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

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

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

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

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

A Da Vinci Theme Park

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

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

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

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

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

Amboise Castle and Da Vinci DNA

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

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

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

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

But is Leonardo da Vinci really buried there?

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

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

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

Practical information

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

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

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

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

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

© 2022, Corinne LaBalme

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Yet travel writers also dream of occasionally breaking out from the truth and using their knowledge of people, culture and place as the background for the enjoyment and conflicts of fictional character. Some then go on to produce stories and novels of great seriousness and psychological drama. Others prefer a lighter touch, as Corinne does in her new novel French Ghost, a romantic cozy mystery published in January 2022 by The Wild Rose Press.

French Ghost is the first of a three-part series featuring Melody Layne, an American ghost writer who gets stranded in Paris when the over-sexed, unloved French movie star who hired her to ghostwrite his memoir accidentally (or not) drowns before the interviews begin. A tall, dark and sexy Spaniard then offers her an alternative book contract, and more, leading Melody on a quest for truth and near-truth that leads her throughout Paris as well as to Rouen, Vichy, Bordeaux, Dijon and Cannes, with lots of Chardonnay, pains au chocolat, fine dining and some steamy romance along the way.

Corinne previously published Temporary Engagement, a New York-based romance published under the penname Cairenn Lawless.

Gary Lee Kraut interviewed Corinne LaBalme about her new book and the place of travel and travel writing in her novels.

What does your travel writing have in common with the romance and cozy mystery that you also write? And how does the former feed into the latter?

Travel writing is like a treasure hunt. It’s a quest, and what’s more romantic and mysterious than the time-honored quest narrative? Even if the quest of the editorial assignment can be as prosaic as hunting for “The Five Best Hotel Breakfasts in Bordeaux,” it still qualifies as a quest. Who knows what’s hiding in that innocent-looking jar of razzleberry jelly? Usually, it’s just razzleberries, but you’re there, on the scene, to investigate that jam, taste it, and report on it.

Until the 21st century made fake news into a dangerous art form, telling the truth (or aiming to tell the truth) has been the cornerstone of journalism. It’s always been my goal, even when doing recon for an article about crepes in Paris.

That’s why fiction is such a relief. You’re no longer constrained by facts. Fiction isn’t about what happened, it’s about the infinite possibilities of what might have happened. In French Ghost I was able to take facts that I’ve gleaned as a travel writer and use them as the background or décor for the fictional story that takes place in France.

French Ghost mostly takes place in Paris, but Melody Layne becomes quite the traveler over her first few months in Paris. She goes to Rouen, Vichy, Cannes, Bordeaux and Dijon. Why did you choose those cities in particular?

I’ve spent years as a travel writer, freelancing for the New York Times, for the luxury destination newsletter La Belle France, and now for the very congenial France Revisited. These are all cities that I’ve visited and written about. Paris is where I live but during lockdown, I used this book to “virtually” revisit so many French towns that I’ve written about for magazines. I missed them!

I especially wanted to highlight Vichy in this book. It’s had a very bad rep since WWII when it was the seat of the Pétain government but the town is really worth a visit. Vichy has been a resort for over 2,000 years (the Roman legions were especially fond of its healing waters) and the royals and uber-rich riff-raff who built stately pleasure domes around the spa spared no costs in their efforts to out-do the tsars next door. The main avenues are flanked by a delightfully flamboyant medley of overblown pagodas, ginger-breaded castles, Moorish haciendas, Gothic gargoyles and turreted fortresses.

Yes, I especially enjoyed the descriptions of the Napoleon III Festival in Vichy and of the Cannes Film Festival ? Were they as fun to write as they were to read?

I didn’t get to attend the festival in Vichy on my last trip there—wrong season—but there were posters and reminders about it everywhere. The festival was perfect for my purposes: I wanted Melody to preen in fancy dress and give history professor Carlos an opportunity to display his knowledge of Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie.

I also enjoyed writing about the Cannes Film Festival which, let’s face it, is just a snotty trade fair with celebs walking around in borrowed evening gowns in broad daylight. Taneesha, my character who freelances for a Hollywood studio, is based on a Belgian friend who babysits hapless American movie stars in France. And I really enjoyed writing about Charlene Trent, the booze-challenged, silicon-enhanced B-movie actress who’s in Cannes to promote Beach Zombies III. Charlene is crude, class-less, but she’s a gas.

Did you have to do much additional research for French Ghost beyond what you already knew?

