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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lyon Tourist Office, Place Bellecour, Lyon.

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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.

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My audio tour is available on the VoiceMap touring app. VoiceMap’s audio tour app for iOS and Android uses your device’s GPS to play audio automatically, at the right time and place. Just install the app and download my tour, then go to the starting point just outside the gates of the Tuileries Garden and begin your walk. And since I’ve included 30 beautiful photos you can even tour with me from your computer at home.

The Champs-Elysées tour starts right where my Tuileries Garden VoiceMap tour ends so that you can segue directly from one to the other.

Watch this video to learn more about my Champs-Elysées tour.

So download the tour from the VoiceMap touring app, put on your walking shoes, and join me for an enjoyable, informative and eye-popping stroll through the glory, glamour and glitz of the Champs-Elysées and its monumental bookends, Place de la Concorde and the Arc de Triomphe.

You can even listen to the first three locations of this 33-location, 90-minute tour free of charge.

This essential Paris walking tour from Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe starts … right here.

I’ve also created Paris walking tours to the Luxembourg Garden and the Tuileries Garden, along with a unique exploration of the Dark Side of the City of Light on the central Right Bank, all available on the VoiceMap app. Find all of my VoiceMap audio-tours here.

FAQ about Gary’s Paris Walking Tour for the VoiceMap app

How do VoiceMap tours work?
VoiceMap’s audio-tour app for iOS and Android uses your device’s GPS to play audio automatically, at the right time and place. Just install the app and download your tour, then go to the starting point and begin your walk.

Do I need to follow a route, or can I start the tour anywhere I like?
Tours have a fixed starting point and follow a route to a fixed end location. This allows the tour to provide turn-by-turn-directions and improves the accuracy of automatic playback. It also allows me to tell a better story as one location leads to the next. But the VoiceMap app does have a Resume option, and this allows you to pick up a tour from the closest location and carry on with it whenever you like.

Can I use tours more than once?
You can listen to your tours as often as you like using both the VoiceMap app and the VoiceMap website. Your access to tours doesn’t expire.

Can I listen to tours at home?
Yes! That’s why I’ve included 30 photos for this tour. You don’t need to travel to a tour’s starting point to listen to it. In the VoiceMap app, just select Virtual mode on the screen that displays after you download the tour. You can also listen to the whole tour at voicemap.me.

How do I access a tour using the VoiceMap app if I purchase it through the VoiceMap website?
Once you’ve purchased a tour, it’s added to your VoiceMap library. If you sign into the app using the same method you used at voicemap.me, you’ll have access to your full library of tours. This works the other way too: if you make in-app purchases using the VoiceMap app, you can access these on the VoiceMap website.

Do I need mobile data to do a VoiceMap tour?
No, VoiceMap works entirely offline if there’s no data connection, so you don’t have to pay roaming fees. Just download the tour over WiFi before you get started. And be sure that your phone’s battery is charged before you set out.

The post VoiceMap Tour: The Champs-Elysées, from Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

I’d barely passed the social distancing sign at the entrance when I spotted one: a man and a woman walking hand in hand just ahead of me. I entered the first room of the permanent exhibition just behind them. They walked up to the panel on the wall and stood shoulder to shoulder reading it. From a proper meter to one side, I, too, read about the origins of the town that the Romans called Divodurum Mediomatricorum.

Madame either read faster than monsieur or she gave up before finishing the panel. She let go of his hand and moved on. Or did the gesture reflect something deeper, some dissatisfaction or annoyance, even something as simple as the way he moved his lips as he read to himself in an audible whisper? It was certainly annoying to me.

I walked on among the extensive Gallo-Roman collection.

To some, the very idea of a museum is foreboding, and the term Gallo-Roman, indicating the Romanized culture of Gaul from the first through the fifth centuries AD, would be unlikely to reassure them. Neither would subsequent signs pointing to collections of the Early, High and Late Middle Ages, though those eventually give way to the mildly promising sign for the Renaissance.

Some travelers imagine that knowledge is required when visiting such a museum, or, crueler still, appreciation. But nothing more is required in this free museum, or any museum for that matter, than when visiting a park: a simple stroll will do. Something is sure to come of it—you’ll catch a sight or sensation that draws you one way or another or the scent of a thought or an idea—at the very least a bit of physical or mental exercise.

The couple I’d first seen soon disappeared. I was alone on my stroll. How fortunate not to be encumbered by anyone. It was then that I truly began to notice the couples and twosomes. They were everywhere: complicitous duos, ‘til-death-do-us partnerships, unselfconscious hand-holders, shoulder-to-shoulder soulmates, undying friends and eternal companions, along with complex trios, bosom buddies of indeterminate gender and questionable confidantes.

