Everyone seeks out the must-sees of Paris, but the must-smells can also be remarkable in June. That’s when the linden trees and jasmine shrubs are in bloom this year. No need to follow a guide, just follow your nose.

And not just in Paris. While you might not even notice a linden’s tiny yellow-white flowers within its full green mane of leaves, the smell—a limish honeysuckle scent, varying by weather and species between honey-lemon, gentle musk and sickly sweet—can catch you unaware as you explore the village- and cityscapes of France.

The flowering period can begin as early as mid-May in the south and may continue to mid-July in the north, depending on the weather, but June is when the scent of lindens typically lifts the nose and then the gaze with the question, “Wow! Where is that scent coming from?”

The scent has caught me by surprise when exiting the Lyon metro at Place Bellecour; it has followed me along broad streets in Chambery; it felt luxuriant during a stroll along Allée de Tourny in Bordeaux; it tasted like a floral sweetener in my espresso at Café Saint Sernin in Toulouse, and it has intoxicated me on streets and squares in Nantes, Dijon and elsewhere. Yes, I travel a lot in June.

Visitors long for lavender in Provence in summer, but I’ve got a nose for the lindens there in late spring. And at any time of year when taking travelers to the Landing Zone of Normandy, I invariably stop beneath the tremendous lindens on Place de Gaulle in Bayeux, many of which were already centenarian by the time Charles de Gaulle gave his famous speeches there, a first on June 14, 1944, a second on June 16, 1946. (There, the ancient trees have grown dangerously tall and for that reason several dozen were cut down last year.)

Various species of linden also grow in the wild, with major forests of them in Provence and Roussillon. And while you’ll come across broad or tall lindens in cities and towns, shorter, pruned lindens are the traditional obedient soldiers of schoolyards, village squares, palace gardens, city parks and broad alleys. In Paris and elsewhere, they’ve been planted in orderly rows to form leafy canopies as one of the triumvirate of urban greenery, along with the disheveled horse chestnut and the poised plane tree.

Silver lindens form an honor guard in Paris’s Palais Royal Garden while Crimean lindens shade the Place des Vosges. Lindens are part of the historic orderliness of the Tuileries Garden while they’re less constrained near the tennis courts and playground of the Luxembourg Garden.

The linden, le tilleul in French, tilia, has for centuries been a favored tree of European cityscapes, most famously along Berlin’s Unter den Linden, which leads from the Brandenburg Gate. France has its own Unterlinden, a beaux-arts museum in the Alsatian city of Colmar.

With so many lindens around, it’s only natural that linden tea is one of most common herbal teas in France, whether alone or conjugated into linden-mint and linden-verbena bags. And perfumers have a nose for the flower in certain fragrances and eaux de toilette. You might also come across linden flower honey.

When maintained in a village or city square, the branches of the linden are sharply pruned in February, and they begin to bud in March, but it’s as their leaves unfold with the arrival of spring that the romance begins. April can be a rainy month in Paris—you might walk around for two or three days with your collar up and your head down—but then the rain will stop and you’ll look up and find the linden’s young, pale green, heart-shape leaves decorating the branches. Like love, one half will be longer or wider than the other. By May, lindens cast full shadows, and in the south may begin to inconspicuously flower before the end of the month. But it’s typically in June that the white-to-yellow flowers blossom, releasing a fragrance that can reach you as a whisper or a scream. Eventually, the shade of summer gives way, in September or early October, to the brief yellow-brown flush of coloring of autumn in northern France before the leaves fall.

As to the jasmine mentioned in the lead to this article, the seductive scent of its little white flowers—more visually noticeable than the lindens because the shrubs are typically at nose level as you walk along the street—is a more recent addition to the smellscape of Paris. And what a pleasure to the senses it is as well.

Put your nose to the screen and you’re almost there.

© 2022, 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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When I was growing up we had no rubbish-bin collection. Waste papers were burned, leftover food was transformed and re-served, empty bottles were a bit of a problem but almost everything else ended its life rotting on the compost heap at the bottom of our garden. We used the compost as fertilizer and used the worms from the compost as bait for fishing.

But in a Parisian apartment composting is impossible, so my raw fruit and vegetable peels just have to go in the bin.

But one day this summer, as I was walking through the park near my home, I noticed three large wooden boxes or chests. They’d obviously been put there recently, I could get that tarry smell of new wood coated with preservative. The hinges on the lids were shiny and new-looking too. Intrigued, I looked closer and saw that each chest was clearly labelled, the first one said “Currently in use,” number two said “For future use” and the last one, “Dry matter.” An explanation was provided in the form of a notice telling the world that this was to be the site of a project called “Organic Composting” giving the name of the park, and an email address for those who needed further information.

I sent off an email asking for information and, more importantly, if I could throw my organic waste in the “Organic Compost.” My request was answered immediately with an invitation to a meeting the following Saturday morning at eleven, in the park.

Saturday morning at eleven there was only me standing beside the three wooden compost chests, then two or three stragglers with cans of beer. Five minutes later a couple arrived, settled on a bench and started what looked like a serious discussion. After about twenty minutes other people started to arrive and to gather around the three wooden chests, mostly young couples with babies in strollers. We looked at each other, wondering if one of us might be the person who sent the invitation.