I love research, but books 1 and 2 of this trilogy treat facets of French life—food, fashion, cinema—that I know quite well. However, for Book 3, I am definitely all over the internet map trying to figure out what makes an influencer hot.

Will Melody continue to introduce readers to various regions and aspects of France in books 2 and 3? Without giving too much away, what can you tell us about them?

Melody’s big trips in Book 2 take her to Switzerland, specifically Vevey and Geneva. She does something on the shores of Lac Leman that I did myself many years ago. I guess I inspired myself on that little episode.

Your protagonist occasionally pals around with a well-known food writer who seems to be dining out every day, everything from high gastronomy to fancy pizza. Is she based on anyone you know? Do you enjoy restaurant writing?

Jenna Bardet, the food writer, is based on little old moi. While I was writing for La Belle France, I spent two weeks on the road each month reporting on hotels and restaurants and the other two weeks writing about those experiences. I really enjoyed it at the time, but now I’m rather glad to be writing about something other than pea soup and grilled grouse. I’ve also become a bit too vegetarian to do that job well anymore.

Do you like Chardonnay and pains au chocolat as much as Melody Layne does?

Yes on Chardonnay. No on the pains au chocolat. I’ve never been wild about French breakfast pastry. Correction: I used to like croissants. Years ago, the bakeries sold two kinds of croissant: curled-up ones baked with lard and straight ones (more expensive) baked with butter. The ones made with lard were much lighter and fluffier but they went out of style. Those lard croissants, if I could taste one now, would be my personal Proustian madeleine.

The Wild Rose Press will be publishing another romance of yours outside of this series. Does it take place in France?

Summer People, which will hopefully on the bookshelves by July, is a Cape Cod mystery-romance that takes place in Brewster, Massachusetts. Like my fictional writing about France, those are places that I know well since I spent most of my childhood vocations on Cape Cod. The protagonist, an antique collector who’s got a statue with some rather murky provenance at her gallery, doesn’t much care for Europe. She’s got a French-Canadian accent, and a rude concierge at a Monte Carlo hotel once made fun of it. That woman sure does hold a grudge.

French Ghost by Corinne LaBalme, available in ebook and paperback. Published by The Wild Rose Press. Available from your preferred online booksellers and select bookshops.
Temporary Engagement by Cairenn Lawless (aka Corinne LaBalme), available in ebook and paperback on Amazon, on ebook only on Barnes and Noble and Kobo.
Corinne LaBalme’s numerous contributions to France Revisited can be found here, with more on the way.

© 2022, France Revisited.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© 2021, Corinne LaBalme

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

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

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

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

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

Bormes-les-Mimosas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sainte Maxime and Saint Raphael

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

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

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

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

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

Tanneron and Mandelieu-La Napoule

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

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

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

Grasse

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

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

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

Planning Your Trip

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

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

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

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

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

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

© 2019, Corinne LaBalme

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APUI (Appel à Projets Urbains et Innovants/Call for Innovative Urban Projects) was launched 15 month ago by Mayor Anne Hidalgo and drew 815 proposals from around the world.

”It was a crazy idea from the get-go,” the mayor said in announcing the winners on February 3, “but Paris needs out-of-the-box ideas for the 21st century.”

Most of the projects are far from the touristic center, taking advantage of abandoned buildings (like the 1930s Castagnary bathhouse in the 15th arrondissement) and oddly-shaped bits of undeveloped terrain. The initiative will create 1,341 new apartments (subsidized for 50% low and moderate income housing), co-working space, art forums, sport facilities and nearly 5½ acres of greenery, mostly planted on rooftops, terraces and facades.

The most ambitious—and largest—undertaking is Mille Arbres, an ocean-liner-like apartment/ park/ office/ hotel complex that will perch atop the beltway in the 17th arrondissement. In this city-within-a-city designed by architects Sou Fujimoto and Manal Rachdi-Oxo, the residential section will incorporate millennial-style amenities such as communal terraces with BBQs, rentable party facilities, concierge service and guest rooms. A signature Philippe Starck food court spanning the highway will link it to both Paris and Neuilly. Budgeted at 550 million euros, the complex is scheduled for delivery in 2022.

An early 20th-century electric sub-station in the Oberkampf district will morph into the Etoile Voltaire cinema/restaurant complex (scheduled to open in 2018) while a metal-frame 1950s garage in the Gambetta sector of the 20th arrondissement will cha-cha into the future as a choreographic center dubbed La Fabrique de la Danse (The Dance Factory).

