Walk 3: A Walk in the Park: Montparnasse and the Jardin du Luxembourg

I probably should have saved this walk for April. I don't know if I've made it clear, but winter in Paris is miserable, weather-wise. SO FREAKING COLD. That whiny-ness out of the way, this was a refreshingly simple walk, without too much history for me to botch.

This is a statue of Alfred Dreyfus.


We don't know what the deal with the balloon was, but it bothered Chelsea. So she removed it.



Dreyfus was a Jewish army captain falsely accused of sharing military secrets in 1894. Based on evidence from a forged note, he was convicted of treason, forced from his position, and exiled. France has a pretty solid history of religious discrimination, and the Dreyfus Affair, as it came to be known, happened at a time when an influx of Jewish immigration in Paris was spawning antisemitism. It took over ten years for the state to admit its mistake and bring Dreyfus back from exile. The affair, in the meantime, had caused a national crisis that culminated in Emile Zola's inflammatory article, J'accuse. The issue provoked a division in the country, as Dreyfus symbolized, according to historian Alistair Horne, "either the eternal Jewish traitor or the denial of justice." Nationalism vs. Humanism. Tough call. This statue was supposed to be on display at the École Militaire, where the original injustice against Dreyfus was committed, but the French are still touchy about l'affaire, and have instead hidden it away, where only people on this walk will find it.

On to the Jardin du Luxembourg. It's much prettier now that there are kids running around and the trees are in bloom, but you get the idea:

The Orangerie, where orange trees and other plants have been housed since the mid-19th century, and where, as a nice old man in a checkered hat explained to us, an art exhibition had taken place the week before. Just missed it!



Pond in front of the Palais du Luxembourg. Again, I went back this week, and it's so much nicer now that the fountains are flowing, birds are chirping, and it's warm enough to want to stay.


Woman feeding the ducks on the frozen water of the Fontaine Médicis.


C'est tout!

Walk 11: Lutetia Pulchra Est: Museé National du Moyen Âge, Sorbonne, Pantheon, Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, Arènes de Lutèce

The title says it all. This has been one of my favorite walks so far--it's chock full o' history! We started at the Middle Ages, or Cluny Museum. My favorite parts were the rooms full of stained glass--there's something that's both so beautiful and so solemn about it.


But la pièce de résistance was La dame à la lincorne, a series of tapestries from around the 16th century. They were in their own, semi-circular temperature-controlled room with a little video screen playing some dramatic PBS-type presentation about them. I just think it's funny how every museum has its one or two "big" pieces (the Louvre and the Mona Lisa, the Orangerie and the Water Lilies, etc.) and they usually end up just not living up to the hype. Some of my favorite pieces, especially in the Louvre, are works I'd never heard of, by artists whose names I'd never seen. And that's been one of my favorite things to do here--explore all that a museum or famous architectural site has to offer.


The Pantheon. The first thing I thought was "cold." It was so chilly inside that it hurt to try to bend my fingers by the time we left. The architecture and murals were beautiful, but it was the crypt that made the Pantheon really memorable. The French place a really fascinating emphasis on their dead; their great writers, politicians, and royalty are interred with great care, often in beautiful tombs or in symbolic locations. This fixation on remains works both ways, however. Historically, revolutionaries have had no qualms about digging up and burning, scattering, and otherwise desecrating the remains of those people who espoused whatever it is they were rebelling against.

Case in point: Saint Geneviéve. The patron saint of Paris, she is said to have diverted an attack by Attila's Huns around the year 450, saving Paris through her prayers. Upon her death, her remains were housed at various churches until Louis XV ordered a new church (what is now the Pantheon) be built for the express purpose of their residence. They were, however, burnt by revolutionaries in 1793, and all that remains in her honor is a little bit of her sarcophagus, on display at Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, a little church directly next to the Pantheon.


The more I read about French history, and the more I'm surrounded by it, the more contradictory it all seems. On one hand, the French care a great deal about preserving their history, their buildings, relics, prestigious citizens, etc., and always have. But the second anything changes (be it a change in the monarchy or the Revolution), it's out with the old, in with the new. Everything is so extreme, like there couldn't just be a happy medium. One minute everyone is glorifying the dauphin, and the next they're burning him in effigy. I kind of like it, though. It makes everything seem bigger, grander, more important and consuming, and makes the French seem altogether more passionate, for better or for worse.

