FrancoFiles

FrancoFiles new address: www.timetravelertours.com

2010-05-12T15:19:00.001+02:00

Okay, this is it. My last post here at FrancoFiles.blogspot.com.
Time to travel!

I hope you'll visit from now on at www.timetravelertours.com.

You'll find the new and improved FrancoFiles web log and a bunch of other cool stuff besides.

Example: Be the first to pilot the prototype iPhone/iTouch/iPad app of the Time Traveler Paris Tours itinerary of the French Revolution: Beware Madame La Guillotine... Coming Summer 2010!

Napoleon Bonaparte's Civic Legacy

2010-05-05T11:39:00.001+02:00

Today, I'd like to share a recent Q&A I had with a FrancoFiles Fan and her Studious Son who is writing an extended essay on the larger-than-life character of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. The two were interested in Napoleon's civic achievements, not just his battles, both successful and disastrous, about which much has been written.

Hi Sarah,

I found your blog on Google. I have a "stumper" for you, which I cannot find the answer online. Anywhere! Here goes: Under the dome, at Les Invalides, Napoleon's coffin is surrounded by bas relief sculptures that represent his most significant civic achievements. What are those achievements?

Surrounding Napoleon's porphyry sarcophagus under the dome of the Chapel at Les Invalides are first a ring of 12 statues of angels, called the "Winged Victories". They symbolize Emperor Napoleon's victorious military campaigns - of which there were 40 or so battles. Inscribed in the mosaic floor at the Victories' feet are the names of his eight greatest victories: Austerlitz, Marenco, Pyramides, Iena, Friedland, Wagram, Moscova, and Rivoli. The Winged Victories stand guard over Napoleon's remains with laurel wreaths in hand, a symbol of victory dating back to Roman times.

On the circular wall just behind the Victories can be found 10 bas relief sculptural panels that commemorate and honor Napoleon's administrative and political achievements as well as his public works. The most significant of these achievements is the Napoleonic Code, which represented the final and perhaps most lasting break from France's former rule by Absolute Monarchy. It placed all French people, no matter their family background, rank, or ties with the church or nobility, under the same system of justice and law. After the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, promulgated during the Revolution, the Napoleonic Code is perhaps one of the most important political documents in the history of democracy. Even today it remains the basis of law in some 80 countries.

The various public works celebrated in the bas relief panels include canals that brought potable drinking water to Paris; bridges; grand streets and boulevards such as the rue de Rivoli; building projects such as the Louvre extension; and monuments like the Carousel du Louvre, all spear-headed by Napoleon. He is remembered for institutionalizing the stock exchange in Paris and building La Bourse, which continues to house the exchange today. He is credited for the idea of centralized government, having carved France up into a series of departments and created localized governments that answered to him. Napoleon is also to be thanked for modernizing the postal system by numbering houses consecutively along odd and even sides of streets to ease delivery of letters and packages.

Any study of Napoleon Bonaparte should consider his great achievements in addition to his elusive military campaign for "La Gloire" that led, finally, to his being sent into exile half way around the world. For even the Emperor is remembered for having said: ...more important than the winning of 40 battles is the civil code, which will live forever.

***

If you have a question about French history and culture, please don't hesitate to ask!

Images:
by the author

Beware Madame La Guillotine - Pilot Tour!

2010-04-23T19:44:00.005+02:00

On Thursday, April 1, 2010, as part of their study of the French Revolution, the 8^th grade class at the International School of Paris took a walking tour of the era with Charlotte Corday. Charlotte is known for having assassinated Jean-Paul Marat, radical journalist and proponent of the Reign of Terror. She blamed Marat for destroying the true revolution. She felt that his death would bring an end to the fear and bloodshed tearing her country apart. She decided to do it herself.

Her tour, Beware Madame La Guillotine, prototype itinerary of the Time Traveler Tours, recounts her journey to end Marat’s life, and her own. She narrates the last four days of her life, from July 11, 1793, when she left her Norman home, until her execution on July 17th.

ISP students followed her movements, from the Palais Royal, birthplace of the French Revolution and where she bought her weapon; to Marat’s home near the revolutionary hot spot, Le Café Procope, where she stabbed him through the heart as he soaked in the bath; to the Conciergerie, where she was imprisoned, tried, and labeled an “enemy of the revolution”. Charlotte was guillotined at the Place de la Revolution (now the Place de la Concorde) six months after Louis XVI and two months before Marie-Antoinette.

“Very compelling [to view the Revolution] from the perspective of the characters” who lived it, reports one ISP 8^th grader. “I liked how we learn more specifically [about the Revolution]. And get to know the places that related to Charlotte,” said another.

Overall the students liked the experience: “Cool trip.” “Interesting and fun.” “GOOD JOB! And well done!”

Images by Julia Luu, Intern, ISP External Affairs.

Time Traveler Tours go to Bologna

2010-04-10T14:25:00.002+02:00

On March 22, 2010, at the acclaimed Bologna Childrens' Book Fair in Italy, Sarah read from the prototype historical itinerary of the Time Traveler Tours, Beware Madame La Guillotine, to rave reviews:

On the evening of 13 July 1793, I found Marat thus, in the bath at his apartment around the corner from his press. It was my third visit to his house that day. The first two times – once in the early morning, then at mid-day – I had been turned away by Simone. This time, however, I succeeded in gaining entry. I climbed the steps to Marat’s door, one heavy foot at a time, and plucked up the courage to knock yet again. I was confronted once more by a scowling and suspicious Simone, but before she could dismiss me a third time, I offered her, with a slightly trembling hand, a letter addressed to Monsieur Marat. I had written the letter myself, in the heat of the afternoon after my second failed attempt to cross his threshold. The letter stated that I had come to name names; that I was prepared to give him information regarding the missing Girondin “Enemies of the Revolution” that he sought.

Who would suspect a 24-year old girl?

Simone took the letter and shut the door with a slam, leaving me alone on that drab, inhospitable landing. I could have turned around right there and then. But Marat was just on the other side of that door. I took a long, deep breath, and held it. Would I again be turned away? If so, so be it. Or would I meet the monster Marat at last?

I met my enemy in a small, square room with a brick-tiled floor. A map of France hung upon worn wall-paper. His tub was the shape of a sabot, an old wooden shoe. A board lying across it served as a writing table so that Marat could work on his articles and conduct his interviews even while soaking. To keep warm, he sat upon a linen sheet, the dry ends covering his bare shoulders. A second sheet draped across the tub and writing table offered him a bit of privacy from his visitors.

Marat was strange and unpleasant, thin and feverish. His head was wrapped in a filthy, vinegar-soaked handkerchief. On his skin were open lesions that reeked of decaying, rotten flesh. My eyes began to tear, struggling so against the fumes of death and medicine that I did not at first notice Marat motioning me to take the chair placed beside his bath. I sat as requested, my head turned toward the window, searching the still, hot summer air for what little breeze might chance to come my way. And in the gloom of evening’s waning light, Marat took great pleasure in scribbling down one by one, his head bent over his writing table, the names of each of my beloved Girondin friends.

Once finished he raised his head, his blood-shot eyes met mine for the first time. He proclaimed viciously, hate dripping from his lips, “We’ll soon have them all guillotined in Paris!”

At that moment I knew I had justly come. I pulled out my knife and stabbed Marat right through the heart.

One blow was all it took. I felt the knife penetrate flesh, bone, muscle. It was shocking how easy it was.

Marat died almost instantly.

For more on Beware Madame La Guillotine and other tours in the Time Traveler Tours Paris series, see www.timetravelertours.com.

Image:

Baudry, Paul-Jacques-Aimé. Charlotte Corday. 1860. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes.

Les Sans-culottes

2010-03-14T22:56:00.002+01:00

Isn't this a great picture? Just this week, I received permission to use it in the prototype itinerary of the Time Traveler Tours, Beware Madame La Guillotine.

It is a hand-colored copper engraving by Braun & Schneider, Munich, c. 1880, that comes to me from the Collection KulturBuro Schodel, www.german-hosiery-museum.de. It pictures les citoyens sans-culottes of the French Revolution.

Who were the "sans-culottes"? This excerpt from Beware Madame La Guillotine explains all:

The term “sans-culottes” first appeared in the French lexicon in 1790 during the French Revolution. Initially, it described the poorer members of the Third Estate* who wore full-length trousers (pantaloons) rather than the knee-length culottes fashionable among the bourgeoisie and nobility. The expression quickly came to refer to the radical revolutionaries, both rich and poor, who styled themselves “citoyens sans-culottes”.

In addition to long trousers, the sans-culottes were also often seen wearing a conical red cap, known as the “Phrygian Cap” or cap of liberty. The same cap was worn in ancient times by both the Greeks and later the Romans. For them, as for the French revolutionaries, the Phrygian Cap symbolized freedom from tyranny.

During the early years of the French Revolutionary Wars, the term sans-culottes referred as well to the ill-clad and ill-equipped volunteers of the Revolutionary Army.

As for news on the likelihood of obtaining photos from the RMN (see Phrases & Expression: Sabotage), I managed to get through to the Paris reps who've bounced my case to their affiliate in New York. I'm hoping very much that this means progress! Cross your fingers for me.

****
*The Third Estate was that portion of the French population (approximately 96%) that was neither part of the Church nor to the Aristocracy in France of the Ancien Régime. For more on the Third Estate and the French Revolution, click here.

Phrases & Expressions: Sabotage

2010-02-26T16:20:00.000+01:00

So almost all good news regarding the spring launch of the first itinerary of the Time Traveler Tours:

The website is up and running at http://www.timetravelertours.com/;

I selected a POD specialist to set up the print version of the prototype itinerary;

I've partnered with a mobile device specialist to program the iPhone application for the first itinerary;

I've acquired permissions to duplicate many of the images selected to illustrate the first itinerary; but...

...most of the desired images, all hailing from the era of the French Revolution and therefore in the public domain, are in French museums and are controled by a single agency. And it appears that this agency may be demanding a healthy sum for their use. A sum I will not be able to pay.

I'm working on finding a resolution to the problem. And no doubt there is one. But in the meantime, it feels like sabotage.

Did you know that the word sabotage originates from French? The story goes like this:

Back in the early 19th century, as the Industrial Revolution took off in France, laborers dropped their shovels and pick axes and left their ancestral fields for work in the growing numbers of factories and coal mines. They sought a better life; they hoped for a better economic future for their families. But work was hard and conditions were unbearable. People were pushed to phyical extremes on bellies that remained empty day after day after day. They soon found that there was no hope.

In those days, poor French laborers wore a type of wooden shoe or clog called a sabot. And when their hunger became unendurable and their hope forgotten they rose up as one to strike. They used their wooden sabots to jam the machines of the factories all over France. With their sabots they stopped all production; they sabotaged the captains of industry.

Today, it feels like the behemoth that is the French bureaucracy is sabotaging the future of the TTT. But we,too, shall overcome.

Stay posted...

Announcing: The Time Traveler Tours Website

2010-01-31T15:51:00.002+01:00

It's happening, folks! The Time Traveler Tours are going live. They now have their very own website and blog.

So today is moving day: I'm packing up FrancoFiles Fun Facts and moving over to www.timetravelertours.com. I'll continue posting in both places for a little while, until I get the new site sorted, but will eventually move over there full time.

Drop in and visit me at www.timetravelertours.com, where you can...

Continue to get your Fun Facts fix,
Post your questions to the TTT Forum,
Chat me up in the TTT Discussion space, and
Follow the latest TTT products and their development.

Looking forward to seeing you there! Click here to get there now. And pass our new address on to all your friends.

With thanks for your continued support,
Sarah

Arago Medalions

2010-01-18T11:19:00.004+01:00

François Arago was a French mathematician, physicist, astronomer, and ardent republican who grew up during the French Revolution. In 1806, at the age of 20, he set out to measure the arc of the Earth’s meridian, or north-south axis, through France. Another goal of his expedition was to determine, by natural law, the exact length of a meter.

Arago succeeded in these as well as a lifetime of scientific endeavors, after an eventful return to Paris: While measuring the meridian on the Spanish border, he was suspected of spying for Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. He managed a heroic escape in a Catalan fishing boat that took him to Algiers in Northern Africa. There, he was captured by Corsairs and held for three months. Upon gaining his freedom, he set sail for Marseilles, but a tempestuous northerly wind blew him back to Africa. He finally made it to Marseilles on 21 June 1809, but was forced to endure a lengthy quarantine before embarking for Paris.

Arago’s adventure and achievements are remembered in a 1994 public art installation by Dutch artist, Jan Dibbets. With Hommage à Arago, Dibbets set 135 bronze medallions bearing Arago’s name along the Paris meridian for a distance of 9.2 kms (5.7 miles).

You can still find many of them in Paris today.

Make a day (or a few) hunting for Arago Medallions. Just follow the North-South meridian in the 1st, 2nd, 6th, 9th, 14th and 18th arrondisements.

From Time Traveler Paris Tours: Beware Madame La Guillotine! Coming Soon!

Images:
Portrait of Francois Arago, engraving by Alexandre Vincent Sixdenier (1795-1846) from a painting by Henry Scheffer (1798-1862), c. 1846. Source: The Warner Library (1917) and the Edgar Fahs Smith collection, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Arago Medallion located near the Louvre pyramid, 2005, by Poulpy, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Galettes du Roi - King Cakes - for Epiphany

2010-01-07T20:03:00.010+01:00

Every year, on and around 6 January, all over France, people are munching les galettes du roi (king cakes), wonderful round flaky pastries stuffed with frangipane, a creamy almond paste. School kids are sampling them in French classes; families are sharing them for dessert; friends are getting together to eat them with champagne; and everyone is hoping that he or she will become king or queen for the day.

You see, every French galette comes with a tiny ceramic figurine baked right inside. This trinket - called a fève, meaning, bean, due to the fact that once upon a time it was a bean – represents the seed that grows from deep within fertile ground, symbolized by the cake, that will bring about a bountiful harvest in the year to come as well as good fortune for all, especially the person who happens to chomp down on it. Whoever finds the fève in their slice of galette is declared king (or queen) for the day and gets to wear the gold paper crown that comes with the purchase of every French galette du roi.

It would appear, with its links to nature and the harvest and the earth’s seasonal rotations, that this special day in the French calendar is pagan in origin. But today, it marks the Christian celebration of Epiphany, or Twelfth Night: the day, long ago, when three wise men found their way by the light of a very bright star to the makeshift bed of a particular child in a manger in a barn in Bethlehem.

We spent January 6^th at the home of the family-of-boys-dogs-cats-and-Mom with another family of mutual friends. Between the 11 of us, we consumed two large galettes and produced both a king and a queen. Following popular tradition, the youngest child crawled under the table and from there announced, one by one, who would get each slice of galette. He received the last slice. Then, we all ate, slowly, savoring the delectable combination of buttery pastry and hot almond paste available in French boulangeries only one time each year. Eventually, royalty was proclaimed among one of the three mothers present as well as the eldest teenage boy. And toasts to a healthy and prosperous year followed.

If you happen to be in France during the feast of Epiphany, do grab yourself a galette du roi. They come in all sizes – even a single portion. And they are really very, very good!

Images:

Artisanal galette, Gorrk, 3 Janvier 2008, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Brioche of the Magi with candied fruit, typical galette of southeast France, David Monniaux, 2005, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

History of French Haute Cuisine

2009-11-25T22:00:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day in the States. As it is a "normal" school and work day here, we won't be cooking or hosting or being hosted. So, I'm reduced to reading about everyone else's dinner plans on Facebook! While missing the tastes and companionship associated with my favorite US holiday, I got to thinking about the history of French Haute Cuisine, or fine dining. I then remembered this little "text box" from my upcoming Time Traveler Paris Tours chapter on the French Revolution: Beware Madame La Guillotine.

Enjoy! And Happy Thanksgiving...

Have you ever wondered why France is so famous for La Haute Cuisine? Well, the answer lies with the French Revolution. You see, prior to the Revolution, the finest chefs in France worked in the grand kitchens of the grandest chateaux of the royal and noble families. When the Revolution began to gather momentum, many royals and nobles fled, leaving their cooks and other kitchen staff without a livelihood. These individuals packed up their former employers' pots and pans and moved to Paris to open restaurants, serving the tastes of the growing numbers of revolutionary bourgeoisie.

One such example is the Grand Véfour, the oldest restaurant in Paris, which has occupied the same Palais Royal location for more than 200 years. Thus, French Haute Cuisine was born, and continues to thrive the world over today. Case in point: It can take up to three months to get a reservation at the Grand Véfour!

Image:
Le Grand Véfour, photo by the Lucky-one-and-only (Loo).

120 Years of the Eiffel Tower Celebrated...Finally!

2009-11-11T15:57:00.001+01:00

I spent the month of March, 2009, posting about the Eiffel Tower. It was my way of building up to the 120th birthday of Gustav Eiffel's remarkable Iron Lady. Erected for the 1889 World's Fair and slated to stand for only 20 years, Eiffel's "Grand A over the Champs" continues to survive, and inspire, today. Eiffel first inaugurated the Tower on 31 March 1889, climbing 1710 steps and planting a French flag at her peak to kick off the Fair. Yet the same date in 2009 passed quietly by; the Tower's birthday seemed to come and go unnoticed, save for a summer exhibition of Eiffel's life and work at the Paris Hotel de Ville.

