Quaismodo would be impressed were he to return now to the cathedral that he inhabited as Victor Hugo’s beloved and maligned hunchback. He would immediately feel at home within the stone walls and wooden frames of the towers of Notre-Dame. Yet the cathedral has also changed and brightened since he knew it as Hugo’s fictional bellringer in the 15th century. There are new elements and much has been restored over the centuries, including its most recent restoration from the fire of April 15, 2019. But I imagine that Quasimodo would be enthralled as we were as we climbed the southern tower, examined gargoyles and chimeras, took in the extraordinary view, stood before the great bells, and descended through the northern tower.

As you would expect, the 360-degree view of Paris is well worth the effort of climbing 424 steps, despite the chicken-wire enclosure from which we take it all in: the city’s rooftops and monuments, church towers and spires, river and bridges, and the spire of Notre-Dame itself rising right before us.

The view over the city isn’t all that makes this visit worthwhile. There’s more to the new climbing route than the grand view. Quasimodo would be in awe to stand face to face, as we did, with the cathedral’s two great bells or bourdons, though these aren’t the ones that he so loved to ring: the 6-ton bourdon Marie, cast in 2012, which sounds a do, and the 13-ton bourdon Emmanuel, cast in 1686, which sounds a fa. The latter is France’s second largest bourdon after the 18-tonner known as La Savoyarde at Sacré Coeur Basilica, the church that we see on the hill to the north.

In bringing the hunchback to life on the page in 1831, Hugo also called for new life to be breathed into the then-dilapidated cathedral. Over the ensuing decades, appointed architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc honored that call by leading a massive restoration while also reimagining missing or degraded elements, taking liberties here and there. The tower route gives a close-up view of several of the 54 animal and demon chimeras that he and an assistant designed. Those that were heavily damaged during the fire of 2019 have recently been replaced with copies, as has Viollet-le-Duc’s spire of 1859. Even if none of these were known to Quasimodo, we are tempted to do as he did and “spend whole hours crouched before one of the statues in solitary conversation with it.” But visitors today don’t have such luxury of such time when visiting the towers.

My own climbing group, comprised of journalists specialized in cultural heritage, had the enlightening pleasure of touring the towers in the company of Viollet-le-Duc’s current successor, Philippe Villeneuve, chief architect in charge of the restoration and reconstruction of Notre-Dame de Paris since the fire.

As we rose, he steered our eyes to various eras and elements of construction and major restoration. The current restoration work in response to the fire will likely continue through 2028, he said.

Even without Villeneuve’s insightful company, you’ll see along the way two major markers of his conceptual work. First, the massive oak spiral staircase, partially in double revolution, that Villeneuve designed for the passage from the second landing to the medieval stone staircase in the tower. Villeneuve’s staircase was shaped and puzzled together by an exceptional band of carpenters in Normandy. Throughout our visit, he sang praises to the dedicated, high-level artisans he’s worked with over the course of the restoration. As he points up to his work, a glimpse of the peak of the spire tatooed on his arm peeks out from beneath his sleeve.

Second, from the top of the south tower, you’ll look out to the real spire rising from the roof. It’s crowned by the flaming golden rooster—symbol of France and of the resurrected monument—that Villeneuve himself designed to replace the fallen, damaged rooster that has now been placed in one of the chapels inside the cathedral. On this national monument belong to the State, not the Church, the rooster crows above the Cross. View the full spire, accompanied by bells, on the 15-second video below.

On the way down, we glimpsed through windows “the forest” of oak beams, cut from throughout France, that form the roof beams. They replaced the medieval forest where the fire originated before consuming it into the night before the eyes of the world.

No more than 26 visitors are allowed to start the climb per 15-minute time slot. Contrast that with the lengthy queue down below leading to a shoulder-to-shoulder shuffle along the cathedral floor. Comparatively, a visit to the towers, culminating with the grand view (even if limited to 5 minutes), feels semi-private, nearly exclusive.

All that’s required is a timed ticket, to be reserved in advance, at a cost 16€ or free for under 18s and adults with the Paris Museum Paris or the Passion Monument pass. While you needn’t be a high-level athlete to climb the 424 steps to the top, do be aware of your own limitations before undertaking the endeavor. The winding staircases include some narrow passages less than 18-inches wide as well as low sections where someone over 5’10” or so is well advised to watch their head.

Along the way, there are levels to pause on, where one can learn a few historical tidbits on information panels about the towers and the bells. There is no elevator. There is no WC. Families are discouraged from bringing children under 6.

Timed ticket to the towers of Notre-Dame should be reserved only through the official site managed by France’s Center for Historical Monuments. Even free tickets require reservations.

From great heights in architectural history to great heights in culinary history

Epilogue: From great heights in architectural history we crossed over the Seine to great heights in culinary history as we pursued our conversation with Philippe Villeneuve at one of Paris’s other celebrated tours, La Tour d’Argent (The Silver Tower). That’s the famous gastronomic institution with the stunning view of the Notre-Dame’s chevet, the portion of the cathedral that radiates in an eastern flourish. Even with the crane and scaffolding that remain on that side of the cathedral, the view from the upper-floor restaurant is a sight for well-heeled, well-fed eyes. We, however, settled into the bar on the ground floor, where we were entertained and informed by Villeneuve’s insightful, cutting, wit-laden accounts of these past seven years of restoration—the wonder, the toil and the beauty of the work on the one hand and the egos, the politics and the back-stabbing on the other. Listening to his vision of architectural and decorative triumphs and failures and to his expression of emotional zeniths and nadirs, the current guardian of the temple seemed to embody both Viollet-le-Duc and Quasimodo. His thirst was quenched with water brought not by Esmeralda, however, but by a polished server from the Tour d’Argent.

As a further treat, André Terrail, owner of the Tour d’Argent made a gracious appearance. While the restaurant is heir to a history that begins with the creation of an elegant inn on this site in 1582, Terrail is heir to the celebrated restaurant that his grandfather, also named André Terrail, purchased in 1911. It was then a ground-floor restaurant, raised to the top in 1936. The Tour d’Argent has now developed into something of a “village,” to use the current Terrail’s term, with its restaurant, its rooftop and ground-floor bars, its grocer next door, its bakery across the street, and beside that its rotisserie. There’s even an apartment with the fab view that can be rented for the night (1800€).

Despite the Tour d’Argent’s visual affinity for Notre-Dame, I’m not promoting it here as the natural extension of a visit to the towers, however many Michelin stars its restaurant may or may not receive in a given year (in 2026 it has 1). Nevertheless, one’s got to go somewhere after the extraordinary experience of climbing to the top of the cathedral, and it might as well be somewhere that’s also earned its place in Paris history and lore, someplace accessible, if not to Quasimode, then perhaps to the likes of Victor Hugo, Viollet-le-Duc, Philippe Villeneuve, and yourself.

© 2026 by Gary Lee Kraut

Also read Notre-Dame: An Interview with Witnesses to a Dazzling Restoration

The post The Quasimodo Climb: Visiting the Towers of Notre-Dame de Paris appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

But I’d like you to remove your rose-colored glasses for now as I lead you into the shadows that are the subject of my new VoiceMap audio tour Paris of Dreams and Nightmares: The Dark Side of the City of Light. Along with the charm of its route through the central Right Bank of Paris, this is an unflinching journey through France’s dark past, where torture, assassination and terror are among the building blocks of the beauty that surrounds you.

The route passes major landmarks, vibrant streets, inviting cafés, alluring pastry shops and boutiques, soaring churches, and the playful Stravinsky Fountain, as it reveals both the enchantment of the present and the cruel events of the past.

Watch this video introduction before reading on.

These aren’t ghost stories or legends that I tell; these are historical events that shaped Paris as you see it today. In understanding the terrible building blocks of the City of Light, you’ll gain an important appreciation for how its beauty and brutality have coexisted throughout history.

Here’s one location covered on a tour, a memorial garden inaugurated in the summer of 2025:

The Dark Side of the City of Light now joins my VoiceMap audio tours to the Luxembourg Garden, the Tuileries Garden, and the Champs-Elysées as another of my essential self-guided walking tours to major aspects of Paris and its culture, splendor, history, and life today.

Though VoiceMap is primarily designed to provided GPS-guided audio tour for use on site, I’ve uploaded photos for each of the tour’s locations to allow armchair travelers to fully follow along. So you can listen from your home computer or your iPhone or Android anywhere even if you don’t have Paris plans. Then use the downloaded tour again whenever you do make it Paris.

