Photo : Rolf Kranz / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
La Charité-sur-Loire
La Charité-sur-Loire grew up around a Cluniac priory founded around 1059, when the bishop of Auxerre Geoffroy de Champallement entrusted buildings to Abbot Hugh of Cluny. Pope Paschal II consecrated the church in 1107. Notre-Dame was then the largest church in Europe after that of Cluny, and the priory directed nearly 400 dependencies across Christendom.
A fire in 1559 destroyed the nave, and the building was rebuilt smaller, with four bays instead of ten. The church has been inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage since 1998, as part of the Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France. The old stone bridge over the Loire dates from 1520. The town, which had resisted Joan of Arc in 1429 thanks to its powerful fortifications, only surrendered in 1435. From the bridge and the quays, you discover the tightly packed rooftops of the old town around the former priory.
