Quimperlé lies on both sides of the little river Elle, which, like the other streams of the South Breton coast, is a special variety of waterway quite unlike their more pretentious brothers and sisters elsewhere. The country round about has been called the "Arcadia of Lower Brittany," and so it will strike even the least observant of travellers--after he has recovered from the effects of the glances of those elegant and gracious females.
The most ancient part of the little city is that known as the walled town, grouped around the ancient Abbey of Holy Cross, on that tongue of land which separates the Isole and the Elle. The escarpment is badly built up, but withal it is ruggedly picturesque, abounding in old houses, some of which have stood since the thirteenth century.
The site of the old Abbey of Holy Cross was known in the sixth century as Anaurot, and became the refuge of one of the Breton Kings of Cambria, who, abdicating, came here and built a hermitage, which in time was converted into an abbey of Benedictines. This old Abbey of Holy Cross, as it exists to-day, has a ground-plan which more nearly follows that of a four-armed cross than any other extant in Christendom. The same motive doubtless inspired its builders as that which induced the architects of Charlemagne to erect that famous round church at Aix-la-Chapelle, which in reality it greatly resembles in general features; both went back to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem for their initial idea.
This church at Quimperlé is one of the three or four in all Brittany having a crypt, and it is more amply endowed with interior furnishings and fitments than many a grander edifice. Altogether it is an ecclesiastical monument of the first importance.
It has a companion, moreover, of no mean rank, either, in the Church of St. Michael, which sits high on the hilltop and dominates nearly every vista of the town.
After a tempestuous past extending from the monastic foundation of the sixth century, Anaurot, or Quimperlé as it had become meantime, surrendered to Duguesclin in 1373. Finally, when a treaty had been signed with the League as to future neutrality, the city walls were demolished (in 1680), and Quimperlé settled down to a peaceful existence, which is only broken on the year's great feast-days, or on the days of the pardons,--that of the Passion in March, the Pardon of the Birds on Whit-Monday, the second day of May, or the last Sunday of July.