The next morning a few kilometres further on we get to Tonnerre, under the watchful eye of a fisherman and his dog. I quickly bury myself among the film canisters because I now know the form: off we will go to the town and its monuments. Why? It’s still a mystery to me.

This bag is the ideal vantage point for me to see what’s going on. We walk down the main street in the direction of the Hotel Dieu, passing across a bridge in front of a really pretty house with red tiles and its feet in the water.

The Hotel Dieu, former hospital of the town, one of the oldest and largest in France, was built between 1293 nd 1295 by Marguerite de Bourgogne, widow of Charles of Anjou, brother of St. Louis. It is a huge stone nave with an enormous (more than 100metres) round wooden vault, reminiscent of an upturned hull of which the beams would be the benches. Inside, the original tomb of Marguerite dating from 1308 was destroyed in the Revolution and replaced in 1826. In the centre stands the main altar, pure fourteenth century.

But what is most intriguing is the meridian line: through a little hole pierced in a blocked-up window, light hits a line on the floor and thus gives the exact solar time (16 minutes before Greenwich) as well as the solstices and equinoxes. There would only be seven like this in the world. The whole concept of this meridian is due to two eighteenth century men who were passionate about astronomy, Armand Henri Beaudoin de Guermadeuc and Dom Camille Ferrouillat. At the entrance one also finds Merovingian sarcophagi from before the eight century, complete with their owners’ bones.

Climbing up the little streets of the town, right at the top you come to St. Peter’s church, originally situated below the old Roman castle and the medieval chateau destroyed in 1414. It’s the Roman castle which has given its name to the town: Tornodurum (from the Latin durum, meaning fortified place, and Turnus, Thor, the god of thunder).
We go down a steep little path where an old ruined house provides evidence of former inhabitants here before arriving at another site: the Fosse Dionne, which is in fact a Vaucluse spring, sacred to the Celts, which has given rise to innumerous legends. Its blue-green waters, in which the pink and gold houses are reflected, gushes forth into a pond surrounded by a charming wash house before continuing through the town to join the Armancon river nearby. We are, as a little sign reminds us, 2095 kilimetres from St. James of Compostella.
For me, Nénesse, one life is not enough…

We go down into the town again, passing by Notre-Dame church, the former chapel of the Hotel Dieu, which welcomed pilgrims on their route from Vézelay. The gate dates from 1536, the year when Francois I signed the treaty “The surrender” with Suleiman the Magnificent.