One of several all-new buildings to be constructed with wooden facades, the Masséna Tower (on the site of a former rail station in the 13th arrondissement) will be devoted to alternative food and agriculture.

Through May 8, floorplans and scale models of the winning (and short-listed projects) are on view at the Pavillon de l’Arsenal, Paris’s center for architecture and urban planning.

”Reinventing Paris” may seem like a daunting task but Mayor Hidalgo said she’s only just begun. ”My next project,” she promised, ”will be reinventing the Seine, all the way to Rouen.”

Pavillon de l’Arsenal, 21 Boulevard Morland. 4th arrondissement. Closed Monday. Metro Sully-MorlandFree admission.

Reinventer.paris. See the city’s official website for information about all of the sites and projects.

© 2016, Corinne LaBalme

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(Updated April 2016)

1. Hotel Saint-James

Two metro stops west of Etoile, the site of the glamorous 4-star Saint James was once far enough away from the central Paris to serve as a launch pad for hot air balloons. While tall buildings have sprouted in the area, the lush private garden of this luxuriant refuge, accented with fanciful balloon canopies (photo above), remains intact and serves as an open-air bar during the fine-weather months. Like its classy library bar and Michelin-starred restaurant, the open-air bar is reserved for hotel guests and club members during the day, but all of them are accessible to visitors after 7pm.

Hotel Saint James, 43 avenue Bugeaud. 16th arr. Tel: 01 44 05 81 81. Metro: Porte Dauphine.

2. Regent’s Garden Hotel

Napoleon III liked his private physician so much that he built him a delightful townhouse with an enclosed garden on the western edge of Paris just beyond the Arc de Triomphe. This year the 4-star hotel has made its private garden an even greater draw with an outdoor exhibition of bronze and ceramic sculptures by Mickie Doussy on view through September 30. Beyond breakfast, when open only to guests, the garden bar/tea salon is open to visitors on reservation.

Regent’s Garden Hotel, 6 rue Pierre Demours. 17th arr. Tel: 01 45 74 07 30. Metro: Ternes.

3. Villa du Square

Tucked between Le Corbusier townhouses in the residential 16th, the Villa du Square (open since September 2015) is a B&B offering five luxurious bedrooms in a 1920s mansion lovingly decorated by art collector hosts Marie-Victoire and François-Christophe Gicqueau. The garden—200 square meters of urban Eden shaded by centenary pines—has enough secluded ‘corners’ that guests won’t trip over each other while they smell the roses.

Villa du Square, 26 rue Raffet, 16th arr. Tel: 01 71 72 91 33 Metro: Jasmin. The garden is only open to overnight guests.

4. Hotel des Marronniers

The secluded garden behind this 3-star Left Bank hotel is open to the public from 2pm until 11pm for tea or drinks.

Hotel des Marronniers, 21 rue Jacob. 6th arr. Tel: 01 43 25 30 60. Metro: Mabillon.

5. Villa Montabord

The Cité des Fleurs, a one-block pedestrian street in the Epinettes district on the northwest edge of the capital, is one of Paris’s original gated communities. The guidelines laid down by the developers in 1847 mandating at least three flowering and/or fruit trees for every garden are still observed. Thus, the four-room bed-and-breakfast that Isabelle and Jérôme Sciard opened in their 19th-century home has a pocket-sized private garden within a garden community. Expect fluent English (Jérôme is a former submarine commander who was stationed in Newport, RI for a year) plus large, luxurious bathrooms, WiFi and television.

Villa Montabord, 3 Cité des Fleurs, 17th arr. Tel: 06 14 88 74 06. Metro: Brochant. The garden is only open to overnight guests.

6. Hotel Eldorado

This hipster enclave in rapidly gentrifying Batignolles is one of the last places in Paris where budget-minded visitors can get a double-digit priced room with facilities “down the hall,” in a decor that mixes fake leopard skin throws and real cat-hair from resident felines. The hotel may have two stars but its popular Bistrot des Dames restaurant/wine bar, nestled in a pleasant but not-overly-groomed garden, goes by its own standards and is open to the public.

Hotel Eldorado, 18 rue des Dames, 17th arr. Tel: 01 45 22 35 21. Metro: Place de Clichy.

