On a far more intimate scale, the Clos Lucé in Amboise, a charming brick chateau in the Loire Valley, also made the cut. Though called a chateau, the Clos Lucé more resembles a large manor, and its magic is less about royal high-rollers than the Italian commoner who resided on the grounds for three short years: Leonardo da Vinci.

With three paintings in his luggage—Mona Lisa, St. Anne and John the Baptist—Leonardo da Vinci made the long and arduous journey across the Alps to Amboise via mule-train and riverboat in 1516 at the well-paid request of King François I, his last noble patron.

While Leonardo’s French dwelling has been open to the public since the 1950s, its displays have changed and expanded over the decades, and a free-standing, immersive gallery inaugurated on the grounds in June 2021 now makes the Clos Lucé an even more enticing place the understand the genius of Leonardo (Léonard in French). It includes 21st-century high-tech gizmos that the Renaissance man himself would undoubtedly have appreciated.

The Clos Lucé is a 10-minute walk from the sprawling clifftop Château d’Amboise, that has dominated the town and the Loire River for over 800 years, where eventual King François (Francis) I grew up. Shortly after his coronation in 1515, France embarked on string of military victories on the Italian peninsula, the latest in a series of incursions there. Though they failed to secure for France the control and influence that it long sought in Italy, they did lead the king to appreciate Italian culture and to a meeting with the great Renaissance man himself. An art lover and an artist groupie, François I installed his famous Florentine guest near Amboise Castle in what was then known as the Manoir du Cloux, a 15th century turreted pink brick mansion that would later come to be called the Château du Clos Lucé. An underground passage, since filled in, linked the two properties for private king-to-genius visits.

The Cloux-cum-Clos is also associated with an earlier relationship between a royal and a commoner, that of Louis XI and a kitchen boy named Etienne Le Loup. Legend holds that one fine day in 1471 the king ventured into the royal pantry and asked the teen how much he was paid. Etienne replied “as much as the king,” leading Louis to inquire how much he thought the king earned. “As much as he needs, just like me.” The king was so charmed by this response that he gave the kid a title and the Clos Lucé holding. Etienne then expanded the manor on the site, making it much the way it appears today from the outside. Whatever the true reason for the king’s generosity, Etienne, in 1490, sold the property back to the crown, then on the head of Louis’s successor, who transformed portions of the interior (a royal chapel was added). The stage was soon sent for the property to serve as the royal guest house for da Vinci.

A Da Vinci Theme Park

Since 1855, the Clos Lucé estate has been owned by the Saint Bris family. While his parents opened the grounds to the public in 1954, it’s the current landlord, François Saint Bris, who has sprinkled the pixie dust of Leonardo’s genius throughout the property.

“Genius” is notoriously difficult to convey to a large audience. But Leonardo’s brilliance as an artist, architect, inventor, engineer and urbanist is demonstrated by actual things that can be seen, touched or used: Mona Lisa in the Louvre, the Escher-esque spiral staircase that’s primarily attributed to him at Chambord, and here at the Clos Lucé many models and visionary images to amaze and delight visitors of all ages: swiveling bridges, helicopters, automobiles, bat-winged gliders, ideal cities, urban sewage systems, theatrical spectacles and, alas, armored tanks and machine guns.

Growing up on the property, François Saint Bris wasn’t immediately drawn in by the da Vinci mystique. As a child, he says, adult discussions of “le grand Léonard” sounded like “le grand renard” (the giant fox), which was more interesting to him than “a guy called Leonard.” Clearly, he has come around as he has increasingly turned the Clos Lucé into a da Vinci theme park, with further projects on the drawing board.

The new Leonardo da Vinci Galleries form an immersive playground that recreates—though some sleight-of-hand tech from IBM, Dassault Aeronautics and the numeric architecture firm Arc-en-Scène—da Vinci’s most fantastic accomplishments. Geared to delight both children and adults, the new invention and architecture spaces, housed in a freshly renovated 19th-century factory on the property, expand on the already extensive simulations that visitors could see at the main abode of the Clos Lucé. They’re filled with 3-D models and videos, including games that simulate Leonardo’s gliders flying over the Loire, while his art is honored in a virtual and musical montage with 200 images dissolving and evolving across the walls.

And it doesn’t stop there. The extensive gardens, echoing the flowers and foliage depicted in Leonardo’s paintings, are punctuated by scale models of the inventor’s innovative bridges and computer-generated images. In the chateau/manor itself, visitors can see a reconstitution of Leonardo’s bedroom, a reconstruction of his studio, the oratory frescoes that Charles VIII commissioned for his wife Anne de Bretagne, and a life-size, walking-talking hologram of Leonardo chatting about art with the Cardinal of Aragon.

Amboise Castle and Da Vinci DNA

No “Homage to Leonardo” tour would be complete without a visit to the Château d’Amboise, in whichever order you choose to visit them. While the castle housed over a dozen kings and a plethora of dukes over the ages, it also held unwilling guests. D’Artagnan escorted the flashy financier Nicolas Fouquet of Vaux-le-Vicomte fame, to the grounds after Louis XIV accused him of embezzlement and before he was sent to a more distant and damning prison. The Emir Abd El Kader (1808-1883), leader of the Algerian resistance, was a prisoner of state at Amboise, along with his family and an entourage of 83, from 1848 until liberated by Louis Napoléon Bonaparte in 1852. There’s a statue to his memory in the castle’s park.

Inside the castle, one can see a sentimental yet historically inaccurate vision of Leonardo’s death in the arms of François I that was painted by François-Guillaume Ménageot in 1781. While the two men were indeed on very friendly terms, the king was in Saint-Germain-en-Laye when Leonardo died at the Clos Lucé.

There’s greater mystery connected with Leonardo’s final resting place. On his deathbed, the artist asked to be buried in the royal chapel in the gardens of Amboise castle, and this request was granted. However, that chapel was destroyed during the Revolution—a statue of Leonardo in the garden marks the chapel’s former location—but at the time no one was overly concerned with the graves on the site.

Leonardo’s lily-bedecked tomb was moved to another chapel at the castle site, Chapelle de Saint Hubert, a small, freestanding Flamboyant Gothic edifice, decorated with antlers because Hubert is the patron saint of hunters.

But is Leonardo da Vinci really buried there?

It wasn’t until 1863, when historian Arsène Houssaye started poking through the debris, that a coffin and some coins minted during François I’s reign were discovered and nearby remains were designated as da Vinci’s.

This has engendered countless, Dan Brownish discussions over the years along on the lines of “was the body now entombed in the current Amboise grave left-handed like Leonardo?” Advances in DNA research—and the da Vincimania that accompanied the 500-year commemorations of his death in 2019 (when the Clos Lucé drew a record 520,000 visitors)—sparked an international fire-storm of interest in the genetic heritage of the remains in the tomb.

Leonardo’s DNA has proved elusive. He apparently had no direct offspring yet his extremely prolific father, a Florentine notary, spawned double-digit half-siblings for the artist.  Samples from the remains in the Amboise vault have been sent to several DNA labs, but there’s been no definitive answer as yet. For the moment, Leonardo’s chromosomes are still as enigmatic as Mona Lisa’s smile.

