The most important church in Les Sables is Notre Dame de Bon Port, built by
the Cardinal Richelieu when he worked so hard to suppress Protestantism here
and throughout the kingdom of Louis XIII. This is not the least of
paradoxes in French history, but Louis XIII's father was a Protestant himself.
We saw the Place des Vosges and the Pont Neuf in Paris, both built by France's
favorite king, Henri IV, the author of the world's first declaration of
religious freedom, the Edict of Nantes, signed a few kilometers from here in
1598.