Let’s talk about your Champagne education. No, not the neighborly kind offered at your local wine shop. Nor the delightful kind that you can get on a wine bar tour with me in Paris. I’m talking about the well-advised independent kind that a curious traveler—you—can get by visiting the vine-growing area and production zone of the world’s most famous sparkling wine. Yes, I’m talking about your Champagne daytrip or overnight.

For most destinations in the Champagne wine region your coursework on the making and variety of tastes and styles of Champagne requires a road vehicle, whether a rental car, a taxi, a car service or an organized car/van/bus tour—in any case a designated driver.

Let’s say that you’re either setting out from Paris or heading to the Champagne region directly after arriving at Charles de Gaulle Airport. A driving tour can start with the Marne Valley producers around Chateau-Thierry, a zone where pinot meunier vines dominate or by going directly to the heart of the region that lies between and within the two capitals of Champagne: Reims, the historic regional capital, and Epernay, the capital of bubbly itself. Beyond Epernay there’s the Côte des Blancs, especially known for the prestigious chardonnay grapes that grow in its chalky soil. Then there’s the lesser traveled southern portion of the growing area in the department of Aube, specifically the Côte des Bar, with its much-desired pinot noir vineyards.

Each of those areas has its particularities and benefits as destinations to enjoy and learn about Champagne. But how to obtain a good Champagne education without a car or driver? Château-Thierry and Reims are reached easily enough by train, but for the former you then need to hit the road to get credits for your survey course, and for the latter you’d be one weary (though probably happy) foot traveler if you didn’t call for some kind of transportation during the day.

Epernay is the DIY Champagne destination with the best car-free outlook, whether on a daytrip or an overnight.

Not only can a sparkling excursion to Epernay be car-free but carefree as well since little logistical planning is necessary. Most days you can even purchase your train ticket at the last minute at Paris’s East Station, Gare de l’Est, for the one hour and twenty- or thirty-minute ride to Epernay. Greater planning is necessary to climb the Eiffel Tower or visit the Louvre than to explore Epernay on a daytrip.

From the Epernay station, your entire learning campus can easily be covered on foot. Within one mile of the station, you can visit any of a dozen Champagne producers, examine a terrific museum that’s dedicated to regional archeology and the wines of Champagne, see the former mansions of Champagne merchants, and have a choice of restaurants, Champagne bars, pastry shops, and cafés. You can even rise 492 feet in a tethered balloon or climb a 217-foot tower for a view over the valley and out to the vineyards. All within one mile of the train station.

The agro-industrial business of Champagne production dominates in Epernay (pop. 23,000), so if you’re a single-minded traveler looking for an intensive introduction, continuing education or master class in Champagne—without recourse to a car—read on.

Avenue de Champagne

The essential strolling grounds for a visit to Epernay is Avenue de Champagne, Champagne Avenue. Sparnaciens, as local citizens are called, like to tell visitors from the capital that Avenue de Champagne is the Champs-Elysées of Epernay. Indeed, there’s just as much branding going on. But there’s also deep know-how along, around and beneath Avenue de Champagne. Epernay has nearly 70 miles of cellars underfoot, holding about 200 million bottles of bubbly. The avenue is bordered by the former mansions of Champagne merchants, many of them dating from the 19th century. They’re mostly on the left side as you rise the avenue, while on the right side are production facilities, with plenty of Champagne know-how and marketing expertise on both sides of the street. All of that allows Avenue de Champagne to be among the elements that entered UNESCO’s World Heritage List under the title “Champagne Hillsides, Houses and Cellars.”

You can easily spend half a day or more along the first half-mile of the avenue. Thanks to its many opportunities to learn, see and taste, Champagne Avenue could be your sole destination on a train excursion from Paris. Yet you’ll undoubtedly also enjoy a walkabout in the compact heart of the town with its bakeries, pastry shops, restaurants, cafés and tasting rooms.

The Epernay Tourist Office, at 7 avenue de Champagne, is conveniently located near the bottom of the avenue, so it can be your first stop on arrival. Reservations are recommended to visit a production facility and cellars, especially on busy weekends and in summer, but it’s also possible decide on an Epernay daytrip on a whim, in which case the tourist office can help direct you to an available cellar tour. Your Champagne curriculum calls for at least one such tour, particularly if you aren’t aware of the grapes, their classification and the Champagne method. Other than a formal tour, tasting opportunities are easy to come by, both on the avenue and in the heart of town.

Beyond the tourist office, the first major former mansion you’ll come upon was built for the Auban-Moët family in the second half of the 19th century. You may not know the Aubans but you’ve certainly heard of the Moëts, as in Moët & Chandon, whose installations can be visited right across the street. The mansion has served as City Hall since right after the First World War, which explains the monument to war dead that greets visitors entering on its avenue side. The estate’s park (feel free to enter) has a near replica of the Temple of Love that stands in the Trianon park at Versailles. (When arriving by train, you can actually cut through the park to reach Avenue de Champagne.)

Château Perrier: The Museum of Champagne Wine and Regional Archeology

A 3-minute walk further up the avenue you’ll come to the Château Perrier, an eclectic and ostentatious 96-room mansion built in the 1850s by local architect Pierre-Eugène Cordier for Charles Perrier, heir to the Perrier-Jouët Champagne House. The Perrier-Jouët cellars are partly beneath the mansion. They were dug to connect directly with the railway line that had been inaugurated in 1849. The estate was purchased by the Town of Epernay in 1943 to house its museum collections and library. Closed in 1998 for massive rethinking, reorganization and eventually restoration, it reopened in 2021 as the Museum of Champagne Wine and Regional Archeology.

If arriving by train in the morning, consider the museum as your first stop before lunch or a visit one of the Champagne Houses.

I know, I know, you’ve come for cool bubbles not for a dry museum. But let your curiosity draw you inside. First, to admire the grand staircase and the gold-leaf décor of the ground-floor reception rooms and to take in the view out to the park of Château Perrier and beyond the Marne River to the vine-planted slopes of the Mountain of Reims. Then it’s on to the geology section. Geology? What’s that got to do with my Champagne education? As with all prestigious wine regions, an awful lot! Just ask the roots of the vines and the minerality in your glass. An awareness of the formation of the region’s chalky sub-soil here is an integral part of your Champagne education as is, naturally, the section on winemaking that comes later. Yet the most fascinating part of the museum is the archeology collection (choice Neolithic, Celtic and Roman finds), one of the largest in France. The informative audio-guide, available in English, is especially useful in viewing that section.

Musée du vin de Champagne et d’Archéologie régionale, 13 avenue de Champagne, Epernay. Entrance (includes audio-guide): 9€, 6€ for ages 13 to 25, free for under 13. Closed Tues.

Continuing along the avenue and nearby

Among the most accessible producers for tours and tastings are Moët & Chandon, de Venoge and Boizel on the primary strolling portion of Avenue de Champagne; Alfred Gratien, Jacquinot & Fils and de Castellane on nearby streets, and Mercier and Comtesse Lafond beyond the first half mile of the avenue. Others are further afield but also reachable on foot (e.g. Charles Mignon on the opposite side of town). Still others allow you to pursue your education in their tasting room or bar, e.g. A. Bergère, Leclerc Briant, Elodie D., Les 3 Domaines (which presents the wines of three winemakers).

Whichever you visit, enjoy a stroll along the mannerly first half-mile of Avenue de Champagne to view the mansions and villas along the way. Don’t hesitate to enter an open gate and to inquiry about the bubbly of a producer you may never have heard of.

One of those that I visited on my recent overnight to Epernay was Champagne Boizel. I asked Lionel Boizel, who oversees the Champagne house with his brother Florent, to give readers a virtual tasting. His presentation of three Boizel Champagnes follows my introduction in this video.

Eventually, at a round-about, you’ll come to the turn-off toward the de Castellane Champagne House on the left and the Mercier facility built in the 1980s on the right. Mercier is a major producer with a family-friendly cellar tour. De Castellane, along with its own cellar tour, welcomes visitors of all ages able to climb the tower’s 237 steps for a view over the town and along the River Marne and out to the vineyards along the slopes of the southern side of the hill known as the Mountain of Reims. For an alternative or additional overview, you can lift off (weather permitting) in a tethered balloon (you’ll see it near the start of the avenue) while sipping a glass of bubbly at just under 500 feet.

Develop your Champagne curriculum freestyle

Obtaining a proper Champagne education when in Epernay or anywhere in the winegrowing region requires getting beyond the branding and the marketing in order to truly taste and understand the variety of sparkling wines called Champagne.

Major brands do dominate the avenue, including major assets within the LVMH wine portfolio, while smaller family-operated and independent producers also have a presence. All can be enjoyable and instructive. If you do opt to visit a big-brand producer, also visit one that’s lesser known or unknown to you. There are thousands of different Champagnes available, so try to discover what defines your taste and style.

Did you say thousands? Yes, I did.

There are nearly 370 producers known as Champagne “houses,” those that control the resources requires for their own production and market internationally. (See here for more detailed definition of a Champagne house.) These houses represent more than two-thirds of Champagne sales and more than 85% of exports. Each has its own style or styles and produces a range of sparkling wines. Many are referred to as grandes marques (big-brand) producers but of the 370 you may have only heard of how many? Six? Maybe a dozen tops? Some are small, even tiny. Most of the world knows Champagne through the marketing and availability of just a few dozen of the houses.

Here in France, however, we naturally have more access to the varied world of Champagne. Beyond those few dozen and beyond producers designated as “houses,” there are dozens of cooperatives marketing Champagne and hundreds of independent producers, and grapes are grown by more than 16,000 growers. Some producers without a presence on Avenue de Champagne have shops in town where you can get acquainted with their winemaking craftsmanship. (In Epernay you won’t necessarily come across all of the major brands that you’d find at home. Reims is the other major hub for international brands.) If you only focus on brand—even if your choices are limited at home—without tasting a great many, you risk being a sparkling wine snob, proclaiming admiration for a favorite brand without being able to explain why. Better to be a sparkling wine snob with the knowledge to back it up, whether you’ve got a favorite brand or not.

Just think how impressed your friends will be when you say, “I tend to like a Champagne that’s 50% pinot noir and 50% chardonnay, with no more than 5 grams of sugar. At least with certain hors d’oeuvres. As a straight aperitif I prefer a blanc de blancs. But I did once encounter a charming pinot meunier rosé that I’ve been looking for ever since. Of course, I’ll be happy with whatever you’re serving—I do like a good Champagne.”

Well, maybe your friends won’t be impressed, but I will.

In the town center, a few blocks from the start of Avenue de Champagne, the wine bar and shop Les Grands Vins de France can serve as a beyond-the-brand Champagne education in and of itself or a good place for your final exam. Ask for a tasting according to grape variety and/or sugar content to find your preference, then ask for the brands that correspond with that preference.

