It gives me a cheap thrill to think that you’d start reading this article in order to discover—with admiration or contempt—which towns and cities in France limit their cooperation with the national government in enforcing immigration laws. You might be imaging a bistro where lawless lefties confront national thugs. Or a wine region where baguette-wielding winegrowers are protecting grape-picking Syrians and Somalis against soldiers in riot gear. Would you then be inclined to visit such a place? Or would you immediately despise it?

How exciting to think that a travel article of mine could be read with admiration or contempt. But at the risk of disappointing anyone, and of ruining my chances of this piece launching a lengthy Reddit thread, let’s have another look at that title.

Villes Sanctuaires en France, the network in question, translates as Sanctuary Cities in France. The words align. But the concept does not. There are no trumped-up stand-offs in these towns and cities. French authorities have indeed stepped up operations to net undocumented migrants and would-be immigrants who’ve overstayed their visa, including a few gently reminded post-Brexit Brits. But round-ups, deportation and resistance are unlikely to occur in the peaceable destinations in France’s Villes Sanctuaires network. What makes them like-minded is a different kind of sanctuary.

Here, sanctuaire refers to a sanctuary in the sense of a shrine, “a place in which devotion is paid to a saint or deity,” to quote Merriam-Webster. Villes Sanctuaires en France therefore brings together villages, towns and cities in France that have shrines—Catholic, at that—that can be visited by the general public.

But wait, wait!

Before clicking away because candle-lighting pilgrims are less Instagrammable than baguette-wielding winegrowers, let me tell you one of my favorite aspects of travel in the secular nation in France: You can just as easily visit these sanctuaries and shrines for the heck, the fun, or the creepiness of it—I do—as you can out of a sense of spirituality, hope or devotion—others do. You can visit them, as I do, out of pure curiosity, out of an in interest in history or architecture, and to observe how people visit shrines. Or don’t visit the shrine at all when in these sanctuary cities, because the municipalities mentioned here also pay tribute to the gods of beauty, construction, gastronomy, wine, nature, even meaning, whatever that may mean. And here’s the best part: respectful as we must be when visiting a shrine that doesn’t speak to us spiritually, we don’t have to fake adoration, because blasphemy is not a crime in France. Praise be!

For the 18 municipalities within the Villes Sanctuaires network, the shrine or sanctuary is only half the picture. The site’s pious handlers work in tandem with local tourist officials, who also seek to promote other aspects of tourism within the municipality and in the surrounding region. Each member-municipality tells a different story in which the spiritual retreat or Catholic pilgrimage site or otherwise sanctified structure can lead to explorations regarding other heritage sites, gastronomy, wine, hiking, and nature—or vice versa.

France today is a secular state not a Christian or Catholic country. Its culture is a mixed bag that doesn’t stem from the history of a once-dominant religion. Yet the history of Christian, particularly Catholic, dominance in France has left major physical markers. Among them, a fascinating, photogenic and/or curious variety of heritage sites that the traveler is invited to encounter. Christianity’s religious and political history in France also includes a record of harms, dangers and abuses that are also worth examining. Thankfully, one is no longer forced to or expected to honor religiously inspired historical sites or the shrines of these sanctuary cities in specific ways, yet all are accessible to visitors whatever one’s views. By contrast, travelers are highly unlikely to visit a synagogue or mosque or temple if they don’t identify with the associated religion. Even travelers who do identify rarely visit those, whereas the vast majority of non-Catholics visitors to France will enter a church. Think Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral.

Pilgrims and wayfarers, reverent and irreverent

For the purposes of this article, let’s use both portions of Merriam-Webster’s definition of a pilgrim: 1: one who journeys in foreign lands: wayfarer. 2: one who travels to a shrine or holy place as a devotee.

The Villes Sanctuaires en France network was created in 1994, not as a direct promotional tool so much as a way for municipal tourist officials and overseers of shrines and sanctuaries to exchange information and learn from each other regarding the welcoming of religious and non-religious pilgrims. Only recently, in December 2025, did the association hold its first organized press workshop.

The event took place in Paris at the religious guest house attached to Sacré Coeur Basilica in Montmartre. Entrance to the hotel is from behind the basilica on a street named for the Chevalier de la Barre. The chevalier was a nobleman who was arrested then tortured and executed in 1766, at the age of 20, because he vandalized a wooden crucifix and failed to take his hat off when a religious procession went by, along with other impious, blasphemous acts. He immediately came to be seen as a secular martyr for the Enlightenment against the dangers of religious intolerance of Church and its bedmate State. Laws today sanction those who incite hate and violence, whether with respect to religion or other matters, while the Chevalier de la Barre remains a symbol of the right to irreverence with respect to something some consider sacred.

It isn’t at all ironic that the street near the Catholic holy site is named after the ill-fated young fellow. Instead, the street was baptized in honor of la Barre at a time when Sacré Coeur was under construction, during the political tug-of-war between Catholic and anticlerical forces in France. While the church rose with one vision of French society, the naming of the street and a statue to la Barre (located in what is now a dog park nearby) were intentional reminders of changing social priorities.

Together, the street and the church, the young nobleman and the devout pilgrim, the charming grey cobblestones and the massive white dome, coexist today as attractive reminders of how travelers—whatever kind of pilgrim they may be, whatever reverent or irreverent thoughts they may have—can experience, learn from and share it all.

The Sanctuary Cities network naturally plays the spiritual card in promoting tourism—unless it’s the tourist card in promoting spirituality—but these villages, towns and cities needn’t be seen as religious destinations alone. Whether you consider yourself a religious pilgrim or a wayfarer in a foreign land, or both at once, or sometimes one, sometimes another; whether you’re a theist (aficionado of a god that does or doesn’t act on human affairs) or a nontheist; whether you go in for blasphemy, heresy, dogma, or the smell of incense; whether you consider yourself spiritual or not; whether you wish that this article had been about deportation or resistance, now that you’ve come this far in, stay with me as I present the 18 current members of the network of Sanctuary Cities in France.

Municipalities in the Sanctuary Cities network vary from world-renown destinations to little-known village.

Among the most famous of these Sanctuary Cities is Lourdes, a town of 13,800 whose shrines attract 3 million visitors per year. Lourdes is primarily known as a spiritual destination relative to sainted Bernadette Soubirous (1844-1879), who is said to have had 18 sightings of Mary from February to July 1858. Personally, I’ve little curiosity about Bernadette herself, but the spirit moves me to visit Lourdes soon so as to witness the Bernadette phenomenon up close and because Lourdes makes for an excellent starting point for exploration in the Pyrenees. There’s a visitable fortress just above the town. A funicular goes to the summit of the Pic du Jer. Further from town, another funicular goes to the even more impressive summit of the Pic du Midi, and there are numerous trails for hiking expeditions in the region. (Stay tuned for my 2026 Lourdes article.)

The photogenic tidal island of Mont Saint Michel is another major destination among these Sanctuary Cities.

While you don’t need to carry an all-knowing deity in your thoughts to be curious about the place, I encourage all travels to delve into the fascinating religious, architectural, technological and geopolitical history of the site, whether through reading or by hiring a specialized local guide, even if only to understand the successive eras of construction on the mount, culminating with the 13th-century portion known as “the Marvel.” I suspect that, unlike visitors to Lourdes, only a small percentage of the millions who come each year to Mont Saint Michel is aware that the mount maintains an active Catholic community—the men and women of the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem. In the village and hard to spot among the souvenir shops and pricey omelets, the House of Pilgrims is a sanctuary for visitors who seek churchly hospitality.

Nevers, population 33,000, is located on the edge of two major travel and touring routes and receives relatively few foreign visitors. It’s on the inner edge Burgundy but without vineyards to draw wine travelers, and it’s the starting point for the 415-mile Loire by Bike route but cyclists largely pedal along paths further downstream. Religious pilgrims, however, know Nevers as the place to marvel at the body of Bernadette of Lourdes. Why aren’t her remains in Lourdes to greet the 3 million visitors there? Because Bernadette of Lourdes joined the Sisters of Charity and lived her short life as a nun in Nevers, where she died at the age of 35. Personally, I’m not planning a trip to Nevers just for that, though I do soon expect to take in the embalmed sight. I’ll also check out the Ducal Palace, have a peek in at the earthenware museum, find a potter to visit, and seek out a lively bistro or good restaurant. I enjoy the sense of discovery of exploring a bypassed town with an eclectic mix of offerings with an eye to encountering something or someone that sparks my interest. (Again, stay tuned for an upcoming article.)

Further south in Burgundy, Paray-le-Monial’s Sacré Coeur (Sacred Heart) Basilica represents Romanesque architectural splendor to Catholic and non-Catholic visitors alike. The former may specifically come to embrace their sense of the Sacred Heart. It was in this town that Margaret-Marie Alacoque claimed to have had three visitations from Jesus from 1673 to 1675, revealing his heart and its meaning to her on the third. The basilica therefore welcomes a significant influx of religious pilgrims. They may or may not also be gastronomic pilgrims, interested in Charolais beef. Charolais is common in much of France but the massive Charolais breed of cattle has its origins in this region and is named for the town of Charolles, eight miles east.

Spirituality needn’t be the main draw of a town or city in the sanctuary network. Wine can be the magnet, at least it is for me when I think of Cahors, which stands out in the wine world as the primary home for malbec in France. Whether you prefer your wine blended, blessed or 100% malbec, or don’t drink at all, no visitor venturing this deep into the country would skip the city’s key heritage sight: the 900-year-old Saint Etienne (Saint Stephen) Cathedral. Within the bowels of the cathedral awaits the Holy Headdress, venerated as the supposed head covering placed on Jesus as he was wrapped in a shroud for burial. Some will stand before it in awe and adoration. Others will raise an eyebrow, shake their head, and think “Oh, the things that people will believe.” But all visitors check it out. Beyond the malbec, the cathedral and the old town, it is the House of Pilgrims at the convent of Vaylats that gives Cahors sanctuary status and provides hospitality for hikers on the Way of Saint James of Compostela.

Sometimes the distinction between religious and non-religious pilgrim-tourists is blurred because they’re all following the same path. That’s the case at Rocamadour, one of the most visually stunning of these Villes Sanctuaires due to way the village hugs the canyon wall. Rocamodour is just over an hour’s drive north of Cahors or east of Sarlat. Visitors of all stripe climb the 216 steps to the sanctuary, then gaze upon the Black Virgin, a little statue with a large reputation.

Brive-la-Gaillarde, just over an hour’s drive north of Rocamadour, is better known for its rugby team than for its caves of Saint Anthony of Padua. But there it is, a sanctuary dedicated to the patron saint of all things lost and found.

Many trains to Bayeux and the D-Day Landing Zone of Normandy stop in the sanctuary town of Lisieux. Looking out the window as the train approaches the station, you see an immense basilica on the hill, its architecture inspired by Paris’s Sacré Coeur. The basilica honors Thérèse Martin (1873-1897), better known as Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. I’m not suggesting that any but the most Teresian travelers take time from their brief tour of the Landing Zone to visit Lisieux, but it’s nice to know what you’re looking at as you pass by on the train.

Teresa’s sainthood marks much of the lower half of Normandy. Her devout parents, the canonized couple Louis and Zélie Martin, lived in Alençon, and their shrine there brings that town into the fold of Sanctuary Cities. Alençon is, however, better known in knitting circles for its lace-making history, as presented in its Lace Museum.

Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer’s annual pilgrimage in May attracts Romani from throughout Europe and tourists from far and wide into the Camargue Regional Park. Yet for most visitors, it’s the natural sensations of its marshes and bottomlands that set the Camargue apart along the Mediterranean.

Most foreign travelers would be surprised to learn that the Loire River, which evokes royal chateaux and easy-going biking along its east-west flow, starts deep in an off-track area of southern France and builds up strength on a northerly flow. Le Puy-en-Velay, population 19,000, in the Haute-Loire (Upper Loire) department, is the first city along the river’s course. Its geographical location and the presence of an ancient shrine to Mary earned it a major place on the map for medieval pilgrims arriving from the east and northeast on the Way of Saint James. Le Puy’s Notre-Dame Cathedral, its monumental statue of Notre-Dame de France, and its nearby volcanic chimney topped with a chapel round out its major Christian sights. But a foreign traveler is unlikely to come here unless interested in exploring the striking natural surroundings of this former volcanic region.

The sanctuary village of Souvigny also has a remarkable Romanesque church, along with the history of the first house of Bourbon—Bourbon as in future kings of France not corn whiskey. Souvigny is a 15-minute drive from the city of Moulins, home to the National Costume Center.

Then there are a handful of more obscure sanctuary villages and towns in the network: Lalouvesc, a remote village in Ardèche; Ars-sur-Formans, which sits quietly between the Beaujolais vineyards and Lyon; Cotignac in the backcountry of Provence; Sainte-Anne-d’Auray in Brittany; Vendeville near the northern tip of France, and La Salette, at nearly 6000 feet in the Alps. Non-religious pilgrims visiting the sanctuaries and shrines there will especially find the opportunity to commune with nature in various shapes and forms in the surrounding area.

See the official site for this network of sanctuary cities for more information about the shrines, sanctuaries, and points of interest of all kinds in and near these villages, towns and cities.

© 2025, Gary Lee Kraut

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On our visit to Lyon, my husband and I stayed in the city center, Presqu’ile (the Peninsula), where we walked narrow, cobbled streets enjoying intriguing shops and wonderful restaurants. Crossing the Saône on a pedestrian bridge, we explored the remarkably preserved Roman ruins at Lugdunum, part of the UNESCO World Heritage site and wandered through Vieux-Lyon (Old Lyon). It is among the most beautifully preserved Renaissance districts in Europe thanks to the intervention in 1962 by Minister of Culture, André Malraux, who saved it from destruction and made it the first “secteur sauvegardé”—protected zone—in France.

