Description

There is a beautiful and timeless quality to the architecture of Anjou. Anchored by Angers in the west and Saumur further to the east, the local buildings are wonderfully monochromatic with pale but warm limestone walls and somber black slate roof tiles. So commonplace is this pattern of architecture that it is easy to become disoriented and not knowing exactly where you are until you look for the closest steeple or road sign. This color palette is not a unique quirk of the local masons but eons of geological history. Anjou is where the border between the ancient carboniferous bedrock of the Cambrian gives way to the Cretaceous tuffeau, or more simply, where schist, quartz, and slate transition to limestone and chalk.