St Chinian and Causses - different views on the same day

So here are some of yesterday's photos arranged here with the municipal cloisters in St Chinian in the centre. The next post will be of the same photos but with a different centrepiece, it's interesting to see how this changes the perspective. You walk through St Chinian's town hall to enter into the cloisters and with great French aplomb they've made a wonderful modern meeting room on one side of the cloisters. It works very well.
It makes me wonder whether what is now the town hall wasn't once a convent or religious house - it does rather have that sort of look about it. In all of the years that we have been coming here I've nover really wondered about that or looked further itno the history of St Chinian itself. Over many of the churches in other towns of the region you'll find the words "Liberté Egalité Fraternité" have been written, sometimes even with the addition of "propriété de l'état". This is a way of clearly marking out state power over the religious buildings.
Anyway, the rest of the photos are from the lovely little village of Causses which we visited to go and taste and buy some of the wines from La Maurine Rouge vineyard. We had great fun wandering in the streets and also discovering the wine we had first tasted at Cessenon on Sunday. More about that later.