26/7/13 (2)

This is St Emilion...not just a famous region for wine, but the site for a famous Monk & his Monastery, St Emilion.

 

Built in the 12th & 13th Centuries, it clings to the siting if a limestone quarry. Instead of building the Church up, they dug the Church into the side of the limestone & sold the stone, making them very wealthy in the process.

 They then built a church on the top of the underground one, but the weight was too great & the bell tower started to collapse. It is only through modern engineering that the structure remains stable.

The streets are narrow & made from English stone that was used as ballast in the sailing ships that frequented this area when (through marriage) the region was under English rule. They unloaded the stones & replaced it with Bordeaux wines to take back to England.

The underground Monastery with the rebuilt & re-enforced upper Church looking onto the Market Square.  

A different camera shot so that you get some idea of what sort of structure sits on top of the cave like Monastery.

The entrance to the underground Monastery. Famille our guide is in the foreground & again, she made the day very memorable...Merci.

The Monastery.

 Further into the bowels of the Monastery are the Catacombs for the wealthy dead. All the gravesites are carved out of solid rock.

& so we exit through this little back door at the end of the catacombs.