Whatagain in Villers la Ville

[whatagain]

Villers la Ville is a small place known for its huge and beautiful abbey.
It is the Cluny in Belgiym.
The abbey was founded in early middle ahe, and destroyed by the sans-culottes, or french revolutionaries.

[whatagain]

These buildings are the hotel (auberge in that time) and some workshops. 

View of a side, from the hotel.

Same, but higher up

Must be an entrance. . 

The park, behind the archbishop hoyse - on the right



Main entrance, the front towers.

[whatagain]

The choir

This is a small building higher on the right. Added in 1718 i would say. 
Pic is from last winter.





The transept. The statues are from Folon, a renowned artist in Belgium. Temporary exhibition. 

[whatagain]

An if - ivy ? - several hundreds years old.

In the XIX century it bothered nobody to build a railway line through the domain. Still in use. 

Remember the hotel ? This is the lobby and dining room. Rooms are upstairs. 



One of the towers. 

The tomb - gisant in french - repaired by the family. 

[whatagain]

We erre back last week end. Some people were duelling.

Workers on strike ? 

Kerouac's friends, obviously

Wild camping. 

Strangely i didn't chsllenge that guy who was getting close to Mrs Whatagain. 

Some local... i don't want to know his hairdresser.

Barbarians looting beer... 

The guards saw nothing or were bribed to look the other way.

Really, what job does this guy have outside medieval reenacyments ? 

A templar back from the Holy Land

[kerouac2]

Great pictures but what always fascinates me even more with "big ruins" is how the cultural authorities decide to deal with them. Them them down and remove the rubble? Completely restore the buildings? You have shown that it is the intermediate solution that was chosen here -- fix things just enough to keep them from deteriorating even more, and that's probably the best. For one thing, it's less expensive than the other two possibilities, and everybody loves ruins anyway. (And have we ever asked ourselves why?)

When I think of a place like Pierrefonds in France which was in the same condition, as we all know, that was completely rebuilt at great expense. It was supposed to become a royal residence again, but that never really happened, so now we have this huge place which is nice to visit but which is basically useless except for movies and things like huge private weddings. And even then, at least 50% of the rooms serve absolutely no purpose but need to be maintained.

So it makes total sense not to have rebuilt the abbey of Villers la Ville. It would have looked great but would have been just as useless unless it were turned into some sort of luxury hotel resort, which would have removed access for 99% of the population. And even if the revolution failed in Belgium, I'm pretty sure that most of the population wants everybody to be able to visit these precious remnants of history.

Those medieval festivals are always great. It's a shame that most of them last just 2 or 3 days with nothing happening most of the rest of the time.

Please keep showing us other little nooks and crannies of your country.