Pays de la Loire
Royal de Luxe
Watch out for giant puppets. Elephants, rhinoceroses, giraffe hunters, the Sultan of India - the world-renowned company loves superlatives. For 40 years, Royal de Luxe has been occupying public spaces in gigantic urban strolls. Conceived as "aesthetic shocks", their shows question contemporary lifestyles, with irony or gravity. Established in Nantes since 1989, Royal de Luxe is when the poet marries the machine.
The elephant, public domain
Saumur-Champigny
This is the wine that perhaps best evokes the gentleness of the Loire Valley. Cultivated since the 4th century, the vineyards began to flourish in the Middle Ages, before becoming the focus of a major trade in the 15th century, driven in particular by the two great abbeys of Saint Florent de Saumur and Fontevraud. Today, saumur-champigny is an AOC wine, to be enjoyed - in moderation - with family and friends. The French art of living.
Les Riches heures du Berry, September, public domain
Abbaye royale de Fontevraud, museum of modern art
Europe’s largest monastic city, the abbey was founded in 1101. It later owed its power to the Plantagenets, a dynasty that produced several kings of England. For example, Richard Heart of Lyon, son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose remains are enthroned at the heart of the abbey church. For seven centuries, the abbey welcomed many nobles of royal blood. Until the French Revolution, which turned the building into a prison until 1963. Today, it is an internationally renowned center for contemporary art. More than a visit, an experience.
The recumbent figures at Frontevraud Abbey, ©iStock
The yellow "Titan" crane, Nantes
It’s big, 43 meters, weighs 400 tons and, above all, it’s yellow. This Titan crane on the Ile de Nantes bears witness to the region’s commercial and industrial past. Built in 1954 and used on the site of the shipyards, this machine is now a listed historic monument. The pride of the local population, it has become a tourist attraction, just like its little sister, dressed in grey, located on another quay in the port of Nantes. A bookshop-restaurant awaits you at its feet.
La Grue jaune sur un quai de Nantes, ©iStock
HellFest
All this happens in June in Clisson, a working-class city in the Loire-Atlantique region of France. It is the muddy and metallic meeting point for disciples of hard rock and fans of the "big sound". Hellfest brings together some of the most important heavy-death-glam-black metal bands in the galaxy, and nearly 400,000 furious men and women in a trance. Good humor, taunts, dust and decibels on the program. Hell has never been so appetizing.
During an Iron Maiden concert, public domain