Use your time in Epernay to visits several producers, whether glitzy and earthy, mineral or fruity, from different areas of the region, for blanc de blancs, blanc de noirs, blended (and in various percentages), rosé, with varying amounts of added sugar, from this part of the vine-growing region or another, with some oak-barrel ageing or (more likely) not, organic, biodynamic or whatever, vintage or not.

Do I have to drink all of those for coursework? Certainly not. Drink with moderation, of course, and pace yourself. You don’t have to finish every glass. But isn’t it reassuring to know that you won’t be driving today and are unlikely to get lost in a town this size?

Which reminds me of something my friend Guillaume once said when we were leaving a wine fair in Paris: “How much wine can you really drink without just wanting a beer?” A lot, was my answer. But if a member of your travel group is anything like Guillaume, note that Epernay has a craft brewery, Tête de Chou, 1 bis avenue Foch, a 10-minute walk from the center. It may sound sinful to mention beverages with bubbles other than those in Champagne if you’ve come this far, but there you have it, craft beer served in the brewer’s taproom Thurs.-Sat. 5:30PM to midnight.

A pink pastry break: le moelleux champenois

Personally, I’d seek out pastry in Epernay before looking for beer. As a break from Champagne tasting (or to accompany it), Epernay and the surrounding region offer the opportunity to enjoy a pastry or cake that you won’t find elsewhere. It’s called the moelleux champenois. Moelleux means soft and champenois means from Champagne. The soft pastry from Champagne is therefore a nod the dry harder pink biscuits (aka Champagne biscuits or pink biscuits of Reims) that are traditionally associated with high tea Champagne and after-dinner delicacy.

In 2019 by a group of six boulangers-pâtissiers belonging to the Bakery Federation of the Marne came together in an effort to create a pastry that would be distinctly regional. The result is the moelleux champenois, made of eggs, sugar, almond, butter, flour, marc de Champagne (a brandy made from the residue of Champagne wine grapes after pressing), baking powder, with crumbled pink biscuit on top (egg whites, sugar, flour, baking powder, coloring). Only members of the Bakery Federation are authorized to use the recipe to make moelleux champenois under that name. Currently, about 40 do. On our trip, it made for a nice pairing with de Castellane rosé both for taste and for color, but it also goes well with coffee or tea.

Ours was actually a triple pairing of moelleux champenois, De Castellane rosé and an encounter with Loïc Maingre, who was among the original development team for the pastry. He and his wife Céline operate the pastry shop Au Bonheur des Papilles. 31 Rue de la Porte Lucas, on the western edge of the inner town. Closed Wed. and Thurs.

Maingre explained that since pink (Champagne) biscuits have long shelf-life, the Bakery Federation wanted to create something that did as well. The moelleux champenois, he said, has a shelf-life of 11 days, but I can’t imagine anyone holding onto one for very long. Immediate consumption is more like it, especially if you purchase an individual portion (3.50€) but even a full cake (13€) if traveling with friends. (Admittedly, I did hold on to one individual portion to enjoy with breakfast two days later when back home in Paris.)

As to the recipe for pink biscuits, Vincent Dallet, a well-known pastry chef and chocolatier in Epernay (who is not among the group making moelleux champenois), shared it with me for this article a while back.

Restaurants and Eateries

La Banque, 40 rue du Général Leclerc. In a former bank building, a polished and classy brasserie, well situated for either lunch or dinner. Open daily.

La Cave de l’Avenue, 5 avenue de Champagne. An easy-going restaurant at lunchtime and a wine bar after 6PM, La Cave belongs to the Bergère family, owners of Champagne A. Bergère. Closed Sun. and Mon. While the restaurant and wine bar naturally serve the family Champagne, a cellar tour and formal tasting can be had further up the avenue at #40.

La Cave à Champagne, 16 rue Gambetta. An Epernay institution for hearty traditional fare. Closed Tues. and Wed.

Le Théâtre, 8 place Mendès France. Traditional gastronomy by the theater at the circle near the train station. Closed Wed. as well as evenings Tues. and Sun.

There are numerous easy-going options for a meal or a snack in the compact town center, including bakeries, cafés and pizzerias.

Accommodations

There are three reasons that Epernay makes for a nice overnight for slow travelers: 1. To take a pre-dinner nap in your hotel or B&B after an afternoon of touring and tasting. 2. To enjoy a leisurely dinner (with more Champagne tasting) in town. 3. To take a genteel stroll along the avenue after nightfall.

Since this article concerns Epernay as a carless Champagne excursion, I’ve only selected accommodations that are within walking distance of the train station. Luxury accommodations and other worthy options are also found in the surrounding villages and by the vineyards.

Hotels

La Villa Eugène, 84 avenue de Champagne. Epernay’s only 5-star hotel, is located several hundred yards beyond the main stroll way of Avenue de Champagne, just past Mercier. It occupies a 19th-century mansion that once belonged to Eugène Mercier himself. Traditional rooms with a touch of elegance. Bar. Small outdoor heated pool. A wooded park behind the house. The hotel is a mile from the heart of the town and the train station, so while it isn’t far from the action, travelers on a car-free overnight may feel that they’re slightly off-center. Without discouraging a stay for Epernay-only foot travelers, I see this more as a place for settle in for two or more nights while also visiting the villages and vineyards in the vicinity with your own car or with a car service, taxi or organized tour.

Hotel Jean Moët, 7 rue Jean Moët, a well-situated 4-star in heart of town, a 4-minute walk from the train station, with a Champagne bar next door.

Hôtel de Champagne, 30 rue Eugène Mercier. A nice and simple inexpensive 3-star near the center of town, a 7-minute walk from the station.

Le Clos Raymi, 3 rue Joseph de Venoge. A 15-minute walk from the station, behind Avenue de Champagne, this pricier 3-star is a 7-room hotel of character in a 19-century mansion that once belonged to the Chandon family.

B&Bs

Epernay is actually more of a B&B destination for now, though not all will allow guests for only one night.

Le 25 Bis by Leclerc Briant, 25 bis avenue de Champagne, situated 500 yards up the avenue, about mid-way along the strolling zone. The Leclerc Briant Champagne house (200,000 bottles/year) has since 2012 been owned by the American couple Mark Nunnelly (from the world of finance) and Denise Dupré (from the world of hospitality management). They’re associated with Frédéric Zeimett, a French partner native to the region, for the production of their wines. The couple also owns the 5-star Royal Champagne hotel that overlooks the southern portion of the Mountain of Reims. Their chic B&B in Epernay has five large, formally elegant rooms and more service possibilities than a typical B&B. Priced accordingly. Options include taking over the entire house with a group of friends and, in that case, hiring a private chef, and, of course, a tour of the Leclerc Briant production headquarters which are situated on the western edge of Epernay where the vineyards begin.

Le Bubble 8, 8 rue des Berceaux, an excellent location on a calm street near restaurants, bars, bakeries and other shops, just a 3-minute walk from the start of Avenue de Champagne. Owner Pascale Lelong-Macra had a career in finance before purchasing the honorable solicitors’ Maison des Notaires and transforming it into five apartment B&Bs. The spacious, well-appointed studios and apartments with clean lines and character have kitchens or kitchenettes and so are especially adapted to a stay of several days or more. It’s nevertheless also a welcoming place for a short stay (there’s a 2-night minimum). Without the pretentions of a full-service B&B such as Le 25 Bis, Lelong-Macra’s son Clement is quite capable, with advance organization, of driving guests out to the villages and vineyards in the surrounding area for Champagne visits according to his itinerary or your own. (His is not a taxi service but a touring service for those staying at Le Bubble 8 and other apartments rentals managed by the family.)

Parva Domus, 27 avenue de Champagne. Parva domus magna quies is Latin for “small house, big rest,” which is what I enjoyed in the attic bedroom at Madame Rimaire’s plain, old-fashion, friendly B&B quietly located midway along the prestigious avenue, a 10-minute walk from the station. Magna Quies is the name of a sister B&B up the avenue at #49.

La Cave de l’Avenue, 5 avenue de Champagne, noted above as a lunchtime restaurant and evening wine bar belonging to the Bergère family (Champagne A. Bergère), is also a B&B with an excellent location for strolls day or night along Champagne Avenue and in the heart of Epernay.

Further logistical considerations

As I’ve said, a day trip to Epernay requires little advance planning, perhaps just a reservation for a cellar tour or two if you want and a hotel or B&B reservation if you intend to spend the night.

While this article is especially intended to describe an easy-walking, car-free Champagne excursion from Paris, whether as a day trip or an overnight, before returning to Paris, you can see on the map above its proximity to Reims, the historic capital of the Champagne region.

Nearly hourly trains link Epernay and Reims, a 35-minute ride to the opposite side of the Mountain of Reims. So after a day or overnight in Epernay it’s possible to continue car-free to visit the sights of Reims (cathedral, basilica, Roman arch, a great food market, and more) as well as tour other big-name Champagne houses (Taittinger, Ruinart, Pommery, Veuve Clicquot) with their impressive cellars occupying Gallo-Roman and medieval limestone quarries. As mentioned earlier, fully visiting Reims requires far more walking than in Epernay, but they are world-renown sights. From Reims you can catch a train back to Paris or continue eastward on a rail-based tour. It’s also possible to begin with a train to Reims (from either Paris or Charles de Gaulle Airport) before continuing on to Epernay then returning to Paris.

© 2022, Gary Lee Kraut

The post A Carless and Carefree Champagne Daytrip or Overnight to Epernay (Video) appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Admittedly, war touring isn’t for everyone. After all, that’s far from the Eiffel Tower, isn’t it? (Well, no, you can actually see the Eiffel Tower from an American war cemetery.) And you’d rather be drinking Champagne, right? (Well, the largest U.S. WWI monument in France actually overlooks Champagne vineyards at Château-Thierry.) And you’d rather visit the Gothic cathedrals of France than the war shines of Americans. (You mean like those that you’ll pass along the way?)

OK, I won’t try to convince you. But if you’ll give a look and listen to the presentation below, you’ll see and learn why someone—maybe not you, but you’ve got curious friends and relatives, right?—might want to visit these sights.

Don’t just take my word for it.

Earlier this year I met with John Wessels, Chief Operating Officer of the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC), to ask if the ABMC would be willing to participate in a Zoom talk with me to explain to readers of France Revisited the interest of knowing about and one day visiting the American WWI sights of France. He readily agreed. There was then a question of finding the right person to co-present with me.

I’ve written many articles about touring American war sights in France relative to both the WWI and WWII, I’ve have given lectures in the United States on the subject, and I’ve personally taken numerous travelers to visit these sights. But I’m a generalist regarding travel and touring in France. So I needed a true specialist to join me for the presentation, preferably a military historian who’s visited the sights to be discussed who could speak authoritatively about both major events of the First World War and the creation and evolution of memorials, monuments and cemeteries. Thanks to John Wessels and to the ABMC’s media and communications duo of Hélène Chauvin in Paris and Ashley Byrnes in Arlington, we found the perfect specialist for the program: Ben Brands, the ABMC’s historian and a war veteran himself (Afghanistan).

