The buttery yellow ramparts encircling the middle of Avignon stretch 2.6 miles and are notched with arrow slits and gaps for dumping boiling water or cooking oil on attackers beneath.
Over the centuries, the partitions have protected popes and warded off sieges. They have been rebuilt by the Nineteenth-century architect who refurbished Notre-Dame, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, and have been embellished by the notices for performs for the reason that summer time theater competition started within the metropolis quickly after World War II.
And for the final 4 months, they’ve borne witness to the mass rape trial occurring within the fashionable courthouse simply throughout the highway and to its central sufferer, Gisèle Pelicot.
The evening earlier than the trial started in early September, a bunch of native feminists traveled across the metropolis and pasted items of paper with letters on them to partitions, in giant collages. They contained messages for the accused males who would arrive to court docket the subsequent day.
“Rapist, we see you,” learn one alongside the lip of an arched gate by means of the wall.
“Victims, we imagine you,” learn one other.
The feminists belong to a bunch known as the Amazons of Avignon. Like different feminist collectives in France, that they had been gluing up messages about violence towards ladies across the metropolis for years. But they picked up their tempo after Ms. Pelicot pushed for the trial to be opened to the general public.
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