7. Novotel Paris Les Halles

With a giant, custard-colored canopy hovering over the Châtelet shopping center, catching ”a patch of blue” in Les Halles is as rare as it was for Oscar Wilde at Redding Gaol. Given the forbidding façade  of the Novotel Les Halles, it’s a triple-fine surprise to find a delightful, tree-shaded garden terrace-bar nestled within its walls. An oasis of calm in a chaotic neighborhood.

Novotel Paris Les Halles, 8 Place Marguérite de Navarre, 1st arr. Tel: 01 42 21 31 31 Metro: Châtelet.

© 2015-2016, Corinne LaBalme

Updated April 2016

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The elegant Château de Cheverny is chez moi for Charles-Antoine de Vibraye and his family. His ancestors have resided on the premises for the better part of 600 years and today de Vibraye (who might also be referred to as the Marquis de Vibraye), his wife and three children occupy roughly 10% of it. Much of the rest is open to visitors. Cheverny was one of the first private French estates to open its gates to the public (1922), and de Vibraye welcomes on average 350,000 guests per year to his castle-sweet-castle.

One expects de Vibraye (seen in photo) to describe Cheverny as a museum but the word usine (factory) crops up in his conversation just as often.

”I live inside my family business,” he explains. ”Cheverny belongs to the public, and making the tourist experience serene and enjoyable requires constant attention to detail. You can’t take your eyes off it for a minute. It’s like caring for a small child.”

The result of such devotion is a well-oiled machine. For numerous crowd-pleasing reasons, Cheverny is one of the more theme-parkish of the Loire châteaux. ”But it’s also one of the most authentic,” adds de Vibraye. ”Hardly any other chateau has been continuously occupied. At Cheverny, things may have been added but nothing’s ever been taken away.”

One thing that’s been added is Cheverny’s association with the Francophone comic book hero Tintin. This is the only Loire castle that comic book fans will recognize faster than many art historians. That’s because Belgian cartoonist Hergé based Marlinspike Hall (Château de Moulinsart), the property of Tintin’s buddy Captain Haddock, on Cheverny’s symmetrical silhouette. (Hergé shortened its wings lest Captain Haddock appear to rich.) One of the outbuildings at Cheverny houses a free-standing museum dedicated to Tintin, his dog Milou and other characters, with videos and special effects.

But the main event is the chateau itself. The place-name Cheverny debuted in 1315 on a deed registered to the newly-enobled Hurault family. The seigniorial domain has belonged on and off to the Herault family—of which the de Vibraye family is a branch—ever since. A peaceable existence allowed the domain to sit out the royal and lordly turmoil and high politics of Blois. It did, however, appear on BuzzFeed in 1551 when former royal mistress Diane de Poitiers took a 10-year lease after being evicted from Chenonceau, but almost all of the day-to-day archives have gone missing.

Construction of the current chateau began in 1625 with a design that signaled a strong tilt toward what would become known as Classical architecture. Those also visiting visited Blois Castle on their Loire Valley wanderings will find that Blois’s Gaston d’Orleans wing, begun in 1635, was designed in the same movement of harmony and symmetry.

Two-thirds of the Château de Cheverny is open to the public, without any of the yawn-inducing, near-empty rooms that one often finds in public castles. Visitors can marvel at a royal bedroom that rivals Fort Knox; a luxuriant dining room; suits of armor; playrooms stuffed with vintage toys; fireplaces adorned with gilded dancing girls; a flower-bedecked chapel; and even the current Marquise’s Cinderella-style wedding dress.

Visiting the interior of the chateau gave rise to one burning question for its owner. When you live in a historic château like Cheverny, aren’t you tempted to roll back the brocade bedspreads and sleep in the Royal Bedroom after closing hours?

”Never,” de Vibraye replied firmly. ”Those rooms belong to the public and that’s final. There was a TV crew here recently, filming lots of furniture in close-up, and I must admit I heaved a huge sigh of relief when they left and I got the velvet ropes back in place.”

The chateau interior is compact enough that it can well visited in about 30 minutes, leaving plenty of time to wander through the expansive park and the flower and kitchen gardens, visit the Tintin Museum (additional fee), enjoy the pretty setting at orangerie for a beverage or a bite to eat (inside or out; open April 1 to Nov. 11), perhaps even take boat-ride on property’s waterways.

At the Café de l’Orangerie you can try some locally made beer, but having passed through the Cheverny and Cour-Cheverny vineyards along your way to Cheverny it’s likely that those appellation wines will be the fermented beverage of choice. For a tasting, the official Cheverny Wine Club is housed just outside the castle gate to Cheverny (see below article).