Practical information

Though more likely visited during extended explorations in the Loire Valley, Amboise can be the object of a carefully-timed day trip from Paris. Trains from Paris’s Austerlitz and Montparnasse stations take between an hour and a half and two hours. The Clos Lucé and the Château d’Amboise are just over a mile from the train station. A shuttle bus links the train station with the center of town.

Parking for cars and bicycles is also available in proximity of those sights. There are three public parking lots in Amboise within walking distance of the chateau, along with a designated Clos Lucé lot.

There are two restaurants on the Clos Lucé grounds: La Terrasse Renaissance (salads and crepes) and La Table du Moulin (grilled meat, salads and take-away sandwiches), to be enjoyed on shaded picnic tables. A third restaurant, L’Auberge du Prieuré, specializing in Renaissance-style fare and wines spiked with herbs and honey, is open for groups of 15 or more, reservations required. Picnics are also permitted on the grounds of the Château d’Amboise, which has an on-site café. There are also many cafés and eateries in the stroll-worthy town Amboise, though the primary points of interest are the castle and the Clos Lucé.

Château du Clos-Lucé – Parc Leonardo da Vinci, 2 rue du Clos Lucé, Amboise. Closed December 25 and January 1.

Château d’Amboise/Amboise Castle, Montée de l’Emir Abd El Kader, Amboise. Closed December 25 and January 1.

© 2022, Corinne LaBalme

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Until the spring of 2021, Deauville’s high culture credentials consisted of misty seascapes by 19th-century artist Eugène Boudin, pages from Marcel Proust’s early 20th-century opus in which Swann swans around with his aristocratic pals, and scenes from director Claude Lelouche’s sentimental 1966 movie “A Man and A Woman.”

This isn’t the town’s fault since Deauville was never intended to be “serious” place. A recent creation by French standards, Deauville was mere marshland until a group of rich investors—fronted by Napoleon III’s half-brother the Duke of Morny—decided to develop an Atlantic Xanadu from scratch in the 1860s. Stately pleasure domes, turreted neo-Gothic castles and towering half-timbered manors quickly rose above the dunes after the train link to Paris was established in 1863. Grander and grander hotels opened in the Belle Epoque period preceding WWI, with the Hotel Normandy, which opened in 1912, remaining the prime example of luxury accommodations in the region.

Situated 130 northwest of Paris, proximity to the capital has always been Deauville’s ace-in-the-hole, but generations of loyal visitors never looked for more than good times: horse races, casino gambling, sailing, golf, polo, tennis, shopping (this is the town where Coco Chanel first went retail) and fresh seafood. Notably, the racetrack was in service before the founders got around to planning a parish church. In 1975, the town established the American Film Festival, a largely frivolous and friendly festival held each September with none of the artsy pretentiousness and cut-throat intrigue of Cannes.

In short, experiencing the fine arts in Deauville essentially came down to spotting Jennifer Lawrence sipping café au lait on a hotel terrace … until now.

Having waited over 150 years to make its debut cultural statement, Deauville decided to pull out all the stops. In May, the Mayor of Deauville, Philippe Augier, inaugurated Les Franciscaines, a 21st-century culture and media complex within a recently abandoned and thoroughly renovated 19th-century convent. The complex consists of a library, an auditorium, a museum, an art gallery, creation labs and a restaurant.

The infrastructure was already at hand. In 1875, two Deauville sisters, Adèle and Joséphine Mérigault, commissioned a clinic, a vocational school and an orphanage for the daughters of mariners lost at sea. All of the above were managed by the Franciscan Sisters but by 2011 the few elderly nuns who still lived on the premises were ready to sell up and relocate to a nearby retirement residence with modern conveniences such as central heating.

To qualify the ensuing municipal makeover as a fixer-upper is an understatement: the sadly rundown convent, acquired for four million euros, required another four million for studies and planning, plus a whopping 17-million-euro construction budget. In 2015, the Paris-based Moatti-Rivière architectural firm (the Musée Borély in Marseille; the Hôtel de la Marine in Paris; the new environmentally correct re-do of the Eiffel Tower’s first level; Jean-Paul Gaultier’s design HQ) was selected from over 180 candidates for the renovation.

According to Alain Moatti, “do not destroy” is the prime directive when approaching an architectural project like this. From the exterior, the only new additions are the twinned, 49-feet-high towers that signal the entry. Past the front desk admissions booth, visitors proceed to the former 4,300-square-foot cloister, which has been roofed, lit by a dazzling chandelier composed of 14,285 light tubes, and transformed into every periodical lover’s idea of heaven with comfy chairs and almost every newspaper and magazine available for free reading.

The rest of the ground floor is occupied by a fully modular 230-seat auditorium in the former chapel decorated with stained glass windows portraying the life of St Francis of Assisi; a bookshop; and a classy, health-and-planet-conscious restaurant, La Réfectoire. The latter, located in the convent’s erstwhile mess hall, serves brunches, tea and sweets, and full lunches with delicious options like beet borscht adorned with fresh shrimp, goat cheese, sprouts and pine nuts.

Les Franciscaines’ crowning glory is a 6,600-square-feet exhibition space, diminutive by major museum standards, which provides proof that the old adage “good things come in small packages” often rings true. As an artful transition from the building’s former use, the museum’s opening exhibition focused on depictions of the hereafter and featured prestigious loans.

Les Franciscaines profits from local largesse because Deauville isn’t just any small town. Case in point: A smaller gallery on the upper floor displays short-term loans from Deauville residents… people who just “happen to have” paintings by Pierre Soulages, Yves Klein or Joan Mitchell in their living rooms. The considerable permanent collection of André Hambourg (1909 – 1999; a French artist noted for luminous seascapes) that includes works by his friends Marie Laurencin and Foujita, is on display in a separate gallery.

Whether the high quality of the opening shows will continue remains to be seen, but Deauville has set its sights on making Les Franciscaines a cultural institution of national, even international consequence. See the agenda for current and upcoming exhibitions here.

The extensive library upstairs is also a treasure trove of art and not just of the bookish kind. Les Franciscaines is the repository of the rotating collection assembled by Peindre en Normandie, an association founded in 1992 to celebrate well-known as well as relatively unknown painters who depicted Normandy from 1750 to 1950. Between and above the shelves, browsing book lovers will come face-to-face with actual paintings by Monet, Bonnard, Boudin and others. Many of the Impressionist paintings will be touring Chinese museums for the next few years, but there is still plenty of artwork by the likes of Raoul Dufy and Edouard Vuillard to adorn the walls, as well as a large photography collection that spotlights Deauville past and present snapped by Cartier-Bresson, Gisèle Freund, Peter Lindberg, Mario Testino, Willy Rizzo and Karl Lagerfeld among others.

The library specializes in Deauville history, lifestyle, cinema, children’s literature and equestrian books. (The latter includes a royal riding manual published in 1666.) The magic for most bibliophiles is the library’s wide variety of seating options. There are tables and chairs with places for computers; cozy arm chairs, couches and even full-length beds for people who want to stretch out when they read. As befits a 21st-century media library, Les Franciscaines also offers lectures, interactive digital access and family-friendly workshops.

