Paris Monuments - The Palais Royal

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!

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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.

1735 French Expedition to Measure Earth - Part I

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…

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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.

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

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.

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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