The VoiceMap Touring App is available from the Google Play Store and the App Store. On your home computer just go to VoiceMap.me. Once you’ve signed up with VoiceMap and purchased the full tour, you can listen to it on your phone, tablet or computer, or all three, on site, on the road or at home.

Even without signing up, you can listen to the first three locations before deciding whether you want to download the full tour.

If, after downloading the app, you don’t land directly on one of my tours, you’ll find them easily by searching “Gary Kraut” in the VoiceMap search block, or by clicking or tapping directly on the author’s page of these Paris audio guides.

© 2025, Gary Lee Kraut

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Despite its significance in 20th-century history and its role in transforming the United States into a world power, the First World War sights, cemeteries and museums of France typically hold little interest for American travelers. Yet several are at Paris’s doorsteps: the Suresnes American Cemetery and the Lafayette Escadrille Memorial are both in the suburbs while the Musée de la Grande Guerre (Museum of the Great War) in Meaux is just 25 miles east along a meander in the Marne River.

In the history of the war, Meaux and the surrounding region are particularly associated with the First Battle of the Marne of September 1914 that pitted French and British forces against rapidly advancing German forces. By halting the German advance before its forces could reach Paris, the battle helped stave off a German victory while putting the belligerents on course for a long slog of trench warfare. Nearly four years later, in July 1918, the Second Battle of the Marne involved a final major German offense followed by an Allied counteroffensive that, with the participation now of American forces, would lead to the Armistice of November 11 and the defeat of Germany.

Meaux itself was not a battleground of the Second Battle of the Marne. It took place farther east and north, so the battlefields where Americans fought are therefore further out from Paris, such as in and around Chateau-Thierry, 35 miles northeast of Meaux. Yet long before the Museum of the Great War opened in 2011, Meaux had its American Monument. Also known as Tearful Liberty, the sculpture by Frederick William MacMonnies was dedicated in 1932, a gift from the United States to honor “heroic sons of France who dared all and gave all in the day of deadly peril.” The museum was created right nearby.

The core of the Museum of the Great War is the tremendous collection of objects from the First World War that had been amassed over more than 40 years by the historian and collector Jean-Pierre Verney. Under the guidance of Mayor Jean-François Copé (pictured at top of page addressing WWI reenactors), who continues to head this town of 56,000 and presides over the wider agglomeration of 107,000, the Greater Meaux region (Pays de Meaux) purchased Verney’s collection of 48,000 objects in 2005 and set about creating this museum to house them. The collection has since been enriched by thousands of additional telling objects from the war of 1914-1918, including major pieces such as a tank, a plane, a truck and artillery.

The museum’s permanent display begins by dialing back its historical clock to France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 and the ensuing decades of conflict and rivalry between France and the powerful, newly unified Germany. Through objects rather than lengthy descriptive panels, the displays then cover the First Battle of the Marne, trench warfare, weaponry and protections, uniforms, the daily lives of soldiers, treatment of the wounded, the United States’ entrance and participation in the war, the Second Battle of the Marne, women and society, attempts at creating a lasting peace, and more.

As interesting and accessible as the museum can be for uninformed visitors, it will be especially appealing to war buffs and collectors due to the depth and breadth of the collection.

Reenactment Weekend in September

Uninformed and informed visitors alike will find no more pleasurable time to visit the museum than the first weekend in September when First World War reenactors parade through the streets of Meaux then set up camp alongside the museum.

This year’s Saturday morning parade started at the covered food market and ended an hour later at the town’s war memorial, just past the medieval cathedral. There, the reenactors gathered for the laying of wreaths and the playing of La Sonnerie aux Morts, France’s bugle call for military funerals and memorial ceremonies. (The Sunday morning parade marched through other quarters.)

The museum is informative and insightful at any time of year, yet visiting over reenactment weekend additionally gives visitors the opportunity to meet reenactors and share in their comradery and their passion for the historical period from 1914 to 1918 and its uniforms and paraphernalia and ways of life.

Meet some of the reenactors in this France Revisited video, which also contains a presentation of the museum by its director, Audrey Chaix.

Along with its vast permanent collection, the museum is currently hosting two temporary exhibitions. The first, “Trenches,” explains the complexities of the trench system that so defined fighting and near-stalemate during the war. It runs until Jan. 2, 2023. The second, Women in the Great War presents, in the forecourt of the museum, photography and archival material revealing the role of women during the war. It runs until Aug. 14, 2023.

Museum of the Great War / Musée de la Grande Guerre, Rue Lazare Ponticelli, 77100 Meaux. Open 9:30AM to 6PM daily except Tuesday. Entrance: 10€; 7€ with regional public transportation Navigo Pass and for over 65; 5€ for under 26. Free on Nov. 11 and the first Sunday of each month.

The Meaux Tourist Office, 1 place Doumer, is a 10-minute walk from the train station and several minutes past the Gothic Saint Etienne Cathedral.

Brie cheese

Meaux has more to offer than wartime memories. As cheese lovers in France are well aware, Meaux is a part of brie country. Brie is the historic name of the region directly to the east of Paris. As a location, the name has largely disappeared from the map other than at the tail end of the names of several small towns. As a cheese, brie is known around the world.

Yet Brie without a geographical title of nobility is not a protected appellation of origin—it can be produced anywhere in the world as a style of soft cow’s milk cheese. Brie de Meaux, however, can only be produced in the swath of the region that passes this way starting just east of Paris. It’s much tastier than the pasteurized bries made beyond the region and abroad. Brie de Melun (Melun is a town in the southeast of the Greater Paris region), also made from raw cow’s milk, is slightly stronger and saltier. So Brie de Meaux and Brie de Melun are the bries to seek out when in France. If you’ve got a nose for cheese, it can be particularly interesting to compare the two. Cheese hunters setting out to discover the variety of regional bries might also seek out Brie Noir, a far less common brie that has been aged for about one year to the point of becoming dark, crumbly, chewy and more earthy and still stronger in taste.

In the same general area of town as the museum, one can learn about the production of appellation brie cheeses at Fromagerie de Meaux Saint Faron on rue Jehan de Brie.

Getting to Meaux from Paris

By train, Meaux is 30-40 minutes from Paris’s Gare de l’Est (East Station). No ticket is necessary for holders of the 5-zone Navigo Pass. The museum is two miles from the station. A regular bus from the Meaux station takes about 10 minutes to get there. There’s also a free shuttle to the museum from the station on weekends and during school vacations in the region.

By car, Meaux might be visited as a first stop on a day or more of touring war sights further to the east, before heading on to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, Belleau Wood and the American Monument at Chateau-Thierry.

By bike, those who wish to combine sport with a visit to the war museum can reach Meaux from Paris after a 32-mile pedal that largely follows along the Canal de l’Ourcq. The Canal de l’Ourcq begins just after the Bassin de la Villette toward the northeast edge of Paris. After a mile along the canal, the capital is left behind, then apartment buildings, train tracks and office buildings give way to suburban residential housing which eventually disappears in favor of parks, wood, fields, country roads, villages, and finally some more trafficked roads as one enters Meaux. Much of the ride is along the canal’s tow path (mostly paved, some dirt) but there are occasional stretches of road biking. Check the weather, rent a bike first thing in the morning or the previous evening, then set out at 9 or 10 for an athletic 3-hour ride or a more leisurely 4+, have lunch in town, visit the museum, then ease your way back to Paris by riding to the Meaux train station and taking your bike onto the train.

© 2022, Gary Lee Kraut

On November 10, 2022, France Revisited will be hosting Zoom conversation with a Ben Brands, a historian with the American Battle Monuments Commission, to discuss the history of the American WWI cemeteries and monuments of France and how best to visit them. Details will be sent out to subscribers of the France Revisited Newsletter.

Readers interested in private touring of the American WWI sights and other highlights in the regions where they’re located may contact Gary Lee Kraut personally by writing through this site.

The post Meaux’s Museum of the Great War, WWI Reenactors and Brie (Video) appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

For centuries until the French Revolution, the extension and beautification of Paris was largely a royal affair. Among the last major urban developments in the capital before titles and heads would fall was Place Louis XV, now called Place de la Concorde, Paris’s largest square, a nearly 20-acre zone between the Tuileries Garden and the Champs-Elysées.