The library and workshops will likely be of most interest to people with fairly fluent French. Nevertheless, through Les Franciscaines’ exhibitions, restaurant and the sheer pleasure of walking through or sitting in its media libraries, English-speaking visitors to Deauville now have a fascinating indoor culture option for rainy days. And there’s never a shortage of rain in Normandy.

Les Franciscaines, 145B avenue de la République, 14800 Deauville. Tel.: 02 61 52 29 00. Open from 10 :30 am to 6 :30 Tuesday through Sunday; closed December 25 and May 1; open daily during school holidays. A 15€ day pass gives access to all the exhibitions.

Getting There: For Parisians, Deauville is one the closest beach destinations, and for that reason it’s often called the Paris’s 21st arrondissement. Direct trains from Paris’s Gare Saint Lazare train station take about 2 hours 20 minutes. (When the train line was established in 1863, the same trip took six hours!) Les Franciscaines, the racetrack, the casino, the beaches and more are all within a 20-minute walk from the train station.

© 2021, Corinne LaBalme

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Corinne LaBalme saw only the dark side of Pierre Soulages, France’s most celebrated living artist, until she visited his namesake museum in Rodez, Aveyron, and saw the light.

Pierre Soulages is the rare artist who’s been able to attend his own centenary celebrations. Born in 1919, he’s been prolific enough to have filled countless retrospectives around the world last year. But age alone doesn’t explain why prices for his work have reached dizzying heights, as his work entitled “200 x 166 cm 14 mars 1960,” which sold for 9.6 million euros (about 10.5 million dollars) in November 2019. (When it comes to Soulages titles it’s just the facts: size and date completed.) There is something extraordinary about his work, though I didn’t realize it until I visited his namesake museum in Rodez, his birthplace in the Aveyron department of central southern France.

Soulages is best known for working within the realm of outrenoir, which is often translated in English as “ultra-black” or “beyond black.” He coined the word in 1979 to describe paintings that he coated in thick black pigment before meticulously raking them into shape with masonry tools generally used on grout and mortar.

“The vehicle is light, not black,” the artist has explained numerous times. “Black is a violent color, it imposes itself, it dominates, it’s the original color.”

Nevertheless, his Darth Vader-ish canvases never imposed themselves on me. While they were instantly recognizable in contemporary art exhibits, my own magpie attention was always diverted by the turquoise Hockney swimming pools or the neon Warhols that flanked them. Once you’ve seen one big Soulages, you’ve seen them all, I thought.

Wrong.

It took a press trip to Rodez, a town so isolated in the volcanic plateaux of central France that the “fast” trains from Paris take seven hours to get there, to alter my perception of Soulages’ outrenoir. Seeing mass quantities of his paintings in a building that was purpose-built to show them off can be a mind-bending, magical and quasi-religious experience—my Come-to-Gesso experience.

In 2005, Soulages donated 500 of his works to the municipality of Rodez. (He now resides in Sète, the nearest Mediterranean town to Rodez.) Until the completion of the museum in 2014, Rodez’s sole main architectural claim to fame was its red sandstone Notre-Dame Cathedral (1276-1531). The museum, designed by the Catalan architectural firm of RCR, now also holds a claim. It consists of five slightly tippy parallelepiped boxes set in a 7.4-acre garden in the center of town. Its rusty Corton steel façade echoes the red sandstone of the Gothic cathedral that stands 600 yards away. (In 2017 the firm won the Pritzker Architecture Prize.)

As the artist has repeatedly told interviewers, his outrenoir painting are all about the light. Yet when I’ve seen his work in group shows, the industrial lumens that make Motherwells and Pollocks sparkle and shine left Soulages looking like the designated driver at the art party. Soulages painting don’t photograph well either. They need to be experienced in motion i.e. the motion of the viewer.

The cavernous museum in Rodez, with its darkened rooms and large windows, allows the paintings to come alive while revealing their secrets. A canvas that appears from one angle to be somber as a moonless night in an urban blackout will from another angle burst into an array of molten golden shimmers.

It’s hard to say more about the outrenoir gold seam. It’s about as close to alchemy as anything yet seen on earth and thus, it has to be seen to be believed. His giant canvases with black motifs on a white field photograph much better but it’s only “in person” that you can detect the tiny splotches of dark paint which could have been easily whited out. People often compare these paintings to Chinese calligraphy, a simile that the artist has denied, yet there is a certain Eastern “drips happen” serenity of these paintings.

For a 100-year-old artist who’s been top of his game for decades, Soulages’ personal bio is surprisingly slim and uneventful. No escapades in Tahiti, no (recorded) drunken revels, no Picasso-esque psycho-drama. Soulages has even stayed married to the same woman, Colette Llaurens, since 1940! That means an 80th wedding anniversary this year, an accomplishment in itself.

Soulages’ instant success and seamless speed towards super-stardom leads me to think of him as the anti-Van Gogh. As a journalist who has had an achingly hard time trying to get a first novel published, 80 years of success is irritatingly hard to fathom. Accepted into Paris’s prestigious Ecoles des Beaux Arts in 1937, Soulages dropped out before day one after deciding that art school had nothing to teach him. After WWII, he was rejected from one salon (count it: one) and then became the undisputed star of his next group show in 1947. By the early 1950s, he’d exhibited in the Guggenheim, the Tate, MOMA, the Phillips in Washington, as well as museums and galleries in Rio, Copenhagen, Paris, etc., and the honors and recognition never stopped.

Even though painters naturally prefer pigment to prose, Pierre Soulages is more cryptic than most. When asked about his outrenoir oeuvre in the December 2019 issue of Connaissance des Arts magazine, he replied: Le mot outrenoir permet de ne pas se limiter au phénomene optique car voir les reflets sur une surface noir, c’est un phénomene optique. (The word outrenoir makes it possible to not limit oneself to the optical phenomenon because seeing the reflections on a black surface is an optical phenomenon.)

While maddeningly opaque in both French and English, this response would make perfect sense on Dagobah: Black see you not, Luke Skywalker. Light it must have to reveal the Force.

The events of 2020 have made the world seem like one huge black hole. Is there no better time to embrace the dark and find the light that lies within it? Pierre Soulages may not be the original Jedi Knight, but his artwork is certainly what I need right now.

Musée Pierre Soulages. Jardin du Foirail, avenue Victor Hugo, 12000 Rodez. Tel: 05 65 73 82 60. Hours: 9 am to 9 pm. Closed Monday. July and August: Open 7 days. Café Michel Bras on premises.

Note: The museum re-opened after Corona lockdown on May 21st. Masks will be obligatory until further notice. Through October 31, the museum will present a temporary exhibition entitled Femmes Années 50 that showcases the abstract works of Sonia Delaunay, Joan Mitchell, Geneviève Asse, Pierrette Bloch, Shirley Goldfarb and others.

© 2020, Corinne LaBalme for France Revisited

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For most Parisians, the granite plateaus of the Aubrac—a mountainous region of central France famed for the pampered cows and sheep that flourish on its austere, volcanic terrain—is flyover country. Or a source of food.

