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Thursday, 22 July 2010

Architectural Styles

The small towns of le Grand Pressigny and Chauvigny are only about 50km apart, but one is in the Touraine and one in Poitou-Charentes.

Both have picturesque ruins of a 12th century château at the highest point in town. Stylistically the two châteaux are very similar.

Le Grand Pressigny

Chauvigny
Most of the houses in town are roofed with terracotta tiles in both places, but in le Grand Pressigny, all the tiles are flat (tuiles plates), and in Chauvigny, all the tiles are curved (tuiles canal).

Le Grand Pressigny

Chauvigny

Susan

PS Simon wrote a piece on the different styles of roof tile some time ago which you may like to refer to for further details.

4 comments:

Jean said...

I love the rooftops of Le Grand-Pressigny. I think this is the view down Rue du Donjon. Did you take it from the grounds of the chateau?

Diogenes said...

The ruined spiral staircase makes a great photo!

Ken Broadhurst said...

The wonders of French: it should be tuiles plates (with the E) and tuiles canal (without the S). Plat/plats/plate/plates is an adjective and agrees with the noun it modifies. Canal here is (I think) not an adjective but a noun forming a compound noun with tuiles. Again, the wonders of French.

Susan said...

Ken: Thanks, corrected now. I think you must be right about canal because often it appears on its own rather than as the compound as the name for these roof tiles. I knew plat needed an 's' to agree with the noun, but forgot it should be feminine too.

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