But on 22 October 2009, the Eiffel Tower lit up the sky, compelling Parisians to turn out in droves, every night since, on the Trocadero plaza. The Uber-Mensch (UM) and I caught a sideways view of the show from our apartment balcony a few days later. We scooped up the Lucky-one-and-only (Loo) and went out to see the 12-minute gift of 400 flashing multi-colored LED spotlights this past weekend.

You have until 31 December 2009 to catch it. Shows are at 8, 9, 10, 11 pm every night. If you can't make it, here's the moment captured on camera by Susan Oubari:

Paris Catacombs Closed Indefinitely!

2009-11-02T14:00:00.005+01:00

I know! I know! The most basic blogging tenet is to post regularly and often. And here I am, not even blogging for a year, and I’ve already blown it! But with good reason, readers, with good reason...

For The Time Traveler Tours are, indeed, going live! And I’ve spent the last month up to my eyeballs in administrative preparations such as: designing a logo; building a website; filing for incorporation and trademark rights; laying out the first prototype chapter for use by a group of 13-year-olds set to pilot the tour later this month; etc. It’s all very exciting!

But there’s a rub: One of my three start-up chapters may be stillborn thanks to the work of vandals...

Yesterday was All Saints’ Day in France, a culture whose many holidays and celebrations do not include Halloween. So I agreed to take the Lucky-one-and-only (Loo) and a few of her North American compatriots - all pining for the ghoulish festivities back “home” - to the Paris Catacombs for a romp among the once living. Arriving at the entrance at 1, Place Denfert-Rochereau, 14eme, however, we found the doors locked tight. A notice explained that the ossuary had been found vandalized on 20 Sept 2009; bones had been broken and strewn about every 20 meters along the 300-meter length of the tomb.

This is truly an immoral act. The Paris Catacombs are simultaneously a sacred memorial, a historical monument, and a work of public art. Their creation took place over the course of 80 years, beginning in Paris’ pre-revolutionary days (1780s) and continuing throughout the reigns of both Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and his nephew, Napoleon III, during the 1860 rebuilding of Paris.

Going back to 1780: Crowded churchyard cemeteries throughout Paris had become so overflowing with dead that killer diseases caused by insects and animals feeding off the rotting human flesh only produced more dead. It was a vicious cycle if there ever was one!

And then there was the stench! The smells emanating from these pestilent graveyards were said to have caused milk to curdle and wine to turn to vinegar. Not good for the dairy farmers and wine makers who came to Paris to sell their wares at the nearby Forum Les Halles, Paris’ main marketplace located right around the corner from the most crowded and offensive graveyard of all: Le Cimetière des Innocents.

Even the dead of Les Innocents seemed to protest. In 1780 they turned over in their graves, breaking through an underground wall and spilling their creepy contents into the basements of neighboring houses. This unleashed a stench so toxic it suffocated the innocent occupants right in their own homes!

It was then that King Louis XVI issued a royal proclamation calling a halt to any further burials within the Paris city limits. But what to do with all those bones and rotting cadavers?

The answer was to remove them - not just from Les Innocents, but from all of Paris' 23 churchyard graves - and to transfer them to the vast network of underground Roman-era rock quarries that lay to the south of the city.

The work went on in for eight decades. Gravediggers dug by day and moved the bones by night, in black-veiled, priest-led processions. The Church declared the former quarry a scared place and gave it an official name: Les Catacombs (the Catacombs), a Roman word meaning ‘underground cemetery’.

At first the bones were just tossed in, helter-skelter in piles of femers, tibias, and craniums. It was Napoleon’s idea to tidy the place up and make it presentable for family members wishing to pay homage to their ancestors. Under his orders, the bones would be stacked and organized in designs to rival their Roman counterparts.

The Paris Catacombs first opened as a public memorial in 1810. Visitors were escorted by torchlight through the narrow tunnels beneath the streets and buildings of Paris so they wouldn’t get lost in the 290km network of underground byways.

Many of the Revolution’s vicitims also found their way to the catacombs, as did the remains of older, forgotten cemeteries dug up during the Haussmannian-building boom of the 1860s.

In all, 6 million former Parisians have been laid to rest within the Catacombs. And for 200 years visitors have marveled at the ossuary sculptures created by Napoleon’s underground workers.

But now, because of the disrespectful and reprehensible actions of idiotic crazies, the sacred historic memorial, no less important to Paris’ past than the cathedral of Notre Dame, the Louvre Museum, or the Eiffel Tower, is off limits to the public... indefinitely.

And, sadly, the Time Traveler Paris Tours itinerary to the Napoleonic Era, featuring the Catacombs and the Montparnasse Cemetery, may be buried before it has had a chance to take its first breath.

***

Time Traveler Tours projected launch date: March 2010.

Images:

Photo of Catacombs ossuary, http://www.flickr.com/photos/albany_tim/2629170281/sizes/0/.

Engraving, artist unknown, of Le Cimetière des Innocents, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Photograph of a Catacombs worker by photographer Félix Nadar, 1870s.

Painting of the Catacombs by Viktor Alexandrovish Hartmann (1834-1873), courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The October March of Women, 1789

2009-10-06T15:29:00.001+02:00

" In the wee hours of October 6, 1789, a mob of peasant women broke into the Palace of Versailles. They had been encamped outside the chateau since the previous evening, awaiting an audience with my King, Louis XVI (16^th), and his Queen, Marie Antoinette.

The women had come from Paris and they were starving. Their children and their aged, as well, were starving. A terrible storm had wiped out France’s wheat crop that summer. Now the common folk had no bread, their main – and sometimes only – source of food. I followed them from Paris as they struggled to make the 20 kilometer journey on foot, afraid for my King, afraid of the power of the mob. As the women marched, their numbers grew. All along the route, I observed as more women dropped their washing and their brooms and left their children to join the fray. They arrived at Versailles in the thousands, demanding that King Louis and Marie Antoinette save them from their misery. Their hunger had driven them to madness. Waiting through the night for a response from the King had transformed their desperation to fury.

Before dawn, they stormed the Palace through a servants’ entrance. I pushed in amongst them, hoping to reach the King first, to warn him or hide him, I knew not what. But the scene was one of total mayhem. Frantic women rushed in all directions. They ran down gilded corridors, flew up marble staircases, burst through passageways reserved for servants. 'If they refuse to come out', was heard the mob’s collective cry, 'we’ll drag them out!' They searched for the King and Queen, their rage now whipped to a savage frenzy. They killed anyone who got in their way.

Before dawn, the King and Queen were found with their two children and the King’s sister, Madame Elizabeth, huddled like mice before a gang of hungry cats, still in their bedclothes in the King’s private apartments. They were forced to dress quickly and pressed into waiting carriages bound for Paris, driven there by the mob so that they might bear witness to the misery of their subjects.

They would never see Versailles again.

Some among the women accompanied the king and queen with the severed heads of royal guards held high upon pikes, like tattered, bloody flags. Others stayed behind and shouting, Down with the Monarchy! Down with the King!, they hurried about the chateau, smashing statuary and precious antiques, pilfering what could be carried, seizing foodstuffs from the immense Versailles kitchen: fresh pheasant and duck, salted pork, baskets of vegetables, and bread still baking in the ovens for that morning’s royal meal.

I do not recall the moment I became conscious that I was powerless to save my King. But I do remember being gripped with the urgent imperative to save the King’s Garden. In a flash I knew, without thinking, that I, Antoine Laurent de Jussieu – the fourth member of my family to bear the title, Botanist-in-Chief to the King – was obliged to confront the mob to save the legacy of two centuries of adventurers and natural scientists, even if it meant my death.

The mob’s force was not diminished by its destruction of the chateau interior. The women’s anger only expanded with their ferocity, like a volcano whose vigor has been pent up for too long. And indeed, it did not take long for them to spill out into the Royal Gardens, intent on further rampage.

I was waiting for them. The botanists, master-gardeners, and under-gardeners of the Palace of Versailles were all waiting for them. We faced the mob armed only with the tools of our labors: shovels, spades, sickles and shears meant for pruning dead or dying leaves and branches from flowers and trees. We assembled to defend with our lives our life’s work: the plants and trees which for two hundred years had travelled to us from the far corners of the earth, and which we had so tenderly coaxed to adapt and thrive in the French soil and climate.

A woman with wrath in her eyes stepped out of the crowd. 'Move aside,' she bellowed. 'These gardens belong to the people, now.'

'Madam,' I said, taking a step forward as well. 'These gardens have always belonged to the people. They provide beauty for our pleasure as well as nourishment and medicine for our health. For 120 years, the products of the Versailles gardens have graced the King’s table and cured his ills. Destroy them and you destroy the means by which we may now help you to feed and care for your hungry children.'

An eerie hush fell upon the crowd. All that could be heard was the whisper of the pre-dawn winds through the trees and bushes of the vast gardens of Versailles. I gripped my ax; my heart raced as blood rushed to my pounding temples. It was the longest moment of my life.

Finally, I heard hope rise from deep within the crowd. I heard the words that I knew would save the gardens, the words that would allow me to breathe again. I heard the words that would mean salvation for the botanical wonders of the Versailles Palace.

'Long Live the King’s Garden!' someone shouted. 'Long Live the Garden of Plants!' cried another, changing the name of the garden to make it acceptable to the people. And then it grew, little by little until it was a resounding chorus: 'Vive le Jardin des Plantes! Long Live the Garden of Plants!'

And all at once, the chant shifted again. 'To Paris!' the women cried. And as they retreated, the gardens were flooded with the first light of a new dawn. The inheritance of two centuries of the blood and sweat of French plant hunters, botanists, and gardeners was saved, and it glowed in gratitude to those of us who had defended it."

*****
Excerpted from the Time Traveler Paris Tours: Long Live the King's Garden, by Sarah B. Towle (copyright 2009), expected launch date: March 2010.

Images:
Versailles, the Chateau, exterior facade, views from southwest, Google Earth, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Triumph of the Parisian Army and the People, from http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/230/.

Portrait of Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu, nephew of the de Jussieu brothers, Galerie des naturalistes de J. Pizzetta, Ed. Hennuyer, 1893, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

French Huguenots in Berlin

2009-10-01T15:38:00.003+02:00

Last week I was in Berlin on a research trip for the Time Traveler Tours (expected launch date: March 2010). While lunching under the trees in lovely Gendarmenmarkt (Soldier’s Market) Square, in the shadow of two curiously-alike domed churches, I learned something I never knew about the history of French-German relations.

In the late 17th century, King Louis XIV outlawed the practice of reformed Christianity, or Protestantism, in France. So, a great number of adherents, derisively called Huguenots by the French, fled to Berlin to make a new home. Here’s what happened:

Protestantism emerged in France in the early 16^th century, inspired by the writings of Jean Calvin. The movement's primary focus was to make the Bible accessible to the masses by translating it into local, or vernacular, languages. Up to that point, Catholic mass was delivered in Latin and understood only by the educated classes. Reformers took issue as well with the heavy reliance on ritual in the Catholic religious practice, believing that this did nothing to help pave the way toward salvation. They preached, instead, that the best expression of faith in God was in leading a simple life based on biblical law. They felt that the Catholic Church had become impure, rife with hypocrisy and corruption, and was, therefore, doomed to fail.

The Roman Catholic Church responded to these criticisms with such fanatic zeal that violent persecution of French Protestants, whom they called Huguenots, became the order of the day. The origin of the name "Huguenot" is not clearly understood today, though we do know it was used as a term of derision. French Protestants, in contrast, called themselves Les Reformés, meaning reformers or reformed.

Tensions between the Catholics and Les Reformés sparked the late 16^th century Wars of Religion whose violent pinnacle came with the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572. The killing began in Paris, but quickly spread throughout the country. Approximately 70,000 Huguenots were cut down in a mere eight days. Many more fled France in horror of the bloodbath.

In 1598, King Henri IV, a one-time Protestant who turned Catholic upon accepting the French Crown, put a stop to the violence. Striking a balance with the Edict of Nantes, he declared Catholicism the state religion of France, but granted Protestants the right to religious freedom.

Nearly 100 years later, however, in 1685, France’s Sun King (Louis XIV) revoked this freedom with the Edict of Fontainebleau. He forbade the Protestants from leaving the country; but they left quickly and in droves, the memory of St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1572, still heavy on their minds.

It was then that Friedrich Wilhelm, the “Great Elector” of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia, welcomed French Huguenots to Berlin. Though a staunch Calvinist himself, his motivations were not purely altruistic. He had economic objectives as well. He looked to the French Protestants, among them farmers and highly-skilled artisans such as goldsmiths, jewelers, watchmakers and sculptors, to help rebuild his war-ravaged and under-populated country. And that is precisely what they did.

Meanwhile, back in France, the exodus of the Huguenots created a “brain drain” from which that country would take decades to recover. What's more, renewed legalized persecution of Protestants in France greatly damaged Louis XIV’s reputation abroad, especially in England. But intolerance toward Huguenots continued well beyond his reign and into the 18^th century. Indeed, it wasn’t until the French Revolution (1789-99) that Protestants were finally granted full citizenship under the law.

Not long after their arrival in Berlin, Huguenot refugees began work to erect their own church following the design of that which they'd left behind in France. The French Church went up on the same city square as the German Church. The two domed buildings continue to face each other today on the Gendarmenmarkt Square in historic Mitte in what was once East Berlin.

Images:

Gendarmenmarket Square, 2008, by Jhintz, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

"The Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre", by François Dubois (1529–1584), courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.(1529)

Portrait of Friedrich Wilhelm (1620-1688), the Elector of Brandenburg, by Frans Luycx, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Toulouse-Lautrec Advertises Montmartre Cafés

2009-09-18T22:36:00.003+02:00

Yesterday, I joined my friends from Paris Art Studies to view Hommages à Toulouse-Lautrec: a celebration of the artist’s career as a poster artist, now hanging at the Musée des Arts Decoratifs. Among the many posters by contemporary artists honoring the great impressionist master, 26 of Toulouse-Lautrec’s 31 own prints are on exhibit. These images offer iconic souvenirs of the people and places of Lautrec’s Belle Époque. They give us incomparable insights into the world in which Lautrec worked and lived.

Take this poster of Cancan dancer, Louis Weber, who gained the nickname La Goulue, the glutton, from her habit of grabbing patrons’ drinks and downing their contents as she danced about the Moulin Rouge. She danced there with a wine merchant named Jacques Renaudin who took the stage name “Valentin le Désossé” (Valentin the de-boned) because of his sinewy, boneless way of moving. Lautrec features Valentin in the foreground of this advertising poster for the Moulin Rouge, where the artist was a regular customer (he even had a reserved table). He captures Valentin’s rubber band-like motions with a simple, bold brushstroke.

Valentin and La Goulue performed on the dance hall floor, rather than on a stage, as the audience, mostly male, milled about them. Notice how Lautrec pictures La Goulue lifting her leg. It was, indeed, her signature move to tease the spectators by dancing on one foot and swirling her dress until she was ready, with a quick upward flick her foot, to kick off a gentleman’s hat, thus revealing her heart-embroidered panties underneath.

Another favorite Moulin Rouge dancer, and a dear friend of Toulouse-Lautrec was Jane Avril. Jane was the illegitimate daughter of an Italian nobleman and a Paris society girl. Jane was more beautiful and more stylish than La Goulue, the daughter of a laundress who started her career wearing the “borrowed” clothes of her mother’s clients. Jane, on the other hand, dressed the part of a refined lady, though her mother cast her off as a lunatic when Jane was only 16. She perfected a more prudish, yet no less provocative, style of the Cancan than that of La Goulue. Lautrec shows this in his posters depicting her in the plumbed hats that punctuated her costume, exposing only her slender lower leg, and puckering her lips as if ready to offer a kiss.

The men of the Moulin Rouge loved Jane Avril, who was often melancholy and withdrawn even in the constant commotion of the dance hall. Perhaps they were drawn to what they knew they could never have. We see Jane in this picture watching Yvette Guilbert, the Edith Piaf of her day, at the tiny café-concert, the Divan Japonais. Lautrec gives us Guilbert in her trademark blank gloves. And we can see by her pose and her locked arms covering the length of her torso that we will get no glimpse of undergarments from her.

Finally, Lautrec provides us clues into the character of Aristide Bruant, a former railway clerk turned popular singer known for his crude, bawdy songs and his propensity to insult the audience. No matter. They always came back for more.

Bruant started his career at the still celebrated Chat Noir (Black Cat), which later became his own café, the Mirliton, advertised here. Thanks to Lautrec, we know that Bruant held openly revolutionary views, as expressed by his red scarf and wide-brimmed hat; that he identified with the working-man rather than the bourgeoisie, as shown through his rough walking stick in lieu of a polished cane; and that he was a bit of a dandy, as revealed by his draped, black cloak.

Bruant was one of Lautrec’s first friends in Montmarte, where the artist made his Paris home. And Lautrec was the one person whom Bruant refused to insult. Indeed, when Henri Toulouse-Lautrec entered the Mirliton, Bruant would quiet the house and proclaim, “Here comes the great painter Toulouse-Lautrec…”

In his short lifetime of 36 years, and a career spanning less than 20, Toulouse-Lautrec left us 737 canvases, 275 watercolors, 363 prints and posters, 5,084 drawings, ceramic works, stained glass, and an unknown number of lost works. Step into his images for a trip back in time to Paris of the Belle Époque and the age of impressionism.

The exhibit, Hommages à Toulouse-Lautrec, runs through 3 January 2010.

