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The rue Pomme d'Or
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The
rue Pomme d'Or leads you to the quarter where the
merchants and lower classes used to live during the
Middle-Ages. With their quaint names, the streets
recall the ancient professions and taverns' signs: A la
Pomme d'Or, Aux Trois Rois, Au Pot d'Etain.
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The rue Challemel-Lacour
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Formely
called rue des Quatre-Œufs (street of the four eggs).
You will pass by the "Maison aux gargouilles"
(gargoyle house), n°18, built of hewn stones in
1651 by the merchant Jean le Masson. He became
wealthy with the trade of butter jars made at Gers
and exported mainly to Brittany.. |
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The market place
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The
much appreciated market covers this place and the surrounding
streets every Saturday morning. You can admire
the Longray Hotel, the ancient covered market and
especially the house known as the Hotel des trois marchands
(the three merchants hotel), one of the rare 16C half-timbered
mansions still standing in Avranches. |
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The Saint Gervais Church
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Neo-classical
style, this church is not only notice worthy because
of its 74m neo-renaissance style bell
tower and its chimes but foremost because of
its treasure. |
A gold & silver shrine contains a human skull which
the legend attributes to St Aubert, bishop of Avranches
in the 8C & founder of the first oratory dedicated
to St Michael on Mont Tombe. One can also admire
a set of sacred art objects. |
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The Notre-Dame-des-Champs Church
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A
large neo-gothic building of imposing stature
dominates the plateau of the Palet. |
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Sculptors with a very active imagination embellished
the church with strange gargoyles representing various
animals and picturesque figures. |
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The Saint Anne de Moutons abbey
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...
(the theatre) founded at the end of the reign of
Louis XIII, was used in turn as barracks, a school,
a hospital, a theatre, a cinema and sometimes also as
an area frequented by beggars & criminals. This very austere
building still retains two vaulted galleries as well as
two fine granite stairways.
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Nowadays temporary exhibitions are organised
& staged in this place which has also become the
town's arts centre. |
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Place Patton
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where one of the most
important monuments of the town has been erected,
celebrates the breakthrough of Avranches by General
Patton's 4th armoured division during the 1944 Liberation. |
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The Roger Valhubert statue
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Near
the tourist information centre stands the marble
statue of General Jean-Marie Roger also known
as Valhubert who was fatally wounded at the
battle of Austerlitz on the 2nd of December
1805. The statue was commissioned by Napoleon Ist
to decorate a famous square in Paris. But his successor
King Louis XVIII refused the project and gave the
statue to the town of Avranches, birthplace of this
great General, where it was unveiled on the 16th
of July 1832. |
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