Saint Anne teaches young Mary to read

When the Ideal Town was built in the 1630s, the external girdling walls, the entry gates and the vehicle carriageways themselves were constructed at the Crown's expense.

Louis XIII and Anne d'Autriche, King and Queen of France and Navarre.

The Cardinal also sought to have his new town's children well educated by the Sisters, so he founded nunneries that followed catholic teaching orders.  These convents he located on the western side of the town, furthest away from the little moated river Veude that runs past the town's eastern boundary. The prevailing wind blows the smoke of the town's chimneys, away from the children at school, over the roofs to the east.  The western side of the town still accommodates these schoolchildren today.

The street that accommodated these schooling premises, as well as the church's presbytery, came to be called rue Sainte Anne. Saint Anne was the mother of the Virgin Mary, and in a sense the grandmother of Jesus. In renaissance religious art she is typically shown teaching Mary to read. Just as the Sisters were doing to their charges in the adjacent buildings...

On one of the houses of 'rue Sainte Anne' - at the town's midpoint - there is a statue of Anne and Mary at lessons. It is in a sad state, but restoration has now commenced.

King Louis must have been flattered by the Queen Anne/Saint Anne allusion!

the dedicatee!

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