Images:

Moulin Rouge, La Goulue, 1891, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Jane Avril au Jardin de Paris, 1892, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Divan Japonais, 1893, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Aristide Bruant dans son cabaret, 1892-3, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Sources:

http://www.lautrec.info/La-Goulue.html

Paris Art Studies, http://www.parisartstudies.com/

Philippe Petit: The Artistic Crime of the Century

2009-09-11T21:17:00.016+02:00

September 11th. A day we will remember forever.

Today, I wish to remember the Twin Towers through their association with a certain French man whose reputation is the opposite of his name.

On 7 August 1974, Philippe Petit, in the "artistic crime of the century", catapulted both himself and the WTC Twin Towers to world fame.

Flashback to the 1960s:

A rebellious teenager from Nemours, France, now expelled from his 5th and last school, runs away from home to become a magician. Quickly drawn to tightrope walking, he teaches himself everything that can be done on a rope in less than a year. He finds the tricks, however, lacking in any kind of expression or style. So he sets out to transform his new skills into an art form.

Fast forward to 1968:

Waiting for his turn in the dentist's chair, Petit picks up a magazine lying on the reception table. He reads about a project to build in New York the tallest structures the world had ever known. They will be called The World Trade Center Twin Towers.

From that point, Petit is obsessed with the WTC towers. For the next six years, he follows their construction, learning everything about them. He travels to New York on several occasions to photograph the buildings from a helicopter. He builds scale models and calculates how much the towers will sway in the wind. He sneaks into the buildings and hides out in them in order to understand their security systems. He makes false IDs for himself and his collaborators that identify them as part of the construction team. He poses as a journalist with a French architecture magazine and conducts fake interviews with roof workers. While there, he resolves how to rig a steel cable between the towers across a span of 43 meters (140 ft).

On 6 August 1974, Petit and half the members of his 7-person team step off the freight elevator of Tower 1, nineteen steps away from the roof. They use a bow and arrow to shoot first fishing wire, then larger and larger ropes, to the team members on Tower 2. They make a make-shift bridge, over which they pass a 450-pound steel cable. They anchor and stabilize the cable with guy lines, securing it at various points about the rooftop structures.

The "coup", as Petit called it, began shortly after 7:15 the next morning. No one on the ground had yet noticed that the Twin Towers were joined 417 meters (1,368 ft) above the streets of Manhattan. Petit crossed without incident from the south Tower to its northern counterpart. Then he turned around and walked the wire back again. In all, he made the trip between the Towers 8 times. He sat on the wire; he did knee salutes on the wire; he even lay down on the wire at one point and reportedly chatted up a passing seagull.

Of course, Petit's artful crime was highly illegal and police officers were dispatched to the scene immediately. Sgt. Charles Daniels, had this to say about the spectacle:

I observed the tightrope 'dancer'—because you couldn't call him a 'walker'—approximately halfway between the two towers. And upon seeing us he started to smile and laugh and he started going into a dancing routine on the high wire....And when he got to the building we asked him to get off the high wire but instead he turned around and ran back out into the middle....He was bouncing up and down. His feet were actually leaving the wire and then he would resettle back on the wire again....Unbelievable really....[E]verybody was spellbound in the watching of it.

On his 8th trip between the WTC Towers, a light rain started to fall. Petit felt it best not to push his luck any further. He stepped off the wire on the south side, and fell right into police handcuffs.

But worldwide news coverage and public appreciation resulted in legal charges being dropped. Indeed, the owners of the Towers were so thrilled at the positive publicity that Petit's stunt brought to their then much-maligned towers that they offered him a lifetime pass to the WTC observation deck and requested that he sign a steel beam close to where he began the most dangerous tight-rope exploit the world had ever known.

A happy ending and a nice way to remember the once dominant feature of the New York City skyline.

Check out the major motion picture about the event, Man on Wire:

Image:

The World Trade Center Twin Towers by photographer Edgar de Evia, circa 1990, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Quote:

"People & Events: Philippe Petit (1948-)" in Episode 8: The Center of the World of New York City: A Documentary Film broadcast on American Experience, Public Broadcasting Service in 2003.

Right-Side vs. Left-Side Driving

2009-09-09T14:23:00.001+02:00

This week, Samoa switched from right-side to left-side driving. Critiques say it will result in chaos. Advocates say it will make cars more affordable and accessible to more people as they can now be imported directly from neighboring left-equipped New Zealand rather than from Japan or the United States. That got me thinking. Why do some countries, like England, adhere to driving on the left side of the street, while in other places, like France, we drive on the right?

Left-side driving appears to date to the Middle Ages. People then traveled on the left side of the road for several reasons: Most folks, like now, were right-handed. They found it easier to wield a weapon against an enemy or welcome a friend with the right hand, which they preferred to keep on the passing side of the road. It was also safer to dismount a horse to the left while wearing a left-slung sword. And it was more advisable to dismount and mount, which can only be done from the left by right-handed people, on the outside, therefore left side of the road, rather than on the inside, right side, in the midst of oncoming traffic!

This left-side driving habit was transported from feudal England to the European continent and, later, to the far reaches of the British Empire. But at the time of both the French and American revolutions, folks felt it best to eschew everything from their monarchical pasts. In France, aristocrats and noblemen of the ancien régime had traveled the road on the left, forcing the peasantry to the right. From the outset of the Revolution, these former gentry found they could blend more easily with the general population by joining the right-moving crowd.

Simultaneously, in both France and the US in the late 1700s, teamsters began hauling farm products long distances in big wagons pulled by several pairs of horses. The wagons were not equipped with seats. So drivers sat on the left rear horse, using their right arm to lash the four-legged members of the team. In contrast to their feudal forebears, the teamsters preferred to pass on the right so they could better see and stay clear of the wheels of oncoming vehicles.

Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte spread rightism throughout conquered Europe during his early 19^th century campaigns. This left England, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Portugal – the countries that resisted or were left untouched by Napoleon – to continue the old habit of left-side driving. This right-side/left-side division remained in Europe for more than 100 years, until after the First World War. At that point, the rest of continental Europe shifted to the right. Only Britain and the countries of the former British Empire kept to the left. But even Canada eventually switched in order to make border crossing with the US less complicated.

Now, in an odd and unprecedented move, Samoa is going from right back to left. Bon courage, les Samoans!

Images:

View of Upolu, Independent Samoa, by Kronocide, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

This print, entitled "The knight of the woeful countenance going to extirpate the National Assembly," shows Edmund Burke as Don Quixote, wearing armor, carrying lance and shield labeled "Shield of Aristocracy and Despotism," riding a donkey, emerging from the doorway to the "Dodsley Bookseller" the publisher of Burke's "Reflections on the French Revolution" which hangs from the horn of the saddle. The head of the donkey has a human face and wears the triple-tiered crown of the pope; depicted on the shield are scenes of torture and death, and a view of the Bastille. Found on Wikimedia Commons.

Driving on the left side in Australia, taken on 11.03.2006 on the Great Ocean Road (near Lorne) in Victoria (Australia), courtesy of Free Software Foundation, and found on Wikimedia Commons.

Phrases & Expressions: La Rentrée

2009-09-05T21:37:00.003+02:00

La Rentrée. The Return.

Return to what? You might ask. Well, to work, school, meetings, classes, all of it. For August in France is a month of rest, while September brings back "normal" life once again.

Most French are on the move en famille (as a family) in August, spending the month at their second home, or at rented accommodations in the south, or visiting international destinations. Both governmental and economic sectors slow or stop in the month of August. But even if you are a business that stays open or you elect to remain the month at work, August is peaceful and restful and quiet whether in the major cities or in les provinces (the provinces).

Throughout the month of July, as folks begin to disperse for les vacances (the vacation) you can hear the tune of, “A La Rentrée”, ringing through the streets. A La Rentrée means, “Until the Return” or for us Anglophones, “See you in September”.

And like clockwork, in the 48-hour period coinciding with the last weekend in August, the highways and streets are clogged once again and tanned families are lined up in queues at the newly re-opened libraries (book stores) and papeteries (stationary stores) to buy the books and supplies required by their kids' schools, classes, and grades.

This year, even the weather seemed to know when La Rentrée had arrived. The last week in August 2009 was balmy and blue. On the 1^st of September it rained all day, and since then the chill of autumn has been in the air. For the first time in months, our apartment windows are closed, both to keep out the cold as well as the non-stop buzz of motorized traffic. Aux prochaines vacances (until the next vacation)!

Images:
Back-up on the autoroute by Osvaldo Gago, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Traffic jam courtesy of www.treehugger.com/traffic-jam-gps-tech-001.jpg.

August in Paris: Parc de St. Cloud

2009-08-31T12:05:00.003+02:00

Our final August in Paris, 2009, adventure took us to the 460-hectare (1136.68 acre) park of St. Cloud [san cloo], situated 10 kms (6 miles) southwest of Paris. The park, once punctuated by a glorious royal château, is perched atop a steep escarpment overlooking the River Seine. It offers magnificent views of the French capitol - a fitting location, indeed, for a place that loomed large over the political landscape of France for centuries.

The Château de Saint-Cloud dates back to 1572. Until the 18^th century, it was largely the country palace of the cadet branch of the royal family (i.e. the descendents of the younger brothers to the king). Louis XIV’s younger brother, Philippe duc d’Orléans, made perhaps the biggest mark on the estate when he acquired it 1658: He hired the same landscape-designer to renovate the gardens – André Le Notre – who would undertake his brother’s Versailles masterpiece just three years later.

In 1785, four years before the outbreak of the French Revolution, the property became royal once again when King Louis XVI bought it from his cousin Louis-Philippe, duc d'Orléans. It was an extravagant expenditure at a time when French peasants were starving and the royal coffers were running dry. But the future King of France, young Louis-Joseph-Xavier-François, had been a sickly child and Queen Marie Antoinette was convinced that the air in St. Cloud would be healthier for him than that of Versailles. She, too, set about to upgrade the grounds, renovating the chateau and gardens with the help of Richard Mique who was just then adding the finishing touches to her Hameau (hamlet) at Versailles.

Alas, she and the children would never spend much time in St. Cloud. The future monarch died on 4 June 1789 and the Revolution broke out only weeks later. By October, the royal family was living under house arrest at the Tuileries Palace in Paris.

Following the Revolution, French governance fell for a short time to a corrupt arm called The Directory. In 1799, a coup d’état, aided by General Napoleon Bonaparte, overthrew the Directory. Guess where? That’s right, at the Château de St. Cloud!

Napoleon I climbed quickly from member of the tripartite Consul to Consul for Life to Emperor of France. The Château de St. Cloud became a favored home. Just as it would be preferred by Napoleon III, France’s second Emperor and Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew.

Napoleon III declared war on Prussia from the Château de St. Cloud on 28 July 1870. Ironically, it was the same spot from which the Prussians laid siege to Paris in the torturous months that followed.

As Parisians struggled to stay alive - feasting off cats and dogs and zoo animals once the meat of sheep, pigs, and cows ran out - the Prussians shelled them relentlessly from the elevated St. Cloud park grounds. On 13 October counter-fire from within the city hit the chateau. It caught fire and burned to the ground.

Today, the domaine de St. Cloud is owned and maintained by the French state. Among the daily joggers, dog-walkers, sunbathers, and picknickers, one can still detect many remnants of its illustrious past. That is, if you know what to look for:

Outbuildings and a small museum near the chateau ruins provide clues to the estate’s 16^th century beginnings;
Le Nôtre’s high-baroque cascade is one of ten fountains dating to his 17^th century renovations;
Marie Antoinette's 18^th century flower garden today cultivates roses for exclusive use by the state;
La Lanterne, so named because a lantern was lit there whenever Napoléon I was in residence, remains a favorite viewpoint of Paris among visitors;
An English garden, the Jardin de Trocadero, has been blooming at St. Cloud since its planting in the 1820s, during France’s short-lived attempt to restore the Bourbon Monarchy.

*****

And now the lazy days of August are over. The sand of Paris Plage has been swept away and the Seine expressway hums with vehicles carrying passengers back to work. The leaves are turning brown and beginning to blanket the Allée of the Ile des Cygnes. Yesterday, sun-kissed vacationers faced hours of stressful traffic delays along the nation's auto-routes as they fought their way home for La Rentrée (The Return). Time to join the queues to buy books and pens and paper again. Starting today for the next 11 months we'll have to share Paris, and all her sleepy corners, once again!

Images:

Chateau and fountain at St. Cloud, around 1845. Engraving by Chamouin after a daguerrotype, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Napoleon Bonaparte in the coup d'état of 18 Brumaire in Saint-Cloud, by François Bouchot (1800-1842), courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Adolphe Braun (1811-1877), "Ruines du chateau de St. Cloud", Paris, 1871, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Saint-Cloud Chateau c1845.jpg

August in Paris: Ile des Cygnes (aka Liberty Island)

2009-08-27T15:19:00.004+02:00

Our next adventure was to Paris’ own Liberty Island, known here as the Ile des Cygnes (Island of the Swans), an 890-meter long by 11-meter wide (2,789 ft/36ft) park in the middle of the Seine. Though not far from our apartment, it’s a place we rarely think to visit.

It was late afternoon and the sun’s position in the sky set the City of Light aglow. I grabbed the Uber-Mensch and we headed toward the river. We crossed the Pont de Mirabeau to the 15th arrondissement and walked along the Quai Andre Citroën, ogling the river cruisers, until we reached the Pont de Grenelle. From there, it was a short hop to the middle of the bridge and the western end of the Ile.

We strolled its length to the most-eastern point at the Pont de Bir-Hakeim along the tree-lined Allée des Cygnes, mesmerized by the soft, dappled light peeking through a canopy of leaves and branches. Tourist boats slipped past us on both sides, on route to and from the island’s most memorable feature: a 22-meter high replica of Fédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s Statue of Liberty.
This Statue of Liberty, placed here on 15 November 1889, was a gift from French expatriates living in the US to commemorate the centennial of the French Revolution. Like her counterpart in New York, Paris' Lady Liberty holds a book her left hand. It bears the inscription "IV Juillet 1776 = XIV Juillet 1789", equating both the French and American struggles for independence.

Paris’ Liberty originally faced east, toward La Tour Eiffel. She turned westward, in the direction of French overseas possessions, at the time of the 1937 World’s Fair when the Ile des Cygnes hosted the “Pavilion of Overseas France”.

Dating to 1827, the Ile des Cygnes is a former river dike erected to protect the once vibrant port de Grenelle, the area now marked by modern high-rise buildings clustered along the left bank. It wasn’t until 1878 that the Allée des Cygnes was added and trees planted to turn the dike into a beautiful island promenade for pedestrians.

The Ile des Cygnes is a transporting little get-away right in the middle of a bustling city, a gem hiding in plain site. And, as it turns out, the perfect place for us some-time New Yorkers to feel a bit closer to "home".

Next post: Parc de Saint Cloud, a favorite spot of Queen Marie Antoinette.

Images:

The Ile des Cygnes from the Eiffel Tower, by Arpingstone, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The western-most point of Ile des Cygnes with Lady Liberty in the foreground, by Greudin, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

View of the Ile des Cygnes from the Eiffel Tower at the turn of the 20th century, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

August in Paris: Paris Plage

2009-08-24T19:49:00.005+02:00

August in Paris. The time of year when most Parisians flee the city, leaving it blissfully empty of crowds and queues and noise and traffic.

This year, August is ideal in Paris, with clear blue skies, cool breezes that brush away the summer heat, a gentle easy pace and relaxed ambiance. This comes as a welcome relief to the Lucky-one-and-only (Loo), the Uber-mensch, and I, after our 5-week whirlwind visit to North America, visiting family and friends while swatting mosquitoes the size of rats and grilling dinners under a golf umbrella in the unrelenting rain. (It also happened that my computer died while away, leaving me unable to post for a month! Mes Excuses, my apologies, dear readers.)

That experience left us all longing for a "real" vacation, Parisian-style. So we've resolved to profiter, as we say here in France, to benefit from the perfect weather and lack of humanity by visiting a different Paris Park or summer attraction everyday until La Rentrée, the very day when the crowds return and the pace of life revs back up to "normal" again.

We start with Paris Plage: the city's summer beachfront that stretches the length of the river Seine from mid-July to mid-August each year.

That is, since 2002, when Socialist Mayor Bertrand Delanoë closed the Seine expressway to traffic and deposited 3,000 tons of sand along the river's right bank to create a summer get-away for those unable to leave town.

Dotted amongst the sunbathers and lounge chairs are beach cafes, potted palm trees, hammocks, and picnic tables. Rollerbladers, bicyclists, and pedestrians cruise the sometime two-lane highway accompanied by live music, beach volleyball, tai chi lessons, and hip hop dancing. Water sprinklers and misting fountains help keep folks cool so they aren't tempted to jump into the river. A mobile library is even on hand to loan out books.

Paris Plage. A real treat for locals and visitors alike. Only in Paris, and only in August (as well as the end of July)!

Coming soon: Ile des Cygnes and Parc St. Cloud

Images:

Paris Plage from the Left Bank, by Remi Jouan, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Paris Plage from the plage itself by Sarah B. Towle

Paris Monuments - Arc de Triomphe

2009-07-23T05:51:00.002+02:00

I'm in New York City at present, staying with my BFF and her Hero Husband in their historic Harlem brownstone. They put me and the Uber-Mensch up in the top floor bedroom facing the street. Why? They thought we'd feel right at home surrounded by wall decorations of Paris scenes, including a painting of the Arc de Triomphe.