I now invite you to watch the France Revisited “Conversation with an Expert” below in which Ben Brands and I speak about the American WWI memorials, monuments and cemeteries of France. This presentation—illustrated with numerous maps and photos—was conducted and recorded via Zoom on November 10, 2022, with a live audience of readers of France Revisited. Several segments were rerecorded shortly thereafter so as to resolve technical problems and for coherence.

The timeline below the video indicates the list of topics, events and sights along with the speaker, whether Ben Brands (BB) or myself (GLK). The full presentation lasts 1½ hours. If you wish to watch only portions of the presentation, I recommend that you watch it directly on Youtube and on full screen so that you can click or tap directly on the timeline in the Youtube description section in order to arrive at segments of particular interest to you and better view details of the images. Be sure to watch my introduction and Ben Brand’s conclusion to understand the underlying reasons for organizing this presentation.

Video timeline

0:00:00 Introduction by Gary Lee Kraut
0:05:40 Ben Brands presents the work of the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC)
0:07:12 Who is Ben Brands? What is his role as historian at the ABMC? His tour of duty as a company commander in Afghanistan.
0:12:22 A comparison between a WWII map of the Invasion of Normandy 1944 and WWI maps of northern and northeastern France and Belgium. (GLK)
0:15:24 American entrance into war. Pershing visits Lafayette’s tomb in the Picpus Cemetery in Paris. (BB)
0:18:39 The annual changing of the American flag over Lafayette’s tomb in Paris. (GLK)
0:19:30 Origin and evolution of the ABMC. (BB)
0:23:35 The Lafayette Escadrille Memorial. (BB)
0:27:41 The Suresnes American Cemetery. (GLK, BB)
0:32:00 Mont Valérien, a major French WWII memorial, a 5-minute walk from the Suresnes American Cemetery. (GLK)
0:34:17 The American Naval Monument at Brest. (BB)
0:36:39 Why didn’t the Germans intentionally harm the Allies’ WWI sights during WWII? American involvement in the Somme. The Somme American Cemetery. (BB)
0:40:35 Cantigny. (BB, GLK)
0:42:09 Amiens and the American Red Cross huts at the former Cosserat Textile Factory. (GLK)
0:45:01 Art Deco design and architecture in Saint Quentin and Reims. (GLK)
0:46:33 The American Monument at Château-Thierry, Paul Cret, Belleau Wood, the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery. (BB)
0:57:52 The French-American House if Friendship in Château-Thierry. (GLK)
0:58:34 The Oise-Aisne American Cemetery. (BB)
1:01:04 Quentin Roosevelt, a president’s son killed in aerial combat. (BB)
1:05:08 Anne Morgan and the National Museum of French American Cooperation in the Château de Blérancourt. (GLK)
1:05:56 The Saint Mihiel American Cemetery and the Montsec American Monument. (BB)
1:09:20 Philanthopist Belle Skinner and the village of Hattonchâtel. (GLK)
1:10:18 Verdun and the Douaumont Ossuary. (GLK)
1:11:56 The Montfaucon American Monument. (BB)
1:14:18 African-American soldiers: segregation, heroes, awards and burials. Jewish grave markers. (BB)
1:20:52 The Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery. (BB)
1:23:09 The Romagne German Cemetery, Jean-Paul de Vries’ Romagne 14-18, Sergeant York. (GLK)
1:25:17 The French and American Tombs of the Unknown Soldier. (BB)
1:27:25 Conclusions by Gary and Ben.

Sights discussed in this presentation are located in the Paris region and the departments of Finistère (Brittany), Somme (Upper France), Aisne (Upper France) and Meuse (Eastern France).

Text © 2022, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Where and Why to Visit the American WWI Sights of France appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

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.

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.

* * *

Americans visiting the D-Day Landing Zone of Normandy quickly learn the invasion map by heart: the five thick arrows pointing toward Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword Beaches; the lines indicating the flight plan that dropped paratroopers and released gliders to the east and west of the zone; the grey band representing the joining of Allied forces throughout the zone and their push inland; the black arrow of the German counteroffensive around Falaise, and finally the victorious block of Allied grey up to the Seine River. Mission accomplished.

The movement on the ground was full of pitfalls, of course, but between the channel, the river and the sweeping color-coded movement of troops, the momentum of the Invasion of Normandy appears clear, even inevitable, whether your recognize the names of individual towns and villages or not.

A map of First World War battle zones is not as easy for American’s to grasp. Yet the vast majority of the American Expeditionary Force joined our Allies along the Western Front in France, with some in Belgium.

Brits may be more comfortable with the map of the Western Front of WWI because of proximity, because the Somme, Amiens, Ypres (Belgium) and the Marne still resonate with many, and because the Imperial War Museum in London continues to draw crowds. Many Canadians can situate Vimy Ridge because it speaks so clearly of the coming of age of a nation and because the monument there is the most stunning Allied war memorial in all of France. Australians know of Villers-Bretonneux.

But the map below of the Aisne-Marne Salient showing ground captured by American divisions after July 18, 1918, an essential element in the development not only of the war but of “the American Century,” speaks little to us…

… even though it’s shown on the most impressive American war monument in France, the American Monument on Hill/Côte 204 above Chateau-Thierry, 60 miles northeast of Paris.

History has never been America’s strongpoint, and our grasp of our own role in the First World War is no exception to that. We need more context and basic information than other participants of the Great War in order to begin to understand its significance. Thanks to the new little museum at the foot of the American Monument, context and information are now readily available on a daytrip or more from Paris.

The museum

The museum, like the monument above it, is the work of the American Battle Monuments Commission. A presentation space was created along with the monument in the late 1920s but it wasn’t furnished until now, as part of the overall restoration of the monument.

As it had at the Normandy American Cemetery on the eve of the 60th anniversary of D-Day in 2004 with respect to the Second World War and the Battle of Normandy, the ABMC saw the need provide American visitors with an overview of the American intervention in the First and battles in the Aisne region of France on the 100th anniversary of our participation in major combat during that war. After all, pristine cemeteries and imposing monuments and pristine cemeteries aren’t intended merely to serve as dramatic backdrops for the occasional speech by a government official but are to be visited, honored, understood, questioned and contemplated year-round.

Despite its modest size, or rather because of it, the new museum plays its role to greater effect than the museum in Normandy. Whereas the ABMC’s Normandy museum seeks to direct and frame the visitor’s emotions, the Chateau-Thierry museum appears to have no agenda other than to provide visitors with context and an introduction, where much is needed, to the Great War and to American involvement in it.

The information is brief, just enough to get the uninformed visitor curious. This is not a roll call of the dead but of the situations and events of our involvement in the war: the German attack on Belgium and France, trench warfare, American isolationism, American interventionism, “Lafayette, we are here!,” the arrival of green American troops in 1917, Pershing’s plan, an American army under American command, the German offensive of 1918, American entrance into action in around Chateau-Thierry, the Battle of Belleau Wood nearby, “The Rock of the Marne,” photographs and posters, the Armistice, the death toll, and the creation of the ABMC, of cemeteries and monuments.

The presentation can be visited in 30 minutes. This isn’t where one studies the war, rather where one finds the spark to understand an essential period in American history and in our relationship with the world as a global power… and to begin to understand the significance of the monument and of the map shown on it.

The presentation ends by giving credit to Paul Cret (1876-1945), the French-American architect (and veteran) who designed or oversaw the design of many WWI monuments and memorials in France, including full involvement in the American Monument here and the chapel at the Aisne-Marne Cemetery five miles away. The shout-out to Cret is well deserved. Though his name isn’t known beyond architectural circle, Cret’s work is familiar to many: the Rodin Museum and layout of the Ben Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, the Indianapolis Central Library, the Cincinnati Union Station, the Detroit Institute of Art, the main building and campus layout of the University of Texas at Austin, the headquarters of the Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C., and others.

The monument

The American Monument fulfills the four major characteristics that the AMBC sought in the 1920s to honor the American presence in the war: it’s built on the site of a significant battle; it’s visible from afar; it has a commanding view of a zone covered by American military operations, and it is accessible to the public.

(In addition to the American Monument at Chateau-Thierry, the two other major WWI monuments in France also fulfill these criteria: the Montsec Monument nine miles from the Saint Mihiel American Cemetery, and the Montfaucon Monument several miles from the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery. Both monuments are further east, in the Meuse region.)

The view from the monument shows what a strategic position this was, on a hill known as Côte 204 according to its wartime designation, overlooking the Marne River and the flat land beyond it that. We are near the southern end of the reach of Germany’s Spring Offensive of 1918, which is as close as their troops would come to Paris during the war.

In 1914 the First Battle of the Marne had seen British and French troops stop the German momentum that had swept relentlessly through Belgium and deep into northern and northeastern France. Now, in 1918, the Americans, first under French command and soon under their own, joined the fray in legendary fighting including the Third Battle of the Aisne (May 27-June 6), the Battle of Belleau Wood (June 6-26, 1918) and the Second Battle of the Marne (July 15-Aug. 6), where the 3rd Infantry Division would earn its nickname “The Rock of the Marne.” Those and other battles along the Western Front would set in motion a complete shift in momentum that would overwhelm German forces several months later.

Having enter along a long driveway, the visitor arrives before a rigid colonnade in a tight, unyielding formation. Against this backdrop of a classical theater of sorts, female allegorical figures of France and of the United States stand center stage. They hold hands as though standing severely united before a tomb in impassive echo of the colonnade itself. The figures are the work Alfred-Alphonse Bottiau, a French sculptor who worked with Cret on a number of ABMC monuments.

Division numbers, insignias and names of battles in the region are inscribed on the monument. They may not be as evocative as Omaha, Utah, Gold, Juno, Sword, but perhaps your curiosity will be awakened to learn more about the origin or evolution of U.S. divisions, their insignias and engagements. Among them:
– the 1st “Big Red One” Division whose 2nd Battalion, 16th Regiment became the face of Americans in France when it paraded through Paris to Lafayette’s grave on July 4, 1917;
– the 2nd “Indianhead” Division, whose insignia of an Indian in profile with headdress was derived from an emblem a driver had painted on his truck;
– the 26th “Yankee” Division, drawn from units from New England;
– the 28th “Keystone” Division formed from units of the Pennsylvania National Guard;
– the 32nd “Red Arrow Division” from the Wisconsin and Michigan National Guards;
– the 42nd “Rainbow” Division drawn from units that stretched “like a rainbow” across 26 states and the District of Columbia;
– the 77th “Statue of Liberty” Division from New York City,
– and the 93rd “Blue Helmet” Division, among others. The 93rd was an African-American segregated division whose regiments (269th Harlem Hellfighters of New York, the 270th Black Devils of Illinois, the 372nd Infantry Regiment) were welcomed as fighting forces by French commanders (who issued them blue French helmets) at a time when American commanders saw African-Americans as a labor-only force.

After a visit to the museum, the map of American military operations below the eagle on the eastern side of the monument may still be hard to grasp, but it will be coming into focus as you head next to Belleau Wood and the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery.

