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| a huge pile of old sleepers |
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| former railway line rails |
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| the engine shed, shed of its tracks |
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| the empty locomotive shed |
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| the last remaining item, a double-decker carriage |
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| the station and demolitions underway |
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| la gare |
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| a new business is in preparation cycle rentals |
A new roundabout has appeared at the northern gate to the town, the Porte de Chinon. This reinforces the original 17th century layout of the gate composition, based as it is on a circular layout of rotation.
While the by-pass remains incomplete in its north western sector, all the passing traffic, including frequent euro-artic-trucks, have to navigate this poem of French civic traffic engineering. It seems odd that there is always money for endless traffic engineering of doubtful purpose, while the old stones of the town languish in dereliction. Don't we all love our cars!
It seems to the old Abbé Henri Proust that the Lemercier brothers would have added a central obelisk, in the manner of seventeenth century Roma, as a confirmation of the centrality of the layout and a reminder of more celestial ambitions for the cité idéale
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| the Chinon gate closed for the construction period |
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| the bridge out of town with new cobbles |
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| the new roundabout |
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| doesn't this need a central obelisk? |
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| the axis of the parc de quinconce |
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| kooking south at the porte de Chinon |
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| the new circular footpath |
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| The town hall decked out |
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| infrared photo of the fortress in Chinon across the River Vienne Hope Bruno doesn't mind a plug... |
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| now in the Uffizi Gallery Florence |
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| villa medici today |
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| One of JMW's many ripostes to Claud |
