La Charite-sur-Loire
© AFP/File Thierry Zoccolan LA CHARITE-SUR-LOIRE, France (AFP) - In 1840, as inspector of historic monuments, he opposed a road-widening scheme to accommodate the new, bigger stagecoaches that would have cut a swathe through the grounds of the town's monastery. Instead, the new road that was to become the national highway to the south for French holidaymakers was routed along the river Loire.
Without his intervention, there would have been little left to deserve UNESCO's coveted designation in 1998 as a world heritage site, which is contributing massively to the town's renewal after years of neglect.
When it was completed around 1130, the priory church at 122 metres in length was the second biggest in Christendom, after Cluny Abbey in Paris on which it depended. The monastery became a major staging post for pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, and even Constantinople and Jerusalem, hence the town's name taken from the charity dispensed by the monks.
While UNESCO has protected the entire pilgrims' route in Spain, it selected only the most significant sites in France, explains Luc Jolivel in charge of the restoration project, as he pointed out the unusual Moorish Arab architecture of the church's window arches.
The UNESCO designation attracted funds, which are allowing the town to reclaim its heritage and peel away the layers of time. A major phase of restoration work is due for completion by September, including the chapter house, refectory and other rooms used by the monks not seen since the 17th century.
"Cluny was a bit like a multinational today. The priory here was one of its branches with the mission to extend its reach as far as possible. In the end it had 45 dependencies as far away as Portugal, England and Venice," says Jolivel.
People are seen on a street of La Charité-sur-Loire
© AFP/File Thierry ZoccolanA devastating fire in 1559 destroyed half the nave of the main church and a sister church dedicated to St Laurent. The monks just walled up the part of the building still intact and carried on, although their numbers had dwindled to only around a dozen by the French Revolution in 1789.
By that time there was a desperate shortage of space for the town's expanding population, hemmed in by the Loire and the ramparts, so when the new authorities seized church property it was sold off to the townspeople who immediately inhabited it.
They just added extra walls to the ones that were already there, says Jolivet. Some of these houses are still private dwellings to this day. The monastery was not destroyed, it just disappeared from view.
In 1973 mechanical diggers clearing the ground for a social centre rediscovered the site of the St. Laurent church, long forgotten because the monastery's archives had also gone up in smoke. Saint Laurent is the saint of all the saints without their own day and of the dead.
"The Cluny monks were very big on the cult of the dead. They lived off donations for saying prayers for the souls of the departed. The best insurance policy for a place in paradise was to give a generous donation and to be buried as near the church as possible."
Archaeologists found scores of skeletons interred as if in a mass grave in corridors leading to the church.
The social centre project was abandoned, but there remained the question of what to do with the site.
"It was decided to leave the best bits on view and grass over everything else, so that it could be used for concerts. We only have a short tourist season, we need to do things that provide local amenities for the other eight months of the year," says Jolivel.
This has been his reasoning behind the restoration of the monastery in general. For example the monastery cellars have good acoustics and are an ideal venue for jazz concerts.
The orthodoxy that everything has to look authentic is also no longer the way restorers think today.
Some of the rooms recently restored, in the once derided Gothic style, have been given modern glass doors. The original Louis XVI decor of a room used for years by a wine merchant as storage space, has been cleaned up, but not repainted, to leave the patina of its past.
They will provide exhibition space and meeting places for the many festivals the town has started hosting as part of its drive to put itself on the map. As well as being an official book town on the lines of Hay on Wye in Wales, it holds book fairs every third Sunday in the month.
©AFP