In 1793, both Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette would know the sharp edge of the guillotine on the square (renamed Place de la Révolution for the occasion), but 30 years earlier the Sixteenth’s predecessor and grandfather, Louis XV, arrived of his own free will to bask in royal veneration as he inaugurated a bronze equestrian statue in his honor. Facing the splendid royal city with calm strength and crowned with laurel leaves, the statue was the focal point around which western Paris would develop, beginning with this very square where two monumental palaces were then under construction.

Ange-Jacques Gabriel, the star architect of the day, had been commissioned to create identical Neoclassical palaces to adorn the northern flank of the new square. These enormously expensive buildings, called hôtels in French, were not exactly purpose-built, beyond the purpose of creating an impressive backdrop for the aforesaid statue. (In French, a hôtel, in addition to designating a place of lodging, refers to a town house or city mansion or administrative building.)

The western building became a private residence. It is now partly occupied by the luxury hotel Le Crillon and the Automobile Club of France. Meanwhile, the eastern building was consigned in 1765 to the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne, an institution tasked with furnishing and maintaining the furnishings of royal palaces (Versailles, Compiègne, Fontainebleau, Rambouillet, Saint-Germain-en-Laye and others.) Think of it as the royal furniture storehouse, though it stored and ordered more than furniture. From beds and chairs to bronze clock, crown jewels, fancy firearms and linens, the Garde-Meuble oversaw the ordering and storage of all manner of decorative elements. Its head administrator or intendant was in contact with the major craftsmen and designers of the era, along with a substantial budget. (The Garde-Meuble is ancestor to the Mobilier National, which currently maintains and restores furnishings, ancient and contemporary, for official use by the State.)

Alas, it wasn’t exactly a secure location for national treasures: revolutionaries raided the royal arms collections on July 13, 1789 before heading to the Bastille the following day, and the crown jewels were stolen in 1792. But eventually there was enough calm in the air to optimistically rebaptize the square on which it stood Place de la Concorde.

The French Naval Command began to use a portion of the Garde-Meuble during the Revolution, and by the of the 18th century it had taken over the entire premises, leading the building to be called Hôtel de la Marine. The Navy continued to occupy the building until 2015, when the military consolidated its branches in a new location in southern Paris. The destiny of the Hôtel de la Marine was then up for grabs.

There was no shortage of ideas on how to re-purpose this glorious chunk of central Paris real estate. What re-opened in June 2021, after four years of renovation, is a hybrid solution: a museum dedicated to the building’s first mission as the royal garde-meuble and its second as navy headquarters; an upscale café; a formal restaurant; a giftshop; an art gallery; the headquarters for two foundations, and several floors of co-working rental space.

Despite its name, the museum in the Hôtel de la Marine is not a pendant to the Museum of the Army at the Invalides. While there are traces of the naval presence—a gallery of “war ports” endowed by Napoleon III, the anchor motifs on ceiling fixtures—along with a tactile display telling about famous French marine officers and explorers, the dozen rooms, large and small, that can be visited largely refer to the building’s initial function as a décor storehouse.

There were only two intendants of the Garde-Meuble over the Louis XV-Louis XVI period that the institution was headquartered here: the intellectual, libertine Pierre-Elisabeth de Fontanieu (from 1772 to 1784) and the more conventional and less imaginative Marc-Antoine Thierry de Ville-d’Avray (from 1784 to 1789), the latter killed during the Revolution. Both left their mark on their private apartments, which were royally furnished and located above the ground-floor storerooms. Painstakingly restored, the human-size living space and offices occupied by these two upper-management bureaucrats are the primary rooms that one visits here while wearing a well-fitting headset through which you learn about their lives and times, major historical events and especially the décor.

Visitors can crab-walk through the narrow, mirrored love-nest created by Fontanieu (though the erotica was later replaced with playful cherubs) and the airy, ostentatious bedrooms later created for Ville-d’Avray and his wife. Electric “candlelight” adds to the charm of these rooms, though the electric cords drooping from the faux candles refutes some of that charm.

The necessary and instructive audio tour is upbeat enough to engage the listener, while the rooms themselves are presented as though still occupied: the dining room table is littered with oyster shells, as it would be after an intimate, upper-class dinner; the gaming tables are cluttered with cards and betting tokens, and the office desks are swamped by paperwork, ledgers and teacups. Beyond the living quarters, the eye is further treated to the gilt decorative work and large chandeliers of galleries subsequently used as ballrooms by Napoleon I, Charles X and Napoleon III, given life during the tour through video recreations of dances past.

This slice-of-life scenery is possible only after years of treasure hunts for authentic furnishings and period fabrics. Curators and private donors have scooped up past inventory at private auctions. The dining room furniture appropriated by former president Giscard d’Estaing has been returned from the Elysée Palace by President Emmanuel Macron. Visitors from Boston may recognize the Ville-d’Avray bedroom furniture since some of the original furnishings are now in their local museum. WWII buffs will note in that bedroom the hole in the inner shutter that was made by the German occupiers (the German Navy commandeered the building from 1940 to 1944) to watch out for the arrival of liberating forces on Rue de Rivoli in August 1944.

Toward the end of the visit one steps out onto the terrace behind the building’s signature colonnade for a panoramic view of Place de la Concorde and monuments beyond it: the Grand Palais, the Eiffel Tower, the National Assembly, the dome of the Invalides, the greenery of the Tuileries Garden—a view that’s nearly worth the price of admission itself.

Because, yes, there is a cost to this decorative time travel: 13€ for the 45-minute Salon & Loggia tour (with headset) that gives access to the ceremonial rooms and the panoramic view or 17€ for a 90-minute Grand Tour (with headset) which additionally includes the living quarters and private offices, a dozen rooms in all. (Free for visitors under 25.) The indicated times are those of the full audio (available in English) but you aren’t required to stay in each room to examine each decorative item. Seventy minutes or so is a more likely time for the Grand Tour.

Given the choice, we suggest springing for the Grand Tour, in which you have a choice between the following themes: The Age of Enlightenment (i.e. the 18th century), Traveling through Time, and two Family themes, one for adults and one for children. Unless visiting with children (who may find the museum a yawn anyway) and unless you’re particularly interested in 18th history and decorative arts, choose Travelling through Time, which nevertheless gives plenty of information about the 18th century and the décor. Timed reservations are mandatory and help avoid over-crowding of the smaller rooms.

While the colonnade of the Hôtel de la Marine has for 250 years been part of the Parisian landscape, the possibility for the public to now go inside for a view of its splendor is a welcome addition to the city’s museumscape.

The caféscape of Paris also benefits from the opening of Café Lapérouse, named for an 18th-century marine officer and explorer (and a famous restaurant across the river). It’s a fine, chic and pricey port to weigh anchor at any time of day, whether for a morning croissant (3€) or a lobster salad sandwich (35€) or a croque-monsieur (24€) or a late afternoon drink. A ticket to the museum isn’t necessary to enter the café, the courtyard or the gift shop.

The formal restaurant, La Mimosa, directed by multi-starred chef Jean-François Piège, will open in September. According to advance press, it will have a Southern-French influence and France’s first devilled egg bar.

The State’s Centre des Monuments Nationaux, which operates the building, has also made a 20-year deal with the Qatari Al Thani family to present its art collection in the Hôtel de la Marine. The inaugural show will open in the fall.

Hôtel de la Marine, 2 place de la Concorde, 8th arrondissement. Metro: Concorde. Open daily 10:30 am – 7:00 pm; Fridays until 10 pm.

© 2021, Corinne LaBalme and Gary Lee Kraut.

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The full one-hour presentation can be viewed below.

Part 1 of this series, which examined the creation and evolution of luxury hotels in Paris from 1855 to 1909, i.e. from the era of Napoleon III though the Belle Epoque, can be viewed here.

Part 3, covering the history of luxury hotels on the French Riviera, from the Hotel de Paris in Monaco to the Byblos in Saint Tropez by way of the Grand-Hotel du Cap-Ferrat, the Negresco in Nice, Les Belles Rives in Juan-les-Pins, the Hotel du Cap-Eden Rock on Cap d’Antibes, and the Carlton in Cannes, can be viewed here.

Jean-Pierre Soutric follows in the footsteps of three generations in the hotel industry. His great-grandmother opened a hotel in 1914, just before the outbreak of the First World War. Jean-Pierre has held marketing positions at leading hotel groups, including Four Seasons, with which he worked for 20 years. Passionate about history, culture, art and the evolution of French elegance and style through the centuries, he now works as a Paris-based consultant advising luxury hotels in France on how to live up to the expectations of demanding and well-heeled travelers from around the world.