Yet I was drawn to the CHRD, across the Rhône, because of my enduring desire to understand how ordinary citizens muster the will to resist, sacrifice and survive in the face of inhumane and repressive treatment. In visiting the CHRD, I hoped to gain insight into WW II beyond dates, battles, and distinguished names from history books.

By coincidence, we were in Lyon on Victory in Europe Day which commemorates the unconditional surrender of Germany to the Allies on the 8th of May 1945. President Emmanuel Macron was there to pay tribute to the Resistance and to the memory of Jean Moulin, but public transportation was disrupted and gatherings to the parade were discouraged, so we watched the ceremony on television. We were touched by its solemnity and by conversations we had with people during the day. Memories of war endure in the collective consciousness of France, and Lyon is a particular reminder of that period as it was both a center for Nazi forces and a stronghold of the French Resistance.

Jean Moulin, who unified disparate resistance fighters throughout France and served as the first President of the National Council of the Resistance until his torture and subsequent death in 1943, is revered throughout France. In 1964, during the presidency of Charles de Gaulle, he received France’s greatest posthumous honor when his remains were transferred to the Pantheon in Paris

The day after the May 8th commemoration of Victory in Europe, we walked from our hotel, near the bank of the Saône, toward the Rhône as we headed to the Centre d’Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation. Along the way, we encountered striking public monuments to suffering and sacrifice during World War II in France and to injustices to humanity in other parts of the world. After traversing Place Bellecour, kilometer 0 in Lyon and the third largest square in France, we came upon a solemn and stunning permanent exhibit memorializing the Armenian Massacre of 1915, considered the first genocide of the 20th century. Installed on Place Antonin Poncet, adjacent to Bellecour, it beckons passersby with a series of 36 white columns made from Armenian stone on which are inscribed poems by Armenian poet Kostan Zarian. The site is bordered by large, evocative photographs of people and sites associated with the massacre.

On the other side of Place Bellecour, in front of what was a café during the war, stands a looming statue called Veilleur de Pierre (Stone Watchman), erected where five resistance fighters were murdered by Nazis in July 1944. An inscription entreats, “Passant va dire au monde, qu’ils sont morts pour la liberté” (Passerby tell the world that they died for freedom). The passionate simplicity of that voice through time touched us deeply.

We crossed the Rhône on Pont de l’Université, itself a vestige of the war; as were 22 other bridges in Lyon, it was destroyed by the Germans on September 2, 1944 in order to slow the American advance as German forces fled north. The bridge reopened in 1947 with the original stone piers supporting the rebuilt arches that span the river.

Entering the Centre d’Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation, we were welcomed by attentive staffers who spoke little English but were helpful when we plunged ahead with our less than perfect French. The headsets with English audio that we were given worked intermittently, but during our visit we encountered empathetic visitors, who, upon hearing our English, offered translations without being asked. And the artifacts and photographs in the CHRD convey powerful commentary without requiring words.

We were encouraged to start our visit with a film about Klaus Barbie. Barbie, head of the Gestapo in Lyon, was known as the Butcher of Lyon because of his brutality toward prisoners, primarily Jews and members of the Resistance. In addition to ordering the torture and execution of thousands of prisoners, Barbie personally tortured those he interrogated in savage ways, often for days on end, using devices such as spiked balls and hot needles, along with causing near drowning and trauma to open wounds to maximize pain. After the war, Britain and later America recruited him to help with intelligence to infiltrate Communist cells. In 1950 the United States helped him assume a new identity and relocate to South America, where he remained as an agent of the Americans while maintaining his Nazi ideology. In 1983 the Bolivian government arrested and deported him to France. That same year, the United States officially apologized to France for helping Barbie escape justice for 33 years.

Barbie’s trial was held in Lyon between May and July 1987. The Barbie Trial, Justice for Memory and History, produced by legal journalist Paul Lefèvre, highlights witnesses who endured Barbie’s physical and psychological torture. The film has English subtitles, so we understood the compelling accounts of those who had been brutally interrogated by Barbie or had relatives tortured and killed by him. Included in the film is testimony by Sabine Zlatin, founder of a children’s home in Izieu, a small village in the hills outside of Lyon which for two years served as a refuge mostly for Jewish children. In April 1944, 44 children, all under the age of 14, and their caregivers were arrested and sent to their deaths at Auschwitz. In her emotional statement against Barbie, who had signed the order to seize the children, she addressed the court in a broken, emotional cry: “The children, 44 children. What were they supposed to be? Members of the Resistance? They were innocents.” We were riveted by the voices of witnesses and repulsed by the smiling, arrogant Barbie. The documentary lacks artifice; it is humanity in the raw. Following the film, the audience in the small theater exited in silence. (Barbie was sentenced to life in prison. He died of cancer in prison four years later, at the age of 77.)

The light of the museum lobby and the sound of voices breaking the silence brought relief from the weightiness of the film. We were instructed to go to the second floor to begin the self-guided tour which starts with the history of the building.

The main gallery is composed of a series of exhibits that provide information about the complex and dangerous workings of the Resistance as well as insight into daily life under the occupation. A visitor may choose to follow the order of the displays, which contain primary source material such as newspapers, identity cards, ration books, photographs and posters, as well as hardware used for communication and intelligence, thus building a chronological background of the period. Others may prefer to focus on exhibits that target personal interests, pausing to contemplate or make connections with other visual and written information.

On display are materials created by the Resistance as well as those used to propagandize against it. Posters and leaflets recruiting support for the Resistance are presented next to posters hailing the Vichy government and promoting the vilest of Nazi ideology. Communications equipment, clothing worn by its members, the parachute Jean Moulin used to reenter France after meeting with de Gaulle in London in 1942, and photographs from the period create not only vivid images of war but a history of individual and collective sacrifice. It is particularly touching to see handwritten diaries and letters belonging to members of the Resistance and citizens of Lyon.

Prominent among exhibits are newspapers, flyers, and other print material effectively used by the Resistance to inspire confidence in eventual victory, to convey important information about the effort to subvert occupation, and to disseminate information to Resistance members. Compared to today’s complex telecommunication systems that instantly provide information and propaganda, this use of printed language on paper may seem simplistic. Its effectiveness, however, is evidenced by the ability of the Resistance to transmit intelligence and perform acts of sabotage while maintaining a constant presence in the public mind. Likewise, the handguns and rifles on display seem so basic compared to modern lethal technology; they support the image of the intrepid Resistance fighter as a confident armed man with a cigarette in hand. The real men, women, and youths resisting occupation and conquest, however, lived dangerous clandestine lives among the populace and assumed many responsibilities. Some fed people, hid them, and transported weapons where needed; others planned and conducted subversive attacks on German interests or dispatched information. Since there were collaborators within the population, the Resistance relied on the integrity of individuals and on munitions obtained clandestinely.

The vital role of women, accounting for between 12 and 25 percent of Resistance members, was not fully recognized until decades after the war. Women did what was needed, including transporting arms, relaying information, and hiding Jewish children. In some cases, they also took part in acts of sabotage. Because women were not as readily suspect as men, they were effective in avoiding Nazi scrutiny. I was not surprised by the suppression of the contributions of woman, but, as always, when reading history that is revised to include truth as well as popular myth, I empathized with the invisibility of such sacrifice. It is suggested that the contribution of women to the Resistance influenced Charles de Gaulle’s government in exile to grant women the right to vote in 1944.

Photographs and audiovisual testimonies add human dimension to dates, statistics, and information. The dedication of men and women who risked everything to oppose tyranny is made palpable by valuable equipment like the “Minerve” printing press clandestinely operated in Nazi-occupied Lyon to produce communiques, coded messages, and information for the populace. Likewise, guns carried by members of the Resistance underscore their constant proximity to death. The lives of those who committed themselves to saving France and to the post-war future is both inspirational and challenging. I wondered if I could have measured up to their sense of duty and courage? If needed, could I stand up to dangers threatening the world today? I found myself reading names of those captured, tortured and in many instances killed and whispering them under my breath to honor them: “Marc Bloch, Marie Besson, Daniel Cordier, Pierre Poncet.”

The historical narrative moves from the Resistance into a space that focuses on the capture and deportation of Jews, immediately made real by the display of the authentic striped flannel suit of a deportee interned in a concentration camp. It was donated by Jacques Micolo who kept the clothing after his liberation from captivity. Further exploration discloses detail about the Jews of Lyon and the indignities suffered as they were identified, captured, and deported to camps. Quite poignant is a series of drawings of the Ravensbrück concentration camp by Nina Jirsikova who survived and was liberated in 1945. The images depict women enduring a claustrophobic and humiliating existence, overseen in some cases by the contemptuous scrutiny of their guards. Barefoot, often naked, the women initially appear devoid of expression, but a closer look reveals identity and individuality seeking survival amid extreme depravation.

Exhibited documents include forged identity papers, leaflets announcing the roundup of Jews, a yellow Star of David declaring “Juif” (Jewish), and photographs of children and adults sent to concentration camps. Particularly poignant are objects from Ravensbrück made by captives that testify to their will to survive and reflect aspects of life in civil society. Mittens, for instance, made from a camp blanket elicit a momentary smile because they appear so child-like. Documentation on the CHRD website states they were made by an inmate as a present. How generous of the resourceful tailor to create cheerful warmth for a friend amid shared deprivation and imprisonment. Also from Ravensbrück is a multicolored deck of playing cards made by Yvonne Rochette who survived captivity.

As in the section concerning the Resistance, there are audiovisual testimonies of Jews of Lyon who were targeted by Nazis. Time spent in this sad gallery infuses painful reality into what could tragically become just a chapter in history were it not for artifacts collected and people remembered.

This section of the museum does not lend itself to random wanderings; the exhibit about the Jews of Lyon leads to a beautifully detailed dining room from Lyon in the 1940s complete with period furniture, tableware, and a radio broadcasting events of the day. We felt as if we had gone back in time to a modest apartment belonging to a family wary of every announcement over the wire and every noise from the street. There is a certain warmth because it is so homelike—despite the portrait of WWI hero then collaborator Maréchal Pétain—but it is accompanied by feelings of dread culled from the collective experience of witnessing the horror of the Barbie trial, the urgency of the Resistance, and the road to death for Jews.

This feeling was heightened when we walked down a dimly lit industrial stairwell to an austere stone basement. The effect of introducing a visitor to the fear of those captured and descending in the dark to interrogation and torture is powerful. At the bottom of the stairs, we sat on bench seats, saw a short film about the Resistance, and learned how even as individuals and groups worked against Nazis and collaborators, the leadership was documenting and formally writing concrete goals and organizational structure for a post-war government. Members of the Resistance were among the factions that helped develop the constitution and government of the Fourth Republic, which governed France beginning in 1946.

Before we left the Centre d’Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation, we stopped to explore a special exhibit dedicated to Madeleine Riffaud who, when only 18 years old, joined the Resistance and functioned as a liaison between units of partisan fighters. Now 99, she is one of the last surviving members of the Resistance. She famously killed a German officer in broad daylight in Paris. Riffaud was captured and tortured but upon release rejoined the Resistance. After the war she was awarded the Croix de Guerre and later become a journalist who focused on human rights. She traveled widely, reported from Algeria, and lived with the North Vietnamese resistance for seven years. She is also an author, poet, and the subject as well as coauthor of two graphic novels that tell her story, “Madeleine Riffaud, Résistante.” The CHRD used the title of her book as the name for its exhibit. Although the exhibition closed in June 2023, all past exhibits, including this one, can be explored on the CHRD’s excellent website.

As my husband and I walked away from the CHRD in the late afternoon, we commented on the incisive and highly effective planning behind the exhibits. Informed by personal histories and primary source materials, we emerged with a picture of a dark and dangerous time in which individual citizens from every segment of society—shopkeepers, professionals, students—came together to be part of a local and national alliance to resist Nazi terror and help defeat it. Likewise, the horror confronting the Jews of Lyon was made real, as was their resolve to survive and maintain moral integrity.

I was drawn to 14 Avenue Berthelot because of its connection to the ascent of evil and to evil’s eventual defeat. Witnessing the Barbie trial in the place where he made decisions that destroyed so many lives reveals the long, traumatic arc of that rise and fall. Likewise, seeing the faces and names of people who recognized evil in their own time and in their own city speaks to the importance of the courageous choices they made to combat occupation and barbarism. It also reinforces the implied mission of the CHRD as stated on their website— “History, Essential to the Present.”

I am not certain that my experience enabled me to understand how people muster the courage to sacrifice and survive, but I do recognize the strength and integrity of the individual who decides that he or she can make a difference. I believe the curators of the CHRD want visitors to appreciate how defying tyranny at the grassroots level impacted the events of the war and how it led to freedom in France and the Western world. The courage and sacrifice of men and women in combatting barbarism remains with me in the faces and names I encountered in the Centre d’Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation.

© 2024, Elizabeth Esris. Cover image by Michael Esris.

Centre d’Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation(CHRD), 14 avenue Berthelot, 7th arr. Lyon.

Jean Moulin, the Children of Izieu, French resistance fighters and many others were tortured or otherwise held prior to execution or deportation at the Prison of Montluc, about one mile from the CHRD. The site is now the Mémorial National de la prison de Montluc (National Memorial Prison of Monluc), which pays homage to resistant fighters, Jews and hostages who were victims of the Nazis and of France’s Vichy government, while also examining the politics of repression and persecution from 1940 to 1944. 4 rue Jeanne Hachette, 3rd arr. Lyon.