Practical tips for visiting the area

A day of WWI touring in the immediate area of Chateau-Thierry can include the American Monument, Belleau Wood and the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery over the course of several hours. It’s then possible to pursue the theme of WWI sights with a visit to the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery, 17 miles northeast of the Aisne-Marne, and the Quentin Roosevelt Fountain and crash site several miles further east.

Or, after visiting the sights around Chateau-Thierry, visitors can shift their attention to wine by visiting Marne Valley champagne producers in the area.

The Curious Tasting & Travel Club organizes occasional private and semi-private tours of the Chateau-Thierry area for a morning of war touring followed by an afternoon of champagne winery touring.

See Chateau-Thierry area’s official tourist site for information about sights, activities and commemorative events in the area. The tourist office occupies the ground floor of the France-America Friendship House.

© 2018, Gary Lee Kraut

The post ABMC WWI Museum Opens at Chateau-Thierry’s American Monument appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Little to no planning is required other than knowing where to rent bicycles if you don’t have one of your own. Trains in most directions are frequent enough that you don’t even have to worry much about timing your departure (unless there’s a strike). Many trains outside of rush hour (you’ll be going in the opposite direction) accept bicycles in a special compartment.

The biking route

The heart of this daytrip is a 9-10-mile ride in each direction through the Forest of Compiegne between the palace of Compiègne and the castle of Pierrefonds. These two notable sights are connected by two major routes through the National Forest of Compiegne, with many possible detours.

The forest covers about 35,000 acres, much of it former royal hunting ground. The landscape is fairly flat with a few minimal rises. Most of the paths you’ll ride on are paved. The forest is thick with oak and beech, and perhaps you’ll glimpse a deer or a boar or a roe. Roe are small European deer, like the original Bambi (created by an Austrian), which Disney transformed into a North American mule deer.

Of the major biking routes, the southern route through the forest allows for a stop in the village of Saint Jean aux Bois, with its abbey church and picturesque houses, while the northern route goes by the village of Moulins, with its church. I recommend starting with the southern route then taking the northern route on the return since that would then allow you to make a last-minute decision to make a 3-mile detour to the Glade of the Armistice, time and biking energy permitting. The glade is a clearing on the northern edge of the forest where the armistice ending combat of the First World War was signed. Add to this a mile’s ride from the Compiègne train station to/from the edge of the forest and you get a cycling day of 20-25 miles, depending on your route. It’s therefore a moderate ride, and for those with athletic teens a family-friendly daytrip.

How much time you spend visiting the three major sights on this route, or simply admiring them from the outside, is up to you.

This biking map can be downloaded. Your point of departure, the Compiègne train station (Gare SNCF), is at the upper left of that map.

Here’s a wider view of the region:

The train from Paris

The train between Paris’s North Station (Gare du Nord) and Compiegne takes 48 to 75 minutes, with departures every hour or so. Tickets are about 31€ round-trip. They can be purchased online, at any train (not metro or RER) station or at the North Station at the last minute. I can’t guarantee that they’ll be available at the last minute, but these trains tend not to fill outside of rush hour (you’ll be going in the opposite direction) and special events in Compiegne, unless a conductors’ strike causes everyone to pile onto the one running train. The schedule for specific days can be searched on the site of the French railways company SNCF. Trains idled due to strike are generally indicated as such a day in advance.

If you’ve rented a bike in Paris or have your own, then you’ll need to know which trains have a bike compartment. In that case, look for the appropriate indication in the pull-down tab describing each departure.

As you arrive at the track, you’ll see a bicycle symbol on the appropriate wagon, but don’t hesitate to ask if you don’t see it. Communication tip for those who don’t speak French: Find a train official on the track, say “Bonjour, excusez-moi,” point to your bicycle then to the train. A shrug of the shoulders and the monkey-like sound où, meaning where, ought to get you pointed to the right compartment.

Bike rental in Compiegne

It’s easy to rent bikes in Compiegne through the rental company Picardie Forêts Vertes, operated by Vincent, with whom you can write to or speak with in English. The booking process and other details are explained in English on the website. Vincent encourages people to reserve their bikes 48 hours or more in advance, but he can often accommodate requests made less than 24 hours in advance, particularly on weekdays. You’ll also make arrangements to drop off the bikes at the end of the day.

A VTC or VTT can be rented for 20€ per day, an electric bike for 25€. Tandems, baby seats and trailers for small children are also available. Helmets, locks and maps are provided. Bring an ID as a deposit. Though the typical rental season runs April through October, you may also contact Vincent in advance about rentals during the off-season.

Compiegne also has an inexpensive bike-share system called Vélotic, with a bike station at the train station. Rentals are 2€ for two days.

Lunch options

I’m not much of a planner when it comes to a short ride involving two towns, as with this ride. You can always find a bakery and cafés in Compiegne and Pierrefords, wherever hunger strikes. My own preference is to purchase a sandwich or more from a bakery in Pierrefonds or have lunch in a café there. If you’re more of a planner you can bring a picnic from Paris or purchase picnic goodies at the center of Compiegne. Or if you set out late in the morning from Paris you enjoy a café or restaurant lunch in Compiegne before setting off through the forest for the afternoon. The Palace of Compiegne also has a nice tea room. Bring along water for the ride in any case. On your return to the heart of Compiegne at the end of the day you might stop into a bakery and chocolate shop to reward yourself for a ride well done.

Sightseeing and touring

There are three notable sights to see along this route: the Palace of Compiegne, the Castle of Pierrefonds and the Glade of the Armistice. You’ll have a fine biking day without going inside any of these, but each is worthwhile and informative should you decide to enter.

The palace is closed Tuesdays and the castle is open daily. Both are closed Jan. 1, May 1 and Dec. 25. The glade is open daily but if making this your final stop note that last admission is at 5:30PM for a 6PM closing. They’re all open daily, except for some holidays. See their respective websites for more schedule details.

As a town with a major palace, Compiègne itself makes for a pleasing daytrip from Paris even if you aren’t interested in biking. So if there are any non-bikers in your travel group they can train out to Compiegne with you and pleasantly live their own touring lives as the others go out biking. The center of town is a 10-minute walk on the opposite side of the Oise River from the train station.

Crossing the bridge you might notice to the right the ruins of a tower now (sometimes) called the Joan of Arc Tour since it existed at the time of Joan’s downfall. On May 23, 1430, having come to help defend the Compiegne from attack by the Bungundians, she was captured and eventually sold to the English and taken to Rouen, where she was tried, condemned and burnt at the stakes. That history—and the late 19th-century inclination to honor it—explains the statue of Joan on the town’s central square in front of City Hall. A local Joan of Arc festival is held the second to last weekend in May.

More eye-catching than the statue is the flamboyant façade of Town Hall, built at the turn of the 16th century. It is one of France’s most remarkable town halls for the way it represents the transition between Gothic and Renaissance architecture in the kingdom. Louis XII, who reigned 1498-1515, rides at the center. (The Loire Valley cyclist might recognize him from the entrance to the Castle of Blois.) Town Hall’s Bancloque, an ancient bell first installed in 1303, still manages a dull thud and dong. The Compiegne Tourist Office is here. If you don’t yet have a map of cycling routes for this daytrip you can pick one up here, along with a town map and other information.

As far as tourism goes, though, the palace is the town’s main attraction.

The Palace of Compiegne

Successive royal castles existed here since the 5th century, beginning with the earliest dynasty of rulers, the Frankish Merovingian kings. What’s seen today is a royal and imperial palace that began with a complete redesign and rebuilding in the latter half of the 18th century by Louis XV’s chief architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel. Gabriel’s other major works include the Petit Trianon and the Opera at Versailles, Place de la Concorde and adjacent Hôtels de Crillon and de la Marine in Paris, and Place de la Bourse in Bordeaux.

The Palace of Compiegne as it stands today is a major monument to the architectural style of the latter part of Louis XV’s reign (1715-1774) and to decorative styles over the 100 years that followed.

On our last biking excursion we didn’t go inside but we did stop to watch a parade by the palace.

Here, in 1770, Louis XV’s grandson and heir to the throne, the 16-year-old future Louis XVI, was first introduced to his fiancé Marie-Antoinette of Austria. It wasn’t the kings Louis who got the most use from the palace, however (they continued to primarily hold court at Versailles), rather the emperors Napoleon. In 1810, Napoleon I met his second wife, Marie-Antoinette’s niece Marie-Louise, at Compiègne, but the first Napoleon generally preferred Fontainebleau.

Compiègne is primarily associated with lengthy stays by Napoleon III, who reigned 1852-1870, and his imperial court. When not reigning from the Tuileries Palace in Paris, this was his Versailles, where he would gather the Court for a month or more during the autumn hunting season in the forest that you’ll soon be biking through.

If the weather turns sour while in Compiegne, you can always forgo biking and spend the afternoon visiting the palace and the town.

Warning: If you do lock up your bikes outside and decide to take a quick tour of the palace, you may soon fall under its charms and find yourself drawn into spending a few hours here: visiting palace rooms that give an excellent lesson in the decorative styles associated with the eras of Louis XV and XVI and Napoleon I and III; strolling in the park; lounging in the tearoom; visiting a museum dedicated to the Second Empire (Napoleon III) and then a large collection of horse-drawn carriages and vehicles from the 17th to the 20th centuries, including early motorized vehicles and bicycles. A biking daytrip can soon turn into an excursion to the Palace of Compiegne.

Entrance to the park is free if you’d just like to lock your bikes up outside to enjoy an impressive view the palace from that side. But if the weather holds and you still think of this as a biking excursion, either limit your time in the palace or save your Compiegne-only daytrip for another day. Then cycle on past the palace, down Avenue Royale, with stately mansions to your right and a horseracing track coming up on your left.

The Castle of Pierrefonds

At a leisurely pace with a village stop along the way you’ll arrive in Pierrefonds an hour or two later. Or you could get lost, as a friend and I did on a distracted trek through the woods, and nonchalantly arrive three hours later.

As with the Palace of Compiegne, you can lock up your bikes to go inside the Castle of Pierrefonds, or not. Since there’s less to see inside, the interior can be visited in less than an hour. From Jan 11-Sept. 16, 2018 there’s an exhibition of castle graffiti, particularly during the First World War, when the castle was requisitions to house French soldiers.

Here’s a drone view of the castle:

The feudal castle of the late 14th century was mostly dismantled in the 17th, leaving ruins to be admired by the likes of Victor Hugo and others who enjoyed exercising their imaginations of medieval time. Among them was the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, the man behind many of the state-sponsored restorations of the reign of Napoleon III. The emperor’s affection for Compiegne and for hunts in the forest would have led him along some of the same paths that just brought you to Pierrefonds. He commissioned Viollet-le-Duc to rebuild the castle, and the architect was pleased to have such an open hand in creating an idealized fortified castle, drawbridge (currently under restoration) and all. While not authentically medieval, it is nevertheless an imposing sight standing on a hill above this quaint little town of about 1860 Pétrifontains, as its inhabitants are called.