One need only spend a few days in Paris to encounter some of the food products from the region: Aubrac steak, raw-milk Laguiole cheese and crumbly Roquefort cheese. The finest steel to cut into these gourmet delicacies is forged right next to the remote and isolated pastures from which these products come.

Folklore says that specialized cutlery was first produced in the workshops of the village of Laguiole for cowherds and shepherds in the 12th century. But the modern era of Laguiole cutlery began in 1828 when Casimir-Antoine Moulin set up the town’s first purpose-built workshop. The distinctive “Shepherd’s Cross” design on the handles—so that a knife plunged in the ground could serve as an ad hoc altar—dates from those early days. By the end of the century, the Laguiole knife it was on its way to becoming the Swiss army knife of France, with three distinct parts: a blade, a corkscrew and a trocar, a pointy surgical instrument used to pierce the stomachs of cows and sheep afflicted with deadly bloat. The addition of the corkscrew is attributed to the diaspora of the local unemployed population to Paris, where opportunities in café and restaurant businesses were developing.

The craft tradition all but disappeared in the wake of the First World War. Production was mostly just a memory when in 1985, the mayor of Laguiole sought to revive the industry, along with the help of Aubrac-bred entrepreneurs Gilbert et Jean-Louis Costes (best known for their fashion-forward Paris hotels, restaurants and cafés).

Age-old craftsmanship collides with high design at Forge de Laguiole. The new look of knifedom is embodied by the factory designed by architect Philippe Starck. Postmodern architects Denise Scott-Brown and Robert Venturi divided commercial structures into “decorated sheds” (metal box with a prominent logos) and “ducks” (buildings where the function or product is advertised by its form, e.g. a burger joint that’s shaped like a burger), so with a 20-meter aluminum knife blade sticking out of its roof, the Forge de Laguiole fulfills both criteria.

Visitors enter through the boutique filled with showcases of dazzling steel blades accented by sleek handles fashioned from highly polished olive, juniper, cedar, ash, ebony and pistachio wood; semi-precious stone; compressed fabric, and, remarkably, varnished sand which is, amazingly, dishwasher-proof. Horn from Aubrac cattle is also used. No animals are slaughtered for their horns.

Prices begin over 100€ per knife, which may sound intimidating, but these are handmade items designed to last forever. A single knife may require days of work, and at full capacity, the Forge de Laguiole can only manufacture 200 items a day.

Visitors with tinnitus may be wise to abstain from entering the workshops, where tours and demonstrations are offered in July and August. (The boutique remains open most of the year, so off-season visitors can peek through glass windows opening onto the workshops even when there are no tours.) The hammering, polishing and sanding is so noisy that all employees wear earplugs. As might be expected in any enterprise touched by Costes sense of style, the artisans are issued hyper-chic black uniforms. Those who work in ateliers where shards of steel are flying around are decked out in metallic aprons that practically scream “Paco Rabanne.”

Almost like a feudal guild, the team spirit is tangible at Forge de Laguiole. Some employees prefer to specialize in one aspect of production while others enjoy contributing a panoply of different skills. Like Jedi knights fashioning their own light sabers, all employees, even those in administrative posts, learn to assemble a pocket knife in a rite of passage.

Once you’ve watched the welders, woodworkers and polishers at work, you’ll retreat to the boutique and examine the merchandise with even greater respect. In addition to producing traditional knives and corkscrews with the totemic bumblebee insignia (which local legend associates, apparently erroneously, with Napoleon Bonaparte’s appreciation of the town residents), Forge de Laguiole has enlisted contemporary design icons for unique cutlery. Among them, Jean-Michel Wilmotte designed knives with sleek acrylic resin handles in six fluorescent colors and Andrée Putman styled matte-finish knives with cylindrical, Art Deco-ish ebony or ash handles.

While the three-part Laguiole knife can still be found, there’s less of a call for a trocar, but modern consumers may want a specialized gourmet knife. To satisfy them, La Forge de Laguiole has worked closely with Michelin-starred chefs such as Sebastien Bras, Anne-Sophie Pic, Cyril Lignac and Gérald Passédat on specific products. This has allowed the Forge de Laguiole artisans to solve some of the thornier cutlery conundrums of the 21st century by creating, for example, a knife that can cleanly slice soft goat cheese and another for your millefeuille pastry.

There is no governmental, regional or artisanal certification connected with Laguiole knives, so at present it is perfectly legal to sell a “Laguiole” knife that was fully or partially manufactured overseas. Contrary to popular belief in many collectible sites, that bumblebee over the hinge is not a trademark guarantee. So while there’s currently no such thing as a counterfeit Laguiole, there’s a certain authenticity to have one made in the town of Laguiole.

The direction of La Forge fashions all parts of its knives on the premises and would like to see a strict regulation for regional production, as would the other Laguiole ateliers in town. Several other thriving ateliers creating both traditional and contemporary cutlery also offer tours.

Forge de Laguiole. Route de l’Aubrac, BP 9. 12210 Laguiole. Tel.: 05.65.48.43.34. La Forge de Laguiole also has boutiques in Paris (29 rue Boissy d’Anglas, 8th arr.), Toulouse (24 rue des Arts) and Rodez (3 rue Pénavayer).

Laguiole Tourist Office. Place de la Mairie, 12210 Laguiole. Tel.: 05 65 44 35 94. They also provide information about visiting the surrounding zone of Aubrac.

Food & Lodging

In Laguiole, Sebastian Bras presides over a luxury hotel complex, whose kitchen has fluctuated between two and three Michelin stars ever since his father created the now legendary gargouillou, a salad that resembles a flower arrangement. It’s one of the vegan gourmet musts of France. It may be even harder to procure a table at the family-run, roadside diner Le Relais de la Vitarelle in Montpeyroux, where Laurent Falguier’s short-but-sweet daily menu is almost sure to include tender Aubrac steak, the house charcuterie and creamy, cheese-laced Aligot mashed potatoes. LaBa Hôtel (Laguiole/Buenos Aires), has four cozy bedrooms and a tiny restaurant with a killer wine-list.

To learn about Laguiole cheese, visit the cheerful Jeune Montagne Co Op where it’s made. Marcillac is the local wine, made with the fer servadou (aka mansois) grape varietal. It’s a hearty, spicy red wine that stands up to local rustic fare.

Getting There

If you aren’t already on an exploration of the deep center of France, traveling to Laguiole is a commitment that will entail some mountain driving. The nearest city is Rodez, 33 miles southwest, capital of Aveyron, a department in the Occitania region. Setting out for Rodez from Paris by train would take some grit since it’s nearly a seven-hour ride. If looking to reach Aveyron directly from Paris, consider instead a cheerful airline named Amelia after the pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart, whose plane disappeared somewhere over the South Pacific in 1937, to whisk you to Rodez from Orly Airport in roughly an hour. (Rodez is home to the Soulages Museum, a destination in its own right, dedicated to the work of France’s most celebrated living artist, who turned 100 in December 2019. An article about the museum and the artist will be published soon on France Revisited.)

