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Blois (blwɑː ; blwa) is a commune and the capital city of Loir-et-Cher department, in Centre-Val de Loire, France, on the banks of the lower Loire river between Orléans and Tours. With 45,898 inhabitants by 2019, Blois is the most populated city of the department, and the 4th of the region. Historically, the city was the capital of the County of Blois, created on 832 until its integration into the Royal domain in 1498, when Count Louis II of Orléans became King Louis XII of France. During the Renaissance, Blois was the official residence of the King of France. Since 2013, excavations have been conducted by French National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP in French) in Vienne where they found evidence of "one or several camps of late Prehistory hunter-gatherers, who were also fishermen since fishing traps were found there.. [...] They were ancestors of the famous Neolithic farmer-herders, who were present in current France around 6,000 BCE [i.e.: 8,000 years ago]." A major urban development begun in 1959 uncovered the remains of a late Gallic settlement and an urban centre from the Gallo-Roman period. At that time, the town was located on the road linking Chartres to Bourges. In the network of cities of the Carnutes people, Blois was a secondary settlement. Excavations carried out on the right bank between 2001 and 2016 and on the left bank in 2013-2014 revealed the presence of a largely developed town on the right bank and an occupation on the left bank during the Gallic and Gallo-Roman periods. The Loire river has undoubtedly always been a major axis route, although no traces of a port have been uncovered. However, there are remains of former bridges linking the two banks. Though of ancient origin, Blois is first distinctly mentioned by Gregory of Tours in the 6th century, and the city gained some notability in the 9th century, when it became the seat of a powerful countship known as Blesum castrum by the counts of Blois. Blois was first organised around a county, which was recreated in 956 by Count Theobald I of Blois, also known as The Trickster.

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Thinking Places (fr)

Jacques Lévy

Neuf films pour faire penser les lieux Thinking Places est une série de neuf films scientifiques dont le principe est le suivant: associer, par le langage du cinéma, le discours d’un chercheur travaillant sur l’espace à un lieu que ce chercheur a lui-même choisi parce ce lieu l’a changé. Chaque film est fondé sur quatre règles A. La personne et le lieu doivent être filmés simultanément. B. Le film comprend un seul plan-séquence C. Le tournage est limité à une seule prise. D. Le lieu filmé est ce dont parle la personne filmée. Les films 1. Béatrice Collignon/Ottawa 2. Jean-François Staszak/Boston 3. John Agnew/Belfast 4. Franco Farinelli/Florence 5. Paola Viganò/Courtrai + Anvers 6. Michel Lussault/Lyon 7. Augustin Berque/Imintanoute 8. Susanne Rau/Grande Canarie 9. Jacques Lévy/Séoul

Chôros, EPFL2015

French Wars of Religion

The French Wars of Religion refers to the period of civil war between French Catholics and Protestants (called Huguenots) from 1562 to 1598. Between two and four million people died from violence, famine or disease directly caused by the conflict, and it severely damaged the power of the French monarchy. One of its most notorious episodes was the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572. The fighting ended with a compromise in 1598, when Henry of Navarre, who had converted to Catholicism in 1593, was proclaimed King Henry IV of France and issued the Edict of Nantes, which granted substantial rights and freedoms to the Huguenots.

Ancien Régime

The Ancien Régime (ˌɒ̃sjæ̃_reɪˈʒiːm; ɑ̃sjɛ̃ ʁeʒim; old rule), also known as the Old Regime, was the political and social system of the Kingdom of France from the Late Middle Ages (1500) until 1789 and the French Revolution which abolished the feudal system of the French nobility (1790) and hereditary monarchy (1792). The Valois dynasty ruled during the Ancien Régime up until 1589 and was subsequently replaced by the Bourbon dynasty. The term is occasionally used to refer to the similar feudal systems of the time elsewhere in Europe such as that of Switzerland.

Loire

The Loire (lwɑːr , USalsoluˈɑːr , lwaʁ; Léger ˈledʒe; Lêre; Liger; Liger) is the longest river in France and the 171st longest in the world. With a length of , it drains , more than a fifth of France's land, while its average discharge is only half that of the Rhône. It rises in the southeastern quarter of the French Massif Central in the Cévennes range (in the department of Ardèche) at near Mont Gerbier de Jonc; it flows north through Nevers to Orléans, then west through Tours and Nantes until it reaches the Bay of Biscay (Atlantic Ocean) at Saint-Nazaire.