Finally, a young woman arrived, tall and with such an air of natural self-possession and authority that it was clear that she was the one, our leader, our lovely Compost Queen. She addressed the waiting crowd, about ten of us by now, the stragglers and the couple on the bench having understood this wasn’t for them. Certain things had to be made clear, she explained, the first being that this was a meeting of the Square L. compost and if you happened to come from another neighborhood, she mentioned another one, a single metro station away, then you had to use their compost.

The imposters slunk away.

She went on to explain that it was a participative compost project, that we’d all have to take turns manning it one Saturday a month and that we should put our names down now if we wanted to take part.

“But, there is a waiting list,” she said, “and places are limited.”

My heart sank as I imagined having to sit an exam, a sort of French concours, but before I could object there were mumblings from the other candidates too and so she assured us that those of us who were present would all be admitted. We smiled at each other, relieved to know that our tea bags and coffee dregs would be welcomed and could rot away comfortably.

She explained too that we mustn’t presume that it was easy, you don’t simply dump your organic waste into it, you have to stir it all up with a large wand-like instrument provided and held in the lid, and then you add some of the “dry matter” from wooden chest number three to soak up the liquefied rot. To give a demonstration of this the Compost Queen opened up the lid of the chest currently in use. We all leapt back and waited until the swarms of flies suddenly released had escaped, and then had a good look at what had already been put into the chest and was composting.

“Not good,” she said. “Look at those onions. Worms don’t like onions. And you should break up your eggshells before putting them in, you can’t expect the worms to climb over them. No citrus fruits, no shop-bought flowers, they are all bad for the worms.”

She then delicately picked out the few onions and the cut flowers visible on the top of the pile and threw them in the nearby waste-bin.

“What about newspapers?” someone dared ask.

“Yes, they’re allowed, but not if they come from your grandmother’s attic, the ink will have lead in it,” came the answer.

There were other questions and gradually the company relaxed a bit as we exchanged composting stories and experiences. One woman told me about how she had spent a year in London as an au-pair and that was when she discovered compost-heaps. She told me that when an English person shows you around their house, they will proudly take you to visit their compost-heap too. After a brief word about what compost duty entailed, we were each given a green bucket, the meeting broke up and we all went home.

I put myself down for compost duty a month or two later, picking the only date that wasn’t already taken. I was there at ten o’clock, it was lashing rain, not another soul in sight. I opened the compost chest marked “in current use.” Nothing alarming seemed to be happening so I closed it again. After a few minutes our beautiful Compost Queen came. We chatted. She told me about the work that running the compost group involved. She had volunteered to Paris City Hall when they were looking for people interested in starting one in their neighborhood and they gave her a one-day course in composting and planting. So I asked her where and when our compost would be used for planting. She lowered her eyelids as she told me with great sadness that in Paris City Hall, compost comes under “waste” and planting comes under “green spaces,” and “green spaces” doesn’t speak to “waste.”

We pondered this one for a minute or two under our umbrellas. Then we decided just to keep on composting and said goodbye.

Text and photos © 2017, Niamh Tixier

Niamh Tixier is Irish and has been living in Paris for several years.

The post Paris Parks & Gardens: Composting in Paris appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

An idea comes to me. Why not an afternoon in a park? I live near the Jardin de Luxembourg, in the middle-class 6th district. It is a formal garden in one part, with tennis courts in another. A fountain created at the initiative of Queen Marie de Médicis has been placed to one side. The garden now belongs to the French Senate. There I can enjoy watching ducks swimming in lines in the center pool, or admire 106 statues, but I must stay off the grass. I don’t feel like going to the Luxembourg Garden today. I know it too well. Since it’s vacation time in Paris, I’m in the mood to try something new and a bit less formal.

I consult Google, make a list of a dozen parks I don’t know. The one I choose is the Jardin de la Folie Titon, on the rue de Chanzy in the 11th district of Paris, a racially mixed working class area some distance from my home. I choose it because it sounds small and cozy, a real neighborhood park, but especially because I have never heard of it before.

When I reach the park I learn that it does have some history connected with it. At the entrance, a sign tells me about it. The Folie Titon was a wallpaper factory built here before the French Revolution, and it participated in that event’s history.

A plaque on a wall on the nearby rue de Montreuil says that on April 28, 1789, a few days before the opening of the Estates General, the factory was burned during a people’s riot that was harshly repressed. Another plaque states that the first manned hot air balloon took off from this site October 19, 1783. The factory was rebuilt, but then demolished permanently in 1880. A middle school now stands on the site, built in the architectural style of the small factories which still exist in the neighborhood. It features broad windows across each floor, overlooking the park. The school is named Pilâtre de Rozier, after the 1783 balloonist.

The Folie Titon Garden is designed with a circular path around a big lawn, where today, couples and families are sitting or lying. There are no “keep off the grass” warnings here. An informational sign tells me about a lily pond at the far end of the park, recently installed to encourage “aquatic biodiversity.” There I see water lilies with tall reeds behind them, and a goldfish swimming around. In front of the pond are a variety of flowering and aromatic plants, honeysuckle, nasturtium, fuchsia, sage, and even a few vegetables, cherry tomatoes and squash.

I sit down on one of the numerous benches placed along the path, and watch the people around me. There are other bench sitters, most of them elderly white men. On the lawn there is a mother with a curly headed brown-skinned boy who looks to be about four. He is having a fine time chasing the butterflies flitting around the plants that separate the lawn from the path. He takes time out from his chase to greet me. “Bonjour,” he says. “Bonjour,” I reply. I can see his mother watching him from the lawn, but she does not get up. She must not consider me scary.