In the first several rooms I educated myself by reading the wall panels about the development of the Gallo-Roman city, but I was more curious about interrogating these ancient pairs without the voice of a historian. So I ignored the panels and focused on the figures.

They didn’t appear to be newlyweds, new lovers or fresh affairs. They seemed to belong together, cut from the same stone, so to speak, in it for the long run. I tried to decipher their expressions. None of them looked particularly happy. Nor did they look particularly unhappy. Did their inexpressiveness mask distress, dissatisfaction or disappointment? Resignation? Reproaches unanswered or ignored? Were those expressions of consent? Or of exchange or transmission? Were those faces of contentment? Now there’s a goal!

I studied them closely, each one, as though examining them that way would allow me to understand why they had stayed together as long as they had? As I scrutinized their stance, their dress, their fixed or absent gaze, I wondered: Did they rationalize their union? How so? I mean, did they not give in from time to time to a torrent of thoughts about alternative possibilities—would I be better off with someone else, or alone? Or did such questions have no meaning within the spans of their lives and the mores of their time?

Still, as a couple, or individually, did they think of themselves as virtuous or acquiescent or constrained? Or was theirs an easy, nearly natural covenant, one of comfort, convenience, family and/or love? Or the consequence of a contract imposed by one or the other or by some outside force? Were they putting on a good face for the sake of posterity?

I strolled on. Decades passed, and centuries. As time went on, the anger, the meanness, the drama and cross-purposes grew.

A third party occasionally entered the scene—an evil or supernatural force, a counselor, a savior, a commander, a sage? Was the couple in danger? Had new laws circumscribed their relationship? What help did they need? With communication? With sexual satisfaction? With forgiveness? A need to placate a new ruler or deity?

Did they, could they, “work” on their relationship or had the material of their union hardened to the point that it was no longer workable but simply accept-able? What did “settling” mean to them? Did they make their bed and then lie in it? And was that so bad? Had their bed been made for them?

I’d been in the museum for nearly an hour and a half by the time I left the Middle Ages. I was ready to leave. I skimmed through the Renaissance, following signs to the exit.

It was a fine summer day. I walked in the direction of the cathedral. The yellow limestone of the city’s old buildings glowed in the late afternoon sun.

The museum had presented me with nothing but questions. Yet what a curious and magnificent stroll it had been—unplanned travel therapy. Rarely has a museum felt so personal. I’d received no answers, yet I felt clear-headed, content, nearly euphoric. I felt a need to talk. I stood by the café nearest to the cathedral. I took out my phone and thumbed a text: Où es-tu? / Where are you?

© 2022, Gary Lee Kraut

Musée de La Cour d’Or, 2 rue du Haut Poirier, Metz. Located one block from the cathedral. Open daily except Tuesday, 10AM-12:45PM and 2-6PM. Free entrance.

Metz, capital of the historic Lorraine region of northern France, is attractively set along confluence of the Moselle and Seille Rivers. Other highlights of the city include its sunbathed Gothic cathedral, aka The Good Lord’s Lantern, with its acre-and-a-half of stained glass; its buildings made of a yellow limestone called pierre de Jaumont; its covered food market by the cathedral; its train station, itself a prodigious Germanic temple. See the site of the Metz Tourist Office for more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© 2021, Corinne LaBalme

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© 2021, Corinne LaBalme and Gary Lee Kraut.

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Does it matter? In many cases, no—you buy your ticket (mostly online these days) and visit. But it’s worth knowing which monuments are operated by the Centre des Monuments Nationaux (CMN), the Center for National Monuments, since a pass called Passion Monuments allows for unlimited visits to most of them for a full year for only 45€. (Passion Monuments doesn’t mean that the monuments have passion but that the holder is passionate about visiting them.)

Tasked by the Ministry of Culture and Communication with “conserving, restoring and maintaining the monuments and collections under its responsibility,” the CMN oversees nearly 100 monuments throughout France, 80 of which can be visited with the Passion Monuments pass.

For monument-minded residents and others available to provide an address in France, Passion Monuments is a must-have that will likely pay for itself several times over. There’s also a psychological benefit of having such a pass since you will find yourself revisiting monuments of which you’d previously thought “been-there-done-that” and visiting others that aren’t otherwise on your cultural radar. Not to mention that now you don’t have to buy a ticket when you accompany visiting friends to the top of the Arc de Triomphe.