The Arc de Triomphe, or Triumphal Arch, stands at the center of Paris' famous Place de l'Étoile (or Étoile Charles de Gaulle), a star-shaped traffic circle joining 12 avenues at the western end of the of the Champs-Élysées. It honors the many souls who have fought for France, particularly during the Napoleonic Wars.

Emperor Napoleon I commissioned the triumphal arch in 1806 after his victory at Austerlitz. Though work to lay the foundations began at the peak of his fortunes, Napoleon would not see his beloved arch realized before his demise in 1814-1815. It was only completed in 1833-36, during the reign of King Louis-Philippe. Napoleon's body did pass through the arch, however, in 1840, on his return trip from St. Helena - where he died - en route to his final resting place under the dome of the chapel at Les Invalides.

Designed by architect Jean Chalgrin, the Arc de Triomphe recalls the Roman Arch of Titus. The Paris arch is so colossal in proportions, that Charles Godefroy was able to fly his Nieuport biplane through it in a 1919 victory parade to mark the end of World War I.

The Arc reads like an encyclopedia of 18th & 19th century French wars and generals and gives pride of place to a WWI tomb of the unknown soldier. Visitors can climb the monument's 284 steps (or take the lift, if it's working, plus 46 steps) to reach the top and one of the most spectacular panoramic views of Paris. There, it's easy to see the city's L'Axe historique (historic axis) which draws a direct line from the Louvre Palace up the Champs-Élysées through the Arc de Triomphe to its modern counterpart at La Defense, the high-rise business district in Paris' north-western outskirts.

There are many replicas of the Arc de Triomphe throughout the world. One of them, right here in my hometown of Brooklyn, NY, commemorates the victory of the Union Army in the American Civil War (1861-65). The cornerstone of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, designed by John H. Duncan,was laid on October 10, 1889, by General William Tecumseh Sherman himself. Three years later, in 1892, President Grover Cleveland helped unveil the monument which stands in the middle of Grand Army Plaza and serves as a gateway to Brooklyn's Prospect Park.

Both Arch and Park are well worth a visit on your next trip to New York, as are the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the Brooklyn Museum, located within Prospect Park and just steps from Grand Army Plaza. Take a break for lunch at the ever-popular Tom's Restaurant on Washington Avenue (closed Sunday). Then hop on the 2 or 3 subway line to Clark Street and walk to Manhattan over the Brooklyn Bridge.

Images:
Photo of Paris' Arc de Triomphe at night by Benh LIEU SONG, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Photo of Brooklyn's Soldiers and Sailors Monument by Jeffrey O. Gustafson, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

King Louis XVI Accepts the French Revolution

2009-07-15T17:54:00.002+02:00

On July 15, 1789, King Louis XVI rushed to Paris. He stood on the balcony of the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) before his subjects. He recognized the power of the National Assembly. In addition to wearing his customary white – the color of the Bourbon Monarchy - he also wore red and blue – the colors of Paris. These colors quickly became the colors of France’s first Republican flag:

Supporters of the Revolution commenced wearing the red, white, and blue cockade pinned to their hats, like this revolutionary, who plays the bagpipe over the fallen lion of the absolute monarchy as another revolutionary menaces a priest.

With the King’s blessing, the National Assembly got right to work to declare the new rights of all French citizens under the new French Republic. In August, the Assembly gave France what people the world over believed to be the most important document of the 18th century: The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.

For those with food in the cupboard, the publication of the Declaration fueled optimism for the future of France. But those with no bread on the table and winter on its way wondered what good their new rights were in this new Constitutional Monarchy. They would rise up once again.

Check back in October for the continuation of the people's struggle for Egalité, Liberté, Fraternité.

Images:
The French flag, or tri-colore (three color), courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. A French revolutionary wearing a tricolor cockade, courtesy of http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/.

Source:
Towle, Sarah B. Time Traveler Paris Tours: Beware Madame La Guillotine. In development.

Never Call it "Bastille Day", It's Quatorze Juillet

2009-07-14T16:20:00.001+02:00

July 14:
A mob even larger than the day before meets at the Bastille, a 14th century medieval fortress turned prison. The gunpowder needed to fuel the King’s munitions is hiding there, behind the eight stone towers and eighty foot (25 meter) walls. The Bastille has long been associated with the worst abuses of the Monarchy’s power and les citoyens hate it!

Armed with canon and guns stolen from Les Invalides as well as with scythes, clubs, pikes, even stones – anything that can be used as a weapon – the mob demands the fortress guards to give them the King's gunpowder and to free their prisoners. The guards refuse. They allow no one anyone inside. They prepare to defend the Bastille with rooftop canon.

No one knows who actually fires first. But after a standoff lasting many hours, a gun blast is suddenly heard, startling both sides out of a tense and eerie quiet. The mob, thinking it is under attack, storms the fortress. Members of the new Revolutionary police force, the National Guard, join them.

They chop off the head of the chief guard and stick it on a pike. They hold the dripping head up for everyone to see. The mauraders go wild, tearing the Bastille apart, stone by ancient stone, until their fingers bleed. They free the prisoners being held there (there are only seven). They steal the King’s gunpowder and immediately train the King’s arms on the King's Royal troops.

A violent, more radical side of the French Revolution has been unleashed, like an angry genie given unexpected freedom. It will be years before the bottle is corked once again.

At Versailles, when told the news, the King asks, "is it a revolt?"

"No, Sire," comes the response, "it is a revolution."

But the Revolution is still not won. What will be the King's reaction? Stay tuned for tomorrow's thrilling conclusion. And remember, the French never call their independence day "Bastille Day". They call it, le quatorze juillet, July 14th.

Images:

18th century engraving of The Bastille before its destruction, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

"The Taking of the Bastille," courtesy of http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/.

"The Taking of the Bastille," by Jean-Pierre Houël, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Source:

Towle, Sarah B. Time Traveler Paris Tours: Beware Madame La Guillotine. In development.

Les Citoyens Plunder the Arsenal at Les Invalides

2009-07-13T23:43:00.003+02:00

July 13:
The morning after Citizen Desmoulins’ impassioned speech, 60,000 people meet at Les Invalides, the home for veterans of former French wars. Les citoyens (the citizens) get away with over 10 canon and 28,000 muskets belonging to the King’s Army. They meet no resistance from the troops on guard there.

But...they found no gunpowder!

Where is the gunpowder, they cry!

The answer comes: It's at the Bastille.

Visit us tomorrow, le quatorze juillet, for the climactic march to the Bastille and the start of the second, more violent, phase of the French Revolution.

Image:
Taking of weapons at Les Invalides, courtesy of http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution.

Source:
Towle, Sarah B. Time Traveler Paris Tours: Beward Madame La Guillotine. In development.

Camille Desmoulins Incites the Revolutionary Mob

2009-07-12T14:29:00.004+02:00

July 12:
Rioting in the capital city of Paris due to the sacking and disappearance of Jacques Necker. The government orders all theatres as well as the Opera closed. A mass of people descends on the Palais Royal.

While dining there, Camille Desmoulins, a poor journalist from north-eastern France and Third Estate delegate, finds himself surrounded by an angry mob. The people are frightened by the advance of the King’s troops on Paris. How will they defend themselves against the King’s soldiers if they attack?

Desmoulins is known for his awkward stutter. But on this day he loses it, at least for a little while. He knows where to find weapons. They will steal them from the King! They will capture the royal munitions stored at Les Invalides!

He climbs onto a table here at the Palais Royal’s Café des Foy. “Aux armes, Citoyens!”, he shouts (To arms, Citizens!). “Plunder the Arsenal!”

In France, the color green represents hope. Desmoulins tears a leafy branch off a nearby tree and puts it in his hat. The rowdy mob also tears tree branches to adorn their hats until they have stripped bare the trees of the Palais Royal.

From that moment, wearing or waving a tree branch symbolizes one’s support for the French Revolution.

Come back tomorrow to see the surprise that awaits the mob when it reaches Les Invalides.

Image:
Print of Camille Desmoulins exhorting the people to take to the streets, courtesy of http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/.

Sources:
Towle, Sarah B. Time Traveler Paris Tours: Beware Madame La Guillotine. In development.

The Diamond Necklace Affair

2009-07-11T22:46:00.003+02:00

The Diamond Necklace Affair was an 18th century sting. It took place in 1785, four years before the events that sparked the French Revolution. Though the Queen was a victim in the affair, it greatly damaged her already compromised reputation in the eyes of the French public. What happened was this:

A lady claiming to be the Comtesse de Lamotte Valois convinced Cardinal de Rohan, who was desparate to win the Queen's favor, that Marie Antoinette desired a celebrated necklace consisting of 647 diamonds and numerous high quality gemstones, but that she lacked the funds to purchase it. Simultaneously, the Comtesse convinced the Crown Jeweler and designer of said necklace, M. Boehmer, that it would indeed be purchased by the Queen of France using Cardinal de Rohan as an intermediary.

Boehmer was at first surprised by this news as he had been pestering the Queen to buy his masterpiece for some time. Repeatedly, Marie Antoinette had refused, saying the 2 Million francs would better serve the Navy. She never actually wanted the garish, many-looped necklace. For one, she didn’t like the look of it. But also, she recognized the foolishness of indulging in such extravagance with the nation in financial turmoil. Unfortunately for Boehmer, no other European royal wanted the necklace either, so he was delighted to learn of the Queen's alleged change of heart. The Comtesse urged that the transaction go forward with the utmost discretion.

Cardinal de Rohan, for his part, wanted nothing more than to be acknowledged by the Queen. She had not spoken to him, publicly or privately, for eight years. Recognizing this vulnerability, the Comtesse made him believe that the Queen secretly wanted the necklace. So de Rohan negotiated with Boehmer to purchase it for 1.6 Million francs in staged payments. With Comtesse's help, he delivered the necklace, as of yet unpaid, to the Queen under cover of night in a quiet corner of the Versailles gardens. He could therefore not understand why the Queen never wore the jewels nor why his status at Court remained unchanged.

As it turns out, the letters received by de Rohan, presumably signed by Marie Antoinette, were forged, and the woman to whom the jewels were given was a prostitute bearing a remarkable resemblance to the Queen. She appeared before him in the shadows of the trees, elegantly veiled, and communicated only by the Queen's characteristic nod of the head. Boehmer was appeased as long as the scheduled payments of de Rohan continued. But when they stopped coming and the victims finally became aware of the hoax, the jewels were long gone. The necklace had been broken up and the gems sold off separately in London.

By the time the truth came out, the Queen was already embroiled in a public controversy with de Rohan, believing him a conspirator and a forger. The Paris pamphleteers went to town, expounding the fiction that the Queen was conniving, self-serving, and naïve. It was easier for her subjects to accept that she was a liar rather than the victim of a criminal conspiracy. She was guilty in their eyes because they wanted her to be.

The Diamond Necklace Affair provided fodder for the lack of trust the people felt toward their King and Queen as the events of 1789 began to unfold. Four years after the Affair...

...French peasants are spending an entire month's wages on bread alone.

...The King re-installs Jacques Necker, who is very popular with the people, as Finance Minister. Necker states that it is the duty of the French government to ensure that every citizen has enough bread and grain. The population is hopeful once again.

...Necker urges the King to convene the Estates General to help find a resolution to the country's financial dilemma. But the Third Estate are almost immediately locked out of the meeting!

...In their own meeting, he delegates of the Third Estate form the National Assembly, calling it “the true government of the People”. They vow to write France's first constitution.

...Third Estate delegate, Maximilien Robespierre, leads the charge for the nobility and aristocracy to start paying their fair share in taxes.

...July 9: the National Assembly turns itself into a Constituent National Assembly, giving itself the power to make laws.

...July 10: 30,000 Royal troops surround the city of Paris on the orders of the King.

...July 11: Louis XVI sacks the most popular man in his government – Jacques Necker - and has him spirited out of the country!

Only three more days to Quatorze Juillet. Stay tuned for daily updates as the hungry people grow ever more alarmed at the guns pointing at them!

Images:
Painting of Cardinal de Rohan, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Boehmer's infamous diamond necklace. Print courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Drawing of Marie Antointte in the Versailles gardens by Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun, c. 1783, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. This is what the impersonator might have looked like to de Rohan.
Painting of Maximilien Robespierre, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Sources:
Fraser, Antonia. Marie Antoinette: The Journey. London: Phoenix Paperbacks, 2001.
Towle, Sarah B. Time Traveler Paris Tours: Beware Madame La Guillotine, in development.

Queen Marie Antoinette: Madame Deficit

2009-07-09T00:26:00.005+02:00

Why was Queen Marie Antoinette so reviled by her subjects?

Marie Antoinette, née Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna von Habsburg-Lothringen, the fifteenth and penultimate child of Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor, and Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria, came to Versailles at the tender age of 14 to marry the 15-year-old Dauphin, or future king, Louis-Auguste, grandson to King Louis XV. The two future monarchs had grown up so pampered that when Louis XV died of smallpox in 1775, just five years after their royal nuptials, even they knew they were not ready for the responsibility before them.

“Dear God,” prayed Louis XVI, falling to his knees, “guide us and protect us. We are too young to reign”.

As you read here, Louis XVI inherited a France burdened by debt and crippling poverty. He was unprepared to cope with the looming crisis that faced his country. Marie Antoinette was not permitted a political role, nor did she want one. As Queen of France, she had one main job: to produce a male heir.

Yet the King was as adept in the bedroom as he was on the throne. Seven years passed before he and Marie Antoinette produced a child, and 11 long years before the Queen gave birth to a boy, the first Dauphin, Louis Joseph, in 1781.

In the meantime, Marie Antoinette became the target of libel and gossip, both in and outside Court. Her interests during these years included fashion, gambling, opera, the staging of plays in which she often played a role, and the creation of a vast private pleasure garden at the Petit Trianon. These pastimes were costly at a time when French peasants were surviving largely on bread.

The Queen made things worse for herself by alienating important members at Court when she retreated to the Petit Trianon and refused to invite them for visits!

Simultaneously, the King saw an opportunity to get back at Britain for his grandfather’s humiliating loss in the Seven Years War. He agreed to send troops and aid totaling 2,000 million livres to support the American revolutionaries. In the 1770s this sum could have fed and housed 7 million French citizens for a year. With France already teetering on financial collapse, this expenditure was seen by many as irresponsible. Indeed, it would have a calamitous effect on the French economy.

Yet, it was the Queen who was blamed. The people dubbed her, “Madame Deficit”. Though she had given her adopted country four children, including two potential heirs to the throne, she would never live down in the eyes of her subjects the reputation that tainted her from her early years at Versailles.

Things went from bad to worse for the Queen during the Diamond Necklace Affair. More on that tomorrow.

Images:
Painting of 12 year old Marie Antoinette, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.Painting of the new King of France, Louis XVI, 1775, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Painting of Marie Antoinette with her eldest children, Madame Royal and the Dauphin, Louis Joseph, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
The Petit Trianon of Versailles by Colocho, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Sources:
Fraser, Antonia. Marie Antoinette: The Journey. London: Phoenix Paperbacks, 2001.
The French Revolution. The History Channel, 2008.
Towle, Sarah B. Time Traveler Tours: Beware Madame La Guillotine. In progress.

The French Revolution Marches Forward

2009-07-04T13:13:00.003+02:00

Today is Independence Day in the States. The French equivalent is just 10 days away - Quatorze Juillet (July 14th).

In early July back in 1789, things are really beginning to heat up here in Paris! (See previous posts for explanation of preceding events. Start here.)

Versailles:
Having achieved the support of the King Louis XVI's Finance Minister, Jacques Necker, the National Assembly grows ever more emboldened. The eloquent delegate from Aix-en-Provence and Marseilles, the Comte de Mirabeau, declares, "We are here by the will of the people, we shall only go away by the force of bayonets."

While a moderate who favored political reform by constitutional monarchy, on the British model, Mirabeau's sentiments spark a flurry of political pamphleteering at the Palais Royal.

At the Palais Royal:
Pamphlets cause extremists to grow emboldened too. They cry for the immediate dissolution of both the Monarchy and the Church, favoring total control of the French government by the Third Estate.

King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette are increasingly vilified. The treatment given to the Queen, derisively nicknamed The Austrian Woman, is particularly crushing. Groundless prints and publications give rise to the myth that Marie Antoinette is out of touch with her people, interested only in herself, and a hindrance to the governance of France. She is featured as a winged creature with webbed feet and a spiked tail, or in a flurry of drunken orgies with both men and women. (In fact, at this point she is a known teetotaler and completely devoted to the King and her children.)

Between Paris and Versailles:
Louis XVI continues to send troops to surround Paris, ostensibly to defend the city against the possible recurrence of riots such as that which took place three months before: On 28 April 1789, workers at The Réveillon Walpaper Factory in the St. Antoine district of Paris, fearing pay cuts, destroyed the factory as well as the home of its owner Jean-Baptiste Réveillon.

The Reveillon Factory fire would turn out to be the first of many violent acts still yet to come. Stay tuned.

Images:

Painting of Comte de Mirabeau, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Print of Marie-Antoinette as a serpent, courtesy of http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/.

Painting of the Reveillon wallpaper factory riot, 28 April 1789, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Sources:

Fraser, Antonia. Marie Antoinette: The Journey. London: Phoenix Paperbacks, 2001.