Walk 7: Marais Walk 1

The institute building, where we have classes, is in the Marais, so I'm there virtually every weekday but had no idea what it had to offer. Turns out it's got a lot.

This is a remnant of L'Enceinte, the Philippe Auguste Wall, begun around 1200 to make Paris an impregnable fortress.* Its completion succeeded in giving Paris the time and security necessary to build itself up a little throughout the coming century--up 'til then it hadn't been much to look at. The text for my French Civ. class dealt quite a bit with Philippe Auguste--dude had some serious gumption. Aged nine and standing in front of the castle of England's Henry II, Philippe Auguste is reported to have remarked: "I only wish this pile of stones could be silver, gold, or diamonds...the more precious the materials of this castle, the greater pleasure I will have in possessing it when it falls into my hands." Age nine.

*Okay, I admit it, I made a bit of a pun. I couldn't resist. Enceinte translates as both outer wall and pregnant. Hence, it's funny, you see, that I called the wall (l'enceinte) impregnable.


We had to go maybe two blocks to find the next stop on our walk: L'Eglise Saint-Paul Saint-Louis. It's totally unassuming from the outside (kindly note how cute Ariel and Hanna look with their umbrellas):


And typically, Parisian-ly beautiful on the inside.




On to the Place des Vosges, where the only thing we cared to see was Victor Hugo's house. I love Les Miserables, and, I suppose, thought that being in the author's house would be a memorable experience. In all reality it was (surprise) just a house. One, granted, full of Victor Hugo's stuff, but just a house nevertheless. The most interesting thing in it was this group of French schoolchildren.


There are a lot of aspects of the French educational system with which I disagree. Don't get me started. But I love the emphasis they place on their own country's history, including their literary history. It is extremely common, as I visit historical site after historical site for these walks, to see groups of school kids, from la maternelle to les lycées, on field trips around the city. You can't turn a corner in the Louvre without running into a group of chatty fourth graders. The average middle-schooler here has a fairly firm grasp on everyone from Flaubert to Napoleon to DeGaulle, from the Franco-Prussian War to the student riots of '68. They cultivate in their students a sense of attachment to history that you just don't see in the States, and I think it serves to elevate the level of respect and appreciation they have for their country. The United States has a noble history, a heritage of which we can be proud, and I am deeply saddened at the general apathy and even disdain its citizens express for their own nation. Here, we could take a page from France's book.

Walk 10: Playing Hooky in le Quartier Latin

The Latin quarter, which is named after the primary language studied at the Sorbonne waaay back in the day, is by far one of my favorite areas of Paris (for now anyway--there's still so much to see!). It has a very simple yet intellectual, live and let live kind of vibe. A sort of Voltaire-meets-Bob Dylan thing that reminds me a bit of Portland.

I think this theatre, which has run Eugene Ionesco's La Leçon for the last fifty years, will give you an idea of the charm of the area.



Or, if that doesn't, maybe this cute little avenue will.


Life doesn't seem real a lot of the time in Paris. That is to say, I don't often feel like I'm encountering real, honest-to-goodness people. The guy on Rosiers just wants to hock his falafel, the women in pencil skirts on the metro just want to get where they're going. But in the Latin quarter, I feel like I can see a little bit of life in people, or a little bit of people's lives. The guy at the crepe stand looks like he's having problems with his boss, and the old women haggling over the price of scarves seem like they've had too much to drink. It's comforting, in a way, to know that, while I'm at the store struggling to count change in euros, the natives have problems of their own, and in that we are connected.

Among its attractions the Latin quarter can claim Le Procope, Paris' oldest café, the Académie des beaux-arts, where Renoir and Monet, among others, studied, and l'Acadmie Française. But even with all these assets, the Latin Quarter wouldn't be Paris-y enough without, you guessed it, a super old church, complete with two women rehearsing their stunningly beautiful chant arrangement. This is L'eglise Saint-Séverin, originally built in the eleventh century and renovated in 1495.


Elle est belle, non?

Walk 1: Paris in Layers: Notre Dame, Sainte-Chapelle, Conciergerie

Can you say overwhelming??? This walk included the Hôtel de Ville, Notre Dame, an archeological crypt, the Conciergerie, and Sainte-Chapelle, and probably covered less than a half-mile. I'd barely been in Paris a week when we completed this walk, and couldn't believe how much there was to see in such a small area. I still can't believe it, actually, but at least I don't walk around with my mouth agape anymore.