Gary Lee Kraut has been inspiring and informing travelers to France for three decades. His unparalleled experience as an editor, travel writer, journalist, lecturer, consultant and guide has made him one of the most trusted voices for English-speaking travelers, armchair travelers and travel professionals interested in France.

Part 2 was originally subtitled “From the Roaring 1920s to the Vaccinated 2020s,” but our story actually begins a decade earlier, with two hotel openings in 1910 and 1913, shortly before the outbreak of the war. You’ll learn about the following hotels in this presentation:

Starting time on video – Hotel – Year opened

00:44 – Guess where?
07:56 – Lutetia – 1909
18:36 – Plaza Athénée – 1913
23:37 – San Régis – 1923
25:00 – George V – 1928
35:11 – Raphael – 1925
36:10 – Bristol – 1925
44:46 – Royal Monceau – 1928
49 :04 – The Peninsula Paris – 2014
49 :21 – Shangri-La Paris – 2010
50 :09 – Mandarin Oriental Paris – 2011
52 :01 – Cheval Blanc – 2021
52 :51 – Bvlgari – 2021
53 :20 – Le Grand Contrôle – 2021

Stay tuned for Part 4, coming in the fall.

Invitations to attend future France Revisited conversations and presentations live are sent out through the France Revisited Newsletter. If you aren’t already a subscriber, you can signing up now to receive the France Revisited Newsletter.

© 2021, Gary Lee Kraut. All rights reserved.

The post The History of Luxury Hotels in Paris, Part 2, 1910-2021 (Video) appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

France Revisited’s “Conversation with an Expert” series has launched with the first part of a 4-part discussion between Gary Lee Kraut, editor of France Revisited, and Jean-Pierre Soutric, a leading French specialist and consultant on luxury hotels around the world, on the history of luxury hotels in Paris, on the Riviera and along the Atlantic Coast.

In Part 1, which can be viewed below, Gary and Jean-Pierre examine the creation and evolution of luxury hotels in Paris from 1855 to 1909, i.e. from the era of Napoleon III though the Belle Epoque, and is illustrated with historical and contemporary images of hotels created during that period that still hold their heads high today within the triangle formed by the Louvre, the Garnier Opera and Place de la Concorde, including the (Grand) Hôtel du Louvre, the Grand Hôtel, the Ritz, the Regina, the Meurice and the Crillon. The difference between a palace hotel, which is the most prestigious category in the official French rating system, and other luxury hotels is discussed. Major historical events and famous figures associated with these hotels are presented as are their contemporary bars and tea rooms.

Jean-Pierre Soutric follows in the footsteps of three generations in the hotel industry. His great-grandmother opened a hotel in 1914, just before the outbreak of the First World War. Jean-Pierre has held marketing positions at leading hotel groups, including Four Seasons, with which he worked for 20 years. Passionate about history, culture, art and the evolution of French elegance and style through the centuries, he now works as a Paris-based consultant advising luxury hotels in France on how to live up to the expectations of demanding and well-heeled travelers from around the world.

Gary Lee Kraut has been inspiring and informing travelers to France for three decades. His unparalleled experience as an editor, travel writer, journalist, lecturer, consultant and guide has made him one of the most trusted voices for English-speaking travelers, armchair travelers and travel professionals interested in France.

Part 2, covering luxury hotels in Paris create from 1910 to 2021, continues here on France Revisited.

Part 3, covering the history of luxury hotels on the French Riviera, from the Hotel de Paris in Monaco to the Byblos in Saint Tropez by way of the Grand-Hotel du Cap-Ferrat, the Negresco in Nice, Les Belles Rives in Juan-les-Pins, the Hotel du Cap-Eden Rock on Cap d’Antibes, and the Carlton in Cannes, can be viewed here.

Stay tuned for Part 4, coming in the fall.

Invitations to attend future France Revisited conversations and presentations live are sent out through the France Revisited Newsletter. If you aren’t already a subscriber, you can signing up now to receive the France Revisited Newsletter.

© 2021. All rights reserved.

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I’ve been going to church a lot lately—for the art, the architecture, the history, the decorative flourishes, the organs, to get out of the rain, to hang out, what with museums and cafés closed during this phase of the pandemic. I’ll call a friend and say, “Hey, want to meet at church?,” though neither of us is Catholic.

We take our hats off when we go in. It’s the respectful thing to do. We respect the sign that says to remove our hats, while the clergy and worshippers respect that we’re not there for worship. Just looking. Mutual respect, of necessity and by law, since most the most notable churches of Paris—those most worth visiting for their art, architecture, organs, etc.—don’t belong to the Church, they belong to the city, to Parisians. They’re our churches. No religious litmus test is required of the visitor. Praise the secular Republic!

The fact that many churches in France don’t belong to the denomination that holds services in them may sound like an aberration, but public they are.

A bit of history will clarify before the video tour at the end of this article.

Blasphemy, Equal Rights and Vandalism

Prior to the French Revolution, under the ancien régime, the vast majority of French were Catholic by virtue of baptism—less so by faith, as the Revolution would show. Religious nationalism, as we would call it today, would not be part of the social order of the new republic. Neither would blasphemy be a crime; it was decriminalized in 1791—not just regarding the prophets, saints and objects that Catholics hold sacred, but for what Protestants and Jews revere as well, since 1791 was also the year that they were given full and equal rights of citizenship. What they held sacred could be blasphemed or ignored as well. (There weren’t many Muslims in France to speak of at the time, so the Revolution wasn’t concerned with Islam per se.)

Freed of the domination of Catholicism, some also felt free to desecrate religious art, architecture and burial sites that were reminders of pre-Revolutionary repression. The term “vandalism” was coined in 1794 to describe willful destruction worthy of the Vandals, but the government soon put a stop to that, for it wasn’t Church property that was being damaged but public property. Indeed, property once considered to belong to the Church or to nobility now belonged to the State. Hadn’t it all been created on the backs of the people?

But what to do with all that property? How to allow the Church to function on public property? How to pay for its maintenance? After the revolutionary decade, the Napoleonic era went a long way in sorting that out with a heavy hand, but throughout the 19th century there were doubts, conflicts and upheavals with respect to the separation of Church and State, even while new churches and now temples and synagogues were being built. Sacrilege–sacrilège!—even became a punishable offense for a time, though no longer, hallelujah. Of course, it’s one thing to disrespect a worshipper’s divine mysteries or Biblical bluster, while another to slander the worshipper or incite hate.

It’s a complicated story, as it is everywhere, but if there’s one chapter that’s particular to France and of which all visitors should be aware, it’s the one entitled “The Law of December 9, 1905 Concerning the Separation of Churches and the State”—the Law of 1905, for short.

The Law of 1905 Concerning the Separation of Churches and the State

The Law of 1905 establishes the principles of secularism (laïcité), guarantees freedom of worship, and defines (along with subsequent texts) the ownership and use of previously built religious edifices and their contents. Here’s the actual law in French. Here’s a good overview in English, including the historical context.

Generally speaking, as a result of the law and the Vatican’s response to it, municipalities own churches, parish chapels and presbyteries built prior to 1905 along with most of the furnishing, decorative elements and artworks existing at the time. State-sponsored temples and synagogues, too, fall under the law, though there were far fewer of them at the time. The State, meanwhile, has ownership and responsibility for cathedrals (at least those originally built as cathedrals prior to the Revolution, since some have changed roles and others have since been built) and chapels on state-owned property. Notre-Dame, the cathedral of Paris, is therefore owned by the State.

(The Orthodox church was scarcely present in Paris in 1905. And other than a small building that went up in the 1850s for Muslim funeral services in the city-run Père Lachaise Cemetery, there was no purposely built mosque in Paris until the construction in the 1920s of the Great Mosque of Paris.)

Not Eternal Damnation but Endless Restoration

France has 42,258 parish churches and chapels, of which only 1951 belong the dioceses, according to a 2016 inventory of the nation’s Conference of Bishops. The City of Paris owns a whopping 96 religious buildings: 85 churches, 9 Protestant temples, and two synagogues. Among these, 68 are officially designated as Historical Monuments and benefit from certain protections and measures of preservation as such. The Catholic Church or a Protestant or Jewish association has been granted use but does not own those places of worship.