What could be scary is the group of teenage boys clustered near one of the park’s exits, not far from the lily pond. They are blacks and Arabs, and they are talking loudly. They stand very close together, and it’s hard to tell just what they are doing. Are they smoking weed? Could they be a gang? I am apprehensive, but relax when I see that the teenagers are ignoring all of the other users of the park, who are also ignoring them. Nobody seems afraid, so I will not be, either.

Two young women, one white, one black, dressed in summer casual clothes, pass my bench. They must live in the neighborhood, I think.

Just beyond me, they stop and look at the middle school. They have a Paris guide, and one reads to the other from it. Once they have finished reading, they take pictures with their phones, then they leave the park. “Why, they’re tourists!” I think to myself with amusement. I thought the only tourist in this little-known, out-of-the-way neighborhood park was me.

I sit for a while longer, enjoying the peaceful atmosphere, then I leave the park, too. I follow the path the rest of the way around the central lawn. There are fewer people on this side, few trees, no benches.

Then I see the Plaque. It is white marble, with lists of names in columns in black letters.

The Plaque reads:

“Arrested by the Vichy Government police, accomplices of the occupying power (Germany), more than 11,000 children were deported from France from 1942 to 1944, and murdered in the Nazi camps because they were born Jews. More than 1200 of these children lived in the 11th district. Among them, 199 babies who had not had time to attend school.

“Passerby, read their names, your memory is their only burial place.”

The children are listed by name and age, one by one, first the babies under four, then the children four to seven.

I feel like I have been hit in the stomach. None of my research on the Jardin de la Folie-Titon made any mention of this memorial to these deported children, the largest and most detailed of its kind that I have seen anywhere in Paris. Few people follow the circular path in that direction, where there are no trees, no benches. From the other side of the lawn, I myself did not notice the Plaque.

In 1942, when the deportation of these children started, I was seven years old, the same age as the oldest of them. In 1945, after the war ended and the concentration camps were opened, I saw a photo in Life Magazine showing heaps of naked corpses. I was ten, an age none of those Plaque children ever reached. I have never forgotten that photo, which became the root of my choice, as a historian, to study the fate of Jews in France under Vichy.

As I walk home through the Jardin du Luxembourg, my mind is still full of my discovery at the Jardin de la Folie Titon. My pretty, formal neighborhood park now seems stiff and stilted compared to what I just saw. I am so happy to live in this city where I can become a tourist and can find something that is more than just pretty, that has a personal meaning for me.

© 2017, Alice Evleth

Alice Evleth is a long-time American expatriate living in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.

The post Paris Parks & Gardens: The Cross-City Tourist appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

He isn’t referring to the motley group of crooked line dancers hopping to an Irish reel that’s blasting from a portable loudspeaker. He’s referring instead to the fact that they, along with the hundreds of others in this clearing in the Vincennes Woods, are buck naked.

“Last day,” I tell him, indicating the sign near the path.

We’re standing on the edge of the zone that the City of Paris has designated as a space for nudism, or naturism, from September 1 until today, October 15.

“Shameful,” he says. “But that’s Paris.”

I don’t know if that last part softens his position on the fleshy scene before us or further condemns it. Either way, the fellow stands there for another minute, and so do I. I have a vision of a cotillion of terns gathering between shelf and sea.

The zone is surrounded by woods, but since the eye is drawn to the terns before the sign explaining what they’re doing here, surprised passersby are not uncommon. If the city renews the experience next year they ought to provide more advance warning.

The fellow standing next to me appears to have come upon this zone purely by accident. Unlike me. I’ve been riding my bike through the woods for the past half-hour looking for it. Eventually the fellow pushes his bike, slowly, along the path through the nudist zone. I follow behind. But whereas he exits out the opposite side of the zone, I look for an empty spot on the grass.

I see someone walking away with a towel slung over his shoulders and grab the space he’s just left. It’s the perfect spot: a beach-towel-size plot surrounded on three sides by foot-high tufts of grass. There’s a narrow path a few yards to one side. To another side there’s enough room to lay down my bike between me and the closest nudist.

While the woods that I’ve just biked through smelled of fallen leaves and autumn damp, the grass is warm this afternoon. It’s an exceptionally balmy day for October, peaking at 77°F.

I undress.

All I really wanted was a place to go barefoot on the grass. That’s the first thing I missed from suburban New Jersey when I settled in Paris.

True, there are a smattering of grassy areas to go barefoot in in various gardens and parks in Paris, more now than when I arrived in the late 1980s. In some of those spots, however, one is expected to be accompanied by a child under eight, or a girlfriend, or to have brought along some rat repellant. The further you go from the center the more likely you’ll find entire swaths of lawn that needn’t only be admired from the edge of a gravely path, and there are plenty more lawns in the Vincennes and Boulogne Woods, Paris’s eastern and western lungs.

This, however, is where I wanted to wiggle my toes. But in this designated zone in the Vincennes Woods I can only go barefoot if I also go bare-assed. That’s Socialism for you – it gives you exactly what you need, with strings attached.

Of course you don’t have to take all your clothes off in the nudist zone. But exposing only your feet to the free air in this clearing in the woods would be like going to Paris and contenting yourself with visiting nothing but the Eiffel Tower.

I take a selfie.

