The wine region of Bordeaux, France. Photo / 123RF
Catherine Masters travelled Bordeaux by river ship — here she takes a look at some of the destinations and ancient history of the famous wine region.
1. BORDEAUX
Bordeaux is a city and a wine region but there is more to the city than wine - though wine, naturally, does dominate. There is said to be 10,000 chateaus in the Bordeaux area and in France chateaus are not buildings so much as sprawling wine estates.
The city is on the Garonne River and is the capital of the Acquitaine region. Not so long ago, it was run down and its 18th century facades were black from pollution, but when former Prime Minister Alain Juppe was elected mayor a law was passed whereby the facades had to be cleaned. Many were, but as you stroll around you will see buildings that are half clean and half black, showing what the city looked like.
The riverside was once shut to the public but is abuzz these days with stylish French promenaders, joggers and cyclists. The occasional cyclist is smoking a cigarette and the French do seem to live on wine, bread, cheese and cigarettes.
Our guide tells us Charles de Gaulle once said: "How can you run a country which has more cheeses than days of the year?" The Pont de Pierre bridge, built by Napoleon Bonaparte, spans the river and opened up the left and the right banks of a city that started when the Romans arrived about 2000 years ago. Although the bridge survived a revolution and two world wars, it is slowly sinking and will be closed to traffic soon for repairs.
The Museum D'Acquitaine is well worth a visit, particularly for the grim but fascinating history of slavery. Bordeaux was once the wealthiest city in Europe and had its own colonies. Wine merchants owned plantations in places like Santo Domingo in the West Indies and some ships went from Bordeaux direct to Africa and traded products for slaves then brought them back to their plantations and to Bordeaux.
Our guide says France was the first country to abolish slavery, in 1793, but Napoleon (under pressure from wife Josephine, whose family owned a sugar plantation in Martinique) re-established it in 1804, until it was completely abolished in 1848.
2. ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE
If there is one name that keeps popping up on our river cruise and wine tour of Bordeaux, it is Eleanor of Aquitaine. She is the reason Bordeaux was English for 300 years. The Aquitaine region is in the south-west of France and encompasses Bordeaux and Dordogne. Her history is embroiled in the bloody history of the 1100s and the power struggles between France and England. She was a powerful woman in her own right and as the Duchess of Aquitaine she was one of the most eligible brides of her era. At 13 she married King Louis VII of France who was 25 years older than her, and they didn't get along.
The marriage was annulled and within two months she married Henry Plantagenet who became King of England. They had eight children, including Richard the Lionheart.
3. THE DORDOGNE AREA
As we head towards the centre of France on a bus excursion the city gives way to rural France, and prehistoric France. We pass picturesque sleepy villages with tiled roofs and stone houses, and our guide tells us rural France is largely deserted these days.
Before World War II 60 per cent of people lived in rural areas but that has fallen to just 22 per cent. This area is soaked in medieval history, says the guide, as we pass near to a battleground that signalled the end of the 100-year war between England and France over who would rule France - and this was when Aquitaine went back to French law.
In the Les Eyzies Valley, the area is thick with early human settlement and we pass by fascinating troglodyte buildings built into the rock face of cliffs and date from the 8th and 9th Centuries. The Hotel Cro Magnon is aptly named because there are 147 prehistoric sites in this area, some with objects and skeletons going back 40,000 years. There are also look-out holes in the rock faces, where early villagers would scan for Vikings who used to come to pillage and plunder.
4. SAINT-EMILION
Another medieval town famous for its wine and as a World Heritage site - even the vineyards here are protected by Unesco. The steep, cobblestone lanes are dotted with wine shops and the view from the top across the sloping roofs and out to a green sea of vineyards is truly stunning.
The Romans made wine here in the second and third centuries but the town is named after a monk who was a bit of a Robin Hood. Emilion is said to have performed miracles while taking food from his former boss and giving it to the poor. He really wanted to live the life of a hermit and came to live here in a cave, which he didn't leave for 17 years.
Sadly, we can't go inside but his cave is the site of a monolithic church (carved out of a piece of stone). It's estimated that underneath the town there are 200km of tunnels, some up to eight levels deep, because they cut the stone out and took it to the river to ship to Bordeaux for the buildings there. Saint-Emilion was seriously damaged during the French revolution (1789-1799) then abandoned, and in the cloisters of the church you can see remnants of the carnage where anything related to religion or royalty was smashed and destroyed.
5. BOURG AND BLAYE
Bourg has a chateau at the very top in a park, and it's said Louis IV used to come to the medieval town in the 900s as a boy with his mother. A story goes he liked the figs here and when a monk lifted him up to reach for the figs, the monk was then imprisoned for touching the king. Blaye has an impressive fortress at the top of its hill, which looks out across the estuary to the Medoc region, another famous wine region.
The fortress is on the site of a neolithic village from about 4000 years ago. When the Barbarians came and destroyed the village the villagers would rebuild, but the site was transformed in the 1600s by Sebastien Vauban, a military engineer for Louis XIV. There is a dry moat and a gate with a drawbridge, places to throw hot water onto people and a portcullis.
But in Vauban's day more was needed to stop Dutch and English invaders coming up the Gironde estuary, an expansive waterway where the Garonne and Dordogne rivers meet.
Vauban's idea was to bar the width of the estuary by building another fortress on an island in the middle, and another one over in the Medoc.
The writer travelled to Bordeaux courtesy of Viking Cruises.
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