The Hounds
One of the major draws of Cheverny is its kennel for 100 Anglo-French hunting hounds. Cheverny has maintained its hunting heritage and the estate census also includes 11 horses, 70 stags and 200 wild boar.

This is no petting zoo. Those hounds are trained to be in prime hunting shape, and the deer are well advised to be too. The hunt takes place in the surrounding forest and other hunt-friendly woods, twice per week from October through March. About 25 deer are killed each year in keeping with local (departmental) hunting regulations.

Come feeding time you can watch the hounds, tail in the air, devour mass quantities of raw meat in a matter of minutes. The feeding takes place at 5pm daily (with exceptions) from April 1 to September 14. The remainder of the year the feeding takes place at 3pm on Mon., Wed., Thurs. and Fri. (except holidays). It isn’t that they don’t eat on other days but they’re probably out working.

If your kids love dogs, get them to the kennels about 15-30 minutes before feeding time for a ringside view of the buffet. Arrive after the crowd has formed and the kids who are too big to sit on shoulders may miss the show. It’s perfectly safe as the dogs are enclosed in a barred courtyard, although one 4-year-old near us was a bit frightened.

The chateau and grounds are open every day of the year, including holidays.

© 2015, Corinne LaBalme.

Château de Cheverny, 41700 Cheverny. Tel. 02 54 79 96 29.

Getting There: Cheverny is 10 miles southeast of Blois, passing near Château de Beauregard along the way. By car Cheverny is about a 30-minute drive from Blois and Chaumont, in separate directions.

From Paris, there are infrequent direct trains to Blois from the Austerlitz Station. They take 1:25. More frequent indirect trains take 2 hours, arriving in Blois via Orleans (from Paris’s Austerlitz Station) or via Saint Pierre des Corps (from Paris’s Montparnasse Station).

While it’s preferable to have your own wheels (car, van, motorcycle or bicycle) for leisurely explorations of chateaux and vineyards in the area, there’s bus service from April to August between the chateaux of Blois, Chambord, Cheverny and Beauregard. Bus information can be found here.
CHEVERNY and COUR-CHEVERNY WINES

Cheverny and Cour-Cheverny are appellations for wines grown between on the south side (left bank) of the Loire roughly between Blois, Chambord, Cheverny and Chaumont. Those are the vineyards you see when driving or biking in this area.

Cheverny is a young, fruity wine largely using sauvignon and some chardonnay for the whites and pinot noir and gamay for the reds and roses.

Cour-Cheverny, far less well known and with more cache because of its more limited production (one-tenth that of Cheverny), is made from grape varietal called Romorantin, a grape specific to this area, introduced by king Francoise I, and so proprietary that it has a capital R.

As with most Loire Valley wines, these all relatively inexpensive, typically 6€ to 12€ per bottle, some a bit more.

Maison des Vins de Cheverny, the official Cheverny Wines Club of the association of winegrowers from the two appellations, is located by the entrance to the chateau, making for an easy tasting stop to get familiar with these wines, at least for those not driving.

Maison des Vins de Cheverny. Open daily from Easter to the beginning of November, 11am-1:15pm and 2:15-6pm. Tel. 02 54 79 25 16

– GLK

Also see our articles about the nearby chateaux of Chambord, Beauregard and Blois.

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La Toilette: The Invention of Privacy, in which la toilette refers to acts of washing and grooming, opens with an early Renaissance tapestry from the Cluny Museum—The Bath—depicting a blonde noblewoman clad in her headdress and jewels (but nothing else) enjoying a refreshing summer-time dip in the garden, accompanied by servants, musicians and attendants of both sexes.

The tapestry is nine-tenths fantasy since bathtubs had been taboo for the general population since the late Middle Ages, when contemporary physicians stigmatized immersion in water, deemed to be an unhealthy substance laden with mysterious “venom.” Dry cleaning was the norm for centuries, with perfume and ointments applied with bits of cloth.

Most significantly, personal grooming—no matter how intimate—was truly a public affair until the dawn of the eighteenth century when it (gradually) became less acceptable to entertain guests while seated on a bidet. Pictures of semi-clothed ladies at their toilette and make-up tables (significantly, the show includes no pictures of men powdering their wigs) went underground, like some of the bawdy François Bouchers from the 1740s that the museum displays.