Lyon Tourist Office, Place Bellecour, Lyon.

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In 1974, David Glass went to France to study art history but no sooner had he arrived than his interest forked off into the heart of modern French gastronomy. In place of an education at the Sorbonne and the Louvre, he entered into yearlong apprenticeships at two three-star Michelin restaurants that were leading the movement of Nouvelle Cuisine: first with Alain Senderens at l’Archestrate in Paris, then with Jean and Pierre Troisgros at Troisgros in Roanne, 56 miles northwest of Lyon. Upon his return to the United States, David started a catering business in Connecticut based on nouvelle cuisine, but it was a recipe for chocolate truffle cake that he had learned in France that would bring him culinary success as he morphed into a master of cakes and chocolates. He now lives in Vermont, where he operates David Glass Chocolates. Forty-five years removed from his culinary and cultural education in France, David pays tribute here to Jean and Pierre Troisgros. Jean passed away in 1983 and Pierre in 2020.

By David Glass

In September 1974, at the age of 26, several days after arriving in Paris to study art history at the Sorbonne, I ate a meal that changed my life. I had made a reservation at l’Archestrate on the recommendation of an acquaintance without knowing what to expect, and little did I know that my first exposure to French gastronomy would take place at a restaurant on the forefront of a type of cuisine that was on its way to conquering the world. Since I didn’t know anyone in Paris, I dined alone that evening. The meal began with a mussel soufflé, followed by sea bass with beurre rouge, tournedos Rossini, an ample selection of the ripest of cheeses, and an ethereal strawberry soufflé. The experience caused me to abandon art history and to devote myself to learning how to cook. I asked Alain Senderens, the chef and owner of l’Archestrate, if I could spend a few days in his kitchen. He said yes. I stayed for a year. (Senderens, who passed away in 2017, had earned his second star in the Michelin guide in 1974 and would receive his third in 1978.)

During my year in Paris, I seized the opportunity to take a road trip with friends to Roanne, a town northwest of Lyon, for a meal at Troisgros. The explosive flavors and exquisite lightness of that meal were the equal of my first encounter with high new gastronomy at l’Archestrate. Immediately I knew where I wanted to spend a second year of apprenticeship.

Thanks to Alain Senderens’ letter of recommendation, I was accepted as an apprentice at Troisgros in 1976. The French dining guide Gault & Millau had named Troisgros the best restaurant in the world in 1968, the same year that it received its third Michelin star. In 1973, the term “nouvelle cuisine” appeared Gault & Millau, referring to a type of cooking whose leaders were Jean and Pierre Troisgros, Alain Senderens, Paul Bocuse, and other chefs. The main tenets of their cooking were lighter sauces, fish that was barely cooked at its center, use of only the freshest ingredients, an emphasis on finding the very best method to cook each ingredient, and using fruits and vegetables that were sourced locally. After a year of developing skills and knowledge with Senderens, I was literally salivating at the prospect of pursuing my culinary education with the Troisgros brothers, while also expanding my sense of France by leaving the capital for a part of the country that few Americans had ever passed through other than those on a long drive toward the Riviera.

The uninformed visitor would never have suspected that a restaurant of Troisgros’s reputation would be found in Roanne. Unceremoniously described as “en face de la gare” (across the street from the train station) in the restaurant’s literature, Troisgros was housed in a building that was less than stunning. Yet I was immediately welcomed with warmth and friendliness as I arrived by train from Paris, and that feeling would remain with me until I left a year later.

I lived in the hotel above the restaurant, so even though I only worked the lunch shift, I was in the building from opening until closing. More than at l’Archestrate, I now had a sense of the full scope of the working day at a restaurant of such caliber. My work day started at 7AM and was over when the last lunch customers set aside their napkins and left, usually around 2PM. As busy and tiring as my own shift was, I could only imagine the extent of the mission of running a restaurant that aimed for 3-star perfection through two full shifts, day in, day out. When I eventually compiled a list of everything that had to get done each day, I felt the true weight of the task. From putting together veal bones, vegetables, herbs and other components of veal stock in the early morning to delivering the final dessert of the evening around 11 PM, the work was non-stop. There was actually no definitive end to the work day. Johnny Hallyday, France’s most famous rocker, dined with friends one evening and stayed until 4 AM.

Staff meals and the 3-star hamburger

Despite the pressure that we all felt to contribute to the Troisgros brothers’ (and Michelin’s) highest standards, there were some truly relaxing moments at the restaurant. Staff meals were a quiet moment between a busy morning of preparation and the hectic lunch or dinner service. For the most part we didn’t eat what was featured on the menu. Instead, I remember eating a lot of beef heart, gratin potatoes, green salads, chicken, less expensive cuts of veal and beef, seasonal vegetables, and occasional sweets. All of us, from the chefs to the apprentices, helped prepare these meals. Since the preparation of the gratin potatoes was part of my job, I would always watch the faces of my fellow cooks and the chefs to see if they liked them. If they didn’t, I was in trouble because this dish was also served to our customers. But they always loved the potatoes. On the other hand, the beef hearts, which were cheap, tough, and definitely not on the menu, were eaten with resigned silence.

We ate our staff meals at a large table in the kitchen, where Jean and Pierre were often joking about something. The rest of us were equally animated, probably as a way to release a final bit of tension before the customers arrived. Sometimes, one of the brothers would discuss the finer points of a particular menu item so that we would understand the reason for preparing a meat or fish a certain way, the combination of ingredients in the sauce, or why the various items on the plate were paired together. I remember a particular discussion about the poached bone marrow that accompanied the giant beef rib in bordelaise sauce and the reason it was included in this dish. We opined on the best way to eat it, with a piece of meat or on a slice of bread with fleur de sel. Since the marrow was served removed from its bone, customers would make the decisions for themselves. (I preferred it with a few grains of salt, letting it melt in my mouth so that it became coated with liquid fat.)

The kitchen staff that year consisted of cooks and apprentices from Holland, Japan, Switzerland, Germany and various regions of France. I was the sole representative of the United States. We took turns leading the preparation for staff meals. When it was their turn, the apprentices from France would typically prepare a dish from their region, thereby introducing us to a cuisine that others, particularly myself and the other foreigners, didn’t know. Everyone was respectful as they tried dishes. Though the French can be snobbish about their country’s or region’s cuisine, at Troisgros, in spite of its fame and notoriety, everybody, from the chefs to the apprentices, appeared interested and fully engaged when sampling a dish that was new to them.

Every once in a while, with no schedule or warning, Jean would issue a proclamation that it was International Day and one of the foreigners among the kitchen staff would be tasked with planning and preparing the staff meal based on his national or regional traditions. In view of all of the various traditions that were presented through the year, I was stumped when it came to planning an all-American meal. My colleagues gave some inappropriate suggestions: pancakes and maple syrup (but there was no Vermont maple syrup available, and who eats pancakes in the afternoon?); fried chicken (I didn’t know how to make fried chicken); hotdogs (NO!!); and a clambake (the ingredients were not available in Roanne). We settled on hamburgers, even though I never ate them and had never cooked one. As unusual as it may sound, the only bite of hamburger I’d ever had in the United States was so grey, so overcooked, and so vile that I spit it into my napkin and threw it away.

Jean had traveled to the United States to give cooking demonstrations, so he knew far more about our cuisine than I did, including about “le hamburger.” When I hesitated, Jean and Pierre immediately took the reins and gave suggestions. First, we were to gather all of the beef scraps. Troisgros’ beef scraps consisted of the “chain” of the filet, which was removed before it was cut into steaks, pieces of the rib steak, and ends of the entrecôte. These were not ordinary cuts that usually comprise a hamburger. Everything was hand-chopped using large knives. Because these were not the fatty cuts of beef normally used to make hamburgers, Pierre added a little kidney fat, and Jean added finely chopped shallots. The burgers were formed thick, so that they wouldn’t overcook. They were covered with cracked peppercorns, like a steak au poivre, and cooked rare. There were no buns, but there was one of the most delicious sauces I have ever tasted: Troisgros’ reduced veal stock, heavy cream and Port. At the first bite, the hamburger was spicy from the peppercorns. Then there was the taste of the rare ground beef, unlike anything ever served in the United States. Because of the high quality of the meat, the hamburger had the flavor of a perfectly cooked steak. The fact that it was ground resulted in more surfaces in the mouth than a slice of steak, and every ground bit exploded with flavor. In another part of the kitchen, one of the cooks made French fries, the French way: twice cooked so that they were crisp on the outside and meltingly soft inside. It was a perfect American meal, re-invented in a Michelin three-star kitchen by two of France’s most famous chefs.

The Apprentice System

The apprentice system in France required young cooks, many starting at the age of 15, to work in a kitchen for two years. They often worked for free or for very little payment, living at home, if they were local, or in a rented apartment or room. My situation was the exception as I was the only one who lived above the restaurant. I received no salary, but my room and board were free. At the end of their apprentice period, the other apprentices would take an exam called the C.A.P. (Certificat d’Aptitude Professionelle), which tested them on everything they learned in the kitchen. Passing this provided a degree that allowed them to advance, so that they could eventually become commis, chef de partie, chef saucier, and eventually chef de cuisine. The younger apprentices were tasked with some of the dirtiest jobs in the restaurant, such as scrubbing grease out the drains or plucking the feathers off huge bags full of frozen thrush. I never drew the worst jobs, probably because I was taller than everyone else and a few years older than the average apprentice.

There was always experimentation going on in the kitchen. Sometimes, the chefs and apprentices were encouraged to contribute ideas. One of my suggestions, a mixture of crumbled fresh goat cheese, finely chopped tomatoes and fresh thyme leaves, shaped into a small dome and presented in a miniature soufflé dish, was added to the amuses gueules (hors d’oeuvres) for a brief time. At the suggestion of a Japanese cook, cured salmon eggs were also adopted for a time. Previously, the eggs had always been discarded, and the Troisgros brothers seemed genuinely amazed when they learned the technique and tasted the cured eggs. My Japanese colleague also showed them how to make tempura batter with a fork instead of a whisk. Jean exclaimed, “Did you see how he made that with a fork?” (The French use a whisk for just about every kind of batter they make.) Novel ideas were always swirling around, and the brothers were always snatching them out of our brains.

Basketball

But all was not cuisine and work at Troisgros. Jean, with his impeccably trimmed grey beard adorning his classically handsome face, was quick to joke with clients. He was a tennis player and in superb condition, though he eventually died on the court at the age of 56, in 1983. Pierre sported a black, bristly mustache and was a bit more serious than Jean, though they could be equally raucous with friends. Pierre was also a bit rotund, although he moved just as quickly as Jean, both in the kitchen and on the basketball court.

One of my fondest memories was the weekly basketball game, which we played in a local gym, with Pierre, Jean, and anyone else who wanted to join. There was nothing so exciting as getting out of the kitchen after a stressful lunch service, changing into a tee shirt and shorts, and playing a no-holds barred game of basketball. I had the double advantage of being an American who grew up with the game and being the tallest member of the staff, an advantage that Pierre tried to deny me by unashamedly grabbing me from behind as I was attempting to make a layup. Meanwhile, Andre, the pastry chef and second tallest, was always waving his hands in my face. Rather than teach them some of the finer points of the game and convince Pierre not to cheat, I used my height and weight to knock into everyone on my way to the basket.

Meals in the dining room

Because I wasn’t paid for my work at the restaurant, Jean and Pierre allowed me to eat free of charge several times in the dining room. Among them was a memorable meal with my friend Reiko, a Japanese student I’d met earlier in my stay in France when she was touring the country. She was charming, so I invited her to visit me in Roanne and have a meal at Troisgros.

Consulting with Pierre about the food and Jean about wine, and keeping in mind Reiko’s love of fish, I decided to have an all-fish dinner. Since Troisgros’ menu depended upon what was available at the market that day, or what a local fisherman showed up with, I requested the day’s arrivals: St. Pierre (no relation to Pierre Troisgros and called John Dory in English) and sea bass. We would forego silverware and eat the entire meal with chopsticks. For the wine, Jean suggested a Bienvenue Batard Montrachet, the best white Burgundy I have ever tasted.

There is nothing so exciting as discussing an upcoming meal at a Michelin 3-star restaurant with the chef himself. By this time, I had learned a lot about the finest cuisine in France, and I wanted to make sure that our meal was going to be memorable. Pierre took his time with me, as if he had nothing more important in the world to do, and gave his suggestions. The St. Pierre would be seasoned with salt and pepper and then grilled. The sea bass would be roasted and served with a classic beurre blanc. I mentioned that Reiko was a small girl and that she was used to eating light meals, as was the custom in Japan. A typical French dinner would probably fill her up before she got to the main course. He suggested that all of the other courses would be very small so that she would have no trouble finishing her dinner. I, on the other hand, was welcome to go into the kitchen and make myself a sandwich if I got hungry afterward. (I did eventually have my standard sandwich that night. It was one that I occasionally made at night while everyone but the night watchman was asleep: a few thick slices of ham, gruyere cheese, and slices of tomato on rustic French bread. All traces were cleaned up before I went to bed.)

Toward the end of my year-long apprenticeship, I was given permission to have a final meal in the dining room, free of charge. I ate alone that evening, but I felt as though I were dining with the entire kitchen and wait staff. Jean, Pierre, and I put together a menu of fish and meat with red and white wines to accompany each dish, and the reason I am not listing the courses is because all was rendered moot as I sat down at the table. The maitre d’hotel came over to say that the chef wanted to offer me a wild woodcock (bécasse), which a hunter had just delivered to the restaurant. He actually leaned in and whispered this to me because at that time it was illegal to serve woodcock, an endangered species, at a restaurant. Nevertheless, with its extra-long beak, the bird was readily identifiable to most people in that part of the country. I was instructed not to say anything to anyone, or exclaim how good it was in a loud voice, or suck the brains out of the head unless I was hiding its beak in my hand.