While “The Republic neither recognizes, nor pays salaries for, nor subsidizes any form of worship” (Article 2 of the Law of 1905), the maintenance and restoration of State- and city-owned property falls upon its owner. Contrary to when many of these religious edifices were built, no one dare argue that tax money will help save souls and steer sheep to heaven. Lofty enough is the ambition of ensuring that the roof doesn’t leak and that fine works of art don’t fall apart. The Law of 1905 didn’t send France to eternal damnation, but it did set the nation on the path to endless restoration.

Instead of looking to heaven for answer, we look to the budget. As you can imagine, a sizable budget is required to maintain and restore the 96 city-owned religious edifices, 40,000 works of art, 130 organs, acres of stained glass and decorative painting and much liturgical furnishing. The City of Paris earmarks 10-15€ million (about $12-18 million) per year for these projects. (The City of Paris did not return repeated requests for the specific figure in the current budget.) Contributions from the state (through the Ministry of Culture), foundations (this, for example), corporate sponsors and private donors add a few million to the budget each year, assigned to specific project, from structural work to the restoration of a chapel or a work of art.

As examples of major maintenance and restoration projects: The recently completed restoration of the interior of Saint-Germain-des-Prés cost 6.4 million euros. Cleaning and repairing the southern façade of Saint Eustache at Les Halles cost 2.3 million, with a large wish-list yet to go inside. The Trinity Church in the 9th arrondissement is now in the midst of a 26-million-euro facelift. The city has earmarked 6.6 million for work on the belltower and northern transept of Saint Gervais, behind City Hall. Etcetera, etcetera.

As noted above, Notre-Dame belongs to the State so restoration efforts there are typically minimal on the Paris budget. However, the cathedral was still smoldering from the fire of April 15, 2019 when the mayor of Paris pledged a public contribution of 50 million euros on behalf of Parisians. (Overall pledges, public and private, eventually approached one billion.)

Guide to Church Visits

Paris isn’t Rome, of course. The City of Light has neither the breath nor depth nor intricacy of the ecclesiastic (dis)order of the Eternal City. Nevertheless, to take measure of the churchscape of Paris, residents and visitors can pick up a booklet entitled Guide des Visites d’Eglises (Guide to Church Visits). Available free in many churches and at the Paris Tourist Office, it indicates 112 churches and places of worship and provides brief descriptions—in French and in English—of their history and architectural and artistic points of interest. The booklet is published by the Catholic organization Art Culture et Foi / Paris (foi means faith, not to be confused with foie, meaning liver, as in foie gras).

Created in 1989, the organization’s mission is to undertake, encourage and support cultural and artistic activities in the diocese of Paris. The booklet therefore only concerns Christian places of worship. In addition to Catholic churches, it lists some Protestant temples and Orthodox churches, the more historic of which were built as Catholic churches then later designated by the State or the city for use by the other Christian denominations.

The city-owned synagogues naturally have no place in the booklet. For information about visiting the Great Synagogue, la Grande Synagogue de Paris, see here. For information on visiting the Great Mosque, la Grande Mosquée de Paris, see here.

Not all those listed in the booklet are property of the City of Paris since it also includes churches and chapels built after 1905. Most are open daily while others can be visited on a regular bases, though they may have special requirements for security reasons. (Smaller churches may consider walking around during mass as an intrusion, though you’re generally able to stand in the back if you don’t feel like taking a seat.) Not all are worth the detour. However, all offer free guided tours (whether rarely, occasionally or often), conducted by volunteers, parishioners or members of Art Culture et Foi / Paris. Times and dates are indicated. Thirty-eight of the listings have QR codes, which are also posted in the churches, for further information on your smartphone. (The few Paris churches and chapels worth visiting but not found the booklet are absent because they don’t offer guided tours, such as Sacré Coeur.)

With or without further information, curiosity is rewarded. If a church door is open, why not remove your hat and walk in? I do. As I say, I’ve been going to church a lot lately. Here are some that I’ve visited:

Video: Gary Goes to Church

© 2021, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Gary Goes To Church in Paris, and So Should You (Video) appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

The view from the King’s Pavilion at the Royal Estate of Marly is forlorn. Just over four miles from the relentless restoration of Versailles, all that’s left of what was once Louis XIV’s most precious secondary residence is fragments: a cobblestone ramp framed by a stone wall, an outline of a pleasure palace, an alignment of naked trees, a small trooping of trimmed evergreens, water basins without ornaments—scarcely a hint of splendor.

Some of my sense of desolation undoubtedly comes from visiting in the grey-brown damp of winter. I imagine that in warmer, drier seasons one could spend a wonderful morning here playing Frisbee with a Labrador or golden retriever. But I don’t have one.

Still, I’m glad that I’ve come, even in January and despite the complication of getting here. I’ve come to understand the rise and fall of Marly.

The Royal Estate of Marly, located on the edge of the town of Marly-le-Roi, is only 12 miles west of Paris, but it takes an abundance of historical curiosity and a suburban adventure to get you here. Worth it? Not worth it? You be the judge. The bleak landscape certainly has atmosphere. Ruins put grandeur in perspective. And the little museum that recently opened just within the entrance to the estate tells of Marley’s heyday. Other evidence of Marly’s splendor can be seen in Paris, as I’ll explain later. First some background.

Marly is situated nearly midway between Versailles to the south and Saint-Germain-en-Laye to the north. Saint-Germain-en-Laye has a much older royal castle. Louis XIV was born there in 1638. He was born in the “new” chateau of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, to be precise, while only the “old” chateau remains today. By the mid-point in his adult reign, the king had three major residences within a short distance: Versailles, Marly and Saint Germain. Add to those the royal residences of the Tuileries and the Louvre in Paris. Also noted on this map is the location of writer Alexandre Dumas’s Château de Monte Cristo.

The Creation of Marly

King since the age of 4 years and 8 months, Louis XIV took control of the reins of power at age 23, in 1661. He immediately set about developing the palace of Versailles. In 1682, after two decades of construction and landscaping, he declared Versailles the official seat of the monarchy. Though intense construction would continue at Versailles after 1682, Louis XIV simultaneously then set his sights on developing the more private residence of Marly, an easy carriage-ride away.

Corresponding with this period, in 1683, Marie-Theresa, his queen, died, and several months later, Louis married Madame de Maintenon in secret.

As with Versailles, Louis XIV gave much input to plans for the pleasure palace of Marly and to its gardens, basins and fountains. As at Versailles, he followed the construction closely. The lead architect was Jules-Hardouin Mansart, who also marked the latter decades of the 17th century with such monumental works as the Hall of Mirrors, among other developments, at Versailles and the Dome of the Invalides and Place Vendome in Paris. Charles Le Brun, who provided the decorative elements for the Hall of Mirrors, among many other rooms at Versailles, also had a hand in decorating Marly. However, Marly’s brilliance was not of the in-your-face kind as at Versailles but of the luxuriant get-away kind.

Louis first stayed at Marly in 1686, and from then until his death in 1715 this was his primary second home. While the king reveled in the glitz and glamour and omnipresent public at Versailles, he enjoyed frequent breaks at Marly, sojourning at the estate on average every couple of weeks for several days. Here he would spend time with the royal family and with Madame de Maintenon and a relatively limited number of courtiers. The etiquette and the dress code at Marly were more relaxed than at Versailles. “Sire, Marly,” courtiers would plead to the king to allow them to counted among the lucky few. In his final years he would come more often and for longer stays, spending more than one third of the year at Marly.

Garden walks, card games, lawn games and fairground-type rides were among the royal pastimes and especially hunting in the surrounding forest, before his health declined.

Unlike Versailles and other palaces and castles built as a single structure, the constructions on the estate of Marly had a fragmented layout. The king’s pavilion, containing a central reception area and apartments for the royal family, was surrounded by a constellation of 12 smaller pavilions for selects guests.

The Machine of Marly

The pavilions of Marly have been largely forgotten, other than a few glimpses in the Marly Museum. When the history of Marly is evoked today, it’s less to speak of the estate than of its sculpted horses, now in Paris, and its Machine, long gone.

The Machine of Marly was a massive engineering project involving a complex array of pumps and lifts that carried water from the Seine River to feed the insatiable thirst of the fountains and basins first at Marly then also at Versailles. Though pumped from the Seine only two miles away in the town of Bougival, the great feat was to use the force of the river to lift water 531 feet so as to carry it over the hillside and onto an aqueduct that sloped gradually toward Marly, then to Versailles. It was late-17th-century engineering at its finest and likely noisiest.