Practitioners of nudism in Paris

On its inauguration day, September 1, Catherine Baratti-Elbaz, the mayor of the 12th arrondissement, which covers the Vincennes Woods, said that this trial nudist zone was intended for a mixed crowd and could be enjoyed by “Parisians, tourists and textiles.” By textiles she meant those that cover more than their head with fabric. By mixed I assume that she meant men and women. If instead she was referring to a rainbow coalition that would include blacks, Arabs, Sri Lankans and Vietnamese, then this afternoon, at least, has clearly missed the mark. And whereas 50 percent of the population of Paris is under 40 years of age, I’d estimate that today less than 10 percent of this crowd is under 40. As to the male-female ratios, it appears to stand at an unbalanced 80-20, at best.

Textiles may be welcome but not one is in sight. Perhaps there would be something suspicious about stripping down to only a loincloth. Anyway, the bathingsuiters and other underpanters long ago designated an unofficial lawn space as their own just a few hundred yards away.

I’m guessing from news reports and photos over the previous six weeks that this sunny final weekend of outdoor nudism in Paris has drawn the largest crowds of the season. (Indoor possibilities remain, as noted below.) There may well have been more journalists than nudists on opening day.

The zone is relatively crowded this afternoon, with only a yard or two between strangers. It’s mostly men, alone or in pairs. Some, like me, have come by bike. Our bikes lie next to us on the grass like sleeping lovers with whom we don’t have to share the towel. There are few small groupings of friends or acquaintances. Upon entering the zone I spotted two families (not together), each with a child of five or six.

The Paris Naturist Association (Association des Naturistes de Paris) naturally has a strong contingency here since the association pushed for the designation of such a zone from the start.

The experienced and lifestyle naturists are easy enough to spot: they’re the ones standing up. They’ve brought coolers and chairs and true picnics. I have a bottle of water and an apple. The crooked line dancers I saw when I first arrived (their music thankfully shut off shortly thereafter) was part of that group. While the average age for men is probably 55ish today, the age of women skews higher, with few under 60, by my guess. The women are mostly within the large gathering of stand-up nudists who present the heart of the day’s, perhaps the season’s, community of naturists. I’m a tourist on the edge.

Tiens, Tiens

A man set up a 10-foot-wide net soon after I arrived and he then walked around inviting people to meet there for a volleyball game “in five minutes.” Two hours later no one has gathered by the net. In its trial season there may be a difference of aims between practitioners and organizers of naturism, with the former content to simply get naked in the sun and the latter more interested in forming a community of moving parts.

It’s altogether a good-natured afternoon as far as I can tell. A few duos and trios walk around. They occasionally see someone they know. “Tiens, tiens” (Well, well) appears to be a common greeting, followed by kisses all around. I don’t see anyone I know. I don’t even recognize anyone.

And then I do. He’s from my neighborhood. I’ve known him for nearly 20 years, though only by sight. You couldn’t miss him when he was in his 30s, a handsome man with muscles large enough to discourage anyone sensible from every going to a gym. Now in his 40s, he’s rounded out but still has gym membership written across his textiled torso. He has taken a towel-less seat on the grass about 10 yards away from me. He sits there without removing so much as his shoes, looking like a heavy, weary raptor on this beach of terns. Since he must still go to the gym he must not be unfamiliar with the contours of the human body. Or perhaps that’s the point: he’s interested in seeing what happens to the body after one turns 50 or 60 and now takes nudity for exercise.

Voyeurism is verboten, reads the sign at the entrance to the nudist zone, but that doesn’t mean that one has to sit blindly through this good day. I certainly can’t be the only one to notice that, this being October, tan lines, are mostly gone – though I suppose that some didn’t go in for tan lines in the first place. And presumably one can’t be arrested for noticing how out of fashion pubic hair has become. It appears that there would be no greater shame for a Parisian nudist than to have a bush down there. I stay low so as to not draw attention to myself.

All eyes turn upward when we hear a high-pitched whizz overhead. Though I can’t see the object making the noise I recognize the sound as that of a drone. Orwellian voyeurism. I wonder what the police would want with these images. And if not the police, then who? We’ve got nothing to hide here. How could we? But still. Something is amiss in this Garden of Eden.

I eat my apple.

As the shadows creep across the clearing in the late afternoon some nudists transition to textiles, some pick up their belongings and move to a sunny spot, while others get dressed and leave. I wait until the shadow reaches my feet before dressing.

There, I think as I pull on my shorts, I’ve done it. I’ve felt my bare feet in the grass, my bare everything else in the sun.

This isn’t so different from visiting the Eiffel Tower after all: I’ve joined the crowd. I’ve looked around. I’ve taken a selfie. Been there, done that. Moving on.

But I do like this city. Maybe I’ll move here some day.

Indoor venues for nudism in Paris

France is considered the world’s top destination for social nudism. In addition to its homegrown nudists, France offers a warmer climate for northern continental European naturist. Information about beaches, campgrounds, other sites, associations and more, throughout France, is available from the French Federation of Naturism (Fédération Française de Naturisme).

For Paris, the main group to consult is the Paris Naturist Association (Association des Naturistes de Paris). The association also has a Facebook page.

Naked swimming: The main venue for athletic nudism in Paris is the Roger Le Gall municipal swimming pool and gym in the 12th arrondissement, which allows nudism Monday and Wednesday evenings 9pm-11pm and Friday evening 9:30pm-11:30pm. Check the website of the Paris Naturist Association before going, however, since closing times may change during holiday periods. Members of the Paris Naturist Association also have access to the gym Tuesday and Thursday evenings.