This wasn’t my first woodcock, but it was the best one I had ever tasted. It was cooked, as all game birds should be, à la goutte de sang (approximately medium rare). The flavor was gamy, the flesh was tender, and the internal organs were mashed up with foie gras and spread on a thin slice of baguette. I had a wickedly tasty red Burgundy, chosen for the occasion by Jean Troisgros, that not only complemented the woodcock but also helped make the meal into something greater than the sum of its parts. It doesn’t happen all the time, but every so often, a wine will perfectly complement a dish. So it was with this Burgundy, which tasted as though its tannin had just crossed over the border from astringent to deliciously round, and the game bird, with its array of flavors. They fit together with stunning results. I sat there savoring the dish until the maitre d’hotel reminded me that it was time for the next course.

Troisgros after hours

It was after this last meal that I started visiting the empty restaurant and kitchen at night after the diners and staff had left. I needed only walk from my bedroom above the restaurant and down a staircase to reach the foyer. I felt that I was watching the ghost of the evening service, complete with the cooks preparing the dinners, Gerard, the stolid maitre d’hotel, giving instructions to the waiters, Michel, the chef de cuisine, steady as a rock, sauteing and roasting diverse items as he was, at the same time, making the sauces, Pierre preparing cuts of beef with the precision of a sushi chef, Jean wandering through the dining room with his cedar box full of Cuban cigars, and the customers thoroughly enjoying themselves.

Some of my favorite memories of that year were of hanging out at the bar inside the restaurant with the brothers and some of the Roannais who did business with Troisgros: the cheese affineur, who had invited me into his cellar to show me how he aged each type of cheese, the chocolatier, who taught me his craft (which would eventually become part of my own), the hunter, whose deliveries depended upon which birds or what deer crossed his path, and others. None of them looked like the type of customer you would expect to see in a three-star restaurant. In fact, the bar itself seemed out of place. If you entered the front door of the restaurant and went to the bar, you would think that you had just entered a small, local dive. Customers there were dressed casually, none in suits or ties or fancy dresses. On the other hand, everyone felt welcome, no matter how they dressed, at the bar and in the restaurant. The warmth, compassion and willingness to share made the restaurant an even homier place.

Throughout that year, the brothers, the cooks and apprentices, the waiters, and all of the other employees of Troisgros made up a family of some of the warmest and kindest people in the food industry, a family that was united in making sure every single customer was warmly received, treated with kindness, and fed the best meal of his or her life. There was no snobbery at Troisgros. Everyone felt comfortable there. Upon entering, every customer felt the excitement of knowing that as long as they were at Troisgros, they would be treated as though they were family, too.

This was one of the most exciting years of my life. After two years of experience at two of the most creative restaurants in the world, I was ready to return home in 1977 to start my American career. Along with a wide range of culinary skills, what I especially learned from Jean and Pierre Troisgros was their talent for pleasing staff and customers. They served as my models in that respect as I returned to the U.S. with the ambition of creating my own business.

Jean, as noted earlier, died young, in 1983 at the age of 56. Pierre lived a long life and got to see his son Michel and grandsons take over the business and move Maison Troisgros, their gastronomic restaurant, to a beautiful new location in Ouches, a few miles outside of Roanne. Pierre died in 2020 at the age of 92.

RIP, Jean and Pierre Troisgros. Thank you for teaching me so much about French cuisine—and about so much more.

© 2021, David Glass. First published on France Revisited, francerevisited.com.

See David Glass Chocolates for more about the author.
See Maison Troisgros for more about Troisgros restaurants and lodging.

The post Chef Talk: A Young American Apprentices with Jean and Pierre Troisgros, Masters of Nouvelle Cuisine appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Though the trip I’m describing took place eight years ago, I can still clearly see in my mind Aubrac’s rippling empty pastures covered with the greenish-brown grass of early spring. But I remember Aubrac more as a state of mind than an actual place on the map. In fact, if I were to look at a unlined map of the territory of France, I might not be able to find Aubrac at all. Those who dressed the map with administrative lines might not have situated it very well either since the plateau overlaps three departments—Cantal, Aveyron and Lozère—and two regions—Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes and Occitania.

No sooner had I left Chaudes-Aigues then I felt as though I’d gone as deep into France as I’d ever been. It wasn’t wilderness deep—the landscape was largely comprised of parceled, pastoral fields. It wasn’t intimidating deep—the rippling topography gave me a sense of airy calm. It wasn’t mysterious deep—I could easily read the architecture of the land. Yet it felt removed, beyond and other-worldly.

It was also deep in silence. I drove by isolated homes and farm buildings, but there was no one about, and only a few small groupings of Aubrac cattle here and there. I stopped the car, got out and listened. Silence, as they say, can be deafening. But not here. In this silence, in this depth of my travel within France, there was plenitude.

Plenitude. It’s something that I’d been feeling at times throughout my five-day drive-about. Were I to look at my photos of the Aubrac Plateau without knowing where they were taken nor that I was the photographer, I might see isolation or emptiness. But at that moment I felt that I’d arrived at a privileged place. Or should I say, in that place, I felt that I’d arrived at a privileged moment? Was this feeling of plenitude due to the place, my movement through it or simply me? That’s a question that a traveler should never ask himself? For the answer is necessarily all three, and to want to measure them separately is to doubt one’s own happiness. It’s what I’d been unable to put my finger on in Mont Dore. It’s what I’d wanted to tell Yu. That there are moments on the road when nothing looks extraordinary yet everything feels right—in this place, with this movement, within yourself.

I got back into the car and drove across the rippling pastures of the plateau that wave between 1000 and 1400 meters (3280 and 4590 feet) above sea level. The pastures, as I said, were greenish-brown. At spots in the distance I could see woods. Briefly, the Bes River flowed near the road before the road veered off. It was late March, the only season, if I can call it that, of Aubrac that I know. I’d come after the wind and snow of winter that I’d read about and before the greening of the rich grazing fields of summer that I’d seen in pictures. Other than the small groups of cattle that I occasionally passed, the herds of Aubrac cattle had yet to make their late-spring transhumance or to emerge from the barns.

I was happy to be traveling alone, and I was glad to be meeting up with someone.

Yu, I’ve been wondering about something. It’s not a question; I don’t expect an answer. After leaving Paris, where you lived two years, shortly after your 23rd birthday, you traveled much over the following year: North America, Europe, Asia. Something had changed since you left Paris. On your blog, you no longer wrote what “I” did or “I” saw, but what “we” did and saw. “We,” “us,” “our.” You’d give the reader a rare side glimpse of a young man, but never more than that. He’s never mentioned by himself. It was always “we.” I like that, Yu. I like to think that you had a travel companion and I like the mystery of not knowing anything more about him or about your relationship, simply that you were enjoying someone’s company, as a traveler should, sometimes. As I would that evening when I met Fred.

Saint Ursize and Fred “Remise”

I didn’t learn much about Fred’s background during the time that we spent together that evening and the next morning. Or, if I did, I don’t remember since, as I’ve said, this was eight years ago. I think of him now as a man who’d moved from the city to the frontier and had no intention of going back. Aubrac isn’t frontier, of course, yet it does seem to be on the fringe of something. I didn’t even learn Fred’s last name. I’d been told to call on a certain Fred Remise while in Saint-Urcize, but Remise was in fact the family name of his wife, Isabelle, née Remise, whom I didn’t meet during my stay.

Fred and I had dinner at Chez Remise, the restaurant that has been in Isabelle’s family since 1906. Chez Remise is also an inexpensive 10-room hotel, but it’s primarily a restaurant with rooms to let rather than a hotel with a restaurant. Fishing rods, other fishing paraphernalia and fishing photos decorate the dining room. There may have been fishing on Isabelle’s side of the family, but Fred is the fisherman of renown in this area and well beyond. Among his many work-hobbies, he takes clients out fly fishing for trout at his favorite spots in the Bès River and the creeks of Aubrac. The Bès River cuts south-north through much of the plateau and serves as the border between Cantal, the part that I was in, and Lozère to the east.

Fred is both a character and a storyteller. Even the simplest of stories that he told was spoken in the voice or with the wink of a tall tale. We shared a dinner of gizzard salad, pulled lamb, green beans and a tasty regional calorie-bomb called aligot, made of mashed potatoes, fresh cantal cheese, cream and garlic, followed by lemon pie. Even the way Fred pronounced marcillac, as he poured the wine, made it sound like a yarn. Marcillac is a red wine made mostly the mansois grape varietal and grown just west of the plateau. We clinked glasses and took a chug. I looked Fred in the eye waiting for him to say it first, until finally I remarked that it smelled like manure. It was an assessment that he neither confirmed nor denied other than to say that we had a full bottle to finish. Which we proceeded to do. The wine got no better over time, but his stories did, and by the time the lemon pie arrived I was wading with him into the river to cast out alongside a wealthy industrialist who’d flown in on a private jet to go fly fishing with him.

Fred and Isabelle also run a B&B called La Fontaine de Grégoire. Mostly Fred’s domain, it appeared to me. Fred had restored the home of a local bigwig built in 1788. It was entirely in his image: warm, welcoming and refined in a devil-may-care way. Pastoral luxury, was how I saw it and lived it as a pre-season guest for the night. Some of its five bedrooms might be considered romantic for a couple who like fine flea market finds, but there’s no mistaking the 3250-foot-square attic lounge for anything other than an incredible upstairs man-cave, though I could also well imagine it being used as an opium den. I’m not a fisherman myself, but it would seem to me that between Fred’s engaging bonhomie, his fly-fishing knowledge, his luxury B&B with the man-cave in the attic, and the restaurant Chez Remise, a group of story-swapping fly-fishing buddies could spend a memorable few days under Fred’s guidance.

Saint Urcize is at the center of the sparsely populated 500-square-mile Aubrac Plateau. At the time of my visit, the population of Saint Urcize (including the village itself, 12 nearby hamlets and forty-some farms) was wavering at around 500. 501, was the official figure. As Fred explained, “A village doesn’t exist if it has less than 500, so the local census people the village fudge the numbers.” Apparently, the numbers are no longer fudgeable since the official figure eight years later is closer to 400. (Population may have been as high as 2000 in the 17th and 18th centuries.) I assume that Saint Urcize continues to exist nonetheless. I only stayed one night, but even in an off-season the village was very much alive, with its café-restaurant-hotel Chez Remise, a grocer, a butcher and a baker.

In the morning Fred took me on a tour of the village. There are more than 50 shades of grey to the granite walls and the slate and shale rooftops of Saint-Urcize.

As is to be expected, its main architectural sight is its church. It’s dedicated to Saints Peter and Michael and houses relics of Urcize, bishop of Cahors. The village once stood along the Way of Saint James, the pilgrimage route to Compostela, Spain, thus contributing to its development. Construction was launched in the 11th century, yet the church can largely be seen as the combination of a Romanesque choir from the 12th century and a Gothic nave from the 14th, to which a wall belfry was added in the late 16th century. The church also houses what legend holds to be the chalice from which Louis XVI last drank when taking communion on the morning of Jan. 21, 1793, before being led to the guillotine. The belfry rises just above the village rooftops. At night the village is silent other than the hourly ringing of the church bell.

Fred and I then took a drive across the plateau to the edge of Auvergne, where we got out of the car to overlook the steeple and rooftops of Laguiole in the near distance. Laguiole, of knife-making fame, is the largest town on the plateau, with 1250 inhabitants. But Auvergne was my sole destination for this trip, so it wouldn’t have felt right to step over into Occitania. We passed a forest of beech and pine along the way, but mostly we drove alongside cattleless pastureland dotted here and there with stone huts called burons, where herders used to store cheese during the transhumance, the movement of livestock between mountain and lowland.

Aubrac continues to celebrate that most ancient tradition of cattle-raisers on the Sunday following May 25, when the barns and stables around the base of the plateau have emptied and the pastures of the Aubrac Plateau fill.

As we drove, Fred told stories of life on the plateau. I don’t remember any of them. But Fred’s weren’t stories to be remembered, rather to be enjoyed at the moment, like fish caught with pride then thrown back into the river, before casting out anew.

© 2020, Gary Lee Kraut

The Aubrac Plateau is a National Regional Park. At its center, the village of Aubrac houses La Maison d’Aubrac, which provides information about the plateau, including tourist information and where to find it throughout the area. In winter, Aubrac had cross-country and easy-going alpine skiing if snowfall is sufficient. In summer, bikes, including electric fat bikes, can be rented to sport along the rippling landscape. Saint Urcize holds a village festival on the Sunday after August 15. In September, as the days shorten and the evenings cool, the forests echo with of the rutting calls of stags in September. The transhumance is celebrated on the Sunday after May 25. Near the summer solstice it celebrates the Night of the Burons in June with music, song and cheese.

La Fontaine de Grégoire, Fred’s B&B. 15110 St Urcize. Tel. 04 71 23 20 02 or 04 71 23 20 69.
Chez Remise, the village’s premier restaurant for local fare and atmosphere as well as a modest 10-room hotel. Place de la Frique, 15110 Saint-Urcize. Tel. 04 71 23 20 02.
Information about other gites and B&Bs in and outside of Saint Urcize can be found on the village’s official website, which also provides information about events.