Alternative starting points for an approach to Laguiole are Toulouse to the southeast, Montpellier to the southwest and Clermont-Ferrand to the north. Laguiole is a 2-3-hour drive from any of those cities, though there is so many rural and small-town discoveries to be made along the way that the drive is more likely to take a few days.

© 2020, Corinne LaBalme for France Revisited.

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For fans of architecture in both its purest and kitschiest forms the fun begins with the exterior façade. In 1878, richissime banker Emile Gaillard hired up-and-coming architect Jules Février to build a Parisian mansion modeled on the late 15th-century features of the Château de Blois in the Loire Valley. The Monceau quarter was favored terrain of the banking class at the time—the Rothschilds, the Camondos, the Perrières and others also built mansions in the area—and is still home to many golden boys and girls.

Ironically, the Hôtel Gaillard is a picture-perfect illustration of a real estate fiasco in fiscal terms: It took six years and 11 million francs to build but the Banque de France was able to scoop it up in 1919 for a mere two million. That change of hands merely ratcheted up the site’s eclectic charm since the Banque de France augmented the already over-the-top décor with the Art Nouveau and Art Deco elements popular in its day. However, for some delightfully curious reason, the directors went all medieval when they decided to protect the safety deposit vault with a moat.

Yes, they dug an actual moat and filled it with water. (BTW, not a single break-in before the bank closed its door to private customers in 2006.) Today’s visitors can walk over the (now-tiled) drawbridge that led over the moat to the coffers.

While the museum’s “function’ is devoted to economics, it’s not macro and micro economics in its stuffiest, textbook form.

Citéco is all about the money: how it’s made, lost, spent, printed, squandered, stolen or saved. All exhibits are well translated in English and Spanish.

Displays showcase currency made from silver, gold, bone seashells, and intricately braided raffia. A home-made, home-grown toaster constructed by British artist Thomas Thwaites (nine months to assemble; nine seconds to melt down) illustrates the need to trade in both skills and materials.

Interactive exhibits make economics even more personal. A bank-balance game flashes a monthly salary, then fast-forwards through possible expenses. Pull a lever to evade the exorbitant 150 € cable/internet charge and the screen politely reminds you that you signed a monthly contract.

The 9-player boardroom game is a lesson in negotiation. Visitors can explore the domino theory with real dominoes, put a pair of jeans through a TSA-style radar check to trace its manufacture and materials, and even design their own paper money.

Don’t worry if you get a little seasick from the walk-in exhibit of the sub-prime crisis. It was specifically designed to make spectators feel queasy. Recover (or not?) by sitting in on an imaginary conversation with John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman.

Citéco: La Cité de l’Economie. 1 Place du Général Catroux, 17th arr. Metro Monceau or Malesherbes. Open Tuesday to Friday from 10 am to 6 pm; Saturday until 7 pm. Tickets: 12 € (general admission); 9 € (ages 18 – 25); 6 € (age 6 – 17); under 6 free. Happy Hour: 6 € from 4:30 pm Monday through Friday (except holidays); 8 € on the first Thursday of each month from 7 to 10 pm.

© 2019, Corinne LaBalme

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From December through March, while grey is the predominant color of the skies of northern Europe, the coastal roads on the Côte d’Azur in southeast France burst into a Kodachrome blur of neon-yellow flowers wedged between a brilliant blue sky and the turquoise Mediterranean.

The mimosa, a hardy Australian acacia, was first introduced to France by the explorer James Cook, who presented the seeds to the future Empress Josephine. But mimosa madness didn’t take root until the late 19th century when the northern aristocrats wintering on the Riviera brightened their holiday villas with this cheery foreign flower that stubbornly stuck to its Australian blooming schedule.

The Côte d’Azur remained a winter destination until the advent of Brigitte Bardot and the bikini turned the region into a summertime fantasy land. More recently, with the goal of reinvigorating winter tourism, several towns in the Var and Alpes-Maritimes regions have banded together to form La Route des Mimosas, the Mimosa Route, 80 miles of bright yellow horticultural heaven between the medieval village of Bormes-les-Mimosas and the perfume capital of Grasse.

The major mimosa action takes place on February weekends when the towns on the route hold their corsos, parades with drum majorettes, local marching bands, and flower-bedecked floats that are planned and painstakingly assembled by village volunteer groups.

This route through the smaller villages is worth following in the summer as well as it provides respite from the crowds in the well-known beach resorts of the Riviera. Even when the mimosa season is over, the gardens and protected nature refuges along this route are among the most exceptional botanical treasures in France even though one botanist’s treasure can be another botanist’s pest, as you’ll discover in your travels along the Mimosa Route.

Bormes-les-Mimosas

The village of Bormes – after enduring the “place-with-all-the-mimosas” epithet for years – changed its name to include the ubiquitous flowers in 1968. And it makes sense: Of the 1,200 varieties of mimosa plants that exist across the world, the latest local plant census claims that 700 different mimosa varieties reside within town limits.

Moreover, the National Conservancy of Mimosa is centered in the greenhouses at the Pépinière Cavatore which nurtures 7,000-8,000 mimosa plants every year. Horticulturist Julien Cavatore waxes eloquent on his family’s specialized knowledge of the Australian acacia. Mimosas, he explains, flourish in the Mediterranean
coastal region although the fickle plants experience difficulties just a few miles (and micro-climates) north in Aix-en-Provence.

“You can’t buy one of my ‘babies’ unless I think you can care for it properly indoors or replant it in an appropriate garden environment,” Cavatore says. Indoor mimosa seedlings must be coddled like a cranky, anti-social houseguests, sequestered in an otherwise unused, unheated room with frequent watering and careful attention to their specific soil requirements.

Therefore, it’s a whole lot easier to connect with mimosas al fresco. The Australian gardens in Bormes-les-Mimosa’s spectacular, three-quarter acre Parc Gonzalez showcase the golden flowers in addition to other exotic plants such as banksia and eucalyptus. For fans of manmade culture, note that architectural jewels such as the 16th-century chapel dedicated to Saint Francis of Assisi (who visited Bormes on his anti-plague tour in 1481) show up in many of the garden settings.

The town’s major non-floral tourist attraction is the Fort de Brégançon, a 15th century military installation designated as a presidential vacation residence since 1968. Rarely used in recent years while running up an annual maintenance bill of 200,000 €, Former President François Hollande opened it to the public in 2013 although his successor seems less likely to relinquish the keys on a permanent basis. President Emmanuel Macron has already installed a swimming pool on the premises and entertained Theresa May at Brégançon for Brexit talks in August 2018. Open to visitors in July and September only. Tickets available through the Bormes-les-Mimosas Tourist Office.

The Domaine du Rayol in Rayol-Canadel-sur-Mer

In 1908, Parisian businessman Alfred Courmes purchased 99 acres of wild beachfront terrain and began to build his personal paradise with a mini-farm, a grandiose villa and an antique-style pergola. After several subsequent private owners, the property was destined to be chopped up for building units in 1974 until several local associations protested.