As in all municipal pools, swim caps are required in order to keep hair from clogging the drain and so that you won’t run into each other’s floating hairballs as you swim. Let’s pause to think about that for a moment. On second thought, better not. Think chlorine.

Naked dining: The 12th arrondissement has become the leading district for Paris naturists. It’s only natural then that it is the district to welcome the nudist restaurant, O’naturel, 9 rue de Gravelle in the 12th arrondissement. Metro Daumesnil or Michel Bizot. Promising “bistronimic” cuisine, O’naturel is open evenings only, Tuesday-Saturday. Tel. 01 85 15 24 91. Clients must enter clothed.

© 2017, Gary Lee Kraut

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Geoffroy Boulard, mayor of the district, opened the October 4th reunion at precisely 7:15pm and introduced the keynote speaker, Doctor Sylvie Petit of the Paris Service of Environmental Health (SPSE). During the rowdy Q&A that followed her presentation, the expert admitted that no one knows exactly how many rats are roaming around the city. (The often-cited four million rodent figure is not based on scientific analysis.)

However, Dr. Petit did confirm that the rodent population is indeed exploding. Full-bellied rats reproduce at a fast and furious rate, and Parisian litterbugs provide them with a moveable feast. Summer’s 24/7 park openings may have aggravated the situation as midnight picnickers are less likely than others to bin their leftovers.

The Square des Batignolles, thanks to the breadcrumbs that children scatter around the duck pond, is the rat pack’s answer to a Las Vegas buffet. The infestation was proclaimed so serious that the park closed for one month in late September so that the city could plug up nests, cover sewer gratings with fine, rat-resistant mesh, and yes… distribute poison.

The p-word provoked a vociferous reaction from the defenders of rodent rights who accused the SPSE of committing vicious acts of ratricide. This is not a small group either: An on-line petition circulating since last December, Stoppez le génocide des rats, has garnered over 20,000 signatures. “Cats carry more disease than rats,” argued a vet to a round of applause. “Why not kill all the kitties?”

“Why not use birth control?” (Because, Dr Petit explained patiently, the rats need to take the pills every day.) “Our tax dollars would be better spent fighting international terrorism instead of mice!” shouted someone from the back row.

That was a prescient remark since international terrorism has contributed, albeit indirectly, to Paris’s present-day vermin invasion. As far as rodents are concerned, the flimsy trash bins installed as part of France’s anti-terrorism plan called Vigipirate simply plastic-wrapped restaurant meals. Experimental rat-proof bins have already been installed in the 17th arrondissement’s Martin Luther King Park.

But for now the battle’s raging and to the victors go the spoils. And since rats actually LIKE spoils…

© 2017, Corinne LaBalme

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By Gary Lee Kraut and C. C. Bell

Partly sunny with a few dark clouds – that’s both the day’s weather and the mood of la flâneuse as she dresses for a day of idle wandering about the city. She’d like to get over to the Luxembourg Garden to see the tulips at some point in the afternoon, but she has no set schedule, no firm plans. She’ll do what she does, see what she sees.

Fresh from the shower she opens the top lingerie drawer of the dresser bought last fall at the neighborhood vide-grenier (garage sale). It’s a Made-in-France day, she thinks, a never-know-who-you’ll-find, never-know-who-you’ll-come-across day.

She smiles as she selects the comfortable Madame Aime (7 Fashion) mesh hipsters with lace trim, smiles as she recalls buying them as much for the look as for the name of the brand. Aime, pronounced like her first initial. This is Aime’s day, she thinks. She feels too nude in the matching bra so she chooses a simpler, blue Madame Aime triangle.

The flaneuse opens her Ikea closet. Feeling both insouciant and determined she takes out her new pair of Terre des Anges (Kiplay) jeans.

To break them in, she thinks. She crouches down, as though to get close to the tulips, to see how the jeans feel. Just fine.

Light pink cardigan, decides the flaneuse. She puts it on. Then, opening the window and putting her hand outside, she recalls the saying En avril ne te découvre pas d’un fil (in April be wary removing too much thread). She’ll hold off on the cardigan until a sunnier day, or until May, when you fais ce qu’il te plaît (do what pleases you). The grey and ivory Chasse Marée (Bonneterie Dupé) pullover will work well today. Work: she laughs at the thought of the word as she pulls the sweater over her head.

Looking in the mirror above the dresser she admires the way the grey and ivory pullover casually shows off her figure (enough, but not too much to be bothered). The sun the dissipates behind a cloud, stealing light from the room. I need some color, she thinks.

She tries on a scarf. No, replies the mirror, too winter. A beret? No, replies the mirror, too… intentional. Several umbrellas hang from the coat stand which she inherited the former renter. That’s it, she thinks, my fuchsia and navy blue striped Pierre Vaux umbrella, practical yet suave on a you-never-know walk-about day like today.

La flâneuse goes into the living room and stands back from the ornately framed mirror above the chimney (circa 1890). She holds the umbrella against her chest like a sword. Perfect. Ready to rumble, she thinks, or at least amble. Only then does she look down at her feet and laughs at herself for having left them undressed.