Did I mention that I love cathedrals? Basilicas? Churches with high ceilings? Well, I do. And Notre Dame represents so much of what is fantastic about Paris. Walking down a single street here, you pass an unassuming apartment building that was built in the 1700s and then a neon-signed pharmacy; an enormously ornate cathedral, and then a McDonald's. The French are like elephants (wait for the end of the sentence...)--they never forget. The fourteenth-century buildings are as much a part of their city and their lives as the supermarkets, post offices, and schools. For them, history is inseparable from daily life--everything just kind of blends together into one big, beautiful, hip-yet-historical city. And Notre Dame is like a microcosm of Paris. Its construction began in 1163, but it's a bit of this-and-that from every century since, including some stained-glass windows that were added in the 60s, but it all works together to make one of the most beautiful buildings in which I've ever been privileged to set foot.


Ready for some more history? Notre Dame is actually built on the same site where once stood a church commissioned by Clovis (who is widely recognized as the first king of France) in the 6th century. We visited an archaeological crypt below the square in front of Notre Dame that houses remains of columns, dwellings, and other architecture dating back to the Roman days of France (we're talking stones from the 400s). And, while, looking at a bunch of brick got a little old, it was fascinating to contemplate the continuity of civilization here, and to think that I'm now a (small) part of it.


The Conciergerie was used as a prison during the Revolution. Various members of the nobility, and those loyal to the King, were held there until being executed. Most notably, Marie Antoinette was imprisoned here until meeting her end at the guillotine. This is me in her cell.

We ended the walk with Sainte-Chapelle, and what a finale! The ground floor is tiny, just one room covered in blue, red, and gold ornamentation that almost looks like it might be painted plaster. We knew there had to be more, but it took several minutes of scanning before I noticed a little staircase at the corner of the room nearest the entrance. We hiked up (seriously, it is the narrowest, steepest, windiest staircase in existence) and found this:



Breathtaking, am I right or am I right or am I right (sorry, I just watched Groundhog Day)? The ground floor must have been designed as a test of devotion--anyone who really cares enough to find and climb the staircase wins this incredible view. And, boy, did we win. Every day that I'm here I kind of feel like I've won some kind of cultural lottery. Every corner I turn, I find some new, indescribably gorgeous thing, and sometimes it doesn't feel real. I have a habit of blinking every time I come to any exquisite new monument , like I'm expecting to open my eyes to find that I've only been fooling myself, that I'm not really standing in the midst of such immense beauty. I've been blinking a lot lately.

Walk 16: Montmartre

We started by walking up to the Sacré Coeur Basilica. All I could think was AMELIE. It's THE chase scene, with all the espionage and blue arrows. There's the carousel, the men who've painted themselves to look like statues, the pay-binoculars, the steps, the basilica. I'm really here, where all the charm in the world is produced.



I have to admit that I was really bummed about not being able to take pictures inside the cathedral. It was beyond beautiful. Gasp-out-loud-stop-your-heart beautiful. This was my first cathedral experience, and I couldn't ask for more. The exterior is gorgeous but imposing, austere in its way, but the inside is something else entirely. The ceilings are so high that you can't help but thrust your head up, in instinctive awe. They're painted in rich, metallic colors and depict a benevolent Christ with his arms outstretched. We visited while a mass was in progress, and the mixture of French, Latin, and chanting gave me goosebumps. There is such sincerity and devotion in the service and in the building itself. This visit alone made my entire trip worth it.

The area surrounding the Basilica, Montmartre (Mount Martyr), is the site of the first French martyrdom of a Christian, Saint Denis. A statue of him, severed head in hands, rests in a neighborhood park.


I took a Christian history course (with Brother Gaskill--do it!) last winter semester, and have such a respect and love for the early Church members, fathers, and martyrs. To see, side by side, the representations of sacrifice for the sake of the gospel, and its results, the flourishing of beautiful houses of worship, is humbling.

I'm not hugely into art history, but it was really pretty cool to see the various places along the walk where major artists slept, ate, and just generally lived their lives. This is the Bateau-Lavoir, cheap housing where several important artists, including Picasso, lived over the years.



This city has so much history, all of it seemingly important and life-altering on a humanity-wide level. I love it-- love the 13th century churches I pass on my way to the crepe stand, love the radical spirit that the city breeds in its artists, love every tall tale the people repeat about every building, statue, and square inch of avenue. I love it all.