Forty-five euros is about the cost of entering just four monuments. In Paris, the pass covers such (re)visitable monuments as the Arc de Triomphe, the Conciergerie, the Pantheon and the Sainte-Chapelle, as well as the notable newcomer Hôtel de la Marine (entrance for which alone is 17€). In the Paris region, use the pass as an invitation to yourself to visit the suburban sights Saint Denis Basilica-Cathedral and the castle of Vincennes, both easily accessible by metro.

No need to be Paris-centric about this. Pick any region and you’ll find major monuments operated by the CMN that are included on the pass: the chateau of Azay-le-Rideau in the Loire Valley, the castle of Angers, the abbey of Mont Saint Michel in Normandy, the castle and ramparts of Carcassonne, the Palais du Tau in Reims, the abbey of Cluny in Burgundy, the megaliths of Locmariaquer in Brittany, the château d’If off the coast of Marseille, the prehistoric site of Les Eyzies-de-Tayac in Dordogne, etc. See the full list here. The list itself will make you want to hit the monumental road.

The pass is officially available to residents of France over the age of 26 but CMN isn’t actually asking for proof of residence but simply that you provide an address in France where they can the card, though you can also pick it up at CMN headquarters. So visitors staying long enough (several weeks? several months?) to get good use from the pass might also wish to purchase one in their own name. After ordering the pass online, your card will be sent by post to that address within four days or can be picked up at the CMN’s headquarters in Paris at the Hôtel de Sully, 62 rue Saint-Antoine in the 4th arrondissement (metro Saint-Paul).

The pass isn’t available to those under 26 years of age for the simple reason that entrance to most of the monuments is free to anyone under 18 and to members of the European Union aged 18 to 25. By over 26 is meant anyone past their 26th birthday, so even 26 + 1 day counts as being over 26.

The pass also gives slightly reduced rates for cultural partners, including the chateaux of Chantilly and Fontainebleau in the Paris regions, the Pinault Collection and the Invalides in Paris, and twenty-some other sights elsewhere in France. Three set days per year you can also invite a guest to join you on your cultural excursion free of charge.

(For visitors to the capital staying for one week or less, the Paris Museum Pass remains the best deal for visiting museums and monuments. Other cities and regions also have local passes that are a good deal.)

Timed reservations are now required for most museums and monuments, and for most of those museums and some of those monuments that’s the cases for Passion Monuments and Paris Museum Pass holders as well. So be sure to verify online for each sight that you plan to visit.

© 2021, Gary Lee Kraut

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But beware—drama lurks within its historic geometry: you’ll encounter Cain hiding his face in shame after killing his brother, Medea avenging the unfaithfulness of her husband by killing her own children, Spartacus vowing to fight against slavery, Daphne fleeing the unbridled passion of Apollo, and more.

Join me on this new audio exploration of the Carousel and Tuileries Gardens, as I, Gary Lee Kraut, the editor of France Revisited, lead you from the exit from the Louvre to the entrance to Place de la Concorde and the Champs-Elysées beyond it. In fact, once you’ve taken this essential Paris strol with me through the Tuileries Garden, we can continue our walk together with my VoiceMap tour The Champs-Elysées: From Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe. And/Or continue on the garden theme with my Luxembourg Garden, Paris’s most elegant park.

These audio tours, published by VoiceMap, are especially intended to be listened to with earbuds while visiting Paris since the VoiceMap app uses your phone’s GPS to launch the audio description from location to location as you follow my exclusive route. If used in situ, the walk can be taken directly after visiting the Louvre or the Orsay Museum or before visiting the Orangerie Museum or the Champs-Elysées.

Not in Paris at the moment? You can still enjoy the tour by listening on your computer at home or by iPhone or Android anywhere. I’ve uploaded photos for each of the tour’s 28 locations to allow armchair travelers to follow along as I tell about the various elements—historical, natural, sculptural—that make this an essential stroll for anyone interested in Paris or in the development of France gardens.

From your home computer, your tablet or your phone you can reach my Tuileries tour directly by clicking here.  You can take the initials steps with me at no cost as you consider purchasing the entire tour. On your phone, the VoiceMap Touring App is available from the Google Play Store or from the App Store for iPhone. If, after downloading the app, you don’t land directly on one of my tours, you’ll them in the list of Paris tours or by typing Tuileries Garden or Luxembourg Garden in the VoiceMap search block.

Once you’ve signed up with VoiceMap and purchased the tour, you can listen to it on either your phone, tablet or computer, or all three, on site, on the road or at home.

In addition to treating yourself to the tour, you can also offer it as a gift for your Francophile friends, would-be travelers and friends living in Paris. There’s a tab on each tour page that opens a link where you can request to purchase the tour as a gift. Specifically request “Gary Kraut’s Tuileries Garden Tour” and/or “Gary Kraut’s Luxembourg Garden Tour” and indicate the number of times you’d like to purchase it (in case you’d like to gift it to more than one person). VoiceMap will then create an invoice for however many tour vouchers you’d like to purchase, redeemable against my tour(s).