Is it too early in the season to wear her Mangalani sandals?, she thinks. Oh, but the butterfly leather reminds her of a palate of spring flowers. In April, be wary of removing too much thread, goes the saying, but removing a bit of leather, why not! She take her sandals from the bookcase in her hallway, and with it her Mangalani purse.

Fatimata Soumare, Parisian designer of the confidential line of Mangalani sandals, ballerinas and purses, is a solo entrepreneur. Unlike the others mentioned here she came to the field not by following in the footsteps of her parents but by departing from the footsteps of her fellow lawyers.

One last look in the mirror and la flâneuse is ready to stroll, to wander, to idle, and to follow her nose, her eyes, her intuition, with the vague notion that she will eventually reach the Luxembourg Garden, to see the tulips in bloom.

© 2017, Gary Lee Kraut / C.C. Bell

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This evening I’m going out to the Vendeen countryside, south of the Loire near the Atlantic Coast, to embrace the new year with closest of friends.

“Are you going to make us those fat crepes again?” said my godchild when I told her I was coming. “They’re called pancakes,” I reminded her. Since I won’t be arriving until the evening I’m dispensed from helping to prepare tonight’s festivities, and in exchange I’ll be making pancakes in the morning. I’m bringing along some Cary’s Canadian maple syrup, hoping to pass it off as Gary’s.

I could have purchased my train ticket online but I like the sense of happy anticipation is buying it at the station. So I biked over to Gare de l’Est, the East Station. (This evening I’ll take the train southwest from the Montparnasse Station.)

I walked back and on the way, not far from the station, I visited the little garden square beside Saint Laurent Church. The exceedingly December weather has allowed it to remain green

and in flower.

It’s a hopeful garden square. The installations and plantings were done by people accompanied by Emmaüs Solidarité along with local volunteers, as is written on the sign.

Emmaus http://emmaus-france.org/ is an organization founded in France after the Second World War by Abbot Pierre (Henri Grouès) that aims to fight poverty and improve the conditions of those living in poverty while calling on the public and on government to act in solidarity with the poor.

We’ll be eating well this evening as we toast the new year, followed in the morning by pancakes, with much else in store for the weekend. Meanwhile, this charming little garden reminds passersby of the possibilities offered by peaceful earth. Rhubarb, for one.

It reminds us of the need for shelter.

It reminds us of the need for community, family and friends.

It reminds to build good

and better lives.

It reminds us that the needs of a man who would cultivate a small plot of earth,

the needs of a woman who would paint a shell

the needs of a child who would play in a city square,

and the needs of a man who would sleep in a public garden

are also our needs.

Beside the square, the church visible today is the third on this site. The first was built as part of a monastery dedicated to Saint Laurent in the 5th century. Saint Laurent was born in Spain then lived in Rome, where he helped the indigent. That was in the third century, before Christianity held sway in much of Europe, when the Roman authorities sought to diminish its appeal and get a hand on the expanding treasure of the early popes. Rather than see that treasure fall into the hands of the Roman authorities, Lauent distributed it to the poor. When asked to produce the papal riches he pointed to the poor and said, “There are the treasures of the Church.” His martyrdom involved being burned on a grill.

The current Saint Laurent Church was begun in the 15th century, with work on the flamboyant Gothic interior continuing for over 200 years .

Several men were praying in separate chapels. A woman in the welcome booth by the creche was moving her lips while reading a book. A woman was sleeping against a column. So was a man.

I emptied the change in my pocket into the collection box, selected a candle and lit it with the flame of another.

I’m not Catholic. I don’t pray. But as I placed the long thin candle in the holder my mind flickered between the man sleeping nearby, my departure this evening for a joyful New Year’s Eve, the pleasing continuity of renewing for 2016 my resolutions of 2015, plans to call family in the U.S. tonight, tomorrow’s pancakes and Friday evening’s Euromillion lottery.

I saw a scribe and decided to write this before leaving Paris to celebrate the new year.

Wishing a happy, healthy 2016 to all. Bonne année!

Gary Lee Kraut

Dec. 31, 2015

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Before the tracks of the RER suburban line were laid, Parisians commuted to and from the suburbs via steam trains. On the east edge of the city, Vincennes-bound travelers boarded at the Bastille where a grandiose station, inaugurated in 1869, handled 30,000,000 passengers per year in the 1920s. The rise of the automobile diminished its use and the last train pulled out of the Bastille in 1969. While the Gare de la Bastille had a brief stay-of-execution through its transformation into a concert venue, it was razed in 1984 to make way for the Opéra Bastille.

The Coulée Verte, loosely translated as the Green River, now follows the trace of the old rail tracks beginning behind the opera house. From there it snakes through the 12th arrondissement, a part of the city little explored by visitors, unless they might be visiting the Marché d’Aligre Beavau, one of the most vibrant food market areas (part indoor, part covered) of Paris, and its neighboring restaurants, cafés and wine bars.

Setting out from the Bastille, the path is elevated along the old viaduct, now called the Viaduc des Arts, whose arches are home to elegant craft stores and workshops. Beyond the viaduct, the path lowers into a neighborhood park before winding its way through the varied urban landscape toward the edge of the city, occasionally branching out into broad picnic areas and playgrounds.

This variety adds spice to the trail since almost every conceivable approach to urban landscaping is tried and tested somewhere along the route. There are bird sanctuaries, bike paths, formal rose gardens and several stretches where weeds go wild. There’s everything but the kitchen sink. No, you actually can see kitchen sinks as you amble past people’s 4th floor windows on the elevated sections.

