A short drive to the Abbey of Our Lady of Fontevraud, where the parking was limited, but free
. Its an amazing complex - this from Wikipedia
The compulsory history (abridged).
Around 1100 Robert of Arbrissel (a religious leader who became a hermit after being cast out) and his followers settled in a valley called Fons Ebraldi where he established a monastic community. Initially the men and women lived together in the same house, in an ancient ascetic practice called Syneisaktism. This practice had been widely condemned by Church authorities, however, and under pressure the community soon segregated according to gender, with the monks living in small priories where they lived in community in service to the nuns and under their rule. Sometime before 1106, Fulk IV, Count of Anjou gave a significant property gift to the abbey.
They were recognized as a religious community in 1106, both by the Bishop of Angers and by Pope Paschal II. Robert, who soon resumed his life of itinerant preaching, appointed Hersende of Champagne to lead the community. Later her assistant, Petronilla of Chemillé, was elected as the first abbess in 1115.
In his Rule, Robert dealt with four principal points: silence, good works, food and clothing, encouraging the utmost in simplicity of life and dress. He directed that the abbess should never be chosen from among those who had been brought up at Fontevrault, but that she should be someone who had had experience of the world (de conversis sororibus). This latter injunction was observed only in the case of the first two abbesses and was canceled by Pope Innocent III in 1201. At the time of Robert's death in 1117, there were about 3,000 nuns in the community.
In the early years the Plantagenets were great benefactors of the abbey and while Isabella d'Anjou was the abbess, King Henry II's widow, Eleanor of Aquitaine, made the abbey her place of residence. Abbess Louise de Bourbon left her crest on many of the alterations to the abbey building which she made during her term of office.
More (abbey site):
History of the Royal Abbey of Fontevraud - Fontevraud
After going through the admission building (and declining another clunky self0guide thing), you first come to the abbey church
The nave - spectacular
Looking toward the choir and ambulatory, a highlight for me - tombs (or rather, effigies) of former Kings and Queens of England (which included half of France at the time
- although the Royals actually spent much of their ruling time in the French territories)
The tombs/effigies of Plantagenet King Henry II of England, his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine.
In 1189, Fontevraud became the royal necropolis of the Plantagenets. Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry II... Who lie in state in the Royal Abbey of Fontevraud?
www.fontevraud.fr
and their son King Richard I of England (8 September 1157 – 6 April 1199) and his Queen Isabella of Angoulême .
Richard the Lionheart . He also ruled as Duke of Normandy, Aquitaine, and Gascony; Lord of Cyprus; Count of Poitiers, Anjou, Maine, and Nantes; and was overlord of Brittany at various times during the same period.
Henry and Richard (and later John) ruled over the Angevin Empire
However, (paraphrasing) although abbey was originally the site of the graves of the above, and others, thir bodies are no longer on the site. Their remains were possibly destroyed during the French Revolution. The bodies of the French monarchs were likewise removed from the Basilica of St Denis in Paris in 1793 by order of the French government.
Sunflowers in the mid-ground. Imagine them in flower.