The quantity of water supplies by the Machine allowed for the operation of cascading fountains at Marly, including one called “The River” that flowed toward the royal pavilion before feeding lower fountains, basins and ponds within the estate’s formal gardens and precisely edged groves. Though in constant need of repair, the Machine as it was more or less designed operated until the early 19th century, when a steam engine was built as its energy source. That was then replaced by a hydraulic process later in the century. Scant evidence of the complex can be seen today by the Seine, where the most visible remnant is the 19th-century pumping station and the rows of trees up the hill that follow the former path along which the water was carried.

A display in the museum on the edge of the estate demonstrates how the Machine operated.

The Horses of Marly

Among the ponds fed by the water network was the Horse Pond or Drinking Pool. At its entrance stood two majestic marble equestrian statues: Mercury Riding Pegasus and Fame Riding Pegasus. They are the work of sculptor Antoine Coysevox in 1702. Several years after Louis XIV’s death in 1715, Coysevox’s horses were placed in the royal garden of the Tuileries in Paris.

Marly was also used by the Louis XIV’s successors, the Fifteenth and Sixteenth of that name, though much less so. Louis XV showed enough interest in Marly to order some restoration work and to stay here occasionally but not enough to detract from the attention he paid to other more modern royal playgrounds that he developed in the middle of the 18th century. Scoring an invitation during Louis XV’s time was easier for courtiers. In place of the equestrian statues of Coysevox in the Tuileries, the king commissioned Guillaume Coustou the Elder, Coysevox’s nephew, to create another pair, called Horses Restrained by a Groom. Both sets are referred to as the Horses of Marly, though the term is particularly used in speaking of Coustou’s pair. Created in created in 1745, these masterpieces of the Rococo period are among the most famous of 18th-century French sculptures. (Coustou’s brother Nicolas also created sculptures for Marly.)

Louis XVI was still less involved in the royal estate of Marly than his predecessor. Nevertheless, he did visit. His final stay took place just three weeks before the storming of the Bastille.

The Marly Courtyard at the Louvre

With the fall of the monarchy, Marly, like Versailles, become property of the French Republic. Statuary, tapestries and furnishings were brought to Paris for public exhibition. Coustou’s horses were placed at the entrance to the Champs-Elysées. Copies stand there today, as the originals have since been brought into the Louvre. So have Coysevox’s.

After visiting the Royal Estate of Marly to feel its absence and to learn its history, I’ve come to the Louvre to admire samplings of that finery. There, in what is now called the Marly Courtyard, Coustou’s horses rear above a collection of brilliant sculptural work from the vanished gardens. As first-time visitors crush toward the must-sees in the Louvre’s Denon (southern) and Sully (eastern) wings, I take the northern escalator into the Richelieu Wing. In the glass covered courtyard, allowing for natural lighting, stands an impressive array of the statuary originally made for Marly. Coustou’s horses are staged in the courtyard as theatrically as the Winged Victory of Samothrace in the opposite wing of the museum, while Coysevox’s horses take flight with Mercury and Fame behind them, and other exquisite works commissioned by Louis XIV toward the end of his reign further display choice samples of the splendor that was Marly.

See this video of the Marly Courtyard produced by the Louvre.

The Dismantling of Marly

While prime pieces of marble artistry were brought to Paris, the furnishings of Marly were sold off by the State. Woodwork was cut up and sold. And in 1799 the estate of Marly itself was sold.

Napoleon bought back the Marly property for the state in 1811. By then the buildings had for the most part been dismantled and sold for scrap. The emperor wasn’t about to rehabilitate a Bourbon adobe anyway. What attracted him to Marly was its forest, prime territory for hunting. The estate therefore became an imperial hunting ground, then after the fall of the Empire a royal hunting ground, and eventually a presidential hunting ground. It remained that way until 2009. Bikers, hikers and Sunday strollers now take to the Forest of Marly.

The Estate of Marly (though not the museum) is now administratively joined with the Estate of Versailles, making for a thought-provoking contrast between the two: on the one hand, the eye-popping views, budget, crowds and commerce of an international bucket-lister; on the other, the ghostly reminder of royal pedigree at what is now essentially a local park and extensive woods.

The Museum of the Royal Estate of Marly

Operated by the local municipality, the museum is dedicated to the history of the estate. Several original paintings and prints and pieces of furniture provide slight glimpses of the estate’s past, but the interest of the museum isn’t so much its historical artefacts as the telling of the history of Marly through its displays, including one that explains the functioning of the Machine. Explanatory notes are only in French for now. Notices in English are planned for the end of the year. Whether you speak French or not, a guide can truly help draw you into the creation and life of this nearly forgotten royal residence. See the museum’s website for guided tour possibilities or to inquire for a private tour.

Musée du Domaine Royal de Marly (Museum of the Royal Estate of Marly), 1 Grille royale – Parc de Marly, 78160 Marly-le-Roi. 7€, free for children under 12. Closed Monday and Tuesday. See website for precise opening times.

Getting to the Estate of Marly

As noted earlier, visiting the Estate of Marly is a suburban adventure, one best reserved for those with an abundance of historical curiosity and a willingness to confront the logistics of navigating the loops of the Seine to the west of Paris.

Consider combining it with other sites in the area, particularly Saint-Germain-en-Laye to the north and the Chateau de Monte Cristo (see below) in Port-Marly, between Marly and Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Including Versailles is an alternative approach due to its proximity both geographical and historical, though I imagine that anyone curious about Marly has already visited Versailles.

Setting aside Versailles then, consider three possibilities ways of a day involving a visit to Marly. All require a GPS or detailed map.

1. From Paris by train

From Paris’s Saint Lazare Station, take the train to the Louveciennes Station, a ride of about 45 minutes. From there it’s a 20-minute (1-mile) walk to the museum, which is at the entrance to Royal Estate of Marly, whose ghosts can then be visited on a stroll. Leaving the estate, you might then take a 30-minute (under 2-mile) walk to the Seine. Not the most beautiful walk either coming or going, though you can pass by the wall surrounding the Chateau de Madame de Barry, 6 chemin de la Machine, now a private property. Madame de Barry was Louis XV’s “favorite” (i.e. official mistress) in the final years of his life. The modest chateau was a gift from the king which she then improved. After the king’s death, and followed by her brief exile to a convent, she lived here from 1776 until the guillotine caught up with her in 1793—a pretty good run. You might time your day to have lunch by the river at La Maison Louveciennes, 2 Quai Conti, 78430 Louveciennes. Return to Paris by train or RER.

2. Exploring the western suburbs by car

You can plan a full day exploring Paris’s western suburbs by a taxi or a car service, if you don’t have your own car.

One possible itinerary if setting out from Paris is to first take the RER (suburban train), line A, to Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a 40-minute ride from the center of capital. Visit the castle and its gardens, followed by lunch in town, then take a taxi or car service to the Estate of Marly to visit the museum and ghostly portion nearby. Then take a taxi (though one will not spontaneously appear outside the gates of Marly) or a car service to Monte Cristo. You might ask the driver to take you past the scant remnant of the Machine of Marly by the Seine along the way. Then a taxi or car service (or a 30-minute walk) back to Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

The Château de Monte Cristo isn’t actually a chateau but rather a large house built in the 1840s to resemble a small castle for the writer Alexandre Dumas, who named it after one of his most famous books and decorated it to his own glory. The house and the smaller castle-like outbuilding that he had built on the property to serve as his writing room are now dedicated to his memory, though he didn’t reside here long. After living high on the hog here for less than two years, a lack of funds led him to sell the property in 1848.

3. Marly and Saint-Germain-en-Laye on a biking day

If you’re into biking—and you needn’t be a long-distance cyclist for this—my top choice for visiting Marly would be by bike. Weather permitting, of course. The 130-acre royal estate is at the edge of the nearly 5000 acres of the Forest of Marly, which is separated by only a mile from the nearly 9000 acres of the Forest of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Visited together, a leisurely day of cycling and touring can include both forests, with stops at the Museum and Estate of Marly at the edge of the one forest and at the Castle of Saint-Germain-en-Laye near the edge of the other.