Horne, Alistair. Seven Ages of Paris: Portrait of a City. London: Pan Books, 2003.

Jones, Colin. Paris: Biography of a City. London: Penguin Books, 2004

Paris Monuments - The Palais Royal

2009-06-28T22:00:00.005+02:00

One of my favorite Paris places is the garden of the Palais Royal, a gem hiding in plain sight right in the middle of town. Indeed, I’m embarrassed to admit that I had already lived here for two years before stumbling on it, having just missed it any number of times while visiting the Musée du Louvre or taking in a show at the Comédie Française. It was like finding an urban Shangri-la!

The Palais Royal was first known as the Palais Cardinal, the home of Cardinal Richelieu, chief advisor to King Louis XIII (and some say the real power behind the throne). He built his beautiful home just across the street from the king who lived at the Palais du Louvre back when that part of today's 1st arrondissement sat at the very edge of the city (see map of Paris 1789).

On December 4, 1642, Cardinal Richelieu died. He left his palace to his friend, the king. But Louis XIII never had a chance to use it, for he died just five months later. His son and heir to the throne, Louis XIV, was then only four years old, much too young to run a country. So young Louis' mother, Anne of Austria, ruled in his name as Regent until he was old enough to take the crown. She didn’t like the draughty then-300-year-old Louvre Palace, so she moved the boy King and his little brother, Philippe Duc d’Orleans, to the more modern Palais Cardinal. Because members of the royal family were now living in the palace, its name was changed to the Palais Royal.

On his 13th birthday, in September 1652, Louis XIV declared himself King. He moved back to the Louvre Palace, where he lived for 30 years before transferring his family and the entire French government to Versailles in 1682. The Palais Royal remained the home of his younger brother, Philippe Duc d’Orleans. It would stay in the hands of the Orleans branch of the royal family for the next 150 years. By 1789, the Palais Royal was home to Philippe’s great-grandson, Louis-Philippe Joseph II Duc d’Orleans, the first cousin of King Louis XVI and royal member of the new National Assembly.

During their first century-and-a-half, the gardens of the Palais Royal were private, enclosed by the backs of houses that grew up around them but faced the outer lying streets. Louis-Philippe Joseph II Duc d’Orleans changed that. From 1781-84, he transformed the gardens from a private domain into a popular Parisian social center, creating France’s first-ever public shopping arcade.

The truth is: the Duc d’Orleans needed money. He was a notorious gambler and he squandered the Orleans family fortune building a private pleasure garden (now called the Parc Monceau) to rival Marie Antoinette’s hameau at Versailles. So, he built this new housing and shopping complex around the perimeter of the Palais Royal gardens, and he did something never before done in France: He sold or rented the apartment spaces to people from all levels of French society, with large apartments for the wealthy on the first level, and smaller, more affordable apartments as you reached the roof. He rented the ground-floor gallery spaces to cafés, smart shops, theatres, restaurants, even a few gambling casinos.

He encouraged printing presses to open at the Palais Royal, too; presses that published and distributed journals and broadsheets expressing the Enlightenment views the king and his council considered so treasonous.

But because these were royal grounds, the king’s police were not permitted to enter the property. By royal edict, neither Louis-Philippe, nor those who printed rebellious literature at the Palais Royal, could be censored. It was thanks to these broadsheets that people outside Paris kept up-to-date with the events taking place in the French capital in 1789.

In a few short years Louis-Philippe Joseph II Duc d’Orleans turned the Palais Royal into the place to be in Paris! Since their opening, the gardens were crowded both day and night. One journal wrote that if you threw an apple from an apartment window it would never hit the ground – that’s how thick the crowd could be! Café tables and chairs spilled out into the gardens at all hours. Circus acts and street performers entertained the crowds. Parisians as well as visitors from the provinces and abroad came to the Palais Royal to shop, gamble, drink, mingle, and discuss the ideas of Enlightenment philosophy without threat of censorship or imprisonment.

It was also where, in 1789, it was very fashionable to talk of Revolution. Thus it is said that the French Revolution started at the Palais Royal, the home of the King Louis XVI's own cousin!

***

Coming soon: Camille Desmoulins incites the crowd at the Palais Royal. Stay tuned.

Images:

Photo from the Palais Royal gardens by Beckstet , courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Photo of the former Palais Cardinal, now the French Conseil d'Etat, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Painting of Anne of Austria, mother of King Louis XIV, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Painting of the boy king, Louis XIV, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Photo from the Parc Monceau by Guillaume Jacquet, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Engraving of the Palais Royal, courtesy of The Costumer's Manifesto: http://www.costumes.org/history/18thcent/lacroix/chrome10.jpg.

Source:
Towle, Sarah B. Time Traveler Paris Tours: Beware Madame La Guillotine, in development.

The Peaceful French Revolution

2009-06-23T12:08:00.006+02:00

It seemed that the Revolution was won! And peacefully too!
(see here and here.)

Indeed, even a member of the royal family joined the National Assembly: Louis-Philippe Joseph II Duc d’Orleans, first cousin of King Louis XVI. (Remember his name, for Louis-Philippe Joseph II Duc d’Orleans played an important role in the events to come.)

However, King Louis XVI was not so quick to recognize France’s new, self-proclaimed government. Where did it put him? Where did it leave his son, the dauphin and future King of France? As he awaited the new constitution, he grew anxious of the rumble back in Paris. He sent troops to surround the city.

Parisians were hungry and growing desperate. In July of 1788, France’s harvest had been wiped out by a hail storm. Cold temperatures and frost lasting well into the spring of 1789 stamped out the harvest yet again. With grain scarce, the price of bread soared so high that the poor could not feed themselves.

Now they watched as the king's weapons were trained right on them!

***
Stay posted for more on the French Revolution as we march toward July 14th and the taking of the Bastille.

Image:
Painting of Louis-Philippe Joseph II Duc d'Orleans, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Source:
Towle, Sarah B. Time Traveler Paris Tours: Beware Madame La Guillotine, in development.

National Assembly Pledges the Tennis Court Oath

2009-06-17T21:02:00.008+02:00

So, as I was saying here…

On 17 June 1789, the Versailles convention delegates representing the Third Estate – that is, all French citizens who were not clergy, royalty, or nobility – broke from the monarchy of King Louis XVI for good. They declared themselves the true government of France. They named their government the National Assembly, an assembly not of the Estates, or classes, but of The People.

They did this in the king’s own indoor tennis court where they were forced to convene after the king kicked them out of his meeting. And they swore, in the Tennis Court Oath of 20 June 1789, that they would not separate until they had written France's first constitution.

Many members of the clergy and 47 members of the nobility left the King’s meeting to join the new National Assembly. Painter Jacques-Louis David was there, too. He immortalized this important turning point in French history in the celebrated painting, above.

Observe the three figures embracing in the center foreground. The subject in white is a member of the clergy; the man on the right, bending his knee, is a nobleman; and it's the Third Estate representative in the middle who unites them.

Of course, you do see who is missing from the image, no?

***
Stay tuned: the march to 14 July continues...

Image:
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Source:
Towle, Sarah B. Time Traveler Paris Tours: Beware Madame La Guillotine, in development.

National Assembly Sparks the French Revolution

2009-06-13T13:24:00.004+02:00

On the south side of the river Seine, across the Pont de la Concorde and directly facing its twin, the church of the Madeleine, stands the Assemblée Nationale, one of two houses of the French parliament. But before the Assemblée was a temple-fronted, neo-classical building, where the laws of government are discussed and prepared before passing to the French Senat and President, it was a body of individuals, and a rogue body at that...

1789: France faced a deep and seemingly intractable economic crisis. Peasants were starving; the monarchy was out of money; and the rich refused to be taxed. To his credit, King Louis XVI recognized he needed help to resolve the situation. He called for a meeting of the Estates General – equal numbers of representatives from the nobility, the clergy, and everyone else: a group referred to as the Third Estate.

No French King had convened the Estates General for 150 years. So, delegates had to be selected from all corners of the country. In June, 12,000 representatives arrived at Versailles, each sporting the dress of their social class: the Third Estate wore plain black suits and three corner hats; the nobility were bedecked in rich silks and colorful plumes; the clergy shouldered their traditional violet vestments. They came as one to seek a solution to their country’s financial problems. They came to usher in a new, golden age for France. They carried with them the hope and optimism of the entire French nation. Confidence reigned.

But it quickly soured. The Third Estate demanded more voting power. They did, after all, represent 96% of the French population, but they had only as many votes as the clergy and nobility. And these two voted always with the monarchy. The demand of the Third Estate did not go over well with the King. He locked them out of the meeting!

With the hopes and dreams of the entire nation weighing heavily on their shoulders, the Third Estate refused to leave Versailles. They held their own meeting in the king’s indoor tennis court, the Jeu de Paume, the only place big enough to accommodate their numbers and keep them out of the storm that raged like their enlightened fury with the 800-year old absolute monarchy.

The Third Estate delegates proclaimed themselves “the true representatives of the French people.” They named themselves The National Assembly, "an assembly not of the Estates but of the People”: France’s new government. Many members of the nobility and the clergy left the king's meeting to join them.

Thus began the French Revolution (1789-99)...

****
Stay tuned as we trace the events of June 1789 that led up to the July 14th sacking of the Bastille prison…

Images:
Photograph of the Assemblée Nationale at night, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Painting of King Louis XVI before the revolution, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

"The People under the Ancien Regime," courtesy of http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/.

Source:
Towle, Sarah B. Time Traveler Paris Tours: Beware Madame La Guillotine, in development.

D-Day, June 6th, 1944

2009-06-06T22:37:00.008+02:00

Today is the 65th Anniversary of the start of the D-Day invasion, when allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy in a courageous and decisive battle that ultimately drove the German occupying forces out of France. The Battle of Normandy remains the largest seaborne invasion in military history, involving nearly three million troops crossing the English Channel from England to face down tyranny on the Normandy coast.

The Uber-Mensch's Daring Dad (DD) was there. He was part of the second landing and later marched with Patton's army across France into Germany. He took us to the beaches a few years back: a once-in-a-lifetime visit that turned then-8-year-old Loo (the Lucky-one-and-only) into a WWII history buff. I wanted to write about D-Day myself, but others have done a much better job of it, like jpkeenan24 whose 8th grade history project I found on YouTube...

Paris Monuments - Napoleon's Tomb

2009-06-03T23:03:00.013+02:00

It’s funny how quickly we take things for granted. Last night I bundled up a blanket, a bottle of red, and a batch of home-made gazpacho and I headed over to the Esplanade des Invalides for a dinner picnic with friends. I was on my second glass of chilled rosé – my first of the summer – before I took notice of the great gold dome that towered over us: the dome over the tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte, the first Emperor of France.

Bonaparte’s was a star that rose fast and fell far. He created important institutions that still survive today, but he also contributed to the violence and upheaval of a century marked by revolution, famine, and war.

His story begins in 1799, ten years after the start of the French Revolution. A corrupt government, called the Directory, then governed a France wracked by poverty and destruction. For seven years, the country had been at war with Austria and Prussia, faring badly against the better organized armies of Europe’s two greatest powers. But a young Corsican officer named Napoleon Bonparte distinguished himself by his keen sense of military strategy. He quickly advanced to general.

General Bonaparte returned from Egypt in 1799 to find that he and two other men had been chosen to head France’s new tripartite consulate. It took him mere months to throw off the others and name himself First Consul for Life. As the century turned from 1799 to 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte proclaimed himself the sole ruler of 27 million French people. In 1804, he would crown himself Emperor.

The years of 1800-1805 saw Bonaparte working feverishly to rebuild his country. He centralized the French government, creating the Departments we know today with local administrations reporting directly to him. He established the basis of French civil law in the Napoleonic Code. He brought back taxation, structuring it so that everyone paid a fair share and levying heavy fines for lateness or default. For the first time in decades the government had money. So the Emperor founded the Bank of France. When business began picking up, he needed a Stock Exchange. So, he created La Bourse, the market.

While he was busy cleaning up the government and economy, Napoleon was also making plans to expand France’s territorial borders. He sought lands to the east, west, and north. He even had designs to invade England. Russia, Austria, Prussia, Sweden, and Italy formed an alliance with Britain to stop Napoleon if he should attack.

And he did. Starting in October 1805, Bonaparte marched his Grande Armée all across Europe, overtaking armies at Austerlitz and Iena and Friedland, and setting up puppet regimes in Berlin, Vienna, Warsaw, and Naples. By 1807, Napoleon was the “Master of All Europe”.

But the war was costing France too much in both man-power and material. The economy, only recently revived, collapsed. New businesses stopped functioning. The Stock Exchange crashed. Those who had money withdrew it from the Bank and fled. To add to the already dire situation, England imposed an economic blockade on France, making it impossible for food and other goods to reach the people.

Then came the famine. Severe thunderstorms ruined France’s 1811 crop. By the beginning of 1812, grain reserves were spent. The price of bread shot beyond what many could afford. As before the revolution, French people began to starve.

The Grande Armée was hard hit as food no longer reached the front. Morale was low; desertion became rampant. And Napoleon began to lose. He was pushed back in Spain; he was laid low in Leipzig; and outside of Moscow, the Grande Armée was forced to retreat.

Still, Napoleon would not give up, in love with battle, in love with La Gloire (glory). In 1814, he raised an army again. And in the Battle of the Nations, fought at Leipzig, Germany, Napoleon was stopped for good…or so it was thought. It took the combined powers of all of Europe to do it, but he was packed him off to prison on Elba Island.

Within a year, however, he had escaped. He went directly to battle once more, facing his final defeat in 1815 in the famous battle of Waterloo. This time, his captors sent him to an island so remote that escape would mean certain death.

Napoleon Bonaparte died on St. Helena in 1821 at the age of 52.

With Napoleon banished, the brother of beheaded King Louis XVI moved in to restore the French Monarchy. Louis XVIII was succeeded by Charles I. But their “Restoration” government did not last long. It was overthrown in 1830 by the July Monarchy, led by cousin Louis-Philippe, who, in turn, was overthrown in 1848 by the nephew of...guess who? That’s right, Napoleon Bonaparte.

In 1852, just as his uncle had done almost 50 years before, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte declared himself Emperor of France. As Napoleon III, he undertook to renovate Louis XIV’s personal chapel at Les Invalides to create a tomb for Napoleon Bonaparte and the Generals who served under him.

In 1861, France's first Emperor was installed in a sarcophagus of porphyry under the same dome that shadowed our springtime picnic. The pink rays of the setting sun glinted off the gold that is the centerpiece of the Esplanade and can be seen for miles around, reminding me that I had failed to notice it for a good 45 minutes. It's funny how quickly we take things for granted.

Images:
Photo of Les Invalides from the Esplanade by Eric Gaba (Wikimedia Commons user: Sting), courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Portrait of General Napoleon Bonaparte by Jacques-Louis David, 1797, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

First Consul Bonaparte, by Antoine-Jean Gros, c. 1802, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Portrait of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte by Jacques-Louis David, 1805, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, by Adolf Northern (1828-1876), courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Photo of Les Invalides Chapel, taken by Daniel Levine on 15 July 2003 and released to public domain. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Napoleon at Saint Helena, by Francois-Joseph Sandmann, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Photograph of Napoleon's porphyry tomb, taken by Willtron, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Paris Monuments - Hôtel de Ville

2009-05-24T19:40:00.002+02:00

You won’t believe what happened last week. I got an unexpected private tour of the Paris Hôtel de Ville (city hall). It happened like this:

Mother-of-the-Uber-Mensch (MUM) and her darling little sis (DLS) were in Paris. They’d flown in to see the Lucky-one-and-only (Loo) in the school play. Loo was in rehearsal. The Uber-Mensch (U-M) was working. So I headed out with MUM and DLS to see the exhibit commemorating the 120th Anniversary of the Eiffel Tower: Gustav Eiffel, le magicien du fer (the Magician of Iron) on display now through 29 August 2009.

We approached the only gate that appeared open in the imposing city hall complex. “Excuse me,” I said to a security guard. “Where can we find the exposition Gustav Eiffel?”

“Je suis desolé (I’m sorry),” he responded. “Mais aujourd’hui c’est fermée (But it’s closed today).”

“Closed? But my belle-mère came all the way from New York to see it!” I said (which really wasn’t true, of course. She was here to see Loo.)

“Oo-la-la!” he exclaimed, leaving me momentarily flummoxed and slightly ill-at-ease. “Mais, j’adore New York!” And he went on to tell us, with much enthusiasm, that he’d been there for the running of the Marathon last November; that he’d found the New York spectators très sympa (exceptionally nice); that no matter where he went in the city, there was always a friendly stranger to help him; that he’d never enjoyed himself more than during the Greenwich Village Halloween Day Parade; and that he’d been in Times Square on the night of November 4th, when President Obama won the election, and he was so proud to have shared such joy with so many happy and peaceful people.

“Attendez deux secondes (wait two seconds)”, he said. He peeled away to chat à voix basse (in whispered tones) with another gentlemen, who responded with a simple nod. The two then looked in my direction and waved us through the gate.

I thought he’d gotten permission to open the exhibit for us. But no! As it happened, he was waiting for his colleague to relieve him for his 45-minute break just when we arrived. Rather than put up his feet, he decided to take us on a private tour of Mayor Delanoë's office building as a thank you for all the hospitality he’d received while in New York.