The most extraordinary architectural highlight offered by the Coulée Verte’s elevation is a view of the chorus line of Michelangelo slaves that adorn the top two floors of the Police Commissariat at 80 avenue Daumesnil. The building screams 1930, but it was designed by Barcelona-based architects Manuel Nunez-Yankowsky and Mirian Teitelbaum in 1991. The balcony apartments shadowed by those mighty stone thighs are reserved for police personnel.

The Coulée Verte René-Dumont was originally called the Promenade Plantée, the Planted Promenade. In emphasizing its greenery it also took on the name of René Dumont, an agronomist and one of the fathers of France’s ecological political movement. Paris has a second Coulée Verte, the Coulée Verte du Sud Parisien, that’s especially worthwhile for leisure bikers. It begins toward the southern edge of the city, behind the Montparnasse Station, and extends nine miles to the suburb of Massy.

The Coulée Verte René-Dumont is partially bikable but only parts are truly bike-friendly. Walking shoes are the best bet here. This Coulée Verte is best approached via metro Bastille or Ledru Rollin. There are then a number of stair entrances up to the planted promenade on the viaduct. For an approach without stairs, the Coulée Verte is accessible via the entrance on rue Jacques Hillairet (near Metro Montgallet) and by the Surcouf elevator in the same general area.

If you plan to wander hors piste for sustenance, Le Viaduc Café (43 avenue Daumesnil) makes for a fine pause for coffee or lunch. The above-mentioned Aligre Beauvau Market is also well worth a detour, particularly if you’d like to picnic along the Coulée Verte. The market (closed Mon.) is in fact a notable place to begin or end an exploration of this area.

Train buffs may want to picnic in the newly renovated gardens of the Gare de Reuilly at 6 rue Dukas/181 avenue Daumesnil, a rare vestige of the old Vincennes line that has survived and that lives on as a neighborhood community center.

The Coulée Verte opens at 8am on weekdays, 9am on weekends and holidays. Closing times vary from 6pm to 9:30pm depending on the section and the season. See the City of Paris website for times.

Text and photos by Corinne LaBalme.

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* * *

Between 1870 and 1900, a period of great influx of Jews into France, you’d be unlikely to find a wealthy Jewish resident of Paris going into the Marais for kugel or gefilte fish, let alone a falafel. Leave that to the tourists and the working class schnooks, they’d say. Well, maybe not. Maybe they’d send a servant or two to Rue des Rosiers for some kishke and kreplach or stay for a meal when in the neighborhood for some philanthropic mitvah.

Otherwise, prosperous Jews in Paris in the latter decades of the 19th century likely felt more at home among the bankers, industrialists and aristocrats of the 8th or 9th arrondissements than in the Pletzl, the Little Place, as the heart of the then-significant Jewish Quarter around Rue des Rosiers was known. In any case, wealthy Sephardim, such as the de Camondo family, a Jewish banking family that had made its fortune in the Ottoman Empire and Italy, would have been more familiar with Turkish spanakopita and kaskarikas and yufka than with the Ashkenazi fare found in the Marais, where the vast majority of Jews were then Ahkenazim. Anyway, by the time the de Camondos established residence in Napoleon III’s France in 1869, they were probably well accustomed to the foodstuff of aristocracy.

The Camondo family’s rise in wealth originated through commerce at the end of the 18th century. By the early 19th century the fortune was sizable enough for Isaac Camondo, based in Istanbul, to open a bank in his own name. Isaac died without children and so his brother Abraham Salomon Camondo (1781-1873) inherited the bank and greatly developed. Having aided Italian unification through loans to the newly formed kingdom, Abraham and his grandsons (Abraham’s son died in 1866) were ennobled by Italy’s King Victor Emmanuel II. The parallel with the (de) Rothschilds led the (de) Camondos to be known as “the Rothschilds of the east.” (See this article about the Rothschilds in Paris.)

The Camondo family’s French story begins in 1869 when the elderly Abraham Salomon Camondo followed his two grandsons Abraham (1829-1889) and Nissim (1830-1889) to Paris to further grew their successful family.

Abraham and Nissim elected to live in what was then becoming one of the most exclusive quarters in the capital, the area around Parc Monceau. Through the 1860s and into the 1870s, members of the imperial aristocracy and of the haute bourgeoisie built stately mansions surrounding the park’s genteel greenery and theatrical décor. Here one could stroll by a colonnade of Corinthian columns in partial ruin, watch duck in the oval pond of a naumachia (the basin Romans used for mock naval battles), walk over a Chinese bridge and visit an Italian grotto and an Egyptian pyramid. The sight of well-dressed (faux) explorers visiting (faux) ancient ruins on an afternoon in Parc Monceau might have been reminiscent of paintings by 18th-century French painters Watteau, Fragonard, Lancret or Bouchet found in the Louvre—or on the walls of neighborhood residence since living with great wealth now required a backdrop of great art and perhaps some antique furnishings.

Soon after they arrived in Paris, brothers Abraham and Nissim de Camondo built mansions side by side overlooking the park. Several streets away, Edouard André, heir to a Protestant banking family, built an even more ostentatious home on the new and expansive Boulevard Haussmann. When, in 1881, André married Nélie Jacquemart, they formed a couple of the most devoted art collectors in Paris. Their home and collection are open to the public as the Jacquemart-André Museum, which gets the lion’s share of museum attention in the quarter, leaving relatively few visitors to the exceptional home and collection of Moïse de Camondo.