Whether entering the castle or not, this daytrip calls for a relaxing pause in a café by the town square below it or by the lake.

The Glade of the Armistice

A stop at the Glade of the Armistice (Clairière de l’Armistice) adds just three miles to the ride back to the Compiegne train station. Be sure to have a detailed map of the forest so as to not miss the point at which you’ll break off from the main Pierrefonds-Compiegne biking route to head to the Clarière.

In addition to the three extra miles, count on 30 to 60 minutes to visit this reminder of the armistice ending combat of the First World War and of the French surrender ending the Battle of France in the initial phases of the Second World War.

A dining car put into service in 1914, shortly before the start of the war, was placed at the disposal of French Marshal Ferdinand Foch, Supreme Allied Commander in 1918, and brought on November 8 of that year to the Rethondes railway junction in a secluded clearing on the edge of the forest. It was here that Foch and British First Lord of the Admirality Rosslyn Wemyss, together representing the victorious Allies, met with Matthias Erzberger, who led the German delegation, for the purpose of agreeing to an signing an armistice to end combat after more than four years of war. The signing took place three days after the parties first met, with the armistice set to take effect “at 11 o’clock, on the 11th day, of the 11th month.”

The original railway car was presented in the courtyard of the Invalides in Paris from 1922 to 1927 before being placed back in the glade in the forest.

It was in this same clearing in that same car that Adolf Hitler delighted in having France surrendered to Germany on June 22, 1940. The car was then taken to Germany to be proudly displayed in Berlin. It was moved again later in the war to protect it from aerial bombing, but nevertheless went up in flames in 1945. Whether the fire was due to a bombing raid or by intentional German destruction is debated. The museum here itself states that the fire was “accidental.” A replica of the wagon as it was on November 11, 1918, now stands in the clearing, along some original monuments from the 1920s, including a statue of Marshal Foch. A small museum recounts these events through photographs and artefacts.

The last train to Paris

The last train to Paris from Compiegne generally departs at about 8:30PM.

© 2018, Gary Lee Kraut

For further information see the following websites:
Picardie Forêts Vertes (Compiegne bike rental company), Vélotic (Compiegne bike share), Forest of Compiegne biking map, Compiegne Tourist Office, Palace of Compiegne, Castle of Pierrefonds, Glade of the Armistice, SNCF train schedule and reservations. Compiegne and Pierrefonds are within the department (sub-region) of Oise.

The post Day Trip from Paris: A Compiègne-Pierrefonds Biking Excursion appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

* * *

The leaves have mostly fallen from the vines. Here and there small bunches of grapes, unripe at harvest time, remain. Sweet now but abandoned, they are the remnants of the pinots—noirs and meuniers—fermenting in vats of Olivier Belin’s champagne installation outside Chateau-Thierry, 55 miles east of Paris in the Marne Valley.

Further up the valley, the river flows into the heart of the champagne-growing area, past the town of Epernay and the Mountain of Reims. That’s the area that most travelers think of when considering a champagne wine excursion. Belin’s vineyards don’t lie within the border of the historic Champagne region, rather in historic Picardy, but the appellation for the world’s most evocative sparkling wine extends beyond the historic borders.

The western portion of the Marne Valley is primarily pinot meunier territory, the lesser known of the three major grapes of the overall champagne winegrowing zone. Meunier represents about one third of the wine that is assembled in various proportions into making champagne. It is often described as the workhorse grape, pulling the plow to add body for the more refined chardonnay (30% of the growing area) and the more noble and familiar pinot, noir (38% of the growing area). To hear some producers in the Reims-Epernay area speak of pinot meunier you’d think that they were embarrass to be pressing it at all, though press it they do. Given little respect as a grape on its own, meunier is the Rodney Dangerfield of champagne grapes.

Yet in this portion of the Marne Valley, within 10 miles east and southwest of the town of Chateau-Thierry, where 70% of the vines are pinot meunier, meunier holds its head high. Rather, its growers hold their heads high. Among them are the 40 grower-producers that form an association of Marne Valley winegrowers called the Association des Ambassadeurs du Terroir et du Tourisme en Vallée de la Marne, of which Belin is co-president.

“We are artisan winegrowers,” says Belin. “But that doesn’t mean that we’re tinkerers. Our cellars aren’t necessarily beautiful but it’s the work of the winegrower that one visits here.”

Indeed, this not zone of the sprawling chalk cellars, some of them medieval, even Roman quarries, as one can visit in the city of Reims. This is not the zone of vast underground installations as found in Epernay. This is not a zone of grand cru and premier cru vineyards. For the few (if growing number of) American visitors to this portion of the Marne Valley, the Chateau-Thierry area is less known for champagne than for the WWI battleground of Belleau Wood and the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery beside it. A tremendous American Monument overlooks the point in the valley where the German thrust of 1918 was stopped. The monument also overlooks a slope of champagne vineyard. So a taste of champagne or a deeper initiation into sparkling wine can be combined with war touring in the area.

Fact and figures about Champagne production and consumption

For the American consumer, selecting a champagne comes down to considering the labels of four or five brands, perhaps a few more at your more Francophile wine shop. Yet the champagne winegrowing region is home to 15,800 grape growers and 12,000 brand names. Only a handful of brands, those with large advertising budgets, reach most states of the union, though over the past decade medium and small houses and grower-producers have slowly been making their way into major markets.

More than half (52%) of all champagne is consumed in France. That doesn’t mean that the French are more festive than others, rather that champagne isn’t reserved for festivity in France but also serves as an aperitif at many gatherings, both casual and formal, social and festive. While bottles are available in a wide price range, there are plenty of worthy champagne available at under 30€, including a significant direct producer-to-consumer market offering good value bubbly for under 20€, as is the case of many of the champagne produced in the Marne Valley.

Even in France Marne Valley champagne is little known. Most people are unaware that the growing area extend this close to Paris, this close to brie cheese territory. Nevertheless, some of the grapes from these vineyards go into well-known labels. Belin, for example, sells a portion of his harvest to négotiants manupulants who buys grapes, juice or wine to make champagne on their own premises that they then market under their own label. All of the major champagne houses work that way. They may own some vineyards but need far more grapes than their own can provide.

Belin himself is a récoltant manipulant or grower-producer, meaning that he makes champagne on his own premises from the grapes of his own vineyards and under his own label.

The third major type of player in the wine business is the cooperatives, which produce champagne collectively, then sell them under a collective or individual label. There exist in the growing region 320 champagne houses and 39 cooperatives along with an astounding 4461 grower-producers, according to the Comité Champagne, the champagne trade association.

Last year, the U.S. ranked second in champagne’s export market (20.5 million bottles) after the U.K. (34.2 million) and before Germany and Japan (just under 12 million). Meanwhile, there are currently about 1.4 billion bottles in storage in the region.

Those are impressive numbers, but the most telling indicator of the difference between the French and the export markets is that in France 43% of champagnes bottles sold are produced by grower-producers or cooperatives whereas in the export market only 13% comes from those players. In other words, you’ll likely need to travel to discover them.

Champagne Gérard et Olivier Belin

As is often the case with small producers, Belin’s father and grandfather were grape farmers, selling their crop to others. His father, Gérard, then began selling champagne through a cooperative before producing champagne from his own grapes, under his own name. Having trained as an oenologist, Olivier began making wine with his father in 1997: tending the vines, harvesting and pressing, assembling wines, dosing sugar. He took firm hold on the reins of the business about five years ago while he continues to consult his father for his opinion whether in his vineyards or in the cellar. The label of Champagne Belin indicates both names. Olivier’s wife Katty is also involved in the family business.

Olivier Belin’s grandparents owned four hectares (just under 10 acres), to which his parents added two more. Belin now produces about 40,000 bottles per year, 60% of which he sells directly to consumers. The average grower-producer in the area makes about 20,000 bottles per year. Altogether the association’s members produce about one million bottles per year. That’s a drop in the champagne bucket consider that 310 million bottles were sold in 2015 for the entire winegrowing region. (Overall, Marne Valley vineyards represent about 10% of the overall champagne vineyard zone.).

With a hectare of champagne-grape vineyard now selling for 1-1.2 million euros, grape growers may be sitting on a gold mine, but it isn’t land wealth that one encounters in the area, rather the work and passion of these grower-producers.

To visit Belin’s installations and taste his sparkling wines in his little tasting room is to glimpse the passion of an artisan involved in his product from start to finish and from tradition to renewal. It’s the opportunity to understand the choices that winegrowers make in producing their product range. Belin, for example, appreciates the use of some oak barrel aging in his assembly. The men and women in the winegrowers association that Belin co-presides may not be tinkerers, but in encountering several of them it becomes clear that they enjoy the occasional risk of the fiddling with their grape juice, such as to create “micro-cuvées” of only a few thousand bottles.

Belin’s champagnes and those of many other winegrowers in the Marne Valley are proof that proper champagnes for celebration or for a friendly aperitif can be found for under 22€. However, it isn’t so much the price of champagne that makes visiting these local worthwhile (though Paris residents might want to take the opportunity to stock up) but the opportunity to discover the humanity behind the production of a world’s most famous sparkling wine.

Furthermore, there’s a fascinating diversity of champagnes produced in the Marne Valley, within their natural reliance on pinot meunier. On a daytrip from Paris—and certainly one can stay longer—the wise wine traveler will visit two or three winegrowers over the course of the day or the afternoon (if combined with war touring) to appreciate the diversity of approaches in the area.

Champagne Marteaux

A bench on the hill above the village of Azy-sur-Marne, four miles southwest of Chateau-Thierry, offers a view of the amphitheater of fields surrounding the village. This one of the prettiest views in the valley, though few come this way. It isn’t the view that might lead a traveler here so much as a visit to winegrower Olivier Marteaux.

Previously, polyculture was a way of in the area; farming meant wheat, corn and beets. Those crops are still grown in the area but vineyards is what one most notices when driving through the valley.

Olivier Marteaux’s ancestors were polyculture farmers until the 1950s. His grandfather then developed a wine nursery, selling young vines to grape farmers. In the 1980s the family began keeping their vines so as to grow grapes themselves. They made champagne with the local cooperative before eventually using their grapes exclusively for their own production. With 9 hectares (22.2 acres) of vines—65% pinot meunier, 20% chardonnay, 15% pinot noir—Marteaux currently produces 40-50,000 bottles per year.

Marteaux concocts what might be called connoisseur’s champagnes in the sense that they provide a deep, rich taste of terroir that one doesn’t always associated with bubbly. His vintages have been aged for at least six years prior to disgorgement and typically have low sugar content, such as the 2008 extra brut with 2 grams of sugar for a wine that’s 60% pinot meunier, 20% chardonnay and 20% pinot noir.