Beginning with delicate images (Dürer, Primatice, the School of Fontainebleau) and barreling towards Georges de La Tour’s remarkable Woman Catching a Flea, the show segues into portraits of better-known bathing beauties like Pierre Bonnard’s Marthe (painted in an era when dedicated bathrooms became havens for private, relaxing escapes) and winds up with ironic, post-modern photos and c-prints signed by Alain Jacquet, Erwin Blumenfeld, and Bettina Rheims.

All in all, the French clean up quite well.

© 2015, Corinne LaBalme

La Toilette, Naissance de l’Intimité, Feb. 12-July 5, 2015, at the Musée Marmottan Monet, 2 Rue Louis Boilly, 16th arr. Metro La Muette or RER Boulainvilliers. Closed Monday.

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* * *

A former New Yorker, I moved to Batignolles, a district due west of Montmartre, ten years ago. To a Manhattanite, Batignolles is the Lower East Side with fewer croissant options. It’s a formerly dowdy enclave where unpretentious tenement buildings have gentrified at the speed of light.

Batignolles had a rare asset: an abandoned trainyard once earmarked for an Olympic Village. Right now, like everyone in this tiny neighborhood, I’m trying to adjust to the 123-acre construction zone a few blocks away. (By the way, 123 acres is an area roughly equivalent to ½ of the second arrondissement.) Already, 24 of its acres have been allotted to parks and recreation, which everyone likes. And 3,385 new apartments are scheduled and who can argue with housing?

However, the 160-meter/525-foot-high skyscraper for the Tribunal de Grande Instance (TGI) designed by Renzo Piano, soon to become France’s tallest (if not highest) law court, is a little less popular. For one thing, in town meetings, we are continually bludgeoned with the idea that a skyscraper will give “an identity” to our quarter. Frankly, we thought we had one, but we’ll have to check in with the people living under the shadow of the Montparnasse Tower on that.

There are, however, larger problems with the glass-sided TGI skyscraper that was signed into existence at the last gasp of the Sarkozy administration. From the start, the TGI has not been presented as “just another glass tower” but as a Very Symbolic Glass Tower embodying judicial glasnost. And that’s a bit frightening because the last expensive architectural project in Paris that got funded purely for its cute concept was the François Mitterrand National Library. The four-building complex, designed to look like airy glass book-ends, ended up flash-frying a good bit of French literature because no one asked any librarians or antique dealers how paper fared when served under glass.

The first, and very vociferous, group to protest the TGI was an organization of lawyers called La Justice dans la Cité who, very into symbolism themselves, posited that law is best dispensed in centuries-old courtrooms on Ile de la Cité. They also pointed out there were many cost-conscious alternatives to a new skyscraper, namely relocating existing archives and annexing adjacent empty space.

These were sensible suggestions because the TGI’s sticker price – 2.7 billion euros – is staggering in a recession economy. That’s just the tip of the iceberg too. There’s also a 27-year lease (90 million euros/ year) plus maintenance fees (12.8 million euros/year) to consider.

When the government changed, the new Minister of Justice, Christiane Taubira, professed her shock over the costs as well, but after some delays, former Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault confirmed the contract. Perhaps he didn’t have much of a choice since it’s reported that the original contract promised developers big bucks whether or not the TGI was built.

The official video of the project showcases an extremely attractive (light-filled! symbolic!) building with modular aspects that are likely to prove useful in the future. After that, it places all its emphasis on the beatific panoramic views that lawyers and magistrates will enjoy from the offices and the glass elevator.

I daydream about whether French tax dollars might have been better spent on far-reaching social improvements with an eye to lowering crime instead of a site to prosecute it more glamorously. However, that train of thought doesn’t give us “a cathedral bathed in light” as Renzo Piano describes it, nor a place where people “need not fear” justice.

Paradoxically, this incarnation of the TGI leaves me feeling a little afraid for justice. Is a delicate, free-standing glass tower (albeit with gorgeous panoramic views) the best ‘form follows function’ solution for a government service conducting volatile investigations into terrorism, organized crime, and corruption? Perhaps ‘Bunker Baroque’ would have been a smarter style choice?

Or perhaps, just making do with (less transparent) existing stone.

© 2015, Corinne LaBalme

Corinne LaBalme is a member of S.O.S. Paris, an association created for “the purpose of defending the architectural heritage of the city, preserving the urban environment for its population.”

For more on the Batignolles Quarter see the photo reportage If I Were a Traveler….

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