If coming from Paris, take RER A to Saint-Germain-en-Laye, whether bringing a bike from Paris (your own or a rental) or renting one in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. You can take a bike on the RER A from Paris during the week outside of rush hour, meaning other than 6:30-9:30am and 4:30-730pm, as well anytime on weekends and holidays. In Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Cyclou rents bikes from the edge of the forest, near the swimming pool about 500 yards from the chateau up Avenue des Loges, though with limited weekday opening times (see their site for details). Also see Bikook for e-bike rental.

Begin by visiting the Castle of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which houses the National Archeology Museum, and the castle gardens. Then bike at your own rhythm for a couple of hours through the two forests before visiting the Museum and Estate of Marly. You’ll use your GPS or a biking app to navigate through the forests. Route des Princesses is the mile-long stretch of non-forest biking between the two. From Marly it’s possible to bike down to the Seine and/or to the Chateau de Monte-Cristo before returning to Saint-Germain. But that involves street biking, so you might want to just keep this as a forest biking day and return the way that you came.

The Saint Germain Tourist Office, a 3-minute walk from the RER station, 3 rue Henri IV, provides information about the town and about surrounding towns along the nearby loops in the Seine, including Marly-le-Roi. This area is located within the department of Yvelines, which includes the western and southwestern suburbs of Paris.

Château Louis XIV

As you travel about in these western suburbs you might not see the wealth, but it’s there. For example, you won’t be seeing Château Louis XIV unless you’re in the habit of hanging out with Saudi royalty. It’s near Marly, in the town of Louveciennes, in the direction of Versailles. Château Louis XIV is a contemporary echo of Marly and Versailles. It was built on a 57-acre property in 2012 by Emad Khashoggi (read: big money from the Middle East further developed in Europe) as a high-tech version of a 17th-century-style chateau. Three years later, the property reportedly sold for 275 million euros, reportedly to the crown prince of the Saudi kingdom. Press reports at the time called it the most expensive private property in the world.

© 2020, Gary Lee Kraut

The post The Royal Estate of Marly: Absence, History and Splendor appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Photographs from nearly half a century ago lead Elizabeth Esris to revisit her first encounter with Paris with her then-boyfriend (now husband) and to rejoice in the timeless nature of travel discovery.

* * *

During lockdown I can travel virtually anywhere with a few clicks: to a book club in Pennsylvania, to an aperitif with friends in France, to an opera at the Met, to exercise with Olympic athletes, to meditate with Oprah. But I miss real travel and find myself journeying through memory as I spot mementoes around the house.

Two such souvenirs remind me of my first trip to Paris when I was 21, in 1971. With backpack and boyfriend—later my husband—I had set out on a “grand tour” of Europe.

Reaching up to a high shelf in a closet, I find a cherished copy of “Paris Match” that I had bought in Center City Philadelphia in August 1970. The tattered cover proclaims, “La Mini-Jupe est Morte” and foretells of radical changes dictated by the capital of fashion. From the mid-60s to that summer, mini skirts were de rigueur for young women. I remember being angry at the thought that mini-skirts, emblematic of the freedom, defiance and promise of my generation, could be so easily dismissed. But when I went to Paris the following summer, I saw calf-length skirts that I would soon be wearing and long, knit triangular shawls that draped the shoulder and reached down the back to the sandaled feet of beautiful Parisians. For me, it was the most romantic look I had ever seen. When I came home, my grandmother made a long shawl for me, and I wore it in the fall with my peasant skirts like an acclamation for haute couture on my college campus.

The “Paris Match” further reminds me of the worn copy of Julie Child and Simone Beck’s, Mastering the Art of French Cooking tucked between the French cookbooks in my kitchen. I purchased it when I returned from Paris that summer. I was determined to make croissants for my family, to amaze them by baking the most delicious pastry I had ever tasted. After twelve hours and endless handfuls of butter, I produced a cracker-thin crescent that brought me to tears. Still, I smile when I recall it and realize that my journey to Paris was more than a visit to monuments and literary mystique; Paris infused me with an urgency to make it part of my identity.

When I met Mike in college I confided in him a resolve that had been with me since devouring Flaubert, Fitzgerald, Balzac and Hemingway and being introduced to Edith Piaf and Jacques Brel in Madame Cooperstein’s French 1 class: I was going to explore Europe and see Paris while I was young, no matter what. I was leaving at the end of the spring semester with or without him.

By June we had a copy of Arthur Frommer’s Europe on 5 Dollars a Day, Eurail Passes and our paltry savings from after school jobs along with his Bar Mitzvah stash. We planned that the final stops on our travels would be the South of France and finally Paris. Paris was to be savored and left to steep within us for the flight home and beyond.

Mike and I purchased backpacks that are unrecognizable in today’s wilderness outfitted world. They had bulky, exterior aluminum frames onto which was strapped a thick nylon bag. As we crossed borders from West Germany to Poland and back into the free world on our summer journey, we bought and sewed patches on our packs to declare our wanderings. They hang in our basement today as mementoes of two travelers landing in Frankfurt so naïve that we didn’t know to exchange dollars for Deutsche Marks before trying to pay a bus fare.

Preparations for the trip also led us to buy matching pairs of the first true athletic shoes we had ever seen—Adidas. They were made of white leather with three distinctive black stripes and had a sturdy, supportive construction unlike the relaxed canvas sneakers we had worn since childhood; we were confident that our feet would survive the extensive walking we anticipated. Adidas were new to us, but they were sensations in Eastern Europe where people stopped us to see the shoes up close and to ask how Mike could have cut his jeans to make shorts. Levi’s and Lee’s and Wrangler jeans were highly prized by young Europeans who were fascinated by everything American.

We finally reached Paris after more than six weeks of travel, arriving at Gare de Lyon on a night train from Nice, a diesel that lumbered on for 12 hours and clanged into the station. We were tired and anxious to reach the pension we had selected from our guidebook. With map in hand we walked across the Seine on Pont d’Austerlitz and followed the Quai. Our eyes were drawn to the river, to Notre Dame, and the bouquinistes on the Quai de la Tournelle, but what imprinted itself upon me was the fountain at Place Saint-Michel as we turned left to head toward rue Saint André des Arts. Place Saint-Michel and the fountain were alive with young people—meeting, reading, embracing, walking, and looking like the literate, involved intellectuals that I had imagined. My literary passions may well have played a part in my perspective.

We were headed to Pension Eugénie on rue St. André des Arts, described in Frommer’s as offering cheap but decent room and board in the heart of the Left Bank, near to literary shrines that I wanted to visit. We booked a room for ten days with a shared hallway bath and WC for 8 Francs a night—about $2.50. The room was a tiny space that must have once been part of a bathroom; there was a defunct bidet about a foot from our bed. We had never seen one nor did we know how it worked. Other friends who traveled in those days said they used bidets to wash their jeans.

Our room had large windows that overlooked the noisy street. On most nights we watched a group of Hare Krishnas who chanted and smiled up at us. The most wonderful thing about Pension Eugénie was the breakfast of a large croissant with butter and preserves and delicious café au lait—included in the price—delivered to our door each day. We were cramped as we sat on the bed and bidet to eat, but we could not imagine more beautiful mornings. Years later, as parents with kids in college, we returned to the street to find a refurbished Hotel Eugénie offering rooms for over 100 Euros—breakfast not included. (It is now up to about 300 euros a night!)

Today, I’ve set up our old slide projector to match my memories with images. As the slides click by, I see all the tourist stops: views from the top of la Tour Eiffel, Sacré Coeur, and Notre-Dame; the Louvre without the Pyramid; Jeu de Paume and the Impressionists before Musée d’Orsay became a reality; Napoleon’s Tomb, Versailles, Samaritaine; and the obligatory stops at 27 rue de Fleurus, where Gertrude Stein lived with Alice B. Toklas, and La Closerie des Lilas, where Hemingway regularly drank and wrote at one of its marble-topped tables. We certainly could not afford a meal at La Closerie or any of Hemingway’s haunts, so there are no restaurants to note, but I remember savoring steak frites in unnamed cafes and vin rouge ordinaire that Frommer’s taught us to order. Like Hemingway, I had given the address of The American Express at 11 rue Scribe to family and friends as a point of contact. On the morning after our arrival we made our way there, marveled at the Paris Opéra and picked up mail feeling like heirs to The Lost Generation.

