Blog

Sometimes you fool yourself into thinking you’ve pretty much seen all the gorgeous art there is to see. You’ve seen towering sculptures by Michelangelo. You’ve seen the sketch-like brushwork of Fragonard. You’ve marveled at the pastels of Cassatt, and you’ve looked goggle-eyed at works by Van Gogh, Soutine, Lautrec, and Monet. I just hadn’t realized some works of medieval needlepoint would take my breath away.

The Musee National du Moyen Age–the National Museum of the Middle Ages–better known as the Cluny Museum, is a Left Bank treasure of stone heads, Byzantine ivories and altarpieces, stained glass, fabrics, and tapestries. This museum is in a medieval house built on top of Roman baths (one of three sets on the Left Bank) on busy Boulevards St. Germain-des-Pres and St. Michel. “The Cluny” may be built of stone, but at its heart are works of sublime beauty: the six tapestries of the Lady and the Unicorn. 

(more…)

 

Marie Antoinette (pictured in marble above) was Queen of France from 1770 to 1793. She was beheaded on October 16 by guillotine in the present Place de la Concorde. And she apparently never did say, “Let them eat cake.”

Her husband, Louis XVI (pictured below), had been beheaded in January, nine months before her, during the height of the Revolutionary excesses of the revolution. A golden plaque at Place de la Concorde records the deed and the place.

(more…)

There was a memorable party given at the gorgeous chateaux and gardens at Vaux le Vicomte by Nicolas Fouquet in the summer of 1661. And I’m not talking about the wedding of Gina Logobria and Tony Parker. Mr. Fouquet put on his celebration in the 17th century in response to a request from Louis XIV, king of France (1738-1715). The story goes that the 23-year-old king (shown below) was so jealous of the estate’s splendor–as well as suspicious of where Fouquet had gotten his hands on such money–that Fouquet was invited to Louis’s hunting lodge for a party, then arrested, then put in jail. (Where Fouquet eventually died.)

 

It seems however, that in fact Nicolas Fouquet was the fall guy for a large amount of embezzling that was done by the Cardinal Mazarin (coincidentally the king’s godfather) who had died that same year. Fouquet himself didn’t help matters by refusing to tone down his parties and other excesses. 

(more…)

I visited Paris this time on my own. Not on a tour and not with a group, I was usually a lone traveler. Thus, these rules are more for the traveler taking care of everything herself. However, even if you are on a tour or with a group, these rules apply.

Take care of your feet. You will never walk as much as when you tour the wonders of a big city. Even though I’m a disciplined walker, I often get blisters when my main transportation on a trip is walking. Good shoes and socks are critical. I also wear inserts for better support. You know what works best for you. Bring bandaids, and pay great attention to blisters. Rest your feet in parks and on museum benches. Even using the metro will have you hiking a lot between the train and the sortie (exit) plus you’ll be going up and down lots of stairs. If your feet fail, you’ll see a lot less of Paris.

(more…)

One of my most memorable art exhibitions on this trip wasn’t at a museum. It was at a library. I braved a cool, breezy afternoon to go see the Francisque Poulbot exhibition at the Bibliotheque de Fornay just north of the Seine across from Ile Saint-Louis.

    

Poulbot (1879-1946) was famous for his illustrations of the effect La Grande Guerre (the Great War–WWI) had on the street children of Montmartre.

 

In fact, street urchins became a main theme in all of his artwork. Poulbot supported Le Clos de Montmartre, a charity that raised money for Les Petits Poulbot–street urchins– affectionately nicknamed after him.

(more…)

I live in the 2nd arrondissement (district), the Montorgueil-St. Denis quartier pieton (pedestrian neighborhood), and the St. Eustace Church parish. Serving the arrondissement, the quartier, and the parish is the market street Rue Montorgueil, just west of my apartment. Montorgueil is pronounced “mont-or-goo-ee,” and it translates to English as Mont Orgueil or “Mount Pride,” referring to the hilly area where it was developed.

The street was made famous in Claude Monet’s 1878 oil painting, “Rue Montorgueil in Paris, Festival of 30 June 1878” (shown above). The original is in the Musee d’Orsay. You can almost hear the French flags flapping for the international exhibition Parisians were celebrating that summer.

(more…)

St. Eustache Church serves the parish where I live in Paris. The church has an impressive organ, and there are free concerts every Sunday. But who was St. Eustace?

Eustace (in French it’s pronounced “oo-stash”) was originally a Roman general and captain of the guards named Placidus. He served the emperor Trajan. While hunting a white stag near Rome, Placidus saw a vision of Jesus on the cross between the stag’s antlers, and the stag was calling his name. 

 

Placidus converted to Christianity, got baptized, had his family baptized, and changed his name to Eustace. Then all the trouble began.

(more…)

I walked right into a really, really, really fancy hotel: the most expensive and exclusive hotel in Paris. THE HOTEL DE CRILLON. It’s the hotel where Marie-Antoinette took piano lessons. A hotel so good, the Nazi high command commandeered it for their headquarters during the occupation of Paris 1940-44. (“Let those SS counterintelligence idiots take the Hotel Lutetia; we’re taking the Crillon!”)

A hotel so good that former Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose (shown below) chose to rent a room there. Perhaps the Crillon staff thought that would be okay since the American Embassy–and its large security staff–is next door. Those policemen outside our embassy are serious.

(more…)

For all moving beings in Paris, the allees, avenues, boulevards, impasses, passages, quais, and rues are very important. Like in the United States, some of these designations of surfaces for vehicular passage are a little vague–do you have to be so many feet wide to qualify as an avenue as opposed to a rue?–but I’ve compiled a sampler of what I understand so far.

ALLEES: There are several alleys or lanes in Les Halles (the covered markets), the large shopping area south of me. These alleys are small paved pathways, sometimes only wide enough to accommodate pedestrians and cyclists. Even the sprawling Pere Lachaise cemetery has walking allees between the grave sites (shown in the image below). Allees don’t usually have sidewalks.

(more…)

The studios of Walt Disney and Hana-Barbera don’t have the lock on fictional characters. Many of Americans’ most beloved cartoon, storybook, and movie heros and heroines come from writers and storytelling traditions in France. Some of the characters are actually Belgian or Swiss but are very popular in the French language. I’ve listed below some familiar (and some not-so-familiar) French fantasy and fairytale people in no particular order.

Belle, the Beast, Gaston, Lumiere, Mrs. Potts and her son Chip are from Beauty and the Beast. The original story, La Belle et la Bete, was written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve (1695-1755) and published in 1740 in the collection La jeune américaine, et les contes marins (The Young American, and Tales of the Sea). There were also other “searching for the lost husband” stories throughout Europe at the time.

(more…)