A gorgeous day yesterday, too nice to be spent in museums, so I started out at the famous Pont Saint-Benezet, famous chiefly, I gather, for a rather irritating children’s song, which was anyway factually incorrect, since in the 19th century they danced under, rather than on, the bridge – probably safer. But still the 19th-century did save four spans of the rather remarkable structure. It was built in the 12th century – what was described as the “first bridge” – although archaeologists have found it had a Roman predecessor, and the medieval constructors used its foundations, at least in part.
But the Rhone was still a big challenge – and it was beaten – the legend says by a God-inspired shepherd boy of 11 who came down to the town and told the people to build the bridge, laying the first, impossibly large, foundation stone himself. That was of course Benezet – who is buried in the lower of these two chapels – well he was, until his body went on one of those inevitable medieval wandering courses.
That first bridge was pulled down by the nasty French, after the Avgnonaise, an early independent Republic under the suzerainty of the Count of Toulouse, were so unwise as to side with the Albigensians (believers in Manicheism). (The walls, and the merchants and nobles great defensive tower houses went too.) But the bridge soon went up again and continued in use until the 17th century.
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