Among his four types of champagne he makes a rose de saignée, 100% pinot noir from a single parcel. Its tart fruitiness of Marteaux’s rose may not reflect what we’re accustomed to a rose champagne, but it is a taste that will give the wine-curious traveler a sense of the variety available in champagne wines in general and in the Marne Valley’s in particular. A 100% pinot noir champagne is a rarity in these parts and it’s interesting to compare Marteaux’s rose with Belin’s rosé de saignée, which is 100% pinot meunier.

Saignée is the more erudite way of producing rose since it requires precise pressing in order to obtain the proper color from the skin. In champagne production the preferred and allowed method for making rose is by adding red still wine (from pinot meunier or pinot noir) in assembling the wine so as to adjust the color along with the taste. Belin also makes a rosé d’assemblage. More than 90% of rose champagne gets its color that way.

Marteaux’s wife Laetitia if fully involved in the business, just as is Katty Belin is involved in the Belin family business. These are truly family affairs, which is the case of the vast majority of members of the local winegrowing association.

The Champagne et Vous wine festival

A great opportunity to meet producers on an easy daytrip from Paris is at the annual wine festival Champagne et Vous (Champagne and You) organized by the Marne Valley winegrowers association. The weekend festival takes place in late October in Chateau-Thierry on the site of the ruins of Thierry’s chateau. It’s a largely local event that invites the area’s population to understand the role of winemaking in the local economy and affirm the place of these grower-producers in the champagne-making landscape.

See Champagne et Vous for further information about the festival including portraits and addresses of participating winegrowers.

Addresses and further information

Champagne Gérard et Olivier Belin
30A Aulnois
02400 Essômes-sur-Marne
Tel. 03 23 70 88 43

Champagne Marteaux
6 Route de Bonneil, 02400 Azy-sur-Marne
Tel. 03 23 82 92 47

The Chateau-Thierry Tourist Office, situated near the House of France-America Friendship (see this article) can help those travelers who arrive with any prior appointments but would like to make last-minute arrangements to visit Marne Valley winegrowers.

For further information about war touring and other sights in the area, also see this article on France Revisited.

A B&B and lunch suggestion: Chateau de la Marjolaine
Two miles southwest of Chateau-Thierry, Jean-Pierre and Bruno have transformed this manor house by the river into an attractive B&B, restaurant and champagne bar.
27 Hameau d’Aulnois
02400 Essômes sur Marne
Tel. 03 23 69 77 80 or 06 60 39 98 79

© 2016, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Wine Travel: Respect for Pinot Meunier in Marne Valley Champagnes appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Château-Thierry, 55 miles east of Paris along the Marne River, benefited from the dedication of Reverend Julian Wadsworth, delegate of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and his wife in their efforts to honor the memory of fallen soldiers while assisting residents of Château-Thierry and the surrounding villages.

This is an area where American forces played a significant role along with our British and particularly French allies beginning in the spring of 1918 in countering the final major German offensives and pushing them back and to eventual surrender and signature of the armistice of November 11, 1918. The following October, the Wadsworths purchased the shell-ridden Hôtel de l’Elephant in Château-Thierry in order to create what Julian Wadsworth would refer to as “a war memorial” and “a community house of friendliness.”

Known as the Maison de l’Amitié Franco-Américaine (MAFA), the House of French-American Friendship, it provided day care and nursing services, a free circulating library and reading room, a war museum, tech instruction in the use of wireless telegraph and radio-telephone, the organization of Boy Scouts and Camp-fire girls and a social club for girls, while also supporting cultural exchanges and events in English and in French.

The MAFA “afford[ed] an ideal opportunity for closer acquaintance and the making of abiding friendship between the American, English and French peoples,” according to a pamphlet produced under the direction of Wadsworth in 1925. Entitled “A War Memorial: A Community House of Friendliness,” the pamphlet explains:

“Already the French Government had asked the Methodists to aid with relief for the refugees who were returning to the devastated homes. Thirty-two villages were assigned to them. It was while thinking of the aid which the Board of Foreign Missions in New York had offered for the devastated areas of France that the thought came of enlarging this temporary material assistance and making a more enduring monument which would a Memorial worthy of the soldiers whose graves are in France. The gift of the Methodist Episcopal Church to Château-Thierry should be more than a passing gift of material relief. It should be an enduring monument of happiness, built out of the desolation of war. It must be a loving service for those who are still living in the war-scarred villages of the Valley of the Marne.” (The full text of that brochure can be found here.)

In 1930 the Wadsworths donated the MAFA to the city. While it continued its vocations for decades, its increasingly dilapidated state led it to being closed in 2000.

This year, on the eve of its November 11 Armistice Day / Remembrance Day / Veterans Day commemorations, the town of Château-Thierry inaugurated a new building on the same location, now calling it Maison de l’Amitié France-Amerique (translated on the plaque by its entrance as the House of France-American Friendship). The square out front had long been re-baptized Place des Etats-Unis (Square of the United States).

While the new building doesn’t as actively serve the lofty goals of the Wadsworths’ original project of the 1920s, it nevertheless reaffirms Château-Thierry’s with the United States.

The inaugural ceremony was led by U.S. Ambassador to France Jane D. Hartley and Mayor of Château-Thierry Jacques Krabal, accompanied by local and regional dignitaries in the presence of about 200 Castelthéodoriciens, as citizens of the town are called.

Rather than recount the history of the war or the American involvement in 1918 in the Third Battle of the Aisne, the Battle of Château-Thierry and the Second Battle of the Marne, the MAFA houses on its second floor an exhibition focusing on the life and death of Quentin Roosevelt. Son of Theodore Roosevelt and his second wife Edith, Quentin was shot down by German planes at the age of 20 during aerial combat over France on July 14, 1918, 17 miles northeast of here.

Quentin and his brothers Ted Jr., Archie and Kermit all served in WWI. Quentin was originally buried by the German army in the village of Chamery, where his plane crashed. In 1955 his remains were removed to the Normandy American Cemetery, to be re-laid to rest beside those of Ted Jr., who fought in WWII. The oldest American soldier and highest ranking officer to land by sea in Normandy (Utah Beach) on D-Day June 6, 1944, Ted Jr. who died of a heart attack five weeks into the invasion.

For more about Quentin Roosevelt, read Quentin Roosevelt: The Most Famous American Killed in France in WWI.

The ground floor of the new MAFA is occupied by the Château-Thierry Tourist Office. For visitors who need logistical assistance or who arrive without firm plans for their day, it’s a good first place to stop in order to obtain information about war touring in the surrounding region. For more about sights and memorials related to the American involvement in WWI, including Belleau Wood, the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, and the American Monument of Château Thierry see this photolog.

Happily, war touring in these parts can also go hand in hand with wine touring—and not just any wine but champagne. Though Château-Thierry is located in the administrative region of Picardy and the department of Aisne, 16 miles from the border of the Champagne region (actually called Champagne-Ardenne), its surroundings lie within the champagne appellation.

As indicated above the entrance to the MAFA, the Chateau-Thierry area represents “the gates to champagne.” The tourist office is therefore well armed to advise visitors on how and where to visit champagne producers within a 20-minute drive east or west along the Marne, and they can call ahead to make last-minute appointments with grower-producers. (An article about champagne producers of this portion of the Marne Valley is coming soon.)

Finally, in keeping with the MAFA’s historical role as a center for cultural exchanges and learning, there is a space for temporary exhibitions and a room where children can come to learn English.

The MAFA is not a destination in itself, but the starting point for further explorations in this once war-torn, still champagne-filled stretch of the Marne River.

With time and interest, one might take a stroll to see the admirable facades of the theater, city hall and food market on the town’s central square and to look up towards the ramparts of the chateau occupied over 1000 years ago by a certain King Thierry IV before the Counts of Champagne took control of the region. Some medieval ruins still remain behind the ramparts.

The town’s major historical sight, involving neither champagne nor war, is its Hôtel Dieu, the former central hospital with a rich collection of works received during its centuries as a religious institution. There’s also a museum dedicated to 17th-century fable writer Jean de La Fontaine.

For outdoor entertainment, an enjoyable, family-friendly birds of prey show takes place April-September beside the chateau ruins, where, among others, a North American bald eagle takes flight.

Maison de l’Amitié France-Amérique / Château-Thierry Tourist Office, 2 place des Etats-Unis, 02400 Château-Thierry. Tel. 03 23 83 51 14.

© 2015, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Château-Thierry Reaffirms Its Bond with the United States appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

In 2008, American pop idol Jeff Koons raised multiple hackles with his giant balloon puppies and lobsters. The exhibition did, however, have its supporters who thought the high kitsch sculptures looked right at home given that Versailles was the original McMansion and nobody “got” glitz and flash more than Marie Antoinette.

By the time that Japanese manga artist Takashi Murakami placed a buxomly cartoonish French Maid a little too close to the Hall of Mirrors in 2010, the opposition had organized. A petition signed by 11,000 stated that the objets d’art, which the artist proposed as a “face-off between the Baroque period and Post-War Japan,” were “degrading and disrespectful.”

Since the Murakami to-do, Versailles curators have confined most of the artwork to the gardens. A sensible plan since, by this time, Tracey Emin was presumably on the invitation short-list. Who wanted to clean up all those condoms in the royal boudoir, especially since the manga maids were banned from the premises?

This year, the protests got nasty. In the wee hours of June 16, barely a week after the unveiling of the current Anish Kapoor exhibit, art vigilantes threw paint over the 33-feet-high Dirty Corner, most likely in response to an interview the artist gave in the Journal du Dimanche (May 31, 2015), in which he described the artwork as “the vagina of the queen taking power.”

In fact, Dirty Corner was not commissioned with Marie Antoinette or one of her predecessors in mind. It’s been around since 2011. When first displayed in Milan at the Fabbrica del Vapore, people were invited to enter the installation and experience disorientation (without royal gynocological implications) as they walked through the narrowing tunnel.

Kapoor acknowledges that the artwork, which rises out of Versailles’s manicured lawn like a giant Dune sand-monster, scattering multi-ton slabs of rock in the process, is supposed to upset the regal symmetry of Le Nôtre’s gardens.

Kapoor is one of the most popular living artists exhibited in France. His 2011 Momumenta exhibition at the Grand Palais attracted nearly 280,000 visitors. Commenting on the attack in The Guardian (June 19, 2015), Kapoor blamed the vandalism on the dark forces of “exclusion, marginalization, elitism, racism, Islamophobia” … a rather puzzling denunciation from the recently knighted, Bombay-born Hindu-Jewish artiste who resides in Britain.

Since the vandalism, visitors at the exhibition, running June 9-November 1, will now be met at the Dirty Corner by rather anxious-looking “Cultural Mediators”, art history students who are ready and willing to wrestle royalist taggers to the mat. Unfortunately—at least during the clean-up phase that features large machines thrusting into the artwork and a work crew diligently scrubbing away at what looks like the mother of all STDs—no one is likely to forget the “V” word.

Text and photos © 2015, Corinne LaBalme

Anish Kapoor in the garden of Versailles, June 9-Nov. 1, 2015. 