The environmentalists’ ecological dream came true in 1989 when the land was acquired by the Conservatoire du Littoral, the French coastal protection agency. The Domaine du Rayol, 49 acres of Mediterranean herb-and-pine-scented brush called maquis, is the anti-Versailles. No orderly rows of petunias. No geometric parterres. No fountains with Greek gods. The Domaine du Rayol is a “planetary garden” in the words of its landscaper-in-chief Gilles Clément, as well as a “moving garden” in constant evolution.

The first idea on Clément’s drawing board was a patchwork of regional greenery native to Mediterranean-style climates all over the world. Thus, during the December-to-March mimosa season, it’s hard to miss the bright gold Australian reserve. But there’s much else to see as well as other areas are devoted to graceful Asian ginko trees, Californian chaparral and Jurassic Park-style giant ferns from New Zealand. A remarkable 300-year-old cork tree stands as a gnarled reminder that this region once earned its baguettes-and-butter from the production of wine corks.

Nature lovers should plan for a full day to explore the grounds; there’s a charming outdoor café for lunch and snacks. And the plant life isn’t all on dry land either. Visitors can check out the seaweed too because the Domaine offers summertime wading tours along the beachfront as well as snorkeling expeditions. For the latter, all equipment is provided. Reservations are mandatory through the Domaine du Rayol website. While on that site, see if your plans coincide with one of the tree-climbing Sundays or the summer concert schedule.

Sainte Maxime and Saint Raphael

These side-by-side beach resorts have very different architectural profiles: The most lavish holiday villas in Sainte Maxime are stripped-down examples of Art Deco, whereas the shoreline of Saint-Raphael is dominated by the extravagant, wedding-cake fantasies of the Belle Epoque.

Both towns provide a large choice of Provençal boutiques. During winter, many local pastry shops stock mimosa-flavored chocolates produced at the artisanal candy workshop “La Muscadine” in Sainte-Maxime. Like Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, they taste like Riviera sunshine on the tongue. If you miss the mimosa season, console yourself with Muscadine’s chocolate creations flavored with lavender, violet, and rose petals.

Mimosa continues to delight tourists, florists and perfume companies (more later) but every splash of yellow at the Massif de l’Estérel nature reserve in Saint Raphael is regarded with fear and loathing by the Park Service. It turns out that mimosa, like most things in life, has a dark side.

The reserve, a hiker’s dream, dominated by dramatic red cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean, has become an anti-mimosa battleground. Mimosa may be notoriously picky about its climate and soil preferences but, like Goldilocks, when it gets what it wants it takes over. “It’s an invasive foreign plant that crushes the local flora. Cutting, uprooting and burning simply encourages it to spread,” explains Forest Ranger André Frey. Mimosa is Nature’s Nietzsche: what doesn’t kill it, makes it stronger.

The Estérel Reserve, a haven for native Côte d’Azur pines, thyme and sage, offers a variety of walking tours and bike, VTT and even motorcycle treks are available. Information is available through the Saint Raphael Tourist Office.

Tanneron and Mandelieu-La Napoule

In August 1986, fires destroyed 12,480 acres of Riviera forest and the hardest-hit area was the Tanneron Mountain. During mimosa season, that hill is now entirely and breathtakingly golden in winter; the traditional Mediterranean brush is nowhere in sight, which is worrisome to many botanists. Tanneron can therefore be seen is either a glorious symbol of flower power or the scary incubator of yellow peril. It all depends on what side of the botanical barricades you’re on.

Just a few miles away, Mandelieu-La Napoule takes most of its golden color from the Palme d’Or (The Gold Palm) at the nearby Film Festival. A bedroom community of Cannes, Mandelieu is more international than the previous towns on the route and has its own Michelin-starred restaurant, L’Oasis.

Nevertheless, it hosts its own folkloric corso (the 2019 theme was Marco Polo complete with dromedaries) which parades right past the 14th century chateau lovingly restored by American artist Henry Clews Jr (1876 – 1937) and now open to the public. There’s a distinct fairy-tale aura to the castle—the stone inscription over the door reads “Once Upon a Time.”

Grasse

Surrounded by fields of blossoms, Grasse is the fragrance capital where mimosa (and roses and jasmine and violets…) are distilled into tiny bottles of money. Last year, it gained listing to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage register for its floral savoir-faire in the arts of perfumery.

Mimosa is one of principal scent factors in Amarige (Givenchy), Paris (Yves Saint Laurent), Champs-Elysées (Guerlain), L’Eau d’Azur (Occitane), Masumi (François Coty) and Moment Suprême (Jean Patou).

Fragonard, established in Grasse in 1926, simply calls their mimosa scent Mimosa. At present, the Perfume Museum in Grasse offers limited exhibits while under renovation. All the more reason to head to Fragonard, which has its own museum (yes, there’s a relation to the painter) and workshops (reserve ahead) where visitors can get a chance to make their own fragrance.

Planning Your Trip

If beginning the Mimosa Route in Bormes-les-Mimosas, Toulon-Hyères is the closest airport and Toulon and Hyères are the closest TGV stations. If starting in Grasse, Nice is the more convenient choice whether arriving by train or plane.

Information on planning a trip to the areas covered by the Mimosa Road is found on the official tourist sites of the department of Var, the Côte d’Azur and the Mimosa Route, in addition to those of the towns mentioned in this article.

Fancy four-star options are thin on the ground at present but they’re in the works: The Belle Epoque-style Grand Hotel of Bormes-les-Mimosas (ca 1903), is currently under renovation and construction is slated to begin on an all-new luxury hotel on a hillside overlooking the old town of Grasse.

In the meantime, profit from charming (and bargain-priced for the Riviera) options such as the Café du Progrès in Bormes-les-Mimosas whose casual restaurant serves some of the best home-made tapenade on the coast as well as lush plats du jour such as minced lamb pastilla. The cozy inn above the restaurant has a small but refreshing pool.

One pays extra for the waterfront views at the venerable Excelsior Hotel in Saint Raphael, but more dramatic scenery is offered by city-side rooms that overlook the remarkable Roman-Byzantine Notre-Dame de la Victoire Basilica, built in 1883 from the region’s pink sandstone.

The Café de France in Sainte-Maxime has been run by the same family since 1852. Directly across from the town’s small but lively fish market, it’s a great place to sample daurade (sea bream) in butter sauce with a side of black rice topped with white truffles. There’s live jazz on winter weekends.

© 2019, Corinne LaBalme

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While traditional crepe restaurants (crêperies) and quick-snack crepe stands remain common in Paris, the crepe has been rising from comfort food status to a trend-conscious lunching and dining choice.

Basically, it’s a Cinderella story for the modest crepe which, at the basic level, is simply an undernourished pancake. Crepe batter lacks a rising agent, like baking soda, that makes the pancake comparatively thick and heavy in the belly.

Crêpes, which wear a circumflex hat in French (optional in English), have been associated with Brittany since the 12th century when buckwheat, newly introduced to the region, proved to be one of the few crops that flourished on the region’s hardscrabble terrain. (That historic Brittany connection explains the numerous traditional crêperies on and around Rue d’Odessa and Rue du Montparnasse, near the Montparnasse station, where trains arrive from that region.)

