Rouen (France) -- Description and travel; Rouen (France) -- History
There is not much that you can still see of the city that was so
splendidly defended, but I can at least point you to the very spot
where King Henry the Fifth had his headquarters. By going eastwards
out of the city, along the Rue d'Amiens, which starts from the Place
des Ponts de Robec, you reach the boulevard Gambetta, north of the
streams of Aubette (along which runs the road to Nid de Chiens, the
Norman dukes' sporting kennel) and south of that branch of Robec which
passes by the Tour du Colombier. Though that part of Rouen's
fortifications has disappeared, you may still see at the south-east
angle of the old walls, a remnant of that Couvent des Celestins
founded by the Duke of Bedford during the English occupation. A little
further northwards you pass the end of the Rue Eau de Robec, "ignoble
petite Venise" as Flaubert called it, with its queer bridges and
overhanging gables, and finally in the Place St. Hilaire you will find
the Route de Darnetal. Walk eastwards straight along it, until a small
suburban road turns out of it upon your right hand, called the Rue de
la Petite Chartreuse. This soon leads you to a large expanse of
enclosed ground on the left of the road, surrounded by a fine bit of
fifteenth-century wall; the entrance-gate is marked with the number
4. Within are several ruined buildings dotted about a quiet abbey
close whose strange religious atmosphere has never changed in more
than four and a half centuries. Close to the gate, there rises an
ivy-covered column of dilapidated ancient masonry, which holds a much
more modern seventeenth-century shrine, still commemorating "Notre
Dame des Roses," as the laundresses call her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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