The post What’s THAT at Versailles? Anish Kapoor and “The Queen’s Vagina” appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

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Blois (pronounced a sharp blwa, vampire-like) holds a prominent place on the map, yet its castle is often ignored in favor of more photogenic stars of the valley. Chambord, Chenonceau, Villandry, Azay-le-Rideau, Usée and Saumur, for example, readily lend themselves to adjectives such as majestic, exquisite, idyllic, dramatic, elegant or storybook. (Match the adjectives with the chateaux and you get a free subscription to France Revisited for the rest of this year.)

Blois Castle, le château de Blois, stands on a rise on the right bank of the Loire but it offers no great photo op from the river. The Blois Tourist Office might well sue me for libel for showing this gray-weather shot from the bridge across the river.

And the main entrance to the castle is more promising though still not as imposing or impressive or fairy-tale as we’d like our castles to look, particularly when seen under an indeterminate sky.

But that doesn’t make Blois any less notable. This is in fact the most historically and architecturally significant of the chateaux of the Loire Valley. Admittedly, that isn’t a line you use to get your spouse to choose Blois as a vacation destination or to get your 12-year-old excited about a trip abroad (how about telling him/her that there’s a Magic Museum with dragons in the windows across the square?). Nevertheless, Blois is a key to understanding the valley’s castle-scape.

What it lacks in outward photogenia it makes up for in details, in revealing history and in convenience to daytripper and valley bikers. Blois does have character(s). You just need to get closer to see it/them.

Let’s take a look.

Amboise Castle, a left bank chateau 22 miles downstream, is more photogenic from across the river but it’s now far less notable inside. Amboise is where Charles VIII (born 1470-reigned 1493-died 1498) died from fracturing his skull on a door lintel (careful when visiting old castles, folks, they weren’t designed with Disney building standards in mind, and just you try suing someone for tripping on a cobblestone).

Charles VIII and Queen Anne of Brittany were childless, so with no direct heir his cousin Louis d’Orléans ascended to the throne as Louis XII (1462-1498-1515).

Louis XII

Louis may have had Orleans in his name but he was a native Blésois, as the inhabitants of Blois are called. A century earlier, in 1391, his grandfather Duke Louis I d’Orléans, brother to then king Charles VI, had purchased the fortress of the Counts of Blois whose power had waned. He took full control of the county six years later. While most of the counts’ fortress was razed to its foundations to make way for the new castle of the mounting Orleans clan, Louis I kept the fortress’s Great Hall (1214), one of the largest civil halls in France still existing today from that period.

Louis XII would in turn raze much of the castle of his father and grandfather, again conserving the Great Hall as he pursued a transformation of the family castle to make it worthy of a king. (We’ll return to the Great Hall later in our visit.)

Louis XII greets us above the entrance.

Below him, his symbol: the crowned porcupine. His motto: qui s’y frotte s’y pique, meaning rub against him and you’ll get pricked (literally) or cross swords with him at your peril or if you don’t watch out you’ll get burned.

The initials to either side of the porcupine: L for Louis and A for Anne, you guessed it, of Brittany, his cousin’s widow. Anne was no looker, but having the duchy of Brittany in her dowry made her quite the catch. Louis therefore obtained the annulment of his own childless first marriage to wed her. Anne’s symbol, the symbol of Brittany, was the ermine, a pattern of black stoat (weasel) coats against a white background.

Viewed from the outer square, Louis XII’s brick-and-stone wing, circa 1500, speaks of the end of an era (Gothic). Inside we follow the call of a new era (Renaissance), a pleasure palace with a vast hallway and a succession of royal apartments. The main Louis XII wing now houses the town’s Beaux-Art Museum (more on the museum later). A chapel, truncated by subsequent developments at Blois, also remains from this time.

Louis and Anne had two surviving children, daughters, Claude and Renée, however the succession laws of the French kings stated that the crown could only pass to a male heir. That meant the search for good (i.e. useful) marriages for the girls and likely inheritance of the crown by cousin François (Francis). There was therefore no better marriage for Claude (de France), the elder daughter, than to cousin Francois (d’Orléans).

Francois I

In 1515, less than a year into their marriage, Louis XII died and Claude’s husband became King Francois the First (Ier in French). (France has had plenty of Kings Louis and Charles and several Kings Henri but only two Kings Francois, the second being his grandson who reigned for only 17 months before dying from an inner ear problem at age 16.)

Claude, already duchess of Brittany by virtue of her mother Anne (she also inherited her mother’s looks), was therefore queen. Claude died at the age of 24, which gave her enough time to have seven children, including the future king Henri II—or perhaps it’s better said that having seven children by the age of 24 killed her, and getting syphilis from her husband didn’t help.

While Francois has gone down in history as a powerful builder king, Claude is remembered in the name of a sensual green or yellow-green plum, la reine claude, found ripe in markets in August. Francois I remarried after Claude’s death but had no children with his second wife, Eleanore of Austria, though plums continued to grow in the castle gardens. (Those gardens no longer exist; the city has grown into it.)

Francois grew up at the Chateau d’Amboise. It was there that he invited Leonardo da Vinci to be his neighbor. But Claude was naturally fond of her home castle at Blois and Francois I was intent on keeping it up-to-date. That meant tearing down portions of his predecessor’s château, already démodé, and creating something stylish and avant-garde.

This year France is commemorating the 500th anniversary of the coronation and reign of Francois (Francis) I. Chateaux great (e.g. Chambord) and small (e.g. Beauregard), however deeply or tangentially touched by the architectural and decorative spirit of the era of Francois I, are unfurling images of the broad-shouldered king with the long straight nose, sporting a thin moustache trickling into a full beard, wearing tights or armor, sitting in equestrian glory or standing in fur-lined grace. Blois itself is hosting a bookish exhibition called “Royal Treasures, the Library of François I,” running July 4-Oct. 18, 2015.

The equestrian statue of Louis XII may get the photo op at the entrance to Blois Castle, but it’s Francois I’s see-and-be-seen staircase that draws the lens once in the courtyard—though how to photograph it properly without looking like it’s been seen in a funhouse mirror is anyone’s guess.

Let me try again.

I give up. Photography may have become the lazy man’s travel writing but a skilled photographer still has his place.

Francois I (1494-1515-1547) would go on to launch enormous royal projects at Chambord, Fontainebleau and the Louvre, but he made his first mark on royal architecture at Blois. Palaces constructed or altered in his name were signed with his royal symbol the fire-breathing salamander and the motto nutrisco et extinguo referring to flames that nourish his people and extinguish his enemies.

The salamander sets the tone for decorative relief by the base of the showy outer staircase that defines the Francois I wing.

This is Blois’ architectural claim to fame. With loggia for nobility to look out onto the courtyard and to be seen from below, the theatrical staircase (1515-1519) and the wing of the castle that it serves set the stage for a new architectural style that would now developing throughout the valley. The Francois I wing gave royal momentum to the French Renaissance, thanks largely to Italian architects and decorators in its early phases.

This is no Eiffel Tower. Go to the top of the staircase and you’ll have little more than a view of tourist tripping over cobblestones down below (be sure to look up, though at the way in which the structure meets the ceiling). Nevertheless, this remains one of the architectural treasures of the Loire Valley. Again, not enough to plan a honeymoon around, but there you have it, 16th-century architectural sophistication—dramatic staircases were becoming all the rage.

If approaching from the train station, a 10-15 minute walk, your first view of the chateau is the back of the Francois I wing. Based on an Italian model, it looks more like an apartment building in Rome than a royal castle along the Loire.

It used to overlook the castle gardens but now faces a city road that wraps around a tremendous Atlas cedar. Beyond the cedar, one can also see from the balcony the orangery where citrus trees from the castle gardens were placed in winter. (The historical building now houses a gastronomic restaurant.)

Francois gets the architectural shout-out for this wing with the famous staircase, but the historical tale told inside speaks more about the era of his grandson Henri III.

Henri III

Francois I’s son Henri II (1519-1547-1559), who eventually died from being poked in the eye during a jousting tournament, preferred to place his architectural monograms elsewhere, including on the Louvre and at Fontainebleau. But Blois continues to speak of the presence of Henri II’s queen Catherine de Medicis and of their third son, Henri III (1551-1574-1589).

Henri III’s era of the French Court was as perverse and manipulative as our own in terms of power struggles, festivities, fashion, intrigue and assassination. We have our own politics in which a vocal, heavily armed group proclaims that the “true” religion should guide policy; we, too, go in for fear mongering, lies and rumors passed off for evidence that one man or one party will destroy life as we know it; we too hear the siren of the politics of nostalgia, etc. Admittedly, we prefer to assassinate character more than body these days and we pretend that telling an armed public that “someone ought to shoot that guy” is just an expression of disagreement, but we surround our politicians with a sizeable security detail just in case.

In 1576 and again in 1588, Henri III convoked at Blois an assembly of the Three Estates: the clergy, the nobility and the Third Estate, i.e. all others. The assembly took place in the Great Hall of 1214, originally built as a multi-purpose hall for the Counts of Blois. At its best the Estates (or States) General, as it was called, served as an advisory body offering wise counsel to the king. Otherwise it might be a way in which those with lesser or no power could let off steam or a quarrelsome nuisance that the king would ignore. The body met periodically at various venues from the early 14th century until 1614, then not at all until 1789, when discontent was so loud that Louis XVI could no longer postpone the reunion—but more than reunion, revolution was in the air.

The Wars of Religion between Catholics and Protestants marked the tenure of Catherine de Medicis and her three successive royal sons. It came to a head during the reign of Henri III. It was bad enough that factions of warring nobility saw no room to compromise, but the ultra-Catholics felt that disaster would befall the kingdom since Henri III was childless, making the heir to the throne his cousin Henri de Navarre, a Protestant.

The Great Hall is a magnificent space for its time and for a family photo op on the throne. Portions of the apartments of Catherine de Medicis and of Henri III are also visible. It’s less the heavily restored décor that makes them significant as the events that took place there. With the right guide (human or audio), the events that took place but gets us thinking about how similar the power struggles of the late 16th century are to the politics of our own time.

In order to calm the warrior spirit of the hawkish Catholic nobility and clergy against the Protestants (Huguenots) on the occasion of the Estates General of 1588, Henri III had the Catholic leader Duke Henri de Guise assassinated as the duke was walking through the king’s bedroom to a supposed pow-wow with the king.

“My God he’s tall,” the king is reported to have said upon seeing his slain rival. “He even looks taller dead than alive.”

The Duke de Guise’s brother, the Cardinal de Guise, also a conspirator against the king, was assassinated in Blois Castle the following day.

Twelve days later, Queen Mother Catherine de Medicis, died here of natural causes at the age of 79.

And seven months later, on August 2, 1589, Henri III was in turn assassinated, caught off guard while on the pierced chair (i.e. the can) at the royal Chateau de Saint Cloud (near Paris). His assassin was a monk named Jacques Clément who represented forces of what we would now call the religious far right.