In the photos, structures in Paris appear grayer than today, with soot marring limestone walls or outlining sculptures such as those on the Arc de Triomphe. I am surprised by how light traffic seems to be in my pictures. There are many photos from both day and night where the streets seem quiet compared to the congestion and speed of Paris that I’ve witnessed on subsequent trips. Most cars in the pictures are small and boxy except for the occasional elongated Citroen or dilapidated VW bus, and I recall the many scooters and Solex mopeds that navigated streets and, occasionally, sidewalks.

Visible in all our slides are reminders of the endless walking we did in the summer of 1971 and the places we stumbled upon. Historic Les Halles, the legendary food market, had recently been torn down, but we would visit the Flower Market on Île de la Cité mentioned in Frommer’s—or so we thought. We were surprised when we arrived and found what looked and sounded like a jungle; we did not know that on Sundays it became the Bird Market. Walking through row after row of colorful birds in cages, in cars, and in the hands of those who came to buy, we reveled in exotic bird calls as well as the more familiar sounds of chickens. But it was the enthusiastic pedestrians who were drawn to them that captivated us. This was not the scene of a reluctant parent taking a child to buy a pet; it was a dynamic venue that existed because so many people delighted in birds of all kinds.

Birds intrigued us again when we walked to the Jardin des Tuileries and saw a gentleman in a dark suit feeding groups of frenetic birds and then enticing them to perch on him. Among the birds were pigeons and sparrows. Passersby were interested and a few stopped to chat, but they did not surround him as if he were an oddity. Years later we read that he was part of a long tradition of Tuileries Garden Bird Charmers, as they were called, with roots that date back to the 19th century. The original bird charmers were street performers who had been featured in French, British and American periodicals, including Scientific American in 1885. Whether this gentleman regarded himself as a performer or as someone who simply loved birds, we did not know; to us he was yet another wonder in a city that surprised with every turn of a corner.

In 1971, the Eiffel Tower did not sparkle with twinkling lights; rather, it was illuminated with a dramatic amber glow. Still, the image I see in my slides is as iconic as the bridges, the boulevards, and the churches. Without the intrusion of dated cars or clothing styles on pedestrians in photos, Paris’s beloved landmarks are timeless.

Among my favorite pictures is a long shot of a man in jeans sitting on the bank of the Seine. One leg hangs over the wall, the other is pulled up to his chest. This young man, my peer, depicts so much of what I find compelling about Paris. He seems at ease and thoughtful. His moment of intimacy with the river is natural. Surrounded by history and beauty but not constrained by it, he is part of a complex city that endures as well as changes. His sanguine presence, like that of the old bird charmer, suggests that Paris embraces the individual as vital to its identity.

My afternoon immersed in Paris 1971 includes the predictable nostalgia for youth and life about to unfold. It also validates my belief that Paris is alive and changeable yet cultivates a dignified permanence that seduced me then as it does today. In my adolescence I was drawn to Paris by literature. My first visit fulfilled my girlhood aspirations as reader and dreamer but also left me wanting to learn more about its history, read more of its literature, cook its food, find streets not in guidebooks, and visit again and again. My first trip to Paris ensnared me and I have been a willing captive ever since. This vicarious journey during quarantine allows me to savor the decaying pages of a 50-year-old “Paris Match” and look forward to my next moment on the banks of the Seine.

Text © 2020, Elizabeth Esris.
Photos © 1971, Michael Esris. (Photos taken with a Pentax Spotmatic.)

More of Elizabeth Esris’s illustrated personal essays about travel in France can be found here.

Readers interested in contributing an illustrated personal essay about their own long-ago travel experiences are invited to write to the editor at gary [at] francerevisited.com.

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A Jewish Tour of Paris: Exploring Historical and Contemporary Paris through the Lives of Jews. An illustrated lecture by Gary Lee Kraut

With more than 500,000 Jews, France has the world’s third largest Jewish population, after Israel and the United States. More than half of French Jews live in Paris and the surrounding region. Yet aside from occasional reports of anti-Semitism, Americans, even Jewish Americans, are generally unaware of the history and contemporary life of Jews in the French capital.

This lecture follows in the footsteps of other lectures that Kraut has presented in the U.S. over the years on various topics of interest to both travelers and armchair travelers, including American War Memories in France; Travel and Travel Writing Beyond the Clichés; Got Heritage?: Understanding Patrimoine; DIY Biking in France, and A History of the Wines of Burgundy and Champagne.

As diverse as these topics are, they, and now A Jewish Tour of Paris, encourage a connection between the Americans and the history, culture, people and contemporary life of France.

In “A Jewish Tour of Paris,” Kraut presents 20 sights, individuals and neighborhoods that reveal various aspects of the history of Jews in Paris. After briefly examining medieval Jewry and medieval expulsions, he will speak of the liberating laws of the French Revolution, the appeal of France to European Jews throughout the 19th and into the 20th centuries, the construction of major synagogues, the Dreyfus Affair, Jewish artists of the 1920s, the Holocaust, Sephardic immigration of the 1950s and 60s, and more recent events, along with major French figures of the past 200 years and contemporary Jewish life as a visitor may encounter it today.

This lecture will be of interest to armchair travelers as well as travelers who have visited or plan to visit Paris. For the latter, Gary Lee Kraut will be available for private consultations upon advance request.

For tickets and further information contact the hosting organizations directly. Non-members of those organizations are typically allowed to attend.

If interested in hosting this lecture within your own organization, contact Gary Lee Kraut at gary [at] francerevisited.com.

Lecture schedule, Feb. 2 – March 1, 2020

Sunday February 2, 10am. A Jewish Tour of Paris
Adath Israel Synagogue, Lawrenceville, New Jersey
1958 Lawrenceville Road, Lawrenceville, NJ 08648
Tel. 609-896-4977

Wednesday February 5, 7-8:30pm. A Jewish Tour of Paris
East Brunswick Public Library, New Jersey
2 Jean Walling Civic Center Dr, East Brunswick, NJ 08816
Tel. 732-390-6767

Wednesday February 5, 9:45-11:30am. A History of the Wines of Burgundy and Champagne (and how to visit those wine regions)
Alliance Française de Doylestown, Pennsylvania
St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, 301 N Main St, Doylestown, PA 18901
Actually entitled Une histoire des vins de Bourgogne et de Champagne since this presentation will be in French.

Friday February 7, 6-7:30pm. A Jewish Tour of Paris
Alliance Française de Philadelphie, Pennsylvania
1420 Walnut Street – Suite 700, Philadelphia, PA 19102
Tel. 215-735-5283

Sunday, February 9, 2-5pm. Travel and Touring in Paris and Throughout France
A private event in Trenton-Princeton area of New Jersey for those planning to travel to France in 2020. If interested in attending contact Gary directly for details at gary [at] francerevisited.com.

Thursday February 13, 11:15am-12:15pm. A Jewish Tour of Paris
Jewish Community Center of Central New Jersey (Scotch Plains)
1391 Martine Avenue, Scotch Plains, NJ 07076
Tel. 908-889-8800 x260

Wednesday February 19, 10:30am-noon. A Jewish Tour of Paris.
Beth El Hebrew Congregation of Alexandria, Virginia.
Organized by The Posner Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia for their Adult Outreach Program, the lecture will be held at Beth El Hebrew Congregation, 3830 Seminary Road, Alexandria, Virginia 22304
Tel. 703-537-3026

Thursday February 20, 7pm. A Jewish Tour of Paris.
Alliance Française de Washington, DC
2142 Wyoming Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20008
Tel. 202-234-7911

Wednesday February 26, 6pm. A Jewish Tour of Paris.
Alliance Française de Miami Metro, Florida
1221 Brickell Avenue Business Center, 6th floor, Miami, FL
Tel. 305-395-4100

Friday February 28, 9:3am-11:30am. Travel and Touring in Paris and Throughout France.
Orlando, Florida
Meet Gary for coffee at Le Café de Paris, 5170 Dr Phillips Blvd, Orlando, anytime between 9:30am and 11:30am for an informal meet-and-greet for those planning to travel to France in 2020 or dreaming of 2021. Write to Gary directly at gary [at] francerevisited.com if you’d like to meet that day but are unavailable that morning.

Sunday March 1, 3:30PM. Les Misérables, film presentation and discussion
ACME Screening Room, Lambertville, New Jersey
25 S Union Street, Lambertville, NJ 08530
Gary Lee Kraut leads a discussion of the Oscar-nominated film Les Misérables following a projection at the Acme Screening Room.

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