It’s the non-gluten quality of buckwheat—known as sarrasin or blé noir ­(black wheat) in France—that contributes to the crêpe’s popularity with the current generation of picky eaters. And it doesn’t hurt that crepes are relatively versatile, made-to-order and inexpensive, averaging 7 to 12 euros a piece in their savory form in Paris. Even in their fashion-conscious accessorized form they’re only a few euros pricier than their country cousins.

A savory buckwheat crepe is often referred to as a galette in French. Dessert crepes are generally fashioned from white flour, though sarrasin flour works perfectly with honey, fruit and Nutella and can be substituted on request.

Savory crepes are traditionally consumed with low-alcohol cider instead of wine since Brittany and Normandy, the historical homes for savory crepes, are short on vineyards and long on apple orchards.

The crepe’s stylish versatility is on display in the following five restaurants which represent some of the best of the current crop of trendsetting crêperies in Paris.

Brutus

Super-chic Brutus, combines two hot trends—designer crêpes and imaginative cocktails—in a wood-accented venue in the white-hot Batignolles quarter. No reservations, but that’s no problem since this is the only crêperie in Paris with an active bar scene. Order some tapas (the sardine rillettes are divine) while you wait for a table and sip a refreshing, gin-tinted cider cooler or a smooth cider sour with a fluffy froth of egg white. The crepes vary from classic cheese/egg/ham to chicken tajine. In a nod to the past, the crepes are named after the grandmothers of the three owners’ grandmothers: Paulette, Lucienne, Babette etc. Sample a novelty fruit potion—like the Scandinavian-style cidre des glaces made from frozen apples—for a digestif with an unusual kick.

Brutus. 99 rue des Dames, 17th arr. Metro Rome or Villiers. Tel: 09 86 53 44 00.

Odyssey

The soundtrack is “Best of Star Wars”; the menu is printed in Aurebash (Imperial Galactic Basic); and although diners are requested to check their light-sabers at the door, there’s a lot more to Odyssey than Skywalker/Solo nostalgia. Just a few blocks south of Notre Dame (and conveniently located on a block that’s rife with Sci-Fi boutiques), the capable kitchen honors the home-worlds of multiple alien cultures. The Gallifrey crêpe features Roquefort, Swiss cheese, bacon and walnuts and the utterly delectable Klendathu mixes minced leeks, chive and goat cheese. There’s even a nod to Remulak. If Princess Leia, currently working undercover as a Latin Quarter waitress, suggests a supplement of extra cheese on your Dagobah, go for it. She knows.

Odyssey. 6 rue Dante, 5th arr. Metro Cluny La Sorbonne or Maubert Mutualité. Tel: 01 77 12 06 70.

Crêperie Gigi

Crêperie Gigi pushes the metro-menu ingredient envelope with fillings like shitake mushrooms and truffled ham. Since this popular Upper Marais joint takes no reservations, you may have a lot of time on the sidewalk to ponder your esoteric order. On the other hand, as the proprietors of Gigi are in the process of buying up all the storefronts on this scenic street, you can do this in comfort at their cozy wine bar, Le Barav, a few doors away. (You might also take a minute to enquire about artisanal ciders like the Granny Smith-scented Domaine du Tertre from Gigi’s cellar.) Crêpes may be essentially Breton, but as neighboring Normandy also lays a claim to flat pancake fame, almost every crêperie offers a Norman-style apple-based dessert. Gigi’s version—topped with melt-in-the-mouth sautéed apples, vanilla ice cream and flamed with a splash of Calvados brandy—is one of the best.

Crêperie Gigi. 4 rue de la Corderie, 3rd Arr. Metro République, Temple, Oberkampf or Filles du Calvaire. Tel: 07 83 58 75 30.

Mona Kerbili Crêperie Bretonne

Mona Kerbili was a mythological Breton maiden whose tumultuous love affair with an underwater Merman Prince ended in Happy-Ever-After-Land… even as all the minor characters in the saga suffered major collateral damage. What better namesake setting for a pre- or post-Puccini nosh? Mona Kerbili Crêperie Bretonne, located a few arias away from the Bastille Opera, opened in October 2018 and – of all the pancake-houses heretofore mentioned – is the best venue for a Date Night. The dreamy sea-blue walls and sepia forest wallpaper evoke the surf’n’turf romance of Mona and her Mer-Macho lover that’s echoed in a surf’n’turf selection (salmon, sausage, sardines). Picky eaters can always choose the “build-your-own” option: ham? goat cheese or Swiss? tomatoes? sautéed mushrooms? spinach? Nice chardonnay by the glass if you’re tired of hard cider.

Mona Kerbili Crêperie Bretonne. 16 rue de la Roquette, 11th arr. Metro Bastille. Tel: 01 58 30 88 18.

Breizh Café

The Breizh Café franchise, is the closest French equivalent to America’s beloved IHOP (International House of Pancakes) chain. Its founder, Bertrand Larcher, took an exceptionally long detour on his way from Brittany to Paris, opening signature crêperies in Tokyo and Kyoto before inaugurating his first Paris outpost in the Marais. The granite/wood/slate decors are very sleek, and although it’s still possible to get a budget lunch at a BC, some of the specialty crêpes—like the vegan beet/avocado/tofu savory galette with sesame seed oil—are priced a bit higher than the norm in the restaurants cited previously.

Breizh Café has the following outlets in Paris:
Marais. 109, rue Vieille-du-Temple, 3rd arr. Metro: Filles du Calvaire. Tel: 01 42 72 13 77.
Odéon. 1, rue de l’Odéon, 6th arr. Metro: Odéon. Tel: 01 42 49 34 73.
Montorgueil. 14 bis, rue des Petits Carreaux, 2nd arr. Metro: Sentier. Tel: 01 42 33 97 78.
Batignolles. 31 rue des Batignolles, 17th arr. Metro Rome. Tel: 01 40 07 11 69.

© 2019, Corinne LaBalme.

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They pre-date dinosaurs. There are thousands of species (both herbivore and carnivore). And almost all of them pack a powerful sting.

Jellyfish (méduses in French) are the ickiest of all marine life when they’re sharing your swimming space but astonishingly beautiful when safely viewed from the other side of a thick glass wall.

On January 16, 2019, the Aquarium de Paris, located in the Trocadéro gardens, just across the river from the Eiffel Tower, opened the first (and only) jellyfish zoo in Europe.

Twenty-four back-lit black tanks showcase 45 varieties of these brainless invertebrates as they dance through the water, buffeted by gentle artificial currents in their high-tech tanks. (Jellyfish, like sharks, expire quickly when not in motion.)

Outside of the zoo environment, jellyfish function like reverse ecological canaries in the coal mine. Whenever there’s a population explosion, it means something’s gone very wrong at the waterfront. In short, anything that dooms sea bass and coral reefs is pure ambrosia for jellyfish.

Marine biologist Jacqueline Goy, a member of the Aquarium’s scientific council, notes that the Black Sea has already become a “jellyfish soup” and warns that the “gélification” of our oceans is a clear and present danger.