Upon Henri III’s death the king’s chronicler Pierre de l’Estoile wrote: “This king would have been a good prince had he been born in a better century.” It’s doubtful though that such a century has ever existed.

Henri IV

Heir and party to the Wars of Religion, Henri IV was not only a distant cousin rising to the throne but was also a Protestant, two strikes against him that meant he had to conquer his kingdom. He would eventually convert to Catholicism to be in phase with the majority, but without abandoning the reformers.

Photo Henri IV. The central role that the Loire Valley had played in royal politics was coming to an end as the Bourbon kings asserted a firm hand throughout the kingdom and took up more frequent residence in Paris and then Versailles. Henri IV’s main association with the Loire is far downstream at Nantes, where he signed the edict that granted the right to Protestants to practice their religion in peace along with certain politic rights, thus closing the Wars of Religion in France.

He nevertheless showed enough interest enough in Blois to order the construction of a new building in the gardens. As a builder, his heart—before it was pierced by an assassin monk in Paris in 1612—was more focused on urban projects in the capital.

After his assassination his queen Marie de Medicis assumed the regency for underage Louis XIII. But a power struggle ensued when he son reached royal majority in his mid-teens and he exiled her to Blois to keep her from meddling in affairs of state. A painting in the Louvre, La Fuite de Blois by Rubens, shows her escaping from Blois through the construction site that had been launched by Henri IV. That building was never completed and was eventually demolished.

(To recap royal deaths from 1498-1612: Charles VIII died from banging his head on a door lintel at age 27; Louis XII died from intestinal trouble at age 52; Francois I died from septicemia related to fistula around the unmentionables and kidney failure at age 53; Henri II died from a brain infection caused by being poked in the eye at a jousting tournament at age 40; Francois II died from an ear infection at age 16; Charles IX died from pleurisy at age 23; Henri III was assassinated by a monk will sitting on the can at age 47, and Henri IV was assassinated by a monk while riding in his carriage at age 56. Not pretty, but, ah, but the castles they built!)

Gaston, Duc d’Orléans

Louis XIII saw no need to keep Blois Castle in the French crown and so gave it to his younger brother Gaston in 1626. Had the power days of Blois ended? Not if Gaston could help it. Any pretext was good for Gaston (1608-1660) to conspire against or otherwise disobey his brother because as long as Louis XIII and Queen Anne didn’t have a son he remained first in line for the throne.

By the second decade of their childless marriage, Gaston could reasonably dream of occupying the throne should his older brother predecease him. Blois would then become a royal residence again.

So Gaston hired one of the top architects of the time, Francois Mansart, to build a new wing to his castle, thus bringing Blois into the modern era of the 17th century. Gaston may well have rebuilt the entire castle, razing the previous structures like an old villa on beachfront property, but the throne eluded him. In 1738, after nearly 23 years of marriage, Anne of Austria gave birth to a son (presumably fathered by Louis XIII). The existence of a healthy boy distanced Gaston one step further from the crown, and when Louis XIII died five years later, the boy became Louis XIV.

The Gaston wing resembles a stand-alone chateau and is notable for its relatively early Classicism, but viewed from the courtyard it sticks out as ambition gone wrong; the focal point of the courtyard remains the Francois I wing with its external staircase. Architect Francois Mansart would lend his name to the mansard, a high-pitched roof pierced with windows, then coming into fashion.

The grace of the Gaston/Mansart wing comes especially from the symmetry of the central structure with pavilions on either side reaching out to embrace the courtyard. Through his work here and elsewhere, Mansart nevertheless helped usher in an architectural style that would later become associated not with Gaston Ier but with Louis XIV.

Louis XIV’s prime minister Mazarin, tired of Gaston’s conspiring against the crown during the king’s youth, eventually exiled Gaston to Blois. There he lost the ambition (and perhaps the funding) to complete his dream castle.

The decorative elements of the interior were never finished. The interior monumental staircase of the Gaston wing, crowned by a copula, looks like a grand stage between plays. But Blois was now far from center stage, and the Loire Valley itself was soon but a sideshow as, about the time of Gaston’s death in 1660, Louis XIV began drawing plans for the entire theater district move to Versailles.

The Beaux Arts Museum

The main Louis XII wing houses a small collection that lends itself as much to pleasant if disinterested meandering as it does to a more studious examination of representative 16th- and 17th-century paintings, and to a lesser extent 18th- and early 19th-century works, including glossy, theatrical historical works from the early 19th century called “troubadour” paintings.

For students of 19th-century restorations of medieval and Renaissance castles, Blois Castle is a must see. But since none of those students is reading this, we might be tempted to pretend that that the original equestrian statue at the castle entrance wasn’t actually destroyed during the Revolution and that this window with the ermine of Anne of Brittany has been safely in place for 500 years.

No, let’s not pretend. Let’s be truthful here: The history of French chateaux is rarely that of a single moment in history, and all the more so at Blois. What we see is the result of evolving tastes and ambitions, good fortune and bad, and restoration. In 1788 Louis XVI, five years short of the guillotine, abandoned any royal prerogative to Blois Castle. It then served as barracks for troops and officers with no interest in protecting its historical significance. With the Revolution soon banging at the door there was no interest in protecting its royal symbols either. What was saved was saved for practical rather than historical or emotional reasons.

Then, several decades later, historical mindfulness came calling. In 1840 Blois became one of the first royal complexes in France to be designated a historical monument. Major restoration began several years later, beginning with the rehabilitation of the Francois I wing. The Beaux-Arts Museum opened in 1869.

A room inside this chateau is dedicated to the 19th-century restorers, particularly one Félix Duban, an architect who oversaw the restoration of Blois Castle until his death in 1870. In his terrific travel book “A Little Tour in France,” Henry James, writing in the 1880s, laments the heavy-handed restoration work that he encounters on his tour of the provinces. Nevertheless, it’s thanks to that post-royal history—as barracks, as possession of the city, as object of restoration—that we get to see and to appreciate the lessons in history and architecture that Blois teaches.

To Blois or not to Blois

That remains the question. Is it more rewarding to aim for the monumental unity of Chambord, the loveliness of Chenonceau, the dramatic view of Chaumont, or to get studious with Blois? You can’t go wrong as you plan or wing your way through the castle-rich area of the Loire Valley between Blois and Saumur. Still, a traveler much choose between chateaux while leaving time to enjoy the other pleasures that the region offers—vineyards, gardens, culinary explorations, a zoo, a long stroll by the river.

The architectural developments themselves may seem insignificant 500 years on. Nevertheless, Blois, considered a (perhaps the) key to the Loire Valley, deserves attention.

© 2015 Gary Lee Kraut

Useful information

Château de Blois, Blois Castle, is open daily except Dec. 25 and Jan. 1. Fencing demonstrations are given July 13-Aug. 16, 2015. One reason to spend the night in or near Blois is to attend the wonderful sound-and-light show in the castle courtyard, April 4-Sept. 20, 2015.

Blois Tourist Office, is next to the castle at 23 Place du Château. Tel. 02 54 90 41 41. The office and its website also provide information about chateaux in the surrounding area.

Maison de la Magie, the magic museum and fun house across the square from the castle entrance. Watch for the dragons in the window. Open April 4-Sept. 20 and Oct. 17-Nov. 1, 2015.

Loire à Vélo is the name of the Loire Valley biking system covering a cycle trail of about 500 miles. Its official website is here.

Getting to Blois: From Paris, there are infrequent direct trains to Blois from the Austerlitz Station. They take 1 hour 25 minutes. 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). A daytrip from Paris is possible. One worthwhile approach to beginning your longer Loire Valley stay in Blois is to spend the first day and perhaps night in the town before renting bikes or a car for wider explorations in the valley. Bus service from Blois goes to the nearby chateaux of Beauregard, Cheverny and Chambord. Inquire at the Blois Tourist Office or see the bus schedule here.

Lodging in Blois and the surroundings area

B&Bs

La Maison de Thomas, 12 rue Beauvoir, 41000 Blois. Tel. 09 81 84 44 59 or 06 60 14 41 41. In the heart of the town, a friendly townhouse for those without wheels or for a night in Blois before or after a biking trip.

16 Place Saint Louis, 16 place Saint Louis, 41000 Blois. Tel. 02 54 74 13 61. At Philippe Escoffre’s B&B a 5-minute hike uphill from center, three cozy rooms look out to the cathedral and over the river. Yes, the name is the address.

Le Plessis, 195 rue Albert 1er, 41000 Blois. Tel. 02 54 43 80 08. On the downstream edge of the town with a chemical-free, salt-water swimming pool.

Le Clos Pasquier, 10-12, Impasse de l’Orée du Bois, 41000 Blois. Tel. 02 54 58 84 08. Claire and Laurent Nicot’s B&B in a 15th-century manor house is another 1.5 miles further downstream.

Hotels

Côté Loire – Auberge Ligérienne 2 place de la Grève, 41000 Blois. Tel. 02 54 78 07 86. A 2-star hotel and restaurant in Blois by the river.

L’Auberge du Centre, 34 Grande Rue, 41120 Chitenay. Tel. 02 54 70 42 11. Nine miles south of Blois. I found this 3-star village hotel with a pleasant restaurant. A choice stop during a biking trip in this portion of the valley.

La Maison d’à Côté, 26 rue de Chambord, 41350 Montlivault. Tel. 02 54 20 62 30. An 8-room inn with restaurant (1 star Michelin in 2015) 6 miles upstream from Blois toward Chambord

Le Château du Breuil, 23 route de Fougères, 41700 Cheverny. Tel. 02 54 44 20 20. Ten miles southeast of Blois, in the countryside two miles from the Chateau de Cheverny, Véronique and Bernard Gattolliat’s 39-room 4-star hotel with restaurant an swimming pool.

Domaine des Hauts de Loire, 79 rue Gilbert Navard, 41150 Onzain. Tel. 02 54 20 72 57.Ten miles downstream from Blois, across the river from Chaumont, a 4-star chateau hotel and restaurant. The 170-acre property also has a tennis court, outdoor pool, a pond where one can fish and bikes.

Restaurants in Blois

For a daytripper, one of the cafés below the chateau de Blois should suffice, or simply a sandwich and pastries from one of the bakeries in that area.

For those spending the evening: I’ve fond memories of a relaxed, gastronomic dinner at Christophe Cosme’s Le Rendez-vous des Pêcheurs, 27 rue du Foix. Tel. 02 54 74 67 48. Closed Sun. and Mon. There’s also the Auberge Ligérienne, a part of the hotel Côté Loire noted above. For a more formal meal in an airy historical setting there’s L’Orangerie du Château, 1 avenue Jean-Laigret. Tel. 02 54 78 05 36. It occupies the former citrus green house or orangery of the chateau. Also closed Sun. and Mon. For a more contemporary decor, more contemporary gastronomy, Assa, one mile downstream from center on the edge of the Loire, has 1 Michelin star (2015). 189 quai Ulysse Besnard. Tel. 02 54 78 09 01. Closed Sun. dinner, Mon. Tues.

– GLK

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