I’ll eventually post in the Near Paris section of France Revisited a review of “An Hour from Paris,” Annabel Simms’ eye-opening guide to lesser known towns and villages within an easy train ride of Paris. Before getting down to the actual review, I decided to choose a chapter from the book in order to follow one of the book’s walking tours. So yesterday, on a whim, I took the suburb train RER A line 30-minutes northwest to the Seine-side town of Poissy in order to follow Ms. Simms’ footsteps there and in the neighboring villages of Villennes and Médard, which are also described in the “Poissy” chapter.

I picked Poissy from the 20 destinations in the book because I’d never been there and because even Ms. Simms is cautious about it, calling Poissy “a modest place, familiar to most Parisians only as the name of a terminus on the RER line service the northwestern suburbs.” I figured that if the author could design a worthwhile walking tour out of a place that apparently held such little promise then “An Hour from Paris” must be full of discovery.

“An Hour From Paris” is an intensely practical guide that one is unlikely to read front to back. But I’d enjoyed reading it that way for its quirky mix of practical information, GPS-like directions, and odd asides that seem ever so gently, and in a British way, to say “I was here.”

Here, for example, is one of my favorite passages from a description of the village of Andrésy: “… continue along the river as far as the Rue de Trélan. There is a little jetty with an electric bell to the right which you press to summon the small speedboat opposite…There is a little riverside garden in which you can eat outside in the summer (where I saw a red squirrel) and the tiled floor, lace curtains framing the river and the old-fashioned oak furniture make for a cosy retreat inside.” I just love that red squirrel that scampered into the text.

I’ll discuss the quirks of the text further in the actual review to appear next month. I’m using today’s blog not to review but to illustrate the visit outlined by Ms. Simms that I more or less faithfully followed—quite easily, I should add, thanks to the book’s excellent maps and the author’s unwavering eye for detail. I did not, however, enter the various museums that she mentioned along the way, though I did stop to photograph the cat, above left, near the entrance to Poissy’s Toy Museum (where I saw a magpie). The fact that the museum is across the street from a major prison for hardened criminals tells you that you are indeed well of the beaten track in these parts.

The spire of Collégiale Notre Dame, the church were King Louis IX was baptized in 1214 (remnants of the baptismal font are there), appears in the photo above with the cat. Here below is a colorful Renaissance “Entombment of Christ” found in that church.

I made a detour from Ms. Simms’ outline to buy a sandwich in town then returned to her trail to visit the Villa Savoye, photo right, designed by Le Corbusier in 1929. To the contemporary eye the villa resembles a generic office building near a strip mall, but when it was completed in the early 1930s it was a wondrous example of chic avant-garde eurotrash that few people would have wanted to live in. It’s in a little park across the street from a low-income housing project.

I already knew how detail-oriented Ms. Simms is from reading the book, but I realized when following her route that in addition to wanting to say “I was here” she also wants to encourage readers to look for details, whether, when heading downstream to Villennes, you’re standing on a bridge overlooking a branch of the Seine (below left) or “strolling down a private, peaceful and pretty, [that] leads past houses whose gardens stretch to the water’s edge” (below right)

or admiring a hedge of firethorns in full bloom (having asked a local what they are then looked up the translation back home)

or sitting in front of “the striking 11th-century church.”

A mile further upstream, at Médan, there’s another church, and a small private chateau, and the house that Zola bought in 1878 and where he lived “for about eight months of the year until his death 24 years later.”

You can then “make a nostalgic detour to reach the river by turning left” and have a seat by the river at Plaisirs d’Eté, “the only source of food and drink in Médan [which] is open sporadically, depending on the whim of the owners, a retired couple.” I don’t know if I’d call the detour nostalgic, but it was certainly delightful, especially since the retired couple’s whim to open coincided with my own to go.

An enjoyable day of discovery indeed! I’m looking forward to following in Ms. Simms’ footsteps in other town and villages where I’d never thought of setting foot.

Click here for my complete review of Annabel Simms’ “An Hour From Paris.”

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The Sainte Chapelle in Paris, a royal chapel once attached to the palace of the kings of France, is well known as a jewel of 13th-century stained glass and Gothic architecture. Far less known yet deserving a place on the trails of the return traveler is the other Sainte Chapelle, the royal chapel at the Chateau de Vincennes, which reopened on May 13 after 9 years of restoration.

Vincennes is an easy 20-minute metro ride from the center of Paris. To get to there you need only take the metro to the end of the Château de Vincennes line (line 1), step outside, and cross the drawbridge across the moat.

This is the only medieval fortified castle remaining in the Paris region. Acrobatic workers were doing some maintenance on the drawbridge when I arrived on a gray spring day for the press opening of the chapel.

The Sainte Chapelle of Vincennes doesn’t have the explosive beauty of the chapel in Paris, but it is in fact a direct descendent of the royal chapel in Paris. Sainte Chapelle means holy chapel, a name typically used to designate a royal chapel built to house important relics.

Like the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, the sanctity of Vincennes’s chapel came from the fact that at one time or another both held articles sold to King Louis IX in 1237 said to be relics of Christ’s Passion: a piece of the Cross and the Crown of Thorns. (They’re now kept at Notre-Dame.)

