#saintguilhem

[photoschotter]

Abbaye de Saint-Guilhem le Désert non loin de Montpellier. Très beau village...

[mopiou]

Saint Guilhem Le Desert #saintguilhem Saint-Guilhem-le-desert #France (at Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert)

[mopiou]

Crème glacée 🍦 Lait de brebis #icecream #glace #saintguilhem (at Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert)

[mopiou]

Saint Guilhem Le Desert #saintguilhem #France (at Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert)

[visual-lemonade]

st guilhem pt 1

[amorehousenomad-blog]

day 14.

yesterday, we went on an excursion to a beautiful mountain range and "desert" in a town named saint-guilhem. this small, quaint town is about a 30-45 minute drive north of montpellier. st-guilhem was a friend of the king, and was allotted land to build his church and monastery for worship and converting people to christianity. they wanted this to be attractive to people to help convert them, so the king put some beautiful marble sculptures, gold, silver and a piece of the "true cross" from the pope. the marble sculptures of angels were naked in some places and people from all over came over just to rub the nude angels to bring them good luck and to solidify their faith. the true cross added to this (although it could not be touched), the people felt as though they had to come see what the pope had delivered to this church. 

because this city is in the middle of a valley, the inhabitants of this area were forced to build towers surrounding the area. there were towers built on the peaks of mountains near the town dating back to the ninth century. the city was ambushed and taken over (by the saracens, the occitane empire and the nazis). hitler and the nazis destroyed some of the relics of the city like the statue of marianne (the symbol of liberty in france) and the huge one-of-a-kind organ in the church of st-guilhem. as of only a few months ago has the organ been fully restored.

not too far away from the town, we visited a cave that had developed over time due to water and salt dripping from the ceiling to the floor. the sea water level was about 4km higher than it is today, so now they space that was filled with water is completely hollow and you can see how the rocks were formed. some of the rocks dated back 1 million years. the cave was pretty cool. although it seemed like we saw only 3 or 4 different rocks, the time it took to form this astonishing cave was something to appreciate.