After our morning visit to the chateau, we walked down the hill for a guided tour of the city hall. Our guide was excellent, had much information to share, and was able to show us inside to view some of the highly detailed interiors:
He then joined us for a short bus ride along the Loire for a visit to Notre Dame des Ardilliers. If I have the legend correct, a peasant found a statue representing The Pietà around the middle of the 15th century, and multiple times the statue was taken from the site, lost, and then re-found at the same location. So people gave up moving it, and simply built a church around it, despite the ground being full of clay (the spot is near the river). The French word for "clay" is something like "argile," and over the years that transformed into "ardilliers," hence the name of the church.
One thing I found interesting about this church is that it has many unfinished pieces, such as the pediment shown above (the triangular part above the columns). This simply has big blocks of stone ready for a sculptor to do his work, but the church has no records of what the intended scenes were to be, and this in addition to the extreme cost of such work leaves things incomplete.
More pics.
Things continue at Chambord.