The collectors in the de Camondo family weren’t brothers Abraham and Nissim, who arrived in Paris as business-minded adults, but their respective sons, Isaac (1851-1911) and Moïse (1860-1935). The cousins continued to live side by side after their fathers died, both in 1889.

The Republic of France was the center of the art world between 1870 and WWI, and while Isaac had a taste for modern art, Moïse (Moses) was devoted to the styles of the pre-Revolutionary Kingdom of France. Having arrived in France as a child, Moïse developed a taste in decorative arts that was more French than the French. He considered the beauty of decorative art of the 18th century, particularly the period from 1750 to 1789 (the second half of Louis XV’s reign and Louis XVI’s full reign) as “one of the glories of France.”

Moïse de Camondo, like his cousin next door, grew up in a Napoleon III-style mansion bought by his father in 1870. After the death of his mother in 1910 he had the home demolished in order to build his dream home. Modeled after the Petit Trianon, that little jewel of a palace at Versailles that Marie-Antoinette used as her getaway house, Moïse’s new home combined the luxury of a modern mansion of the 1910s with a space that could ideally present his 18th-century decorative treasures. (The former home of his uncle Abraham and cousin Isaac, which would have had much in common with the home Moïse had demolished, can still be seen next door.)

The brothers would eventually bequeath their extensive art and decorative collections to French cultural institutions. Isaac, who never married, left his collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings to the Louvre (many of them are now in the Orsay), while Moïse bequeathed his home and collection of 18th-century decorative arts to the Union Central des Arts Decoratifs. The UCAD, an institution created in 1882, is now called Les Arts Decoratifs, and oversees the Museum of Decorative Arts and affiliated museums, including the Nissim de Camondo Museum, where Moïse’s home and collection are still largely presented as he wished.

Whether or not you’re greatly interested in 18th-century decorative arts, the museum is remarkable in its combination of three different points of interest: an extraordinary decorative arts collection, the technology and services of an ultra-modern home of the early 20th century, and the life and times of the de Camondo family as bankers, philanthropists, collectors and Jews. Use of the audio-guides (free with the entrance ticket) or a human guide is highly recommended.

Rooms specially designed to receive Moïse de Camondo’s growing collection are fitted with antique wood paneling and present marquetry, inlaid tables and other furnishings by great names of French cabinetmaking in the latter decades of the 18th century, such as Oeben, Riesener and Jacob, along with paintings, bronze clocks, vases and chandeliers. Methodical in his purchases and with a sense of symmetry in his home, he often purchased items in pairs. The pieces often have a known history relative to high aristocracy or royalty, such as Marie-Antoinette’s chiffonier, a table for her needlepoint work. A room off the dining room was built to showcase Moïse’s porcelain collection, including two Sèvres dinner services (“Service Buffon”), each piece of which is illustrated by a different bird.

Advised by curators at the Louvre and the Union Central des Arts Décoratifs and in contact with major antique dealers, Moïse continued to enrich his collection until the end of his life. He sold pieces to buy better pieces.

While wishing to present the art de vivre of the ancient regime, Moïse de Camondo had also instructed the architect René Sergent to provide all of the high-luxury comforts of his own time, complete with an ultra-modern kitchen, heating, bathrooms and car park.

In an alliance of two powerful banking families, Moïse married Irène Cahen d’Anvers in 1891. Irène had been painted by Renoir as a child, her curly long brown hair falling down her back and wrapped around her shoulder like a fur cape. They were married at the Grande Synagogue de Paris on Rue de la Victoire. Five years and two children later she fell in love with an Italian count who was a racehorse trainer, the era’s equivalent of running off with the pool boy. In the divorce, Moïse was granted custody of the children.

Their son Nissim (named for Moïse’s father) was the intended heir to the home and his collection, as well as of the bank, but he predeceased has father, dying in air combat during WWI in 1917. Moïse then closed the bank and eventually bequeathed the mansion and its furnishings to the Union Central des Arts Décoratifs in Nissim’s memory.

Their daughter Béatrice showed no interest in her father’s passion for 18th-century decorative arts. She nevertheless inherited a sizable fortune. Horses were her passion, and in any case she had a family and home of her own. During the German occupation of WWII, she felt protected from expanding anti-Jewish policies by her wealth, assimilation and position in French society. By then, her late father’s Paris home and collection had become a museum. If she had inherited them the collection would undoubtedly have been dispersed since her own possessions were eventually seized when she, her husband Léon Reinach, and their children Fanny (born in 1920) and Bertrand (born in 1923) were arrested in 1942 for being Jewish and deported (Léon, Fanny and Bertrand in Nov. 1943, Béatrice in 1944) to the death camp at Auschwitz. They did not return.

This is one of the most beautiful of lesser-known museums of Paris enlivened by a fascinating family history, ideally followed up by peaceable stroll through Parc Monceau.

© 2013, Gary Lee Kraut

Musée Nisim de Camondo, 63 rue de Monceau, 8th arr. Metro Villiers or Monceau. Tel 01 53 89 06 40 or 01 53 89 06 50. Open Wed.-Sun. 10am-5:30pm. Entrance: 7€50, includes audio-guide. Joint tickets including entrance to the Museums of Decorative Arts, Fashion and Textile and Advertising, all on Rue de Rivoli, are available for 12€.

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