This is the end of the 6-part series Five Days in Auvergne. To return to the previous parts:
Part I: From Paris to Clermont-Ferrand
Part II: An Introduction to Spa Towns and Hot Springs By Way of Royat
Part III: Chatel-Guyon
Part IV: Château La Canière, a Luxury Hotel
Part V: Mont Dore, Saint Nectaire, Chaudes-Aigues and Yu

The post 5 Days in Auvergne, Part VI: Plenitude on the Aubrac Plateau appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Yu Jia’s message both embarrassed and pleased me. It pleased me because she said that she enjoyed my writing. It further pleased me that she was interested enough to want more, particularly the more that I’d promised at the end of Part IV. “Part V: Mont Dore, Saint Nectaire and Chaudes-Aigues will be posted later in May,” I’d noted as a teaser.

Mostly, though, I was embarrassed. I hadn’t kept my promise, I’d given up, and Yu Jia was reminding me of that. I don’t remember giving up—one rarely does—but no doubt my inspiration had waned and as it did I let something distract me from the long-winded project of a 6-part series. Afterwards, I thought it occasionally, but only in passing, without the will or the inspiration to complete Parts V and VI.

Scrapbooks
Trip reports such as this Auvergne series are like scrapbooks. You sit down with pieces that you’ve collected from your recent travels—notes, photographs, audio, press kits, brochures, books—then stitch together the highlights and a few mid- and low-lights with observations, impressions, transitions and additional research. Chronology is an easy organizer. Furthermore, most of the steps of my 5-day 2012 Auvergne trip were planned in advance. I prepared and published the texts for the first four parts at a rhythm of one per week.

But some scrapbooks (and articles) don’t get finished. The scraps never get booked, so to speak; they remain in folders and the audio gets thrown out with an old computer. I’ll finish it one of these days, you say to yourself whenever you come across the folder or whenever someone mentions the place you’ve been.

Within two months after completing Part IV, I’d written articles about Kaysersberg, Colmar, Chambéry, Blois, Chateau-Thierry, a restaurant in Paris and a WWI memorial in the suburbs. I traveled; folders accumulated. And the chances of “one of these days” putting together the remaining Auvergne scraps became increasingly slim.

8 years on
It’s now April 2020, the spring of Covid-19 lockdown. That Auvergne trip was eight years ago. I’ve only been back to Auvergne once since then but nowhere near the area covered in this series. In a sense, Auvergne no longer exists. Since 2016, the official map of France has contained 13 regions rather than the 22 at the time of my visit. Auvergne has merged with the Rhône-Alpes region to become Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. Actually, I’ve visited Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes once or twice a year since 2012, so I could fudge the facts by saying that I’ve returned to region of this series many times in the past eight years. But in all honesty I can’t. Administrative region or not, Auvergne is Auvergne, everyone knows that. The parts covered in this series have nothing to do with the Rhone or the Alps. So, no, I haven’t been to Auvergne since March 2012.

Why, then, return to this Auvergne series now?

Because in cleaning out and updating some articles on France Revisited during lockdown, I came across Yu Jia’s message. I had never “approved” it (i.e. allowed it to be made public on the site) when she wrote it in the comments section beneath Part IV. Yet I hadn’t trashed it either. Nor had I hidden my tracks by deleting the announcement in May 2012 that parts V and VI would be coming soon. For 7½ years Yu Jia’s message awaited in the limbo of the dashboard of this site, staring me down as a comment awaiting action: approve, trash or spam. It stared me down again a few days ago—”Too bad parts V and VI aren’t up, I did want to read about Mont Dore and St. Nectaire in particular”—a reminder that I still I owed Yu something. So I “approved” the message as a dare to myself to complete the series during coronavirus quarantine and began stitching and pasting together scraps and memories from my Auvergne trip of 2012.

It wouldn’t make sense to pretend now that this follows the momentum of the first four parts of the series. I’ll therefore leave the scraps in italics and place other facts, impressions, memories and comments in roman.

This is for Yu.

Mont Dore

Three types of hot springs. Living, dead, hot.

Either my guide in Mont Dore (aka Le Mont Dore) said that or that was a summary of what I’d learned about hot springs over the three days in Auvergne leading up to Mont Dore. Either way, if there are indeed three types, I don’t recall the distinction between living and hot, and I prefer the mystery of not knowing.

I’m more intrigued by another mystery: Why would you, Yu, a young woman from Singapore, still in her twenties, want to read “in particular” about Mont Dore. I can fathom an interest in Saint Nectaire—there’s the cheese and the Romanesque church. But why Mont Dore? Who’s even heard of Mont Dore, remote and bygone as it is? (Not to be confused with Mont d’Or, the fabulous and fattening runny cow cheese from the Jura region of eastern France.)

Sight of the slate roofs while approaching the hills. Le Mont Dore, at an altitude of 1000 meters. The ski slopes are 3 miles from town. The town feels unused/underused. Tourist official explains: “We’re between seasons,” nevertheless “Declining population, a town that lives from tourism and curists.”

I don’t recall the slate roofs, though I do see them in my photos. I do remember winding through hills and valleys on my way to Mont Dore from where I’d stayed the previous night near Chatel-Guyon. I remember some splendid inter-seasonal views of a choppy landscape and of lakes and hills appearing around bends or through pines. I remember above all the unused/underused feel of Mont Dore when I arrived. I remember that it brought the pleasant sense of having arrived at an oasis.

What’s especially stayed with me about Mont Dore is the thought that I’d like to settle here, or someplace like here, for a month and read and write and walk and get familiar with strangers, if they’ll let me and make the place mine for a bit. Do you ever feel that when you travel, Yu? Stopping someplace for just a few hours, do you ever think: I wonder what it would be like to settle down for a few weeks to “live” the town and explore the immediate surroundings on foot, never with transportation? Though “settle down” is the wrong term for the momentary attraction that I had for Mont Dore. “Shelter in place,” as we say today, would be more like it, within the confines not of a house or an apartment but of the entire town of Mont Dore and its surrounding landscape. You wouldn’t be there to escape anything, you’d be there… well, you’d just be there, between seasons. Then you’d want leave before too many tourists and curists arrived and transformed your quiet town. Not that you would actually ever shelter in place there. Not that you’d ever return to the place after that first visit and the original impression. But do you know what I mean?

The source of the Dordogne River is just above Mont Dore. Snow-capped massif visible from town. Situated along the Roman road from Clermont-Ferrand. Vestiges of Gallo-Roman thermal baths. The current thermal baths opened in 1823, with later additions and mosaics, including a portion from 1920. The casino burned down in 1962. Eight springs, 38-44 degrees, are now used particularly for rheumatology and respiratory illnesses. During WWI, gassed soldiers brought here from the front. Hot springs exploited since about 2000 by the Chaine Thermal de Soleil, which operates 20 establishments in France. Not always water therapy, sometimes vapors are used for nasal baths and injections. The nasal infiltration room; glass canopy by Gustave Eiffel; original wall mosaics from the 1930s. No noise or movement to distract the eye as it takes in the basilica-like space of the neo-Byzantine architecture, recently restored, light from the glass black of the barrel ceiling. Villas and grand hotels. Between seasons.

I don’t remember the villas, the grand hotels or whatever building replaced the casino. But the dramatic, archaic emptiness of the hot springs complex between seasons—go for that, Yu. Between seasons.

The Dordogne and Dore Rivers meet at the foot of Sancy Mountain as the Dordogne River begins on its course southwestward before turning due west about 90 miles from here to form what most people think of when they think of the Dordogne Valley.

I’ve just looked up the population of Mont Dore. It’s been in continual decline since 1982 when there were over 2300 inhabitant. In 2019 there were 1300. How sad, an exodus, people leaving parent and relatives, unrooting themselves. Or hopeful, but with something diminished left behind. I wish them well. Let’s move on to Saint Nectaire before this trip report becomes an elegy.

Saint Nectaire

Another beautiful drive. Though I left Clermont-Ferrand three days ago on this meandering itinerary, I look at the map to see that I’m still less than an hour’s direct drive from my point of departure. Questions of near and far.

What questions? I was preparing a trip report, not an essay on distance. Sometimes one writes cryptic notes to oneself, don’t you find? With corona lockdown, everything that isn’t near seems far. I might have thought about those “questions” because Saint Nectaire also felt empty when I arrived, or because the feeling of Mont Dore was still with me when I arrived at Saint Nectaire and checked into the hotel Mercure.

But the feeling evaporated during lunch.

By contrast with the emptiness of the hotel, the busyness of the brasserie Les Baladins is a sign of a living town. I had a hearty St. Nectaire fondue for lunch. Population 728.

Lunch was more than hearty. My photo reminds me that it was absolutely and appetizingly local and delectable, the kind of meal and the kind of place where the hungry traveler says: This is good living, despite what the ingredients whisper about heart disease. (Like the pancakes, bacon and eggs on the table of the post you wrote about celebrating your 23rd birthday in Paris. But thinking about heart disease when you’re 23 is a personal crime.) To judge from the photo, I was not alone for lunch. (Neither were you for your birthday, to judge by yours.)

Saint Nectaire once had 25 hotels serving “curists” coming for ailments related to rheumatism and urinary problems. Once the cure season was over, employees would leave town to find work elsewhere, e.g. Clermont. The thermal baths closed their doors in 2004. Currently, four hotels are in operation. I’m staying in one of them. It’s nearly empty. Remnants of the 19th-century thermal baths can be seen at the Hotel Les Bains Romanes and at the Tourist Office.

Unlike other spa towns whose reputation has faded with a diminished interest in taking a cure, the name Saint Nectaire is still well-known in France because of the cheese of the same name that’s produced here and in the 69 surrounding communes. Plus, while thermalism is dead at St. Nectaire, for church hunters this is one of the prizes of central France.

A prize indeed!

You know all those great soaring Gothic cathedrals and churches of Paris and its surrounding regions, Yu? Of course you do. I saw the picture that you took from the towers of Notre-Dame on your birthday. An impressive cathedral; an impressive view. Sometimes, however, those Notre-Dames of northern France seem to me to be trying too hard compared with the ease of the rounded arches and the effortless proportions of the Romanesque period—at Saint Nectaire, for example—that proceeded the extensive use of the ribbed vaults and the pointed arches at those Notre-Dames.

On a promontory overlooking the valley (and the lower town), exquisite proportions, an impassive western façade through which one enters to the shadows of the narthex and the light of the choir illuminating the whitewashed stone and the polychrome capitals. Storytelling capitals.

Were those scrap words mine or those of the excellent guide who steered me around and through the edifice? Or were they the words of her source? Doesn’t matter: I could see it, I could feel it, from near and from far, a vast and harmonious church in such a remote area. Worth the detour, as they say in the guides.

A lengthy and thorough restoration 2002-2009.

Legend has it that Saint Nectaire, a Greek who encountered Christians in Rome then came to evangelize in this area, early 4th century, created an oratory here. Saint Nectaire said to be accompanied by Saint Auditeur and Saint Baudime. Rebuilt by Benedictine monks in the 12th century. Made with lava stone. Red, beige, blue?, grey. Belonged to the monks of La Chaise Dieu until the Revolution. A pilgrimage church, one of the 5 major Romanesque churches of Auvergne.

The question mark that follows “blue” is enough to make me want to go back to examine my doubt.

While I’d elected to focus my 5-day itinerary in Auvergne on spa towns, I can well imagine the parallel interest of an itinerary that aims for those five major Romanesque churches: Saint Nectaire, Notre-Dame in Saint-Saturnin, Saint-Austremoine in Issoire, Notre-Dame-du Port in Clermont-Ferrand, Notre-Dame Basilica in Orcival. I kept the brochure.

The treasure of Saint Nectaire is a 12th-century bust of St. Baudime, a wood sculpture covered with gilded copper. See also the Virgin and Child in the choir.

I had an appointment with Mayor Alphonse Bellonte outside the church at the end of the visit. As I write this, between the two rounds of municipal elections, Alfonse Bellonte is still mayor of Saint Nectaire.

The natural, warm welcome of this big fellow has undoubtedly contributed to my favorable view of Saint Nectaire from that day. He didn’t start, as most mayors do, by telling me anything about his town but rather about how much he’d enjoyed visiting Cleveland and Baltimore several months prior to my visit. The trip had been an extraordinary journey of discovery for him, one that he wanted to share me, an American. But Cleveland and Baltimore? Yes, he’d followed Saint Baudime on tour to those cities, and during that visit he’d marveled at the generous welcome that he’d received from his hosts.

Alphonse Bellonte is also a producer of saint nectaire fermier. Fermier (farmhouse, we would say) indicates that it uses raw milk from a single farm. Saint nectaire fermier is one of the kings of France’s farmhouse cow cheeses. Industrial saint nectaire also exists; the milk used for that can come from more than one farm and be pasteurized. The farmhouse version is tastier.

I visited the mayor’s farm, Ferme Bellonte. (Other farms in the area can also be visited.) The Bellonte family has been in the cheese business for eight generations in Saint Nectaire, and for several generations elsewhere prior to that. Ferme Bellonte is open to the public (free and daily, year-round). The farm’s 110 cows, primarily a breed called montéliarde, are milked twice each day, 7-8am and 4:15-5:15pm, followed by the cheese making 9-10am and 6-7pm, so time your visit according to your interest, Yu, or stay long enough for both. I did. (Times indicated are Daylight Saving Time, so an hour earlier in winter.)

Each cow here produces more or less about 15 liters of milk per day. 15 liters of milk for 1 round of cheese. So the farm makes about 100 saint nectaires per day. 8 days in the refrigerator then 5 weeks of cellar maturing on straw mats. Aging cellars here are 1000-year-old troglodyte quarry rooms, formerly inhabited by people and/or farm animals, which can also be visited. Summer farmhouse saint nectaire is softer and tastier.