Ever since 1357, when then mayor (actually, provost) Etienne Marcel bought the parcel on which the Hôtel de Ville sits, the administration of the city of Paris has been located on this spot. Once a gentle slope leading to the river Seine, the site had been a port for unloading cargo of wood and grain in medieval times. It then became the infamous Place de Grève where Parisians gathered for public executions (the very place where Quadimodo was beaten and Esmeralda hanged in Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame).

In 1533, Francois I, the Renaissance King, decided to bestow upon Paris a city hall building worthy of the French capital. It would be the largest in all of Europe and Christendom, filled with space and height and light. Construction was completed nearly 100 years later, in 1628, under the reign of Louis XIII. In 1835 two wings were added, in keeping with the original Renaissance style, to accommodate the needs of an enlarged city government. Otherwise, the building remained unchanged until 1870-71, during the Franco-Prussian War.

In September 1870, Napleon III surrendered to Prussia. Embittered Parisians declared the end of the Empire. A republican government moved into the Hôtel de Ville and assumed the Prussians would go away. But they did not. A bitter four-month siege of the city ensued. After a harsh winter living off cats and dogs and rats when all other meat became scarce, the republicans, too, capitulated to Bismarck, giving up Alsace and Lorraine and agreeing to heavy war reparations.

Angry revolutionaries in Paris broke into the Hôtel de Ville, setting up a rival communard government, called the Paris Commune. The republicans moved out to Versailles, taking their army with them. In May 1871, as anti-communard troops advanced on Paris, extremists set the city ablaze. At the Hôtel de Ville, a fire intended to eradicate all existing revolutionary records did much more than that. It gutted the entire building, leaving it a scorched stone shell.

Reconstruction took place from 1873-1892. While the new Hôtel de Ville edifice retains the exact look of its 16th century predecessor, the restored interior reflects a more lavish 18th century design. Our guide confided to us that he finds the Hôtel de Ville to be even lovelier than the Elysée Palace, home of the French President.

The central corridor of the Hôtel de Ville boasts ceiling-height stained glass windows, bearing family crests of the pre-revolutionary Noblesse de Robe (aristocracy). Murals painted by some of the leading artists of the day, including Puvis de Chavannes and Henri Gervex, adorn the walls of the extravagant banquet halls, salles des fêtes. And sculpture abounds, with such figures as Auguste Rodin having joined 229 other sculptors to provide likenesses of 338 famous Parisians as well as lions and other features.

So you see: what goes around does come around. Thanks to the kindness of New York strangers, the MUM being one, we were given a special bird's-eye view of a special Paris icon.

And that night Loo gave us a show-stopping performance as well!

Images:
Photo of Hotel de Ville de Paris by Tristan Nitot, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Photo of the New York Marathon from the Verrazano Narrows Bridge by Martineric from Lille, France, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Photo of sculpture of Etienne Marcel by by Thierry, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Image of the Hotel de Ville de Paris at the time of the Paris Commune (1871), courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Photo of Hotel de Ville courtyard by TwoWings, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

1735 French Expedition to Measure Earth - Part III

2009-05-22T19:59:00.003+02:00

…Dessert at Christophe's was pineapple, carmelized with cinnamon – deee-licious! – topped off with a finger of Armagnac. Between sips, I told the Uber-Mensch everything he wanted to know about what happened to the ten members of the greatest scientic expedition the world has ever known.

Charles-Marie de La Condamine, adventurer, geographer, and mathematician, made it back to France in 1745 a hero. After ten years spent proving the earth's shape, he then set off to chart the 3000-mile course of the Amazon River from the Andes to the Atlantic, something no European had ever done before.

Pierre Bouguer, who signed on as the mission’s astronomer (he had been a child prodigy in math, famous for making celestial observations at sea) returned to France at the expedition’s end. He remained a productive scientist until his death at the age of 60, in 1758. Among his achievements were the invention of the heliometer, used for measuring the diameters of planets, as well as his studies of the properties of light, which earned him posthumous recognition as “the father of photometry”.

Jean Verguin, a naval engineer and draftsman whose job was to draw the expedition’s maps, enjoyed a prosperous career upon his return to France and lived a long, healthy life.

But not all their stories had happy endings.

Three of the expedition's members died in South America: Couplet, one of two assistants charged with advanced mapping and identification of the best geographical locations for each new research point, died from fever. Surprisingly, he was the only one to succumb as fever constantly preyed on the French scientists. Morainville, an engineer who built the observatories needed for the team’s celestial measurements, suffered a fatal injury after falling from a scaffold. The expedition surgeon, Senièrgues, whose job was to tend to the medical needs of the expedition members, was attacked and killed by a mob, angry at the way the Frenchman openly flirted with their women.

Hugo, the watchmaker responsible for the care and maintenance of the scientific instruments, simply disappeared.

Joseph de Jussieu, the expedition’s botanist whose story is recounted here, would take 36 years to return to France, and not by choice. At times his skills were considered so valuable that he was forbidden to depart by the local authorities, such as when he was made to care for the sick during a 1745 outbreak of smallpox. At other times he was ready to leave, but prevented in other ways, like when a 1746 tidal wave destroyed the port from which he was set to sail. Eventually, in 1771, he returned to Paris, a frail and broken man. His mind was shattered, his body would soon follow. Eight years later, he died, at the age of 74, eulogized as a “martyr to science”.

Louis Godin, mathematician, astronomer, and nominal leader of the expedition, was forced, like de Jussieu, to stay in Peru. He remained for 16 years under orders of the government, returning to his wife and two children only in 1751. He was never the same. In 1760, at the age of 56, he died from an attack of apoplexy.

And then there is the story of Louis' nephew, Jean Godin, who joined the expedition as an ambitious youth with a desire for adventure. His twenty-year separation from his Peruvian wife is one of the most tragic and romantic tales the world has ever known.

You can read about the story of the assistant mapmaker and his devoted bride in The Mapmaker's Wife, by Robert Whitaker.

Images:

Map of La Condamine's travels found at www.enchantedlearning.com.

Portraits of Pierre Bouguer and Louis Godin, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

1735 French Expedition to Measure Earth - Part II

2009-05-16T12:06:00.000+02:00

...No sooner had I swilled my last sip of white Burgundy when it was replaced by a glass of red Saumur. Another Chef’s selection, meant to accompany my plat (main dish) of duck breast from Challans, a town in the Vendée region of France famous for its poultry. The Uber-Mensch ordered the shoulder of lamb, and both dishes were brought to the table by the Chef Christophe himself. After we ooohed and ahhhed for half-a-dozen sumptuous bites, offering each other a sample portion and then reneging again, it was time to resume the story of the greatest scientific expedition the world had ever known (see Part I here)…

On May 16, 1735, Charles-Marie de La Condamine and a team of eight scientists, a doctor sent to care for the group, and a botanist, Joseph de Jussieu, set sail for Peru from La Rochelle, France. Their overt mission was to measure one degree of the arc of the earth's meridian at the equator...

...Their covert mission was to penetrate the area of the world that had been controlled by Spain for more than two centuries. Click on the map, left, to view how the map of South America changed from the 1700's, after the French expedition.

The easiest part of the journey was the ocean passage from France to the Americas. The seas were calm, the weather cooperative, and the boat equipped with fine brandy. The French team crossed the Atlantic in less than one month. From that point on, however, hardship reigned.

They put in at Cartagena, a swampy and windless port so rife with mosquitoes that some of the team arrived in the New World already sick with fever. They were stricken by the “illness of Siam” -- later known as malaria -- a disease considered dangerous even for the American natives. The victims' strength would ever after be compromised; they would be plagued by fevers for the rest of their lives.

Once in Cartagena, the team needed to reach their starting point in Quito. To do this they had first to cross the Panamanian isthmus, continue south along the continent’s western coast, and travel inland, up and over the western ridge of the Andes Mountains, dragging their telescopes and other heavy, delicate instruments with them all the way. On this leg of the journey they encountered widely varied terrain...

They coursed swift-moving rivers lined with man-eating alligators in flat-bottomed rafts held together with nothing more than the rope-like branches of the liana tree. They traversed land on mules, hacking their way through dense, dark forest with axes and machetes. They scaled mountains higher and more treacherous than expected or imagined, at times inching along narrow ledges that gave way on one side to deep abyss, at other times crossing over profound crevasses on woven bridges that swayed with each tentative step.

They slept in huts on stilts when torrential rains stopped their progress, or in mountain caves the mouths of which iced over at night and had to be broken through in the morning with frozen and bleeding hands.

More than once, when the route became too rough, they were abandoned by their guides. More than once, when the route became too narrow, they had to abandon their mules and pack their instruments and belongings themselves. But the worst menace they faced were the insects, whose stings caused painful and fiery itching to exposed hands and faces which swelled and became covered with painful blisters. One by one, the voyagers were brought down by illness and fever. Joseph and the doctor brought them back to life with cures from native plants that their Indians guides taught him along the way. The bark of the cinchona tree they used to create quinine, a tonic capable of reducing high fever. With the leaves of the coca shrub they created a strong analgesic, called cocaine, able to treat pain.

One year after their departure from France, the team finally made it to Quito. It had taken 11 months to reach the starting point of their expedition. Already bruised and broken, their real work had yet to begin. And what they thought would take two years to accomplish would now drag on for another ten. But when the French scientists finally concluded their measurements and arrived back in France in 1745, they had proven Isaac Newton’s theory the right one.

***

The story, however, does not end there. They didn't all make it back to France. Stay tuned for the rest.

But first, we must ponder dessert…

Sources:
The Great Expeditions. National Geographic, London, 2007.

Whitaker, Robert. The Mapmaker's Wife. Bantam Books, London, 2005.

Images:

Lithograph of Charles Marie de la Condamine, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Map showing changing borders of South American continent from 1700s and onward by Esemono, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Photo of the Andes Mountains by Roman Bonnefoy, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Painting of virgin forest in the South American jungle by Jean-Baptiste Debret, 1834-1839, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Drawings of the coca plant, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Satellite photo of the "blue marble" by NASA, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

1735 French Expedition to Measure Earth - Part I

2009-05-12T11:27:00.003+02:00

Last Saturday night, the Uber-Mensch and I found ourselves wandering the streets of oldest Paris. We passed a remnant of the 12th century Philippe-Auguste wall, scooted behind the Pantheon where such famous French souls as Marie and Pierre Curie are laid to rest, and shot in front of the 200-year-old school of science, the Ecole Polytechnique. We searched for a hip Latin Quarter restaurant with an up-and-coming chef, both named Christophe, that we'd read about in our favorite restaurant guide, Hungry for Paris. At last we located our destination, nestled between two busy student bars on the rue Descartes. The name of the street brought to mind France’s great 18th century scientific expedition, the one that included Joseph de Jussieu. So, while sipping a coupe of Champagne and awaiting our entrées (first course), I shared the story with the U-M.

It was the age of Enlightenment. Knowledge was the new power. And the race was on to ascertain the true size and shape of the earth. French scientists held to the established theory of French philosopher, Rene Descartes (1596–1650), who claimed that the earth was prolate: longer in diameter from pole to pole and squished or pinched at the equator rather like a pot-bellied man wearing a tight belt. But across the channel in England, a young up-start named Isaac Newton had another notion. Studying Jupiter each night, as Galileo Galelei had done a century before him, Newton believed that the earth bulged at the equator and shortened slightly from pole to pole, making it oblate in shape. He theorized that the length of the earth’s arc would therefore be longer at the equator than at its northern and southern extremes.

A decisive experiment was needed. In 1733, King Louis XV – the same king who would later lay the foundation for the Pantheon – resolved that France would be first to unlock this mysterious puzzle, even if it proved Descartes wrong. It took two years to assemble and equip a team of French mathematicians, astrologers, map-makers, and engineers with the most highly technical scientific instruments and gadgets of their day. It would be "the greatest scientific expedition the world have ever known".

Their mission: to measure the length (or degree) of the earth’s meridian (its north-south axis) at the equator in Peru. The measurement obtained there, when compared to the same measurements from Paris and Swedish Lapland, where a similar expedition was also heading, would prove who was right: the Cartesians or the Newtonians.

“Why Peru?” the U-M wanted to know. “Wouldn’t Africa have been easier?”

But just as I was about to answer, out came my trio of Dublin Bay prawns wrapped with basil in a light pastry blanket and served on a bed of fresh greens.

The taste? Bref: Exquisite.

The rest of the story would have to wait until I’d savored the medley of flavors in this delectable dish brought to life with a white burgundy specially selected by the chef…

**
When next in Paris, try this bonne addresse: Christophe, 8 rue Descartes, 5th arrondissement.

But wait, stayed tuned, there’s more of both meal and story…

Sources:
Lobrano, Alexander. Hungry for Paris. Random House, New York, 2008.
The Great Expeditions. National Geographic, London, 2007.
Whitaker, Robert. The Mapmaker's Wife. Bantam Books, London, 2005.

Images:
Photo of the Paris Pantheon at night, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Copyright © 2004 David Monniaux.
1730 painting of King Louis XV by Hyacinth Rigaud, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

How to Make Fast Friends of the French

2009-05-09T19:25:00.000+02:00

Every country and culture has its rules and customs. France is no exception. So to avoid coming face-to-face with such grimaces as these when on a visit here, practice the following tips. You might find yourself returning home with an image of the French people that defies all the usual stereotypes:

Tip #1:
Immediately upon entering a place of business in France – a boutique, restaurant, boulangerie, museum gift shop – catch the eye of someone working there and say: Bonjour, Madame or Bonjour, Monsieur (good day, Madam; good day, Sir). Once you’ve received a bonjour in return, you may go about your business.

It’s a simple gesture, really. But Anglos (English-speaking people) seldom do it. Understandably. It’s not a part of their cultural code. North Americans, for example, are used to entering a shop and acting on their goal. They look for what they came for. If they find it, they take it and approach the counter to pay. Words may never pass between shopkeeper and customer until this point. And that’s okay…if you’re in North America.

But the French consider such behavior terrifically rude.

Many shops and boutiques in France (though sadly fewer every day) are family run and owned. The place of business is often felt to be an extension of the home. So offering a “good day” greeting is a common courtesy. When you forget to do this, no matter your culture of origin, you will receive, at best, sullen service, at worst, no help at all or a finger pointing you toward the door.

So always remember to greet your host with a bonjour on entering his or her shop or store. And don’t forget the Madame or Monsieur, because bonjour on its own is actually less polite than saying nothing at all! Even if the shopkeeper is a younger woman, use Madame.

Tip #2:
When making requests, always say, s’il vous plait, even if you don’t speak French and can only point to what it is you want.

Tip #3:
When you have successfully completed your transaction, always thank your host with a Merci, Monsieur or Merci, Madame, and conclude with the appropriate sign-off. Among the expressions to choose from are:

- Bonne Journée (Good day)
- Bonne Aprés-Midi (Good afternoon)
- Bonne Soirée (Good evening)
- Bon Weekend (Good weekend)

Finally, don’t forget to say goodbye:

- Au revoir (Until we meet again)
- A bientôt (See you soon)
- A la prochaine (Until the next time)

Practice these three simple acts of common French etiquette and I promise your time here will be pleasant. These are the keys to making fast friends of the French!

Image:
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

What's in a Name? - The de Jussieu Brothers

2009-05-05T12:43:00.008+02:00

Once upon a time there were three French brothers: Antoine, Bernard, and Joseph de Jussieu. Sons of a reputable apothecary, they all studied to be doctors at a time when medical science was based on curing physical ailments and disease with the use of herbs and plants. Indeed, the brothers’ interest in the discovery and cultivation of healing plants led them each, in turn, to the study of natural science. Today, they are celebrated in France as among Europe’s earliest botanists. Their legacy still abounds on a springtime visit to the Versailles gardens or to Paris' Jardin de Plantes.

Antoine, the eldest, became director of the King’s Garden in Paris in 1708, a few years before the death of King Louis XIV. Louis XV, who succeeded his grandfather to the throne at the tender age of five, cared little for the garden for many years. It fell on hard times then, with Antoine keeping it going out of his own pocket. Once, he even carried two small cedars back from England in his hat, unable to afford proper transport. These hardy trees continue to survive today and are among the tallest, if not the oldest, trees in the garden now known as the Jardin de Plantes.

Bernard came to Paris in 1722 at the invitation of his brother. Antoine needed competent and trustworthy help and Bernard, after taking his medical degree at Montpellier University, found he could not stand the sight of blood. Working with plants was much more to his liking.

As he came of age, so did King Louis XV, and so, too, did the age of Enlightenment and the development of scienctific inquiry. Louis XV hired Bernard away to Versailles to create a botanical garden at the Grand Trianon. Bernard filled the garden with exotic flowers and plants, such as the heliotrope, which his brother, Joseph, sent to him from Peru.

Joseph was the most adventuresome of the three brothers. In 1735, when King Louis XV extended him an invitation to join “the greatest scientific expedition the world has ever known”, Joseph jumped on it. The expedition, led by Charles Marie de la Condamine, sailed to Peru to measure the arc of the earth’s meridian in an attempt to prove the greatest question of the day: What was the true size and shape of the planet earth? The team of eight astrologers, engineers, mathematicians, and map-makers that Joseph accompanied spent 10 arduous years substantiating the theories of young Isaac Newton.

