Nothing kicks off your weekend and gets you excited about doing French Homework on Saturday better than another update from our new series: Better Know a Department. Today, we take you to the historic 28th department, Eure-et-Loir. After you have read our attempt to summarize the region, feel free to click on the title of this post to visit Eure-et-Loir's website and learn many more facts that will probably have little to do with your life.
Eure-et-Loir derives its name from two rivers (take a guess at what those two names might be, and no, one of them is not "et"). It was formed from the provinces of Orléanais, Perche, and Chartrain, on the same day as most departments: the 4th of March, 1790 (by cutting up the provinces into these new departments, leaders in revolutionary France were hoping to dissolve regional community identities in order to foster a "French" identity that would supersede any other notions and give more power to themselves, as you can read about in Dr Cropper's comment on the last week's installment. Given that the country is still there and using departments, we'll assume that's been working out in the long run).
It is located in the Centre region, with its prefecture being Chartres. There are four arrondissements in it, 403 communes, and a population of 415,000. The President of the General Council is Albéric de Montgolfier, a member of the "Union for a Popular movement" political party, which is center-right leaning and was founded in 2002. And yes, my astute readers, your memory is serving you correctly, this is indeed the same party that holds 313 of 517 seats in the national Assembly, 151 of 331 seats in the Senate, and that Nicolas Sarkozy is a member of.
But I digress.
A major point of tourism for the wonderful 28th department is the Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres, a.k.a., Chartres Cathedral. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (I already got off topic once, if you don't know what UNESCO is, let me know in a comment and we'll do a piece on that some time), which is kind of a big deal. Its architecture is a fantastic example of the Gothic style, which as Professor Unlandt could explain does not consist of high schoolers wearing all black. Not only has it been a place of pilgrimage for well over a 1000 years and have a great labyrinth, but it has been said to be home to one of the blessed Virgin Mary's tunics (for more on that, look up the "Sancta Camisa").
Should you decide to go there, you will find luxurious country living with a bounty of chateaus and bed & breakfast inns to choose from. This region also prides itself on its gastronomy, or in the words of Ned Flanders, they find their local cuisine to be "scrum-didilly-umpcious." Further, there is hot-air ballooning, boating, horses and hiking for the outdoors types.
So if you have a penchant for chateaus, good food, pilgrimages and the outdoors, make sure to find your way to France's 28th department, Eure-et-Loir. It's only an hour west of Paris!