Whether on site in Paris or from home anywhere, I look forward to strolling with you soon through the Tuileries Garden, as well as through the Luxembourg Garden, along the Champs-Elysées, and into the Dark Side of the City of Light on the central Right Bank.

All of my VoiceMap audio tours can be found here.

Frequently asked questions about VoiceMap tours

How do VoiceMap tours work?
VoiceMap’s audio tour app for iOS and Android uses your device’s GPS to play audio automatically, at the right time and place. Just install the app and download your tour, then go to the starting point and begin your walk.

Do I need to follow a route, or can I start the tour anywhere I like?
Tours have a fixed starting point and follow a route to a fixed end location. This allows the tour to provide turn-by-turn-directions and improves the accuracy of automatic playback. It also allows me to tell a better story as one location leads to the next. But the VoiceMap app does have a Resume option, and this allows you to pick up a tour from the closest location and carry on with it whenever you like.

Can I use tours more than once?
You can listen to your tours as often as you like using both the VoiceMap app and the VoiceMap website. Your access to tours doesn’t expire.

Can I listen to tours at home?
Yes! That’s why I include numerous photos on my VoiceMap tours. So you don’t need to travel to a tour’s starting point to take this essential stroll with me in Paris. In the VoiceMap app, just select Virtual mode on the screen that displays after you download the tour. You can also listen to the whole tour at voicemap.me.

How do I access a tour using the VoiceMap app if I purchase it through the VoiceMap website?
Once you’ve purchased a tour, it’s added to your VoiceMap library. If you sign into the app using the same method you used at voicemap.me, you’ll have access to your full library of tours. This works the other way too: if you make in-app purchases using the VoiceMap app, you can access these on the VoiceMap website.

Do I need mobile data to do a VoiceMap tour?
No, VoiceMap works entirely offline if there’s no data connection, so you don’t have to pay roaming fees. Just download the tour over WiFi before you get started. And be sure that your phone’s battery is charged before you set out.

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Baby Liberty will stop first to spend the Fourth of July with her big sister on Ellis Island before continuing on to Washington, D.C., where she’ll stand for the next decade outside the residence of the French ambassador. There, she’ll be visible to the public from the street. The inauguration ceremony at her new home will take place on the French National Holiday, le Quatorze Juillet, a.k.a. Bastille Day.

The Statue of Liberty, a.k.a. Liberty Enlightening the World, a work by Auguste Bartholdi, was a gift from the people of France to the United States, i.e. from one republic to another. Originally intended to mark the American centennial of 1876, it wasn’t erected in New York Harbor until 1886.

Numbered 1 of 8, this bronze version, made in 2011, is based on the original plaster model that served as the basis for Baby Liberty’s big sister. That painted plaster model can be seen inside the former chapel that is now a part of the Musée des Arts et Métiers.

The Statue of Liberty was first erected in Paris before being dismantled and sent over to the United States in 350 pieces. Gustave Eiffel of Eiffel Tower fame designed the iron frame that holds the copper sheets that make up the monumental version of the statue. The Musée des Arts et Métiers is the depository of the original plaster model as well as various documents, photographs and sketches that tell the history of its creation because of the technological feat that its creation and assembly represent. The bulk of the collection was a gift from Jeanne Emilie Bartholdi, the sculptor’s widow. Some of those photographs from the 1870s and 1880s can be seen here.

Watch this video of Baby Liberty’s departure from the courtyard of the museum.

© 2021 – text, photo, video – Gary Lee Kraut

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(While Paris promotes low cartoon, the city of Nancy offers high and accessible art to the general public, as noted at the end of this article.)

The exhibition Le Chat Déambule (Le Cat’s Walk) wouldn’t be so distasteful if there were a hundred other events going on at the same time, as there usually are in Paris. In less restricted times, seeing the sculpture of a dog peeing through a hoop being held by an enormous, rotund cat or Le Chat dressed as a ballerina might be a cute diversion while taking a stroll with a six-year-old. But right now this cat is the only game in town. So its orchestration along the why-does-anyone-still-call-this “the most beautiful avenue in the world,” even though originally planned before the pandemic hit, is like ordering restaurants and food shops to close then handing out dollops of Nutella to celebrate Gastronomy Day. Some will certainly say it made their day.