Louis IX (1214-1270) ordered the construction of the Sainte Chapelle at his castle in Paris specifically to house, reflect, and honor the significance of those relics. He also set about transforming a royal hunting lodge at Vincennes, to the east of his capital, into a fortified castle and an important seat of his power.

Already the relics were being held at Vincennes while awaiting construction of the chapel in Paris. It was from Vincennes that the king bid farewell to his family before leading the Crusades of 1248 and 1270, the 7th and 8th Crusades. He died in Tunisia on that final crusade. By then he had transformed the royal castle at Vincennes into the second major royal abode after that on Ile de la Cité in the middle of Paris.

In 1379, Charles V (1338-1380) ordered the construction of the Sainte Chapelle at Vincennes. During an era whose history would eventually be dominated by The Hundred Years War, the project was part of an effort to solidify both his power and his castle in the face of threats to his in reign from nearby dukedoms, from within Paris itself, and from the English. The dungeon/keep, seen here, was completed by the time of death. Guided tours are given there.

As to the chapel, it was just getting started when Charles V died. Though initially pursued under his son’s reign, it advanced through fits and starts and it wasn’t completed until 1552, under Henri II. That explains the Hs that decorate the chapel’s vaulted ceiling, below left. The detail below right indicates that it was built as a French royal chapel.

On Dec. 26, 1999, winds whipping through the Paris region at 90 miles an hour broke though stained glass and destabilized vaults and damaged sculptural work inside and out, so the chapel required important restoration work. It reopened this week for the first time since then, though renovations will continue on the exterior and in some windows.

While Vincennes’s chapel doesn’t have the impressive stained glass of the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, its glass and stone form a peaceable, harmonic space inside beneath a gracious vaulted ceiling.

A temporary exhibit of Bulgarian icons, now accompanying the reopening of the chapel, prohibits a full view of that space and allows only partial glimpses of its inner harmony. But the icons themselves have their own static beauty, as the 10th-century ceramic icon of Saint Theodore, below left, and the 18th-century story-telling icon of Saint Panteleimon, the healer, below right.

In addition to its medieval portions (chapel, dungeon, moat) of the Castle of Vincennes, the former royal complex also has major remnants from its role as a 17th-century pleasure place. In the early 19th century Napoleon I ordered the complex converted into barracks for his army and then also an arsenal. The complex still belongs to the Army.

Admission to the complex is free, however, there is an admission fee for the chapel (with the exhibit of icons) and dungeon. Admission to the chapel during this exhibit, showing until Aug. 30, costs 8€. A joint ticket for the chapel/exhibit and the dungeon costs 12€. The chapel and the dungeon are open daily 10am-6pm except during the June 21 Music Festival. Click here for further practical information.

Other religion, other relics: While Vincennes’s Sainte Chapelle no longer has a religious function, a major religious structure elsewhere in the Vincennes Woods (Bois de Vincennes) is very much in operation. That’s the Grand Buddhist Pagoda, which on May 17 will receive the relics of the Buddha Sakyamouni that recently arrived from Thailand. The Grand Pagoda is located in the park a 15-minute walk from the Porte Dorée metro station (line 8).

I went to Philadelphia last week to attend, along with about 55 other guests, the friendly Francophile ceremony by which Joanne Silver received the decoration of Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes académiques, the most prestigious honor a scholar or academician can receive from the French Government. Adding further weight to the decoration is the fact that the French ambassador to the United States, Pierre Vimont, in person came to Philadelphia to pin the palms on Joanne.

The Palmes académiques, established in 1808 by Napoléon Bonaparte, recognizes those who have advanced the cause of French culture, education, and the arts and made active contribution to the expansion of French culture throughout the world.

Joanne fit the bill for her years of teaching French, her involvement with the American Association of Teachers of French (AATF) and other Franco-American organizations, and her work as publisher of Francophile books, in French and in English, at Beach Lloyd Publishers, whose mission is “to recognize the strong historical and ideological ties that bind France and the United States, and to view those ideals globally.”

Before the ceremony began, former Honorary Consul of France to Philadelphia Daniele Thomas Easton introduced me and France Revisited to Ambassador Vimont. I didn’t dare ask the ambassador to sign up for the France Revisited Newsletter seeing as half my friends have yet to do so, but the three of us had a nice chat about this site nonetheless.

Below is a photo, left to right, of me, the ambassador and the former honorary consul. Michael E. Scullin, current Honorary Consul of France to Philadelphia, was caught in the photo to the right. (Click on all photos to enlarge).

Below is a photo of Ambassador Vimont pinning the palms on Joanne’s lapel, after which he gave her the traditional kiss on each check that seals the deal.

Joanne then posed for the official photograph with Ambassador Vilmont, left, and Honorary Consul Michael E. Scullin, right.

Below Joanne proudly displays her palms, freshly pinned.

Also in attendance among the Francophile luminaries of Philadelphia and illustrious guests from the U.S. Canada, and France were some of the members of the Board of the Alliance Francaise de Philadelphie. Among them, left to right in the photo below, were Alliance Board Members Delphine Lawrence (Secretary), Martine Chauvet (Executive Director), Joanne Silver, Lynn H. Miller (who has contributed an article about Frenchtown, N.J. to France Revisited), and Diana Regan (President).

Bravo et félicitations, Joanne!