I bought some saint nectaire fermier for lunch today. The rind, I now see, echoes the color of the exterior of the church: Red, beige, grey. Blue? I can smell (or imagine that I smell) the humid cellar and the straw on which it’s aged, though the taste of this semi-hard cheese is mild.

In addition to the spa town route and the Romanesque church route, Yu, you might also melt into the itinerary the AOP Auvergne cheese route (AOP=PAO, Protected Appellation of Origin): saint nectaire, cantal (semi-hard, pressed, raw or pasteurized, typically aged up to 6 months), salers (raw milk, pressed, aged up to 9 months), fourme d’Ambert (a mild blue) and bleu d’Auvergne (a creamy blue), all from cow’s milk.

By the way, Yu, due to the coronavirus crisis, farmers, industry and authorities have to deal with the excess amount of milk being produced in view of decreased consumption. (My Paris cheese tastings have been halted!) So the strict rules of producing an AOP saint nectaire have been modified to allow for newly cultured cheese to be frozen in anticipation of aging and sale next year. Production and storage times have also been modified slightly for blue d’Auvergne and fourme d’Ambert, as well for some cheeses produced elsewhere in France.

In the morning, breaking from the two-hour drive to Chaudes Aigues, a quick stop in the town of Issoire to visit St. Austremoine Church, the largest of the five Romanesque majors. A visual feast of its extravagant and jubilant painted columns and walls.

While the columns do indeed seem to be “extravagant and jubilant” when I look at my pictures of the interior, I must have been in an upbeat mood to jot down those words. It must have been one of those “Wow, I’m glad I stopped here!” road-trip moments before getting back into the car.

Chaudes-Aigues

The problem with scraps, Yu, and in particular my written scraps from Chaudes-Aigues, is that they amount to no more than wikifacts without footnotes. Absent some evidence that I had actually been there to “experience” the place (I put experience in quotes because what does that mean, really?), you might be tempted to skip this section. After all, your message said that you were particularly interested in Mont Dore and Saint Nectaire—not a word about Chaudes-Aigues. How then to get you to scroll beyond the fact bites?

Chaudes = hot, Aigues = eaux. The town’s inhabitants are called caldagaises.
The various springs emerge at 52-82 degrees Celsius [126-180°F ]. The 82° springs are the hottest in Europe. The village exists since about 1332, date of the construction of the first houses. We’re at 750 meters [2460 feet] in altitude. Population about 900, 3000 in summer. 1500 curists during the April-November cure season. The water at the thermal baths is 52 degrees. The water comes from 5000 meters underground. Each quarter of the village has a patron saint.

Among the 32 springs, the majority of which are private, some provide heat in winter on the ground floor of houses, about 20 of them. Those whose homes are heated with the hot spring pay only an annual maintenance fee of 30-100€, depending on the length of the piping network and the temperature. Pipes get clogged with deposit; they need to be cleaned often, eventually replaced. The church is heated this way as is the municipal swimming pool. The springs also feed the thermal baths (expanded in 2004), the fountain (where I boiled my egg) and the lavoir (publish wash basin), which is still used and where the water, which contains sodium bicarbonate, is good for bleaching.

Before 2004, about three-quarters of homes were heated by the spring called Source du Par. Since then, three-quarters of the flow is used by the thermal center and for the swimming the pool from June to September (through a spring water serpentine) + to heat the church (to 20-25°C/68-77°F) + to boil my egg. The little Geothermalism Museum explains how houses were/are heated and shows pipes that get obstruct quickly with carbonate deposits and must be cleaned frequently.

On your blog, Yu, you define yourself as a baroudeuse, an adventurer. I don’t think of myself in the same way; I’m not a baroudeur, just someone who travels sometimes, happy enough with the adventure of boiling an egg in the fountain made at a hot spring in Chaudes-Aigues in Auvergne.

Centre Caleden, thermal center that belongs to the Cantal department in a new building since 2009. Includes thermal baths, spa, fun pool, hotel, residences. Water comes out at 32-37 degrees depending on where. The average age of those who come for the cure is 65, often “retirees and professors.” The cure lasts 3 weeks, prescribed by a doctor, with 60-100% reimbursed by the Sécu [the French health system]. 230 curists come in the morning, fitness program clients then come in the afternoon.

Lunch with Claire Soyer Le Thorel, director of the Chaudes-Aigues Tourist Office at owner/chef Simone Gascuel’s Le Moulin des Templiers, in Jabrun, a 10-minute drive from Chaudes Aigues. SG’s mother ran a café here in what was formerly a mill, rebuilt after WWII. Her father wanted her to work in the kitchen. [Now there’s a line that’s open to interpretation! It means nothing to me as I read it now; I assume that it meant something to SG if she said it to me. What did your father want you to do, Yu? Mine wanted me to be a doctor. He also liked to travel.] My first encounter with Le Birlou, an apple and chestnut liqueur that smells like apple and tastes like chestnut. Salade de gesier, blanquette de veau, pruneau au vin rouge.

That’s it, Yu. I left Chaudes-Aigues soon after that for the Aubrac Plateau. My article about that, the sixth and final part of this series, will be published soon. I promise.

In the meantime, I have a question for you, Yu. After your two-year stay in France and the celebration of your 23rd birthday in Paris with pancakes and gargoyles, you visited over the following year New York, Quebec, Nova Scotia, Malaysia and Montenegro. A barodeuse indeed! Then you were in Istria, Croatia, taking your time before “the drive back to civilization.” With that line you ended your blog. Did you ever make it back?

© 2012, 2020, Gary Lee Kraut

Return to:
Part I: From Paris to Clermont-Ferrand
Part II: An Introduction to Spa Towns and Hot Springs By Way of Royat
Part III: Chatel-Guyon 
Part IV: Château La Canière, a Luxury Hotel

The post 5 Days in Auvergne, Part V: Mont Dore, Saint Nectaire, Chaudes-Aigues and Yu appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Corinne LaBalme left the high-end northern real estate of the Loire Valley far behind when she trained down from Paris to the rust-belt town of Saint-Etienne, Loire’s capital. She then started an off-track journey to a château that hosts a family-friendly classical music and dance festival and discovered some of the region’s rural and natural delights along the way.

The Château: La Bâtie d’Urfé

King François I, the patron of Leonardo da Vinci, appointed his close friend Charles d’Urfé, Bailiff of the Forez region, to represent the crown at the Council of Trent in 1545. Quite like his king, Charles came down with a severe case of Renaissance Fever while in Italy. On his return to the Loire region, he embarked on an enthusiastic makeover of the family estate that channeled the intellectual, humanist ethos of the age into stone and stucco.

Creating this unique Franco-Italian Renaissance château, which included a 4,600-book library protected by a benevolent sphinx statue, effectively bankrupted his family. His descendants sold off everything that wasn’t nailed down and certainly did not have the cash for extensive remodeling.

That’s why the Bâtie d’Urfé in Saint-Etienne-le-Molard has the only surviving 16th century grotto in France (detail at top of article). These rustic stone structures, decorated with rocaille (seashell-and-gravel mosaics) were trendy décor musts in the era. Given that they are so sturdy, it’s rather surprising that more of them haven’t stood the test of time. But trends being what they are, the noble grotto faded from fashion as the French garden took shape.

This one, renovated in 2008, would have been remarkable in any case. Charles d’Urfé was a staunch Catholic who was nevertheless imbued with the ecumenical, open-minded spirit of the age. His grotto, which leads to the family chapel, is decorated with pre-Christian iconography. Neptune, for instance, is treated with the greatest of esteem.

The chapel’s theme is the Holy Communion. As the point is made with Old Testament scenes, the golden captions to the artwork are respectfully written in Hebrew. The elegant chapel bore the brunt of the family’s garage sales, but an enterprising local historical/archeological society, La Diana, tracked down many of the chapel’s missing parts and restored/replaced them as needed. (More about La Diana below.) Don’t forget to look up at the ceiling vaults, daringly decorated with exotic New World vegetables like corn.

Speaking of food, there’s a delightful locovore restaurant (with outdoor and indoor tables) on the premises, offering a budget friendly prix-fixe meal to which you might add a bottle of the easy-drinking local chardonnay Clos de Chozieux.

The Festival: Estival de la Bâtie

“We don’t want people to feel afraid of classical music,” says pianist/composer Pascal Amoyal, one of the two guardian angels of this low-key, eight-year-old festival. The festival will be held on the grounds of the château from July 5 to 22 this year. The engagingly ambitious program includes an updated concert version of The Enchanted Flute (sung in French), pioneering Flamenco artist Rocio Marquez, Algerian composer/guitarist Souad Massi, and the opening night Berlioz/Ravel/Dvorak concert by the OSE ! Symphonic Orchestra.

Circus acts, puppet shows and games aimed at children and their parents are scheduled for weekend afternoons in the castle’s gardens throughout the festival.

As a side-note, the austerely symmetrical Renaissance gardens inspired Claude’s grandson, Honoré d’Urfé (1568-1625) to write the 5,000-page love story, Astrée, a best-seller of the day that’s arguably credited as the first French novel.

The Historical Society: La Diana

The Bâtie d’Urfé would have fallen into ruin if not for the dedication of the local historical society, La Diana, based in the nearby medieval town of Montbrison. Montbrison, population 17,000, boasts 18 listed monuments, and fittingly the rarest and most unusual of these, an early 14th-century vaulted heraldic ceiling, is located in La Diana’s headquarters.

Roughly 1,700 emblems of the local nobility are painted on separate wooden panels. These served as the who’s who of the time and no fortified town in the Middle Ages would have been complete without its salle héraldique presenting the coat of arms of feudal families.

Fires, floods, termites and fashion often decimated these once-ubiquitous wooden tributes to the status quo. (Viollet-le-Duc’s heavily-restored version at the Château de Pierrefonds north of Paris is the closest that most architecture fans have ever come to seeing one.) Miraculously, the Montbrison ceiling at La Diana survived intact with its original paintwork, despite the room’s post-revolutionary incarnation as a livery stable. It’s open to the public on Wednesday and Saturday.

Ever the historical detectives, La Diana has traced a few precious, missing elements of the Bâtie d’Urfé chapel to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. They would very much like them back. If you have any Met connections…

And if you’re stopping in a bistro for a snack, don’t forget to order some fourme de Montbrison, the local blue-veined cow cheese.

Nature Walks

While it’s not necessary to go all Dr. Livingston and track the Loire to its source (unless you’d like to visit a 1950s hydro-electric dam along the way), the southern Loire offers spectacular scenery thanks to an 877-acre nature reserve with plentiful hiking trails.

The park is noted for its birds of prey, playful otters and rare dragonflies. Several of the prettiest, two- and three-hour hikes start out at the Maison de la Réserve Naturelle Régionale des gorges de la Loire in Saint-Victor-sur-Loire, a fortified medieval village located ten kilometers from Saint-Etienne. An alternate way to view these unspoiled river canyons and wooded Forez hills is on a lunchtime cruise. https://croisieres-gorges-loire.fr

Saint-Victor also has a man-made surprise: a charming granite chapel. The chapel boasts a 17th-century altar made of gilded wood and Cordoba leather, possibly the only surviving altar of this type north of the Pyrenees.

Lodging and Food

The Romans came to Saint-Galmier for the thermal baths, and the sparkling water that still gushes from the earth here is marketed across the world in forest-green Badoit bottles. Today it makes a fine home-base for exploring the area.

The 4-star Hôtel La Charpinière proves how reasonably priced a fine stay in the French countryside can be. With double rooms under 150€, guests profit from a swimming pool, a beauty spa, a well-equipped gym with personal trainers, and two restaurants. The “gourmet” dining room features foie gras with rhubarb and fish with wasabi sauce but given that this is cow-country, the aged steaks and country fries in the brasserie may be even more tempting. Specify one of the spacious “Privilège” rooms (e.g. room 215) with walk-in Italian showers and king-size beds when booking.

It’s only a short hike to the center of town where, across from a small white stucco casino, Xavier Thély runs the Amphitryon restaurant. Try the surprisingly delicate foie gras/lentil appetizer and don’t miss the strawberry tart with pistachio cream and a bright hint of lime.

Hôtel La Charpinière, 8 allée de la Charpinière, 42330 Saint-Galmier. Tel: 04 77 52 75 00.

L’Amphitryon, 9 blvd Gabriel Cousin, 42330 Saint-Galmier. Tel: 04 77 56 33 39. Closed Sunday and Monday.

See the official tourist site of Loire for further information about this region.

© Corinne LaBalme, 2018.

The post The Deep South of the Loire appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

* * *

Chambery swelled with civic pride when the fourth of its four elephants returned last summer. A carnival atmosphere filled the center of this valley city of 58,000 at the base of the Alps. Bands played. Artists created miniature elephants. A tremendous mechanical pachyderm wowed the crowd. A costumed parade marched down rue de Boigne from the Castle of the Dukes of Savoy to the Fountain of Elephants.

There they were, the four of them, their new iron cast dazzling in the light, home at last after an absence of seven months. Affectionately known as les Quatre sans culs, the Assless Four, since only their fore portion is visible, they faced the crowd in each direction. Mayor Michel Dentin, his deputies and several thousand people of all ages gathered around, flush with admiration for the newly restored emblems of the city.

There was a time, however, when the man at the top of the pedestal that soars above the Fountain of the Elephants was the pride of the town rather than the pachyderms: General and Count de Boigne (1751-1830).

De Boigne was a mercenary who had made his fortune and his titles by selling his military and governing skills to various powers of Europe and the Indian sub-continent, especially in the Maratha Empire. He eventually retired from a life of adventure and settled back, via a stint in London, to his hometown of Chambery. Here he donated sizeable funds to charitable organizations, including to build a home for the aged and the indigent, and for projects to embellish the city. A municipal theater was built. So was the arcaded street that bears the philanthropist’s name, the street the elephant parade marched down.