A collection of 10-foot-high Bugs Bunny sculptures would be more interesting. Bugs does irony and sarcasm far more incisively and expressively than Le Chat. Could be that I’m more attached to Bugs than Le Chat because I didn’t grow up with Geluck merchandizing as the French and Belgians have. Still, I can only imagine the outcry of crass commercialism and cultural imperialism if Bugs were the lead cultural offering of the season.

Belgian cartoonist Philippe Geluck created his rotund cat in 1983 and they’ve both been well known and highly marketable in France for more than three decades. Cute irony, charming incongruity and a bit of megalomania are Le Chat’s brand of humor. Even if the work as a whole—l’oeuvre, as they say in art circles—is trite, it presents the kind of harmless humor that spreads easily and innocuously and makes its creator rich from merchandizing royalties.

It isn’t Le Chat’s quaint humor or childish irony that’s objectionable, and this isn’t a discussion as to what constitutes art. What’s objectionable is the decision of the City of Paris’s to offer a monumental version of a hackneyed newspaper cartoon as the only-see in town during this phase of the Covid restrictions. Given one shot at an outdoor sculptural exhibition, the City of Paris went for this?

While the national government meanders through the minefields of the pandemic, the city government has decided to encourage herd immunity from critical thinking. The bronzes are cute enough in a simple-minded way, call them mildly amusing if you like, but with museums closed, the occasion called out for exhibiting something more thought-provoking or humorous or simply surprising in the public space—something to appeal to our sense of curiosity at a time when cultural gatherings are otherwise forbidden and many of our usual pleasures (not to mention loved ones) are out of reach. Instead, Le Cat has killed the curiosity.

The exhibition is present along the park bordering the Avenue des Champs-Elysées from Place de la Concorde to the Rond-Point from March 26 to June 9.

Sculptural Sedatives

It’s a misnomer to call the current restrictions lockdown. Instead, since November we’ve been locked out from cultural institutions and locked in for the evening. As displeasing as it is to be infantilized by a grab-bag of restrictions and fluctuating curfews decreed by the moderate right national government, the moderate left city government under Mayor Hidalgo clearly views Paris as a playground for uncurious children.

The Geluck exhibition will be gone soon enough but what will remain is the sense that insipid installations, permanent or otherwise, are a hallmark of the current occupants of Hidalgo’s vision of Paris. Two others examples, both installed in 2019, stand near Le Chat: One is Jeff Koons’ bouquet of anal/mushroom tulips in the park on the opposite side of the avenue. Koons’ sculpture was intended as a colorful call to weep for the victims of terrorism but it’s as unthought-provoking as Le Chat in a tutu: take a picture and move on. The other is the group of LED-lit tubular crystal and bronze fountains at the Rond-Point. The good news is that both of those are easily ignored: you’re unlikely to pass by the bouquet without seeking it out and you’re unlikely to notice the high-tech plumbing during the day despite their prominent position.

City Hall has repeatedly reminded doubters that the 3.5+ million euros for the tulips and the 6.3 million for the high-tech plumbing were funded through private donations in collaboration with the Fonds pour Paris – Paris Foundation, as though private funding makes more palatable and less public these mind-numbing installations. (Follow the money in one analysis here.)

All attempts to bring a contemporary touch to the city get criticized, city officials repeatedly proclaim. That is certainly true; Parisians and the Paris-based national press love to debate what’s going on in their backyard. Yet it’s also true that despite the distinct reasons for each these three closely-spaced installations—the grotesque bouquet, the fancy plumbing, the glorified cartoon—they reveal similar attempts to numb the mind of the stroller and the passerby. Each of them is distinctly uninspiring. City Hall would have us believe that any criticism of their public installations is a criticism of progress and of contemporary art or design. But you have only to realize that none of them holds your attention for more than one minute to understand that they are cultural and sculptural sedatives, intended to keep us from thinking anything at all.

Are You in Love?

While Paris promotes low cartoon, Greater Nancy is offering high and accessible art that premiered online on March 25, 2021.

Etes-Vous Amoureux? (Are You in Love?), a project by the Opéra National de Lorraine, may not have the mass appeal of Le Chat but it certainly makes an effort to engage the general public with the arts in an original manner during the pandemic. It premiered online on March 25.

Composed by Paul Brody, who’s American, and developed through NOX, the Opera’s laboratory for lyric creation, the opera is comprised of 12 lyrical short films presenting 12 love stories filmed at 12 locations in the Greater Nancy area. Nancy is a city 190 miles east of Paris. The films have English subtitles.

Watch contemporary opera when there’s so much else to do? I know, I thought the same thing. Then I clicked on the first film and patiently got drawn in. Will you? Have a look and listen here.

© 2021, Gary Lee Kraut

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