Nevers: a mini-guide

 That will be absolutely a mess, more following my crazy thoughts...

'Tu ne connais pas Nevers, tu n'est jamais allée a Nevers!"

Here is the beginning of a very famous French novel by Marguerite Duras: Nevers mon amour... Not quite. The title is 'Hiroshima mon amour'. But Nevers is in the novel... Not quite in a great light, the female protagonist was arrested and did time in Nevers just after the war as she had a relationship with a German soldier. So I'm a bit surprised to see that a street got Duras' name and she's considered a friend of the city! (But maybe she did stuff I do not know about)

There is another literary reference, a bit far-stretched maybe... Madame de Lafayette's portrait of the Prince de Clèves in La princesse de Clèves. The Prince de Clèves, a man of honour, became Duc de Nevers by accident after the death of his brother. It is said Madame de Lafayette took him as model in her novel, one of the first in France. 

If we go further in time (and that means I have to check Wikipedia a lot) some sovereigns were in between the house of France and the house of Burgundy. There are also 'bosses' from Flanders and then from Italy. Very confusing. As usual. 

The famous 'botte de Nevers' is an invention, unfortunately. I thought it was something typical of the fencing style of the region but no. It appeared in a novel 'de cape et d'épée' as we call them (le bossu, also a film). But fencing has been going on a very long time here.

A prestigious past with the most beautiful churches, the maritime business of receiving and sending stuff, pretty much like a city near the sea, then, with the influence of Italy, the business of faiences. 

There was even an artistic group at the end of the nineteenth century which included my great-grand father. He did a lot of paintings of the country side and of Nevers. I really like the museum as it shows a lot of painting of men and women at work in the fields.

Unfortunately, Nevers became part of 'la France morte' this lovely term, probably attributed by Parisian technocrats to describe struggling French regions. I do remember, at the end of the 'trente glorieuses' that is in the seventies that there was a lot happening in town then. I was 7 or 8 and there were many shops and events. Now the beautiful city is crumbling.... 

Even some churches are damaged, the beautiful eglise St Etienne stinks of damp. It got worse since last year. 

And in town there are many abandoned buildings. The only good thing is that hundreds of birds are living there now and in the evening right now, it's a birds' paradise.