After his death, Chambery would return the favor with a monument honoring his philanthropy and his military glory. De Boigne stands dressed as a general on a pedestal nearly 15 meters high. Yet it’s the cast-iron elephants that have become the symbol of the city worthy of celebration. As a sign of the popular desire to support the elephants, €160,000 of the €1 million restoration project came from donations.

“The elephants may not be the most profound historical element in Chambery, but sometimes an amusing piece of heritage is what one needs to enter further in depth into what makes up this peaceable city,” said Gerard Charpin, communications officer for the Chambéry Tourist Office. “Perhaps Chambery’s greatest symbol of heritage isn’t a monument at all but rather the sign that one might not even notice upon entering the city: Villes et Pays d’Art et d’Histoire” (Cities and Territories of Art and History).

30 Years of Villes et Pays d’Art et d’Histoire (VPAH)

Villes et Pays d’Art et d’Histoire (VPAH), meaning Cities and Territories of Art and History, is a label that’s easy to miss, particularly for foreign visitors unaware of its significance. Yet it brings together the wide variety of points of historical and architectural interest in Chambery, as it does in the 183 other towns, cities and territories (i.e. communes or grouping of communes) throughout France that hold the state-award label. The VPAH label was created under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture in the spring of 1985. That winter Chambery became one of the first towns to receive it. The city formally celebrated the 30th anniversary of its label in January, though with far less fanfare than the festivities that surrounded the return of the elephants.

As a name, Cities and Territories of Art and History is less seductive than a moniker as Les Plus Beaux Villages de France (The Most Beautiful Villages of France), the name of an association of 153 village and the signal that a visitor is entering a village or small town with two listed or classified monuments along with movie-set charms. Nevertheless, VPAH holds out the promise to residents and visitors alike that here one will have the opportunity not only to see but also to understand the history and significance of local heritage and architecture.

The VPAH label represents a joint engagement between the State and the municipality or group of communes to promote an understanding and preservation of local heritage and architecture. The label-holder undertakes to make significant efforts to engage local residents of all ages in local heritage, architecture and urban planning. This is done through guided tours, documentation, exhibitions and colloquia. Visitors can benefit from these as well.

A Vector of Identity

Heritage is given its broadest meaning for the purposes of the VPAH label. It includes natural, industrial and maritime heritage, as well as the memory of residents. Chambery’s Mayor Michel Dantin has called the label “a vector of identity.”

What is Chambery’s identity? It is the culmination of many components, eras and populations that create a city that sees itself a peaceably place in the valley at the base of the Alps.

Geographically, Chambery now appears to be on the edge of the map of France but for centuries it was the center of a duchy that straddled the Alps with Chambery and then Turino (now Italy) as its capital.

Duchy since 1416, Savoy was annexed to France, as was Nice, in 1860. Its firm attachment to France was part of a remodeling of the map of the Alps that soon involved the unification of Italy. Within the castle complex, now the prefecture of Savoy, at the opposite end of rue de Boigne from the elephants, the 15th-century chapel of the dukes of Savoy once housed the cloth purportedly showing a crucified Jesus that has become known as the Shroud of Turin. It remained there from 1502 to 1578 when the dukes moved it to their new capital across the Alps. A copy of the shroud can be seen in the recently restored chapel.

In conversations with elected officials, tourist officials and cultural leaders, it’s evident that they would like Chambery to live up not to its ducal grandeur but to the reputation that the philosopher and novelist Jean-Jacques Rousseau gave it when he called Savoyards “the best and most sociable people I know” and wrote of his stay here from 1736 to 1742: “If there is a little city in the world where one can enjoy the sweetness of life in a pleasant and secure society, it is Chambery.”

Quality Tourism and Programming for Families

To see VPAH as a mere reflection of a classification of historical monuments is to ignore the community-wide dimension and intention of the label. As Mayor Martine Berthet of Albertville, an Alpine town that has held the label since 2003, has said, “The label enables the recognition that Albertville’s historical and heritage-related richness largely goes beyond the context of the medieval city.” The same can be said about Chambery.

Alexandra Turnar, Chambery’s Deputy Mayor for Culture and Housing, the elected official responsible for overseeing Chambery’s proper application of the VPAH label, says that the label and the efforts it implies work on many levels.

“Tourism related to old stones may sound old-fashion,” she says, “but this isn’t simply nostalgia, it’s also turned toward the future… It isn’t just the sights that are important but how we live with this heritage and architecture today and how we will live with it tomorrow… For those visiting from outside of Chambery, it is a sign of a quality tourism, of intellectual tourism, where every age finds its place.”

“Intellectual” tourism certainly doesn’t preclude the pleasure of simply getting lost in the historic alleyways that run through the old town or from using Chambery as a jumping off point for excursions into the Alps for hiking or skiing or further along the valley to splash or bike or hike around Lake Bourget. Instead, it signifies that resources—exhibitions, brochures, guides, oversight, training of guides—are available to educate visitors and residents alike.

While applauding the quality of programming that introduces local school children to the city’s heritage, Turnar, at 34 a young parent herself, seems especially pleased to see “families increasingly involved in visiting and learning about our heritage.”

“Previously, Chambery was very turned toward a tourism of consummation. With respect to families that meant that we wanted activities to keep the children busy. Now there’s more of an effort towards and interest in transmitting our heritage, our knowledge and our memory of Chambery and of Savoy… Families are essential in transmitting heritage.”

Heritage and Architecture Interpretation Center

One of the obligations of the label is the creation and operation of a Heritage and Architecture Interpretation Centre or CIAP, which is partially subsidized by the state. Chambery’s CIAP is housed in the 16th-century Cordon mansion in the city center. The CIAP and its programming serve as one of the primary sites for educating children as well as adults about the city.

“The label recognizes work done of a long period of time as well as ongoing, forward-looking work,” says Sarah Dietz, who oversees the CIAP under the umbrella of Chambery’s Tourist and Congress Office. “Our task is to show how the story of the city is told, through architecture, daily life, history, monuments.”

Chambery’s CIAP, as that in other VPAH towns, is an appropriate starting point for both those seeking an in-depth approach and a light overview of the history of Chambery. Entrance is free. Documentation in Chambery is available in English. Chambery has no regularly schedule guided tours in English, though they are available upon request.

Beyond the Interpretation Centre, the visitor’s curiosity then leads to any number of major points of historical interest in the city: Saint Francis of Sales Cathedral with its surprising décor trompe l’oeil décor, among the largest such surfaces of the 19th century in France; the Beaux-Arts Museum; the Castle of the Dukes of Savoy; Les Charmettes, the house where Rousseau lived with his benefactor and lover Madame de Warens (thereby gaining his view of the sweet life in Chambery), and the Fountain of the Elephants, of course.

“The label isn’t simply a notion of quantity, of how many visits we organize, but also of quality,” says Dietz. “It translates the engagement of the city with respect to its heritage, its architecture, its urban planning and its population. It enables public awareness of urban developments. It is a part of public policy.”

Chambery’s Locomotive Roundhouse

Chambery’s locomotive roundhouse, la rotonde, a rare element of the railway system of yesterday still in use today, is a prime example of the evolving notion of what constitutes heritage. In 2012, just over a century of its being put into service, a portion of the roundhouse was opened as a second Architectural and Heritage Interpretation Centre, allowing for guided tours. With an internal diameter of 108 meters beneath a metal fame, the roundhouse is an impressive early 20th-century construction with 36 tracks that allows for storage of 72 locomotives.

On May 26, 1944, Chambery’s railway installations are hit by American bombers in order to prevent the movement German troops from to/from Italy as the Allies prepared for the Invasion of Normandy. About a third of the town were destroyed, but de Boigne and the elephants survived, furthering their symbolic value in a wounded city.

Despite effective destruction to the railway network the aerial bombing of 1944 also did surprisingly little damage to the roundhouse itself, which was fully restored in 1948. The structure also survived the threat of demolition in the early 1980s when the National Railway Company SNCF planned its demise in view of the cost of renovation. Those plans were thwarted by the efforts of railwaymen and in 1984 the roundhouse was listed on the supplementary inventory of Historical Monuments.

While still in use for maintenance and service by the French National Railway Company SNCF, the portion dedicated as the CIAP allows the general public to be inform and awed by the powerful locomotives. That dedicated as a portion is also used by the Association for the Preservation of Savoyard Railway Equipment (APMFS), which restores and maintains in working order a number of historic locomotives. The SNCF has authorized the association to use them for occasional tourist outings.

Other Heritage Organizations in Chambery

Chambery has a deep tradition of preserving and promoting their heritage sites. The Chambery Tourist Office was created in 1896. Les Amis de Vieux Chambéry (The Friends of Old Chambery), an independent association for the protection, preservation, restoration and acquisition of elements that historic and artistic value in the city and in the department, was created in 1933 and currently has over 600 members. While the association isn’t directly involved with the VPAH label, the label “gives more weight in defending major issues such as the protection or preservation of various buildings or monuments that are the focus of our attention,” says Michèle Chappius, the association’s president.

La Manivelle, meaning The Crank, Chambery’s club for vintage car collectors, has existed since 1972 and now has 120 members. It organize outings and events through the year, including a rally to visit their sister club ASVA Turino in view of Chambery’s historical relationship with the city on the other side of the Alps.

Serge Gross, president since 1998, the owner of an MG TA 1938 and a 1967 Jaguar, among other vintage vehicles, said that “Every amateur collector has a special affection for England.” British cars, he said, account for about 25% of those of the club’s members. The club’s major public event is the organization of Chambery’s Auto Retro fair, which attracts 7000 visitors over the first weekend of December.

The VPAH Network

The VPAH label itself must now be renewed every 10 years. Chambery is due for renewal in 2017, so preparing the renewal application is one of the projects that will be underway this year along with developing new sightseeing circuits and creating new opportunities for families to explore the city’s heritage. “We’re confident to have the label renewed,” says Turnar, “but one can’t miss the boat.”

With 186 labelled towns, cities and territories across France, label-holders have a lot to learn from each other. A national association that combines municipalities with the VPAH label and those with preserved and protected sectors “enables professionals in the heritage sector to exchange practical information and to reflect on various themes,” says Dietz.

In February, network participants from throughout France came to Chambery for a day of study on the theme of heritage sites belonging to companies, such as Chambery’s roundhouse with respect to the National Railway Company SNCF or hydraulic sites belonging to electric company EDF.

“We’re proud of what we have in Chambery,” says Turnar. “We’re proud of our history as Chamberians and as Savoyards. But the VPAH label isn’t just something we have where we can say, ‘There, we have it, now we can focus on something else,’ but rather a constant calling into question of what we are and where we’re going. Yesterday’s tourism is not today’s.”

As to tomorrow, cue the elephants. Following the successful celebration of their return in 2015, a second elephantine celebration took place on the 1st of July 2016. A new annual event seems to have been born in Chambery: The Elephant Festival.

Chambery Tourist Office, 5 bis place du Palais de Justice. Tel. 04 79 33 42 47

City Lodging in Chambery

5* Petit Hôtel Confidetiel, 10 rue de la Trésorerie. Tel. 04 79 26 24 17.
In the old town at the foot of the ducal castle, a stylish contemporary 5-star boutique hotel.

4* Le Cinq, 22 Faubourg Reclus. Tel. 04 79 33 51 18.
A contemporary boutique 4-star hotel between the train station and the elephants. Small indoor pool.

4* Mercure Chambéry Centre, 183 place de la Gare. Tel. 04 79 62 10 11.
A reliable 4-star chain hotel across the street from the train station.

3* Hôtel des Princes, 4 rue de Boigne. Tel. 04 79 33 45 36.
A central and pleasing hotel between the elephants and the ducal castle. Small spa.

Country Lodging near Chambery

4* Chateau de Candie, 533 Rue du Bois de Candie, 73000 Candie Tel. 04 79 96 63 00.
Midway between Chambery and Bourget Lake. Gastronomic restaurant L’Orangerie, noteworthy whether spending the night or not, especially in weather with dinner on the terrace.

4* Domaine des Saints Pères, 1540 Route de Chartreuse, 73000 Montagnole. Tel. 04 79 62 63 93.
Several miles south of Chambery, a lovely manor with a grand view up the valley. Small outdoor pool. Chalet-like restaurant.

Chambery’s Neighbor Aix-les-Bains, a Newcomer to the VPAH Label

Currently, 186 cities, towns and territories across France hold the label Villes et Pays d’Art et d’Histoire. Of Chambery’s relative neighbors, the lakeside towns of Annecy and Aix-les-Bains also hold the label as do, as do Albertville (site of the 1992 winter Olympics) and the rural and mountain territories of Hautes-Vallées de Savoie, Vallée d’Abondance and Voironnais. The complete list of VPAH cities, towns and territories throughout France can be found at www.vpah.culture.fr. (Also see www.an-patrimoine.org for more about how the association of VPAH towns and territories and towns with preserved neighborhoods stick together.)

While Chambery is now an old-hand at carrying the label, Aix-les-Bains, a town of 29,000 alongside Lake Bouget 11 miles north of Chambery, is a newcomer, having received it 2014. “It took four or five years to prepare the application for the label,” says Beatrice Druhen-Charnaux, a guide with the Aix-les-Bains Tourists Office whom Mayor Dominique Dord appointed to develop the application for the label. Durhen-Charnaux says that by enabling programming for both school children and adults VPAH can nearly be considered “a label of social engagement.”