Perhaps Joseph would have made a different choice had he known he’d be gone from France for 36 years. He returned to Paris in 1771, at the age of 74, physically broken and having lost his mind. But during his time in Peru he made many important discoveries for France, all of which found their place in the King’s Garden:

In addition to the heliotrope, he confirmed that the bark of the cinchona tree furnished a tonic called quinine, capable of reducing high fever. This would become an important substance in curing malaria.

He also discovered that the coca shrub, whose leaves he observed the Indians chewing with obvious enjoyment, created a strong analgesic able to cure pain. He called this substance, cocaine.

Finally, he sent back notes on a plant found in the Amazon jungle by La Condamine that he was certain would be of commercial importance. The plant produced a remarkably elastic resin that was impervious to moisture. When fresh, it could be molded to any shape – bottle, bowl, or boot – that, when dry, did not break. Once back in French hands, the plant, called “rubber”, helped to spark the Industrial Revolution.

Meanwhile, back at Versailles, Bernard was arranging all the plants in the garden of the Grand Trianon according to his own scheme of plant classification. His 1759 improvements on the existing system, developed by Swedish botanist and contemporary Carl Linneaus, sorted natural organisms by both “genus” (generic name) and “family” (specific member within a genus) using universal Latinate names. Even today, Bernard's system of binomial nomenclature remains in international use much as he conceived it. Though a breakthrough for the field of natural science at the time, Bernard was a retiring, humble man not inclined to publish his ideas. He would leave it to his nephew, Antoine-Laurent, another celebrated de Jussieu botanist, to make his classification system known to the world.

Today, the de Jussieu brothers are remembered in a few quiet ways: They are the namesake of both a Sorbonne University campus as well as its neighboring Paris Metro station. Also, on July 26, 1998, the main-belt Asteroid 9470 Jussieu was named in honor of the three French brothers.

***

For more on the Versailles and Paris gardens, the "greatest scientific expedition the world has ever known", and the de Jussieu brothers, stay tuned for the Time Traveler Paris Tours: Love Live the King's Garden! Coming out soon...

Sources:

Duval, Marguerite. The King’s Garden. Charlottesville: University of VA: 1982. Translated from the original, La planete des fluers, 1977, by Annette Tomarken & Claudine Cowen.

http://httpyavww.knight.org/cathen/08569a.htm

www.wikipedia.com

Images:
Image of Bernard de Jussieu courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Photograph of the Jardins de Plants in Paris by Benh, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Painting of a young Issac Newton by Godfrey Kneller, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Photograph of Cinchona plant courtesy of the United States Geological Survey and Wikimedia Commons.

Photograph of tapped Rubber tree courtesty of Wikimedia Commons.

Photograph of Heliotrope by http://www.nga.gov/feature/sculpturegarden/plantings/summer/images/heliotrope-fs.jpg

April in Paris - Don't Forget Your Scarf!

2009-04-29T09:42:00.002+02:00

We’re back from Italy and Paris is spectacular. It always is in April. Trees are full, flowers are in bloom, and flowering bushes are bursting with color. No wonder the 1932 song, April in Paris, by Vernon Duke and E. Y. “Yip” Harburg continues to resonate today with music lovers and lovers of Paris, alike:

April in Paris, chestnuts in blossom,
Holiday tables under the trees.

April in Paris, this is a feeling,

No one can ever reprise.

I never knew the charm of spring,

Never met it face to face.

I never knew my heart could sing,

Never missed a warm embrace.

‘Til April in Paris.

Whom can I run to?

What have you done to my heart?

Honestly, though, the weather in Paris in April can be quite changeable. Perhaps that’s part of the charm. On any one April day, it’s possible to experience all four seasons. So, when visiting Paris in April, remember to have with you the following items, at all times:

A portable, collapsible umbrella for when it showers;

A light jacket to guard against the chill, but one that can go easily into a bag or tie around the waist with the sun comes out;

Sunglasses, for when the sun really shines;

The all-important Parisian écharpe (spring scarf) for when the sun is in and out and it’s too warm for your jacket but still a bit nippy for a shirt alone.

You thought les Parisiennes were just being fashionable with their scarves! Mais, non! The écharpe is a valuable, and very practical, part of our April wardrobe here in Paris. And it looks good!

Wait to buy your ubiquitous Parisian scarf first thing on arrival, this way les dames can show you the myriad ways to tie it. It will make for a much-loved souvenir when you return home.

Images:

Painting of Paris in springtime by Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Painting of Paris Chestnut trees by Van Gogh (1853-1890), courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Spring scarf from http://stylediary.stylehive.com/Toolbox.aspx?ArticleId=781.

April in Paris - The Charm of Spring

2009-04-28T21:54:00.001+02:00

Frank knew it...

Ella knew it...

The incomparable Count Basie and Thad Jones knew it...

And where would we be without Glenn?

Leonardo's Inventions at the Clos Luce

2009-04-22T13:24:00.002+02:00

Leonardo da Vinci was the true "Renaissance Man": able to do it all. Not only was he the innovative artist and painter we continue to celebrate today, 500 years after he lived, he was also a musician, mathematician, philosopher, scientist, draftsman, architect, engineer, and inventor centuries ahead of his time.

Many of Leonardo’s technological designs were so conceptually advanced that they could not be realized during his 67 years on the planet. Ideas for such machines as the helicopter, hang glider, and armored tank were only a few of Leonardo’s inventions considered impractical, even crazy, by his contemporaries. Today, at the Clos Lucé - the home given to Leonardo by French King, Francois I, and where he spent the last three years of his life - you can find three-dimensional replicas of these and many other inventions conceived by Leonardo.

Thanks to the IBM Corporation, 40 da Vinci machines are on display at the French home of the former Tuscan master. Created using Leonardo’s own plans and sketches, they reveal his intellect as a military engineer, town planner, and mechanical genius capable of conceptualizing both the nature of hydraulics as well as the possibility of human flight.

Even in his lifetime, Leonardo was valued as an engineer. He devised numerous devices for protecting and besieging enemy cities, such as moveable barricades, catapults, and repeat-action weaponry. In 1502 he designed a 720 ft (240 m) bridge for Sultan Beyazid II of the Ottoman Empire intended to span the mouth of the Bosporus River. Beyazid did not pursue the project, believing the construction to be impossible. However, 504 years later, in 2006, the Turkish government went ahead with Leonardo’s plans and built the bridge over the Golden Horn.

Leonardo died at the Clos Luce on May 2, 1519, in the arms of his friend and patron. The two had met only four years before when Francois I’s army captured Milan. The French King appreciated Leonardo’s genius right away and brought him to the Loire Valley to live out the rest of his life tinkering with his inventions. Twenty years after the Renaissance Man’s death, the King is reported to have said, “There had never been another man in the world who knew as much as Leonardo”.

Despite being the birthplace of the Renaissance, today’s Italy is not yet fully connected to the wireless world. This is the first time in eight days that I’ve been able to find a hotspot and send you a new post. Thanks for your patience with me, dear readers. I’ll be back at home and posting regularly again soon!

Images:

Engraving of Leonardo da Vinci, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Replica of Leonardo's helicopter propeler, courtesy of Anima and Wikimedia Commons.

Model of di Vinci armored tank, courtesy of Matilda and Wikimedia Commons.

The Golden Horn at sunset, courtesy of Bertilvidet and Wikimedia Commons.

Art & Architecture - Renaissance France

2009-04-15T14:38:00.007+02:00

Easter Sunday. We rose before dawn in Paris, but didn’t breakfast until clearing the crowds of holiday travellers at Orly Airport, making our one-hour flight, renting a car, and driving to the Leaning Tower of Pisa just as the bells chimed 10:00. On the way to Florence, we passed a turn-off for the village of Vinci, prompting discussion in our miniscule baby-blue Fiat 500 about whether this had been Leonardo’s hometown. Just last year we visited his home in France, and final resting place, to view replicas of his inventions: the Clos Lucé, located in the Loire Valley town of Amboise, had been provided Leonardo by his friend and benefactor, King Francois I (1494-1547). When Leonardo died in 1519, Francois lived just down the hill at the Château d’Amboise, one of many chateaux built by the King credited with bringing the Renaissance from Italy to France.

Upon succeeding to the throne in 1515, Francois pursued a series of wars in Italy in an attempt to unseat his sworn enemy, Charles V, as Holy Roman Emperor. He failed, but he did manage to capture the city-state of Milan. He immediately fell under the spell of the city’s art and architecture. Like Florence, Milan had by then been transformed by Renaissance style and ideals. Thus, from the earliest years of his reign, Francois I strove to bring the beauty of the northern Italian states back to Paris and the Loire Valley.

He built or renovated numerous Loire Valley châteaux in Renaissance style: Amboise, Blois, as well as the magnificent Château de Chambord, which some believe Leonardo designed. Francois rebuilt the Louvre, transforming it from an imposing crenellated medieval fortress into a welcoming Renaissance palace. He financed the building of Paris’ Hôtel de Ville (City Hall), constructed the Château de Madrid in the Bois de Boulogne, and refurbished the Château de St-Germain-en-Laye to the northwest of Paris. But his most extensive building project was the reconstruction and expansion of the royal Château de Fontainebleau. Luxurious both inside and out, including a central fountain said to mix wine with water, Fontainebleau became Francois’ favorite royal residence.

Francois I was also a great patron of the arts. He supported a number of period writers and developed a royal library filled with rare books and manuscripts. He also encouraged many of Italy’s great painters and to come to France to teach their French contemporaries.

By the time Leonardo da Vinci made it to France he was an elderly man and no longer painting, having earlier suffered a stroke. But he brought with him many now famous works, including the Mona Lisa, known in French as La Joconde. These works stayed in France upon his death, and along with paintings by Italian such masters as Michelangelo, Titian, and Raphael – all procured during the reign of Francois I – they make up part of the royal collection now on display at the Louvre Museum.

We finished the day at a 15th century Renaissance-style Tuscan Abbey, listening to the monks chant their ritualistic prayers. Amid the Gregorian song and smell of incense, we were as transfixed by the wood-inlay perspective renderings lining the walls of the chapel choir as we were soothed by the monk-produced red wines and hazelnut liqueur that later accompanied Easter dinner.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_I_of_France
http://www.amazon.com/Renaissance-Warrior-Patron-Reign-Francis/dp/052157885X
http://www.librarything.com/work/14788

Images:
All images courtesy of Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.

Paris Monuments - The Conciergerie

2009-04-10T10:49:00.003+02:00

Spring has sprung in Paris, and so has tourist season. Trees are blooming, lines are growing, and the sound of French is muted among myriad other languages. Today, as I walked across the Pont au Change in the direction of Ile de la Cité, my ears pricked up at the words of a US mid-western male just behind me.

“I wonder where the Chatelet is. And what it is,” he said.

I couldn’t help myself. I turned around and told him - and his wife and two young sons, aged approximately 8 and 10 – that the Chatelet no longer existed. It had been a medieval fortress that became an evil, hated prison, and Napoleon Bonaparte had it destroyed in 1808. I pointed out where it once stood, at the site of Bonaparte’s Palmier Fountain and the twin Palladian-style theatres, the Théâtre de la Ville and Théâtre du Chatelet.

We continued on, all five of us, in the direction we’d been going, toward the imposing four-towered medieval structure that stretches along the Seine on the Ile de la Cité. One of Paris’ few surviving medieval buildings, the Conciergerie makes an arresting impression.

“That was also a prison.” I said. “It’s called the Conciergerie. During the French Revolution prisoners at the Conciergerie only came out to get their heads chopped off at the guillotine,” I drew my hand across my throat. “And they had to pay for their stay there!”

The boys both stared up at me, rapt. They appeared to want more. So I told them that the Conciergerie was once part of the royal palace of the earliest Kings of France, the Palais de la Cité. (This was before King Charles V moved the royal residence to the Louvre in 1364, turning the Palais de la Cité into the Palais de Justice, which it remains today.) I pointed to the round towers of the Conciergerie and explained that in the days of kings each one had a different purpose. The Tour d’Argent, center-right, was where the kings kept their guarded royal treasure. At the far-right, the Tour Bonbec, was where they tortured their prisoners. Tour means ‘tower’; Bonbec means ‘good beak’. When the torturer applied his instruments, the victim’s beak, or mouth, gave up the “good” things the torturer wanted to hear.

“And that tower,” I said, indicating the left-most tower, “That’s the Tour Horloge, the clock tower. Follow me.” And the whole family, mom, dad, and both little boys skittered right along beside me. We crossed the street and looked up at the colorful clock decorated with images symbolizing law and justice high up on the turreted, corner structure. The clock there now dates to 1585, though its predecessor was installed around 1350. In medieval times, it was the only clock in Paris. It told time for the entire city back when Paris comprised only the islands, the Latin Quarter, and a bit of the Right Bank. The bells of the Tour Horloge tolled every hour to mark the passing of the day.

“You can visit the Conciergerie,” I said to the boys. “Before it was a prison, it was a hang-out for knights and royal policeman. You can even see a slab of the table where they ate.”

As the boys clung to mid-western-Dad’s arm, begging to go to the Conciergerie, mid-western-Mom sidled up to me. “Thank you,” she said. “They haven’t been this engaged since we arrived.”

History. It’s all in the context.

Sources:
Horne, Alistair, Seven Ages of Paris. London: Pan Books, 2002.
The Conciergerie, Palais de la Cité. Monum, Editions du Patrimoine, 2003.

Images:

Photo of tourist boat on the river Seine alongside the Conciergerie, courtesy of Milvus and Wikimedia Commons.
Engraving of the Chatelet Fortress, by Dupré, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Photograph of the Conciergerie, courtesy of Beckstet and Wikimedia Commons.

Painting of the Palais de Justice by Adrien Dauzats, 1858, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Photograph of the Tour Horloge, courtesy of CaptainHaddock and Wikimedia Commons.

Blue Note Jazz Fest at the Theatre du Chatelet

2009-04-04T16:49:00.003+02:00

The 2009 Blue Note Jazz Festival opened in Paris this week with Jazz giant, Ron Carter, joining his Quartet and the Blue Note All-Stars at the lovely Théâtre du Chatelet.

The Uber-Mensch and I were there for the opening Gala Soirée. We came for a taste of hometown New York as well as to celebrate our shared birthday. Yet another birthday celebrated in Paris this past week!

I had never been to the Théâtre du Chatelet before, but I’d always admired it. Hard not to. It’s located right in the center of Right Bank Paris, just across the Seine from the Ile de la Cité at the meeting of the 1st and 4th arrondissments. Architecturally, it’s a grand Palladian structure, mirrored just opposite an open public square, called the Place du Chatelet, by its twin, the Théâtre de la Ville.

The area now occupied by the place and two theatres was once the site of a 12th century medieval fortress-turned- prison. The Chatelet prison witnessed some of the most heinous acts of torture ever committed in human history. Horrors such as these were likely invented at the Chatelet:

The Boot: a wooden instrument used to squeeze the foot beyond repair
The Wheel: where a prisoner was stretched and tied and whipped mercilessly
Water Torture: engorging the stomach to bursting by force-feeding water
Drawing and Quartering: pulling a body apart by four horses
Branding

Burning at the Stake

No wonder the French people hated the fortress and wanted it torn down. Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte ordered the horror chamber destroyed in 1808, ostensibly to clear crime from the area. He intended to construct a pair of theatres in its place. But like many of the building projects dreamed up by Napoleon, this one was not realized before his exile first to Elba (1814) and then to St. Helena (1815). He did manage, however, to clear space for a public square in which he erected a monument, the Palmier Fountain, to lionize his tragic Egyptian campaign.

Fifty-two years later (1860-62), the second French Emperor, Napoleon III, made good on the plans of his infamous uncle. Following designs by French architect, Jean-Antoine-Gabriel Davioud, he saw to it his civic engineer, Baron Haussmann, build the two theatres on either side of the square, the Place du Chatelet.

The Théâtre du Chatelet showcases music and dance while its twin spotlights dramatic performances. Both theatres attract artists ranging in style from classical to cutting-edge. On March 30, 2009, the Ron Carter Quartet stepped onto the Chatelet stage to assuage yesteryear’s tortured souls in a tribute to Miles Davis.

With Stephen Scott on piano, Payton Crossley on drums, and Rolando Morales-Matos on percussions, Mr. Carter honored his mentor, who died in 1991, with a new interpretation of many formerly trumpet-led ballads that are now part of the “classic” Jazz repertoire. A 30-minute closing rendition of "My Funny Valentine" brought Carter’s bass front and center, while Morales-Matos’ often humorous percussion added a fantastic new texture to the traditional trio arrangement.

Carter played with Miles from 1963-68, an experience he likened to “going into a laboratory like chemists” to mix with a variety of musical ingredients. Many of the group’s formulations from that period have since become standards for future generations. Carter stood out as a new-style bassist even then, going beyond the traditional role of rhythm-keeper. By changing beats, creating harmonies and embellishing his accompaniment with melodic lines, he prodded soloists to new heights. Since leaving Davis, Carter’s mission has been to take the double-bass out of the rhythm section and prove that it can stand on its own as a lead instrument. With more than 2000 recordings to his name, it would appear that Carter, a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, has proven his point.

Also on stage last Monday night was the latest line-up of Blue Note All-Stars: Joe Lovano and Stefano DiBattisto on saxophone, Flavio Boltro on trumpet, Jacky Terrasson on piano, Carter, and Crossley. They treated us to raucous evening of swinging Jazz standards that had me bouncing in my front-row, Mezzanine seat. All in all, it was a spectacular evening.

