Vendettas, nuraghi and the marches: A poem in stone

We head south from Burgundy into the Rhone region. We have coffee in Nuits Saint George and love this little village, that like Beaune, is all about wines. A car accidently hit me on the hip in this village, knocking me from the footpath where he had encroached, but he didn't even notice me fall destrait into a heap, but once I was pulled from the ground by an embarrassed husband and a worried child I was so fine I didn't even bother waving my finger at the idiot in his rear view mirror.

We pass Pouilly. We pass Fuisse. We stop for a night at Sologny -- a winery that makes AOC Macon Villages Chardonnay and Pinot Noir: some of the most delicious whites and reds we have found enroute. We buy a lot. Eeek.

Usually we accidently came across interesting things but I knew about the chickens that come from Bourg-en-Bresse, food being one of my passions. They are probably the most famous gourmet chickens in France let alone the world. They are sold at a weekly market soaked in white milk after slaughter. I begged to drive via Bourg-en-Bresse, just in case our luck is in and we might see a market of the brilliant Bresse chickens. There wasn't. We didn't. I was distraught. We did come across ceramic chickens trapped in a window, though, and (oh god I admit it) I made Pierre take a photo or three.

But our luck held in other ways. On our way out of this very ordinary town we came upon the most amazing Gothic church in one of the most ordinary little suburbs of Bourg-en-Bress, called Brou. Which we knew absolutely nothing about.

It happens that in 1504 a lovely young duchess, Margaret of Savoy, decided to build a church in honour of her husband, Philibert, who died at the intolerably young age of 24. She loved him. She wanted it beautiful. She built it here. And it is. Oh, how it is. White and feminine and as flamboyantly gothic as a sad medieval widow can afford.

It has three separate cloisters, some with double storied arches (how extravagant!); a choir of stone that drips decoration from its specially made exotic stone rood screen, on into its exquisitely decorated stone tombs.

The wooden choir stalls were made in a Flemish workshop bear exquisitely carved Old Testament scenes and characters. A wooden misericord has been added -- a small wooden seat strategically placed higher on the stall to allow the monks to appear as if they are standing during service, not sitting. As if the congregation wouldn't guess, since they'd be wanting to do the same thing.

How Margaret must have mourned to build in such a way that it makes the stone and wood seem to drip and weep. It really is lovely. Nineteen years it took to build, yet, tragically, Margaret did not live to see it. She, too, died too young and too soon. Leaving a legacy by which we will forever remember her: a poem of stone.

oooOOOooo