The Church of Auvers theme was inspired by the artwork of the same name by Vincent Van Gogh. I have tried to keep the atmosphere and colours of the artwork while also ensuring that the items don't look out of place in the Sims game. I have also tried to retain the feel and general shape of the church, while making it a desirable house for your sims. I have given them a larger upstairs area than would be the case, and also an upstairs courtyard where there would be just roof space.

Dating back to the 12th century, the church of Notre Dame in Auvers-sur-Oise, just north of Paris, has undergone many restorations and additions, yet it retains the solemn architecture of the Roman-Gothic period. It can be traced back as far as 1131 when it was given to the nuns of Senlis by Louis VI. Today, it remains virtually unchanged from when Van Gogh painted it.

"Auvers is very beautiful. There is among other things a lot of old thatch, which is getting rare. One is far enough from Paris for it to be real country, but nevertheless how changed since Daubigny; but not changed in an unpleasant way - there are many villas and various bourgeois dwelling-houses very radiant and sunny and covered with flowers." Vincent Van Gogh May 1890, Dear Theo

Van Gogh lived in Auvers for only 70 days - but these were to be the last 70 days of his life, during which time he painted some of the most famous canvases of his entire work.

UPDATED 20 July 2002 Church of Auvers-sur-Oise, Lot 5

PLEASE NOTE: This zip does not contain any objects, walls or floors. You will need to download, unzip and install all the object, wall & floor zips from below before playing this house, otherwise you will get the dreaded "missing objects" box and the house will be incomplete - and may even crash your game.

UPDATED 20 July 2002

Two windows Stained Glass window & buttress

The beautiful window bases and the wall buttress base object are by Marina's Sims http://rt000wy8.eresmas.net/objects/objects.htm The Stained Glass window is deliberately not transparent, to try and retain the feel of the painting's opaqueness. Please note that the interior wall & floor pictured are from the Brunel theme and are not included in this set.

The updated versions have been made droppable by the talents of Cosycole, using the "Rooke's Droppings" tool made by the best birdy on the web http://members.aol.com/therookesnest/ This is an awesome tool, essential for HD users, as it enables you to make your windows and doors droppable during gameplay. Do follow the instructions to the letter - it will not work properly unless you do.

Front: four Sectional roof pieces Back: five Gable roof pieces - in two zips 1 2

These two sets of roof pieces with different angled slopes can be mixed and matched to give interesting roof details, but to make continuous roofing like the ones pictured, they are named separately to make it easier to tell which set is which. The largest roof segment of each set comes with and without "windows". You can place these in any way you like to give the effect of a multi-storey building. Thanks to the awesome talent of Cooptwin The Amazing And Magnificent, the pieces are droppable - they will drop when played with walls cutaway or down. You may well find that your sims can walk in the squares where the gables should be if the walls are down as well =:o See more of Cooptwin's work at Another #%*& Sim Site http://www.angelfire.com/retro/vinylp_ants/Stuff.html

Original gable roof idea credit to Ophelia http://www.oph3lia.com/index2.html - although my gables have all four views and can be placed against walls at any rotation. All roof pieces will be under "Buy Mode / Decorative".

Church Door

Now made droppable with many many thanks to Feline of N99 - one of the dearest pusscats on the web ;o)

Two paintings - the Van Gogh original and a contemporary watercolour by Jane Tomlinson.

Exterior wall, two floor tiles, roof Unzip to a temporary storage folder, and move the files ending in:

• .wll to C:\Program Files\Maxis\The Sims\Gamedata\Walls
• .flr to C:\Program Files\Maxis\The Sims\Gamedata\Floors
• .bmp to C:\Program Files\Maxis\The Sims\Gamedata\Roofs

If you would like to redesign or recolor objects from the Church of Auvers set, please do! All I require is a credit and link on your site and in the object description, similar to how I give credit here.

All links to the original site where I have made the recolour from are given. You will find more information on this in the Recolourers Resource Project pages.