From a "Dear Miles" concert in Tel Aviv, May 2008, here’s a taste of what we heard:

My recently discovered high school friend, Nashville-Guy-'n-Edinburgh, is a true jazz aficionado. He writes, “When you look at the span, product, and quality of music across Ron Carter's career...well, impressive isn't praise enough. I was thinking about him the other day. Astonishing. To have seen his 4tet and the Blue Note All-Stars both -- in Paris, no less! -- that's good living. Drink it in.”

We did, man. We did!

Sources:
http://www.aviewoncities.com/paris/placeduchatelet.htm
http://www.roncarter.net/
http://speakeasy.jazzcorner.com/speakeasy/showthread.php?p=807001

Images:

Photo of Ron Carter, courtesy of Mind meal and Wikimedia Commons. Theatre du Chatelet, Chatelet Fortress, and Napoleon Bonaparte all courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Photo of Ron Carter, courtesy of Kku and Wikimedia Commons.

The Paris Balloon Celebrates 10 years!

2009-04-03T10:02:00.001+02:00

Looks like there’s been another birthday in Paris this week. The Ballon Air de Paris, visible from my apartment windows, has been flying over the Parc André Citroën since 1999. In these 10 years, it has hoisted 500,000 visitors 150 meters (492 ft) into the sky for incomparable views of Paris!

They say the trip up is not to be missed. And during the week of sustainable development, currently underway in France, you can fly in the Paris Balloon for free! Head to the Parc from 9:00am to 7:00pm on a good-weather day for a 10 minute voyage you will never forget.

Since 2008, the Ballon Air de Paris has an environmental purpose as well as a touristic one. In partnership with Airparif, the Balloon is equipped to measure air quality in Paris. It changes color to reflect the amount of pollution resulting from auto emissions in the city:

green for good;
orange for fair; and
red for poor.

When at its height, the Balloon can be seen for over 19 kms (12 miles).

Check out this news report. Don't worry if you don't understand French, the visuals are most important.

Up, up and away! I’m on my way with the Lucky-one-and-only (despite our last journey into the heavens). Care to join us?

Source and Image:
http://www.webinfrance.com/paris-balloon-takes-visitors-up-in-air-while-measuring-air-quality-103.html

Tower Tales - Gustave Eiffel Honors Contributors

2009-04-02T19:26:00.012+02:00

Though Gustave Eiffel goes down in history as the creator of the famous iron Tower, he was far from alone in this momentous endeavor. A huge cast of characters - scientists, engineers, mathmeticians, architects, metalworkers, and laborers of all kinds - helped him to realize the "A over the Champs-de-Mars". Eiffel did not fail to appreciate this. He engraved beneath the first-level platform the names of 72 notables who worked alongside him to design, develop, and build La Tour Eiffel.

My friend Jeanne, picture-book-author-and-illustrator-extraodinaire, can lay claim to one such recognition! Her maiden name, Bélanger, is forever embossed on the Tower's structure. It was hidden by paint from the early 20th century until 1986-87 when the Iron Lady underwent a massive restoration. But it's there now, plain as day, between Lagrange and Cuvier on the east pillar.

Jeanne writes, "Jean-Baptiste-Charles-Joseph Bélanger was a mathmetician and hydraulic engineer. Whew! Good thing he didn't write his whole name on the tower! It is a bit long!"

Thanks for sharing this family history, Jeanne!

*******
Do you have a Tower Tale to tell?

Comment here and I'll put it in a post!

The Eiffel Tower Celebrates 120 Years!

2009-03-31T11:24:00.007+02:00

120 years ago today, March 31, 1889, Gustav Eiffel inaugurated La Tour Eiffel. He climbed her 1,710 steps and planted the French flag at her peak, kicking off the 1889 World’s Fair.

This year, the city of Paris has numerous plans to celebrate the birthday of France’s most iconic symbol, a structure that was not supposed to have survived more than 20 years.

The 19th Repainting of the Tower
In his book, The 300-meter Tower, Eiffel wrote that the only way to insure the longevity of iron is to protect it from rust. The best way to do this is with paint. Thus, every seven years since her creation, the Iron Lady has received a new dress comprised of 60 tons worth of paint.

Once upon a time, she was red. Then she became orange. Today, she is bronze, the hues of which are lightened little-by-little from bottom to top to create, for the viewer, a uniform perception of color.

Exhibition: Gustave Eiffel, le magician du fer (the Magician of Iron)
To be held at the Paris City Hall (Hôtel de Ville) from 7 May to 29 August, 2009, this exhibition will commemorate the life of one of the world’s most celebrated engineers and enterprising visionaries. It will be organized in four parts: Eiffel in his time, Eiffel the engineer, Eiffel the builder, and Eiffel the researcher and scientist.

Exhibition: Epopée tour Eiffel (Eiffel Tower Legend)
This exhibition will provide on-site itineraries focused around eight themes, each one its own independent mini-exhibition. They will be located on the first level of the Tower and in the Tower stairways from 15 May through 31 December, 2009.

Concours d’Architecture Eiffel, 2008-09 (Architecture Contest)
Perhaps you heard that for her 120th birthday, the Eiffel Tower would be sporting a marvelous new hat? Well, though that may have been the hope of the Serero Architecture Agency, it is not a reality, at least not as of this writing.

What actually happened was that La Societe d’exploitation de La Tour Eiffel sponsored a competition for young architects to design a complement to the Tower structure. Simultaneously, the Serero Architecture Agency proposed a plan to enlarge the third level platform from 280 to 580 square meters by attaching a carbon Kevlar platform to the existing Tower framework. On the occasion of the Iron Lady’s 120th birthday, the contest’s five winning designs will be announced and 91 of the proposed projects will be presented. The five winners will share a prize of 45,000 Euros.

I quite like the Serero hat! How about you?

Source:
Le Journal du Dimanche, 29 mars 2009.

Images:
Painting of Eiffel Tower under construction, 1888, by Paul-Louis Delance, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Painting of Eiffel Tower, by Georges Seurat, 1889, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Photo of Gustave Eiffel, by Felix Nadar, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Drawing of the Eiffel Tower concept by one of the main architects, Maurice Koechlin, courtesy of the Koechlin family and Wikimedia Commons.
Concept designs for the Iron's Lady's birthday hat, by Serero Architects, http://www.serero.com/index_en.htm

What's in a Name? French Patisserie

2009-03-26T19:33:00.006+01:00

Did you know that the name of your favorite mouth-watering French pastry may have a special meaning?

Let’s start with an easy one. Take a look at this picture...

Of course, you recognize the flaky, buttery French croissant, so named for its crescent shape. But did you know that crescent-shaped breads and cakes have been made in France since pre-Christian days? Once upon a time, they were made to honor the moon.

Now, let's make it a little harder. How about this one…

What do you see?

If you see a fat little nun, shuffling about the Abbey in her religious habit, you’d be exactly right. Because that is exactly what the religieuse, a puff pastry stuffed with chocolate or coffee cream, is meant to evoke.

What do you see in this image?

Do you see a thousand layers of puff pastry alternated with luscious sweet fillings, such as cream, chocolate, jam, almond paste, or a delectable combination of all the above? This is the mille-feuille, meaning ‘one-thousand leaves’.

And check out this yummy treat, from two perspectives…

What do you see? A wheel? A bicycle wheel?

That’s right! For this is the Paris-Brest, a pastry as delightful to eat as it is to look at. It was created by a pastry chef in Brest, France, in celebration of the annual bicycle race that starts in Paris and terminates in his home town. It is a ring-shaped pastry – fashioned after a bicycle tire – split and filled with praline buttercream.

My personal favorite! What’s yours?

(Stayed turned here for more French patisseries and the meaning of their names…)

Images:
Croissant, religieuse, and Paris-Brest, courtesy of Sarah B. Towle.
Mille-Feuille, courtesy of Miya.m and Wikimedia commons.

Human Flight in Paris, Past and Present

2009-03-22T13:08:00.039+01:00

When I look out the windows of my Paris apartment, I see a jumble of rooftops, our neighborhood church and park, the spire of the Eiffel Tower, and an antique clock atop the Hopital Saint Perrine. Also in my direct line of sight is a 6,000 cubic meter (211,860 ft3) balloon. White by day, fluorescent-green by night, the 32-meter-tall (105 ft) balloon floats up and down all day long, tethered by a cable that lets it out, like a kite, to a height of 150 meters (482 ft). Amid the classic beauty of my corner of Paris, it’s a kitschy reminder that hot-air balloons figure prominently in French history and culture:

From the height of a hot-air balloon, the earliest French photographers gave us aerial documentation of the 1889 and 1900 World’s Fairs. A few decades earlier, from July 1870 to May 1871, Parisians used hot-air balloons to break the siege of their city during the Franco-Prussian War. And almost a century before that, in 1783, the first recorded episode of human flight took place in Paris, in a hot-air balloon developed by the French Montgolfier brothers.

It all started one cold evening in 1782. Joseph-Michel Montgolfier, the impractical dreamer of a family of 16 children, sat mesmerized by a fire burning in a fireplace. He wondered what “force” could be causing sparks and smoke to rise up from the flames. With the help of his brother, Jacques-Etienne, he fashioned a small, oval bag out of silk, turned it upside down, and lit a fire under the opening. The bag rose into the air, hitting the ceiling above the two brothers. They hypothesized that fire created gas, which they dubbed “Montgolfier gas”.

What actually happened was that the heated air inside the small “balloon” became lighter than the surrounding air, causing it to become buoyant and rise upward.

The brothers set to work, building bigger and bigger balloons and experimenting with different materials until on June 4, 1783, they held their first public demonstration of un-manned flight. Near their home in Annonay, in the Rhône-Alpes region of southern France, they sent a balloon of 790 cubic meters (27,894 ft3) to an estimated altitude of 1,600-2,000 meters (5,200-6,600 ft). The balloon weighed 225 kilograms (500 lbs) and was constructed of four large pieces of cloth held together by 1,800 buttons and reinforced by interior netting. The voyage lasted 10 minutes and covered 2 kilometers (1.2 miles).

Their next launch was to take place on August 27 in Paris over the Champs de Mars. This time the balloon, made of sky-blue taffeta decorated with gold suns and zodiac signs, was half again as big. Unfortunately a downpour stopped the show. But a subsequent test, on September 11, compelled King Louis XVI to suggest that the brothers select two criminals to test the effects of atmospheric travel on living creatures.

Joseph and Etienne thought it best to send animals aloft first! On September 19, they sent a duck, a rooster, and a sheep called Montauciel (Climb-to-the-sky) into the skies of Versailles before a huge crowd, including the King and Queen Marie-Antoinette. The flight lasted roughly eight minutes and covered 3.3 kilometers (2 miles), obtaining an altitude of 462 meters (1500 ft). The animals survived the trip unharmed; indeed, Montauciel was found nibbling unperturbed on the straw used to fuel the fire that lifted the balloon.

The next step was to release humans into the clouds. For this, Joseph and Etienne doubled the size of the balloon again. It was 23 meters tall (75 ft) and able to hold 1,698 cubic meters (60,000 ft3) of air. On November 21, 1783, a physician, Pilâtre de Rozier, and an army officer, the Marquis d’Arlandes, set off from the Bois de Boulogne. They stayed aloft for 25 minutes at a height of 100 meters (328 ft), traveling 9 kms (5.59 mls) over the rooftops of Paris until they touched down amongst the windmills of the Butte-au-Cailles (now in the 13th arrondissement).

The balloon we see from our apartment windows is a feature of the Parc André Citroën, a 14 hectare (35 acre) public space located on the banks of the river Seine in the southern 15th arrondissement. The park occupies the site of the former Citroën car factory, which operated from 1915 until the 1970s. A 1980s urban renewal project leveled the former factory to create housing as well as a public recreation area now famed for its modern landscape design.

The balloon ride over the Parc André Citroën offers views of the Champs de Mars, the Eiffel Tower, the Seine, Sacré Cœur Basilica, and Cathedral of Notre Dame. For years now the Lucky-one-and-only (Loo) has been begging me for a ride. But after our hair-raising voyage up La Tour Eiffel, I’ve resisted. Though Loo, being lucky, is the one-and-only person I would ever consider taking a balloon trip with, for the moment - pour l’instant - I prefer to watch it rise and fall from my apartment windows.

Sources:
http://www.howstuffworks.com/hot-air-balloon.htm
http://www.solarnavigator.net/history/montgolfier_brother.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_air_balloon

Images:

Self-portrait of Félix Nadar, French Photographer, 1820-1910, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Photographic reproductions of engravings of Montgolfier balloons, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

(Some) Favorite Paris Really Must-Do’s

2009-03-18T21:42:00.020+01:00

The Musée d’Orsay, again and again,
A good book in the gardens of the Musée Rodin.

Celebrity hunting at the Père Lachaise,
The Buttes-Chaumont to cure malaise.

Hunting Arago medallions in the Parc Montsouris,
Berthillon ice-cream on the Pont St. Louis.

The Saint Chapelle on a sunny day,
The Notre-Dame garden, while the kids play.

Sailing boats in the pond of the Tuileries,
The Eiffel Tower, any time you may please.

First Night in Paris - City of Light

2009-03-16T16:13:00.012+01:00

A few months ago, I received an e-mail from a friend-of-a-friend asking for advice in creating an itinerary of ‘best hits’ for a five-day whirlwind visit to Paris. My contact had won two tickets to the City of Light from a Valentine’s Day dial-in contest offered by her local radio station. She was the 14th - and winning - caller! So she and her husband, both of whom grew up, got married, and settled down to work and start a family in the same small US town, were on their way to Paris. Between them, they had only a modicum of international travel experience, but a big desire to make every minute here count.

I was delighted to combine their always wanted to’s with a few of my favorite really must-do’s and put together a dynamite program. For starters, I gave them the following directive:

On the night of your arrival, buy a bottle of chilled champagne, borrow a couple of champagne glasses, and get yourselves to the Champs de Mars sometime after dark at 15 minutes before the hour. Find yourselves a comfortable spot on the grass in the middle of the park, facing the Eiffel Tower, and be ready to pop the cork. You’ll know when.

“Why?” they wanted to know.

“It’s a surprise,” I answered.

“Is it safe?” they hedged.

“Very safe,” I countered.

“Why?” they tried again. “Why the Champs de Mars? Why our first night?”

“Just do it,” I responded. “You won’t regret it.”

And they didn’t, because since the stroke of midnight, January 1, 2000, to launch the new millennium, the Eiffel Tower has been lighting up the Paris sky for five dazzling minutes at the top of every hour. And what better place to witness this spectacular show than front-and-center, in the middle of the Champs de Mars, with your favorite person and, en plus, a bottle of chilled champagne?

These days, one hundred different models of electric lamps containing 10,000 bulbs illuminate the Eiffel Tower every evening, 20,000 bulbs when the Tower flashes. From the Tower’s peak, the continuous sweep of an enormous searchlight blasts a beam so bright some say it can be spotted in Le Havre, 200 kms away.

This is not the first time in her nearly 120 years that Eiffel’s Tower has been dressed up in light. The first display was in 1887 upon completion of the second level. A year later, the Tower lit up again, on the evening of her inauguration: 10,000 gas street lamps accented the steeple and platforms while two blue, white, and red beacons, considered the most powerful in the world, beamed down from the top to light up the French exhibits below. In 1900, with the advent of electricity, 3,200 lamps spotlighted the Tower’s framework and decorative arches for that year’s World’s Fair. Then, from 1925-36, Andre Citroen adorned her sides with 250,000 colored lamps that could be seen from 30 kilometers. For the Art and Technique Exhibition of 1937, the Eiffel Tower became an enormous chandelier: 10 kilometers of fluorescent tubes of blue, red, and gold decorated the first floor while 30 naval spotlights wrapped the spire in a bright, white light. From 1958, 1,290 spotlights lit the Iron Lady from the ground until 1985 when a new lighting system, the precursor of today’s illumination, outlined her shapely curves in gold with the aid of 350 high pressure sodium bulbs.

Of course, Eiffel’s Lady isn’t always gold; she changes color from time to time in accordance with events and celebrations. Since we’ve lived in Paris, she’s been red in honor of Chinese New Year; she’s taken on the colors of the Rugby World Cup on the occasion of its being hosted by France; and most recently, she remained a luminous blue for six months, from June 30 – December 31, 2008, when France held the presidency of the European Economic Union.

But when the Eiffel Tower flashes at the top of each hour, she does so for each of us. She sparkles for those who happen to pause for a moment and look up. And on that first night of their first visit to the famous City of Light, the Tower lit up for these friends-of-a-friend. For five whole minutes their world stood still as they held hands, sitting in the grass of the Champs de Mars and sipping a bottle of chilled champagne, while the flickering light of 20,000 bulbs reflected in their awed gaze.

Sources:
http://www.tour-eiffel.fr/teiffel/uk/documentation/
Tour Eiffel Magazine, numero 1, 2009.

Images:
The lights of the Eiffel Tower in a) 2000, b) 1900, and c) 1925-36, all courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Not Something Seen in Paris Everyday!

2009-03-12T18:38:00.003+01:00

According to unsubstantiated YouTube chat, this un-authorized flight under the Eiffel Tower took place on March 1, 1984. The chatter also suggests that the pilot and aircraft made it safely back to the US without ever being caught...