Whether on a daytrip from Chambery or on a longer stay, visitors in Aix-les-Bains architectural evidence of the town’s significance as a 19th-century spa town as well as current sporting activities related to the lake and the mountains. Boats take visitors across the lake to Hautecombe Abbey, a burial place for the House of Savoy since the 12th century. Humbert II of Savoy, the last king of Italy, was buried here in 1983.

© 2016, Gary Lee Kraut

A previous version of this article appeared in the February 2016 issue of The Connexion.

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The removal occurred on Dec. 17, leaving the city’s most emblematic monument both dry and naked.

Chambery’s Fountain of Elephants may not embody the pinnacle of local architecture, the General/Count de Boigne, the mercenary-cum-philanthropist to whom it is dedicated, may not represent the summum bonum of virtue, and it isn’t as though the city has no other attractions. Nevertheless, in the absence of photogenic signs of Chambery’s role as the former seat of power of the House of Savoy, beyond its flag, the Fountain of Elephants is as fine a symbol as any of this most pleasant small city of some 60,000 inhabitants.

Furthermore, the fountain’s got a great and evocative nickname: “Les Quatre sans cul,” meaning the assless four. Only the head and forelegs of the four elephants exist. For now though, through the winter of 2014-15 and well into spring, the four will not only be without derriere but absent altogether. Two of them may need to be completely recast.

Here’s a video showing the dismantling of the elephants.

Who was General de Boigne?

Born in Chambery, Benoit Leborgne (1751-1830), later known as Comte and General de Boigne, had a storybook life of a soldier, traveler and hometown benefactor. As a soldier he worked under various states and organizations, alternately Irish, French, Sardinian, Russian and Indian. In 1796 he left India to live in London before returning to Chambery in 1801.

Having gathered a sizeable fortune along the way, particularly while at the service of the Maratha Empire of India, he donated significant funds to charitable organizations and for projects to embellish the city, including for the construction of homes for the aged and indigent, Chambery’s theater and the arcaded street that now bears his name. It was therefore fitting that Chambery would return the favor with a (not-too-expensive) monument to his memory, created by Pierre-Victor Sappey and inaugurated on Dec. 10, 1838.

American planes bombed Chambery on May 26, 1944 in order to prevent Germans troops from going to/from Italy during the final days of the Allied preparations for the Invasion of Normandy. The railway station and about a third of the town were destroyed, but de Boigne and his Assless Four survived, furthering the fountain’s symbolic value in a wounded city.

This is the first major restoration to the fountain since the early 1980s. The anticipated total cost of the operation is 1.2 million euros, with 40% being paid for by the Regional Department for Cultural Affairs (DRAC), 19% by Savoie/Savoy (the department) and the rest by the city and by private donation.

Already in the fall of 2013 the statue of the philanthropic general atop the column that soars over the fountain was removed for a thorough cleaning. The column and pedestal having been solidified in the meantime, the general soon returned with a golden bronze sheen that was then treated to return him to the patina of old age. It’s likely though that few Chamberians missed de Boigne during his absence since it’s the elephants that are the true stars of the monument.

The elephants will begin their trek back to the fountain in May 2015, when they’ll return to their slots surrounded by restored bas reliefs telling about de Boigne’s military exploits and his benevolence toward his hometown. The full project isn’t expected to be completed until June, however. Then the water will again spout from their trunks and the city will once again be whole, if assless.

© 2014, Gary Lee Kraut

Chambery is 2:50 by train from Paris. By car, Chambery is 1 hour from Lyon, 45 minutes from Geneva or Grenoble, 30 minutes from Annecy. For official tourist information see www.chambery-tourisme.com.

Also see this article about Chambery on France Revisited.

The post The Assless Elephants of Chambery Head Off for Restoration appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

***

Before asking yourself whether you want to be, or not to be, in Moulins, you’ll quite naturally ask yourself, as I once did, “O Moulins, Moulins, wherefore art thou Moulins.” For Moulins is an unlikely destination in the hinterlands of France that’s difficult to situate on the map. Being told that the towns of Bourges, Vichy, Nevers, Autun and Montluçon are within a radius of 60 miles only vaguely helps.

Ah, there you are, Moulins. Come, let’s away.

The thought of taking the train 2.5 hours from Paris to visit a museum dedicated to theatrical costumes did little in itself to get my travel juices flowing. Yet, accustomed to following the rails southeast and southwest from Paris, it felt strangely venturesome to ride due south beyond the Loire. I say there is no darkness but ignorance. Actually Shakespeare said that. But I was ignorant of Moulins, capital of the department of Allier and of the former duchy of the Bourbon family known as Le Bourbonnais. So I took this trip as a challenge to discover something new for myself while exploring an unheralded region.

Moulins has since 2006 been home to the National Costume Center, Centre National du Costume de Scène or CNCS. In the world of theater, the CNCS is unique in its devotion to preserving, studying and exhibiting exceptional and histsorical theater costumes and elements of theater sets. Much of the collection comes from three founding institutions, the Comédie Française, the National Library (BNF) and the National Opera of Paris. The center also receives donations from costume designers, theaters, acting companies and artists and their heirs. Its vast collection of 10,000 costumes and another 10,000 articles largely remains in the on-site reserves. Choice items are then brought out thematically for evocative, even dramatic, temporary exhibits mounted twice yearly.

In 2014 the CNCS honors the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth with the exhibition Shakespeare, l’étoffe du monde (the fabric of the world), presenting costumes, mostly from French productions over the past century, of some of the bard’s most emblematic plays.

The exhibition begins by introducing visitors to the world of Elizabethan theater, then displays in a dozen rooms the diversity of Shakespeare’s world through the costumes of kings, queens, soldiers, jesters, witches, cross-dressing actors and assorted ghosts and spirits. The exhibition runs through Jan. 4, 2015.

Information about this and upcoming exhibitions can be found here.

O, had I but followed the arts!

It’s rare for France’s Ministry of Culture to allow a national collection to stray far from Paris, but the relative obscurity of theater costumes and the knowledge that the conservation of the vast collection required significant space, led to its removal from the capital region. For Moulins, a service town with a population of 27,000, 40,000 with the suburbs, the center’s creation here in 2006 was a coup that placed it on the cultural radar of the map of France.

Moulins is capital of the department of Allier and of the former duchy of the Bourbon family but had no particular historical relationship with theatrical costumes, unless one counts the uniforms of the cavalrymen who occupied the exhibition building when originally built as barracks in the late 18th century. The architect Jacques Denis Antoine (1733-1801) also designed the old mint (Hôtel des Monnaies) in Paris near Pont Neuf on the left bank of the Seine.

The CNCS is a 20-minute walk from the center of Moulins, on the left bank of the Allier, past the terns nesting along the river from April to early August. (The name Moulins refers to the mills that were once here.) On the approach the building appears rather sparse and uninviting. But the CNCS is appropriately theatrical in the presentation of its exhibitions, and there’s a nice airy brasserie inside.

While much of the CNCS’s public space is dedicated to its temporary exhibitions, the center also presents a permanent exhibition of the Noureev (Nureyev) Collection. That exhibition displays artifacts from the life and career of Rudolf Noureev (Nureyev) (1938-1989) the danceur étoile who, in the 1980s, danced with the Paris Opera Ballet and became its director (1983-1989).

In addition to its exhibitions, the CNCS is an important resource center open to stage professionals, researchers and the general public.

Shall I compare thee, Moulins, to a summer’s day?

Perhaps not, but the sun needn’t be at its peak for the curious traveler to visit a lesser-known region such as Moulins and its surrounding.

* * *

The building blocks for making a day or more of Moulins and the surrounding area of Le Bourbonnais include the following:

National Center for Theatrical Costumes and Scenography, Centre National du Costume de Scène. Tel. 04 70 20 76 20. Open daily 10am-6pm (until 6:30pm in July and Aug.). Closed Dec. 25 and Jan. 1. Tickets: 6€ for entrance to both the temporary and permanent exhibitions. Free for children under 12. For several weeks between exhibitions only the permanent collection is visible.

Moulins Tourist Office. 11 rue François Péron. Tel. 04 70 44 14 14

Choice café: Le Grand Café, 49 Place Allier. Tel. 04 70 44 00 05. An Art Nouveau café-brasserie whose 1899 décor is listed as a historical monument. Open Mon.-Sat. 8am-11pm.

Choice restaurants:
– Le Grand Café (see above)
– Le 9/7, 97 rue d’Allier. Tel. 04 70 35 01 60. Olivier Mazuelle serves fresh market fare in the center of town. Closed Sat. lunch, Sun., Mon. dinner.
– Le Trait d’Union, 16 rue Gambetta. Tel. 04 70 34 24 61. Trait d’union, meaning hyphen, refers to the link that chef Vincent Hoareau seeks to create a link between classicism with modernity. Closed Sun., Mon.
– Hôtel de Paris (see below).

Choice hotel: Hotel de Paris, 23 rue de Paris. Tel. 04 70 44 00 58. A 4-star hotel with 32 rooms and suites, AC, spa, gastronomic restaurant (opening Sept. 2014), brasserie. Member of Chateaux & Hotels Collection.

Others sight in Moulins:
– Maison Mantin (Mantin Mansion). The home of an upper-class resident (a bourgeois) of the late 19th-century left more or less as it was and according to his will.
– The flamboyant Gothic Notre-Dame Cathedral of Moulins and its late 15th-century/early 16th-century triptych of the Virgin of the Apocalypse.
– Le Jacquemart, a15th-century belfry.

Near Moulins:

– Souvigny and its Romanesque abbey church containing the tombs of the Dukes of Bourbon.
– Saint Menoux Church, another beautiful Romanesque church, and its legend that sticking ones head in the hole of the saint’s tomb will render the simple-minded more intelligent.
– Bourbon-l’Archambault, an old spa town containing ruins of a fortified castle.
– Vineyards of Saint-Pourçain, a little-known appellation using Gamay and Pinot Noir for the reds and rosés and Chardonnay, Sauvignon and Tressallier (a local grape) for the whites.

See this companion article about sights, food and drink in Moulins and the surrounding region: Tasted, Tested in Allier.

© 2014, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Moulins (Auvergne) and the National Costume Center appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Discovered by three speleologists in 1994, the cave remarkably well preserved cave holds the work of some of mankind’s earliest artists, including some images/decorations dating back an estimated 36,000 years. The newly listed property encompasses the entire cavity as well as the landscape setting and the groundwater basin with its 177-foot natural arch of Pont-d’Arc.

For preservation reasons, few will ever have the privilege of visiting the actual cave. However, a replica, said to be the largest of its kind, will open to the public next year in the vicinity of the original in the Vallon Pont-d’Arc at the entrance to the gorges of the Ardèche River.

The immense Decorated Cave of Pont d’Arc, untouched for tens of millennia, presents three characteristics which are rarely combined: the age of the decorations, the quality of their conservation, and the wealth and abundance of artistic representations. Among the 1,000 drawings are 425 animal figures, with a bestiary of 14 different species, the majority of which are dangerous animals (cave-bears, woolly rhinoceros, mammoths, big cats, etc.), along with representations that are unique in Paleolithic cave art, such as a panther or an owl.

It’s often the herds of animals that get the most attention, but the most evocative and dramatic images are the human hands.

When it opens in the spring of 2015, the facsimile of the underground landscape (ten times the size of the replica of Lascaux, another great example of Paleolithic cave art in France) and the accompanying museum promise to reveal to the public the richness of the artistic achievements of the Aurignacian period.

Hervé Saulignac, the President of the General Council of the Ardèche, the department (sub-region) in which the cave is located, says, “It is a chance that this treasure of intelligence, sensitivity and human presence is in our area. It is our responsibility and our ambition to preserve this masterpiece. Tomorrow, the replica will allow each one of us to discover this jewel of humanity without damaging the original which is in an area protected for science and for our descendants.”

“Our descendants” here presumably refers not only to the Ardechois or to the French but to the future of mankind.

After 20 years of conversation measures and scientific study and with construction of the replica and the adjacent interpretation center well underway, UNESCO recognition validates the site’s universal significance while adding an attractive label for local tourist officials. Simultaneously, the UNESCO label of prestige also leads to great local, regional and national promotional efforts for the site and its surroundings. Some French sites have reported a 30% increase in tourist revenue for the years following listing as a World Heritage Site.

France is a perennial applicant for listing of its cultural heritage sites on the World Heritage List. In fact, applying for UNESCO recognition is something of a national sport in France in which regions compete with each other for national and international attention. Two French projects relative to wine, land and wine culture are to be decided at UNESCO’s June 2015 committee meeting in Berlin: the one concerns the “climats” (a mix of terroir and man-made parcels for cultivating vineyards) of Burgundy, the other concerns the slopes , cellars and producers (aka houses) of Champagne.

Two war-related files are currently being constituted for possible presentation by France within the next few years: to the north and east, recognition for the WWI memorial and funerary sites in France and Belgium due to the fact that for the first time in a major war the dead were honored as individuals; to the west and into the channel, aspects (as yet firmly defined) of the D-Day Landing Zone of Normandy. An application for the Chaîne des Puys, the chain of volcanic cones, domes and maars in the Massif Central, in competition to join the World Heritage class of 2014 as a natural site, failed as yet to receive recognition for not being universal enough (i.e. there are plenty of volcanic cones around the world).

The World Heritage List of cultural properties hit the 1000 mark with the inductees of 2014. The Decorated Cave of Pont-D’Arc is now the oldest property of the lot. France has 39 sites and zones on the list. Images of them can be seen here, an illustrated invitation to travel throughout the country.

More information about the cave can be found on the site of The Vallon-Pont-D’Arc Cave Project, where you can watch this video about the creation of the replica.

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