Christmas, dare I say already forgotten, led to my city-in-law.
Le Mans is a pleasant enough city, known to all motor racing fans because of the 24 Heures or motorbike equivalent, plus the film about the former featuring Steve McQueen, and has a handsome old town, Vieux Mans, also known as the Cité Plantagenêt.
Twice in the past decade, in 2003 and then - after a quick relegation - n 2005 in the years between 2002 and 2004, the local football club of which my late father-in-law was a keen fan and one-time supporters' association official, reached the French top-flight, Ligue 1.
The second spell ended in 2010, wretched bad timing since this immediately preceded just a move from the little Léon-Bollée my father-in-law knew to to the new 25,000-seater MMArena. It has been a downward spiral since, with a gathering financial crisis sending the club into liquidation and the team into the sixth division of French football.
At least the city still has two of the world's biggest motor races, its delicious rillettes and a magnificent cathedral, Saint-Julien du Mans, named after the bishop who brought Christianity to the area in the fourth century. It was virtually deserted, between services, when we looked round on Christmas Day.
The cathedral, construction dating from the 6th to 14th centuries, dominates the Place des Jacobins, where the pesage, technical verification of vehicles competing in the 24 Heures, formerly took place. But on the other side of the square from this beautiful example of cathedral design stands l’Espace Culturel, an arts complex opened last year and for which the old theatre was demolished.
Make up your own mind. In my eyes, it is no worse than most modern architecture of the functional kind, but a monstrosity in terms of its proximity to such a splendid cathedral.
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