The Médusarium, set up to educate visitors about climate change while highlighting the beauty of ocean fauna, is akin to a marine jewel box. Some of these diaphanous creatures even appear to be sprinkled with shiny blue sequins. Watching these iridescent creatures perform their graceful water ballet is a mesmerizing, nearly hypnotic, experience.

A little too peaceful? Then plan your visit around 2:45 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday when the aquarium’s fifty hungry sharks have their late-lunch feeding frenzy. Altogether, there are 7,500 ocean animals on view, 700 colonies of coral, and a pool where venerable Koï carp can petted and caressed.

L’Aquarium de Paris. 5 avenue Albert de Mun, 16th arr. Metro Trocadéro or Iéna. Open daily from 10 am to 7 pm; last tickets sold at 6 pm. Tickets: 20,50 € (general admission); 16€ (13-17 years and over 60 years); 13€ (3-12 years): under 3 free.

© 2019, Corinne LaBalme

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The Folies Bergère (established in 1869 and adorned with its landmark Art Deco façade in 1926) ought to be on every American arts-oriented heritage tour, given that the theater nurtured Trans-Atlantic talent like Chicago-born Loie Fuller (1890s) and Josephine Baker (1920s) whose dance acts (and banana tutus) were too daring for censors and sensibilities back in the homeland.

The lobby, decorated in the “too much is not enough” style, is almost worth the admission price so arrive early enough to take pictures of the gilded goddess statues and giant chandeliers before making your way to the tattered red-velvet seats (last re-upholstered in the Piaf era?) and accustoming yourself to the slightly hazy atmosphere (residue of Maurice Chevalier’s cigars?).

Jean Paul Gaultier has always been the offbeat enfant terrible of French fashion culture, holding some of his early fashion shows in circuses, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that his life and work are presented in a Barnum & Bailey version of Gay Pride in Las Vegas. The show is mostly visual; a certain amount of the narration is in French only but it’s easy to follow if you know the basic storyline.

The saga begins with the designer’s 1950s childhood, his early fashion experiments with a beloved teddy bear, and an homage to the grandmother who let him play with her corsets. We share the joy when Jean Paul meets the love of his life and share the sorrow when his lover dies of AIDS. We travel to the seamy sex clubs of London and the wild parties held in the infamous Palace night-club, the Parisian Studio 54 of the era.

But most of all, it’s about the clothes: Gaultier’s insanely inventive fashion manages to be playful and provocative at the same time. When the models sashay on stage in clothes from his debut show in the late 70s, the entire audience is swaying to the 1978 ear-candy hit “Ça plane pour moi” by Belgian punk artist Plastic Bertrand. (Check out this video if you want to sing along, or this audio if the previous one is blocked in your country.)

On-screen celebrity cameos of Gaultier muses are slipped in between the fashion shows. Some faces will be familiar to non-French visitors (Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Catherine Deneuve) although others (rock divas Catherine Ringer and Mylène Farmer; fashion pundit Cristina Cordula who critiques the cat-walking skill of a chosen member of the audience) will only be recognizable to the hometown crowd. There’s a funny, back-handed slap at fashion dictatorships with actors portraying Anna Wintour and Karl Lagerfeld. (That sequence is in French with sub-titles even though calorie-obsessed pseudo-Karl remarks that speaking French is fattening.)

The show ends with a taped video of Jean Paul Gaultier explaining that fashion is much more than a “commodity” and that everyone is beautiful in his or her own way. It’s a heartwarming happy ending to an upbeat evening.

A word about seating: unless you pop for the best orchestra or front-row loge seats, you won’t see absolutely everything. However, the show takes place on many levels (with video screens and acrobats on high platforms) so you will still enjoy a full two hours of fancy, freaky fashion wherever you’re sitting.

Jean Paul Gaultier Fashion Freak Show at the Folies Bergère through April 21, 2019. 32 Rue Richer, 9th arr. Metro Cadet or Grands Boulevard. Tuesday-Saturday at 8pm as well as Saturday and Sunday at 3pm. Tickets 30-99€.

© 2019, Corinne LaBalme

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That’s the perception that psychologist, author and feminist Edith Vallée sets out to rectify in Le Matrimoine de Paris (2018), a book that grew out of the popular Matrimoine tours inaugurated in 2015 that added a pinch of estrogen to the annual Journées du Patrimoine (Heritage Days), when heritage sights are celebrated throughout France and elsewhere in Europe on the third weekend in September.

While patrimoine now commonly refers to heritage of all kinds, its etymology leads back to the Latin word patrimonium, meaning heritage of the father. Hence the desire to infuse the notion of heritage with some gifts from mother by creating the analogous term matrimoine. To English speakers, matrimoine may be too close to matrimony for comfort and lead us to think of marriage, but French-speakers immediately recognize it as a feminist riff on patrimoine, as herstory is on history for English-speakers.

Her story is history as well

With a chapter (and a handy map) for each of the city’s twenty arrondissements, Le Matrimoine de Paris tracks the city’s female history-makers. Some of the names are familiar: Coco Chanel, Marie Curie, Simone de Beauvoir, Isadora Duncan, Françoise Sagan.

Sadly, all too many will draw blanks, such as ex-slave abolitionist Queen Bathilde (626 – 680), vengeance-driven pirate Jeanne de Belleville (1300 – 1359), poet/historian Christine de Pisan (1364 – 1430) and revolutionary firebrand Olympe de Gouges (1748 – 1793).

The stately Théatre du Palais Royal in the 1st arrondissement allows Vallée to tell the roller-coaster tale of Mademoiselle de Montansier (1730 – 1820), France’s first stage impresario, who parlayed a smallish stake (earned through gambling and the sex trade) and a friendship with Marie-Antoinette into an entertainment empire managing multiple theaters throughout France.

Montansier’s own acting abilities were not strong enough to convince the Revolutionary Council that she was anti-royalist, but in a melodramatic flourish, she postponed her final act when her arch-enemy Robespierre was beheaded a few days before her own date with the guillotine.

She made a fortune, lost it and did a stint in debtor’s prison before convincing Napoleon to build her a new theater. She died peacefully, a rich and successful self-made woman, at age 90.

Many of the stories have unhappier endings: Standing out from the crowd often got women burned the stake (Joan of Arc); beheaded (Olympe de Gouges); bundled into nunneries (author/investment capitalist Madame de Tencin) or insane asylums (sculptress Camille Claudel); excommunicated for their art (Rachel Félix, La Champmeslé) or cheated out of their earnings (Colette).

Vallée also describes the necessary life-hacks that women were obliged to employ in order to get their work noticed, or to be able to work at all.

“We can’t let women be erased from history, and sometimes history itself does that,” says the author, noting that mathematician Emilie du Châtelet (1706 – 1749), considered a world-class savant in her day, has somehow morphed over the years into “Voltaire’s brainy girlfriend.”

The book, well-received in France, is not yet translated in English but the French is not overly complex. It’s the perfect guide for a #TimesUp tour of Paris.

Le Matrimoine de Paris by Edith Vallée. Published by Editions Christine Bonneton, 2018. 18€.

© 2019, Corinne LaBalme.

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