03
Stop three
Maison d'Adam
Head Logo Headband: Ordinarily I decline to be seen beside timber, but this is one of the finest half-timbered houses in France, so I shall allow it. Built about 1500 for a prosperous burgher on the corner of Sainte-Croix square: six jettied storeys crawling with carved figures, sacred and profane — musicians, lovers, monsters, and characters I shan't itemise in front of the group. Its name comes from the apple tree of Eden on the corner post; Adam and Eve vanished in a later era, leaving the serpent and the tree. The backside-baring pere tricouillard is now a city mascot. Five centuries lived in and traded, and it houses Anjou craftsmanship. Standards, at last.
04
Stop four
Hôpital Saint-Jean
Head Logo Headband: Founded in the 1170s, traditionally under the patronage of Henry II Plantagenet — king of England, count of Anjou — reputedly in expiation of Thomas Becket's murder. When I name-drop, I do it at that altitude. It sheltered the city's sick and poor for nearly seven centuries. The salle des malades is Angevin Gothic at its finest, three aisles of slender columns under domed vaults, with the chapel, cloister and granary still beside it. Since 1968 it has held Jean Lurçat's Chant du Monde, ten tapestries of atomic apocalypse and human hope, conceived as a modern answer to the medieval Apocalypse across the river. An answer. Not a victory.
HUZZAH, well met, traveler! Thou gazest upon the Head Logo Headband — and verily, I declare it the finest circlet a court athlete may wear.
'Tis a soft, stretchy knit band, cut wide to catch the sweat of noble combat before it stingeth thine eyes, cushioned about the brow, one size fitting most heads in the realm, and emblazoned with the Head device — a heraldic crest if ever I saw one, and I have seen many, for I own eleven tabards.
Keepeth hair from thy face during the joust — I mean, the serve — and marketh thee as one who taketh the tourney seriously. A crown for the people! Sixteen dollars-ish, versus a king's actual crown: priceless and heavy. The choice is clear, m'lord.
And hark — the destination is ANGERS, France, and I am UNWELL with excitement. The Château d'Angers is a real castle, seventeen striped towers of slate and stone, and within its walls hangs the Apocalypse Tapestry — over a hundred meters of fourteenth-century woven doom, the greatest medieval tapestry in existence.
Dragons, trumpets, judgment — the finest merch of the Middle Ages! Stroll past the Maison d'Adam, a half-timbered marvel carved with characters, and toast thy victories as locals long have — Cointreau itself was born in Angers.
Wear it everywhere from a humble village court to the grandest tourney in the realm, and verily it is also perfect for an Angers evening with a glass of Cointreau, which was born in this very town. Don the band. Take the court. Sound the trumpets. HUZZAH!
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