UNESCO w.h.s. :
PARIS - Banks of the Seine

Date of inscription : 1991

From the Louvre to the Eiffel Tower, from the Place de la Concorde to the Grand and Petit Palais, the evolution of Paris and its history can be seen from the River Seine. The Cathedral of Notre-Dame and the Sainte Chapelle are architectural masterpieces while Haussmann's wide squares and boulevards influenced late 19th- and 20th-century town planning the world over.