June 03 – St. Émilion

Another Les Plus Beaux Village today, this one only about 20 minutes away.  We are visiting St. Émilion.  And we are in the heart of the Bordeaux wine region so much of the town revolves around wine.  It is an old town, as have been many of the others we have visited.  However, it has a much more polished look to it, probably because the wine industry brings in much more money and tourism.

We first visited the St. Émilion Collegial Catholic Church…

and its cloisters. 

Around the corner was a small plaza and the huge bell tower.  The town was a pilgrimage site for the monolithic church here but the church was hard to find (it is underground) so the bell tower was built over it so that pilgrims could find it.

The plaza had good views over the lower town and the countryside. 

We spent some time wandering around the town.  Pretty streets...

and some old ruins. 

We found the Cloisters of the Cordeliers.  Much of the old structure remains but it is now mostly shops with some of the old cloisters in the back...

and a terrasse beyond. 

We saw the City Hall during our wanderings.   

We found the Petit Train and bought tickets.  Instead of going around town this one headed out into the countryside among the vineyards...

and the narration was mostly a running commentary about the various vintners that we passed.

And the countryside itself was lovely. 

We had a stop at the Chateau Rochebelle where we joined a tour into their wine storage cave.  The area is mainly limestone and the limestone caves provide perfect storage conditions for the wines. 

We saw a lot of wine barrels in the cave…

and stacks and stacks of wine bottles. 

There was also a “room” with a glass pyramid over it.  The stone walls were covered with lush ferns.  This was where the stones had been removed to build the caves for use a wine cellars. 

Back up top we went to the shop where they offered wine tastings while we waited for the train to return.  They made a few sales.  But not us.

As we were leaving for town we passed an area where there were a lot of horses.

Views of St. Émilion as we headed back to town. 

Back in town we headed back to the Cloisters of the Cordeliers where we bought food for a picnic lunch.  They put everything in a basket (that we had to return) and we headed back into the cloisters to eat.

From there we then headed down to the lower level of town.  The town is very much on two levels with a much lower section that is accessed via very steep streets.  

The plaza at the lower level was very busy.

There we met our tour that took us through the Catacombs, the Trinity Chapel and the Monolithic Church.  No photos were allowed in any of the places we visited.  The most impressive part of the tour was the Monolithic Church.  The first church here dates to the early 12^th century and the current one is huge…135 feet long and 40 feet high.  There were three small chapels along one side and they can be seen from the outside (the "humps" along the side of the building).  So that is the only part of this amazing place that we could photograph. 

After the tour we opted for ice creams at the restaurant on the square.  We are eating way too much ice cream on this trip. 

This “Great Wall” is the remains of an ancient church.  It was on the outskirts of town as we were leaving. 

We very much enjoyed our visit as St. Émilion was a very interesting town.