Audioguides Angers

Angers commands the Maine River in the former province of Anjou, and its chateau contains one of the most extraordinary objects in medieval art: the Apocalypse Tapestry, commissioned around 1373 by Louis I of Anjou and woven over two decades from cartoons by Hennequin de Bruges. Originally 144 meters long (surviving length is 103 meters), it depicts the Book of Revelation in wool and silk with a directness that would be lurid if it weren't so astonishing. The castle that houses it is itself a fortress of seventeen towers built from dark schist and white tufa, and the contrast between the two stones gives Angers its characteristic striped visual identity.

The city grew wealthy from trade and from the Plantagenet dynasty, the French counts of Anjou who became kings of England.

Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard the Lionheart: all connected to this city through the Angevin bloodline. That connection gave medieval Angers a cosmopolitan reach that went far beyond its size, and the cathedral of Saint-Maurice on the slope above the Maine reflects it in the quality of its twelfth and thirteenth century stained glass.