From Charleville-Mézières, capital of the Ardennes, I drove north, following the loops of the Meuse River on a misty May morning. The winding corridor sticks like a bedspring into Belgium’s southern border. Though the weather didn’t lend itself to photo-ops promised the tourist brochures, I nevertheless had a wonderful sense of meandering otherworldliness as I crossed and re-crossed the Meuse at the riverside villages of Joiny-sur-Meuse, Bogny-sur-Meuse and Monthermé, driving slowly and stopping frequently to take in the grey yet inviting view.

I was on the lookout for a café by the river that morning but at Monthermé a sign for a little bar called Le Palais de la Bière (The Beer Palace) on the opposite side of the road reminded me of my quest for beer joints, so I went in.

It was rather insular bar, the kind of place where, in the movies, a stranger walks in and everyone stops talking. But no one stopped for the simple reason that no one had started. I said “Bonjour Messieurs-Dames” to the six people inside and, turning friendly enough, they all responded “Bonjour Monsieur.” Four men and a woman stood at the bar (one beer, one juice, two coffees, a white wine) while an older man sat at a table nearby (coffee). The mistress of the Beer Palace was arranging glasses behind the counter. I stood at the counter and ordered coffee. The place was strangely quiet without being ominous, as though they/we were all waiting for something to happen.

And it did.

A roundish fellow in his comfortable 30s walked in. I’d seen him outside as I’d parked the car. A thin older man had been berating him on the sidewalk. The term “sad sack” had come to mind; I thought that he might be a slow-moving public employee being given some tough love by his employer. Here though he appeared taller, more confident. He shook hands with all of the men, including me, kissed the female client and went behind the counter to kiss our host. His presence lifted everyone’s expression. He joked politely, commented on how he’d heard that this one was having trouble installing a new door, how that one’s dog had been barking again through the night. He remarked that the one female client must have fallen in love since he hadn’t seen her in a while. He accused our host behind the counter of being too beautiful. We travel as witnesses or as strangers but are often aware that we don’t quite belong. Here, though, it was impossible not to feel a part of the scene. I’d come to the right place. Conversation flowed.

I asked the man standing next to me which road I should take to the top of the hill.

“Haven’t been up there in a while,” he said. He asked the man on the other side of me if he knew. They talked about the hill as though it were another country, speculating about distances and weather. Finally the friendly fellow whom we’d all come to count on said: “You go the intersection about 200 meters that way then wind around until you come to a little inn. Then turn left.”

On a given morning—a Thursday it was—Le Palais de la Bière in Monthermé may well be one of the best beer bars in France, even though only one in six was having a beer and I have no idea what kind they serve.

It was a grey, misty day, still a view to remember… I share here my photo, with nothing to envy of the promise shot provided by the tourist office.

The map was inviting me to continue north to Deville, Laifour and Revin so as to eventually step on the Belgian border just past Givet, but I had a beer call to make further south in the more central portion of French Ardennes.

Woinic and Ardwen

Little did I know as I drove from Bogny-sur-Meuse to the center of the department of Ardennes that I was more or less following in the trails of Woinic, the wild boar that is the symbol of the department of Ardennes.

Standing 33 feet high, 46 feet long, 16 feet wide, and therefore the world’s largest boar sculpture, Woinic was completed in late 1993 following an 11-year labor of love by artist Eric Sleziak, who created the mammoth pig in a hangar in Bogny. The department acquired Woinic in 2008 and the sculpture was moved to its current position with great fanfare (and lots of cut overhead wires) for inauguration at the entrance to the natural regional park of the Ardennes from the plains of Champagne on the emblematic date of 08-08-08.

The trademark Woinic, which belongs to the department of Ardennes, is the object of various licenses, including its designation as an 8.08-degree “triple” beer produced by the brewery Ardwen, located in Launois-sur-Vence.

Created in 2006 and producing about 2100 hectoliters last year, Ardwen is too large to be considered a microbrewery and is in fact the largest brewery in the department, still it’s quite small. Geoffrey Stevenin took over as the brewmaster here in 2012 at the age of 22 and works with one assistant. In 2014, to celebrate its eighth year of existence and its 1000th brew, Ardwen began producing its eighth type of beer, an amber-colored triple called Obscure which uses four types of hops and four types of malt, a celebration of beer making. Ardwen is available mostly in bottles and is sold though large distribution channels throughout Champagne-Ardenne region, principally in the Ardennes.

Founder Daniel Guerin, who previously worked in agriculture, said that he founded the brewery “out of love for the department of Ardennes.” He lauded the local spring water (otherwise sold in bottles under the Cristaline brand) and Launois-sur-Vence’s position in the heavily agricultural center of the department as reasons for selecting this location to produce Ardwen beer.

“The French have managed to maintain variety in their cheeses as the Belgians have in their beer,” Guerin pointed out. But while the beer-making tradition of France went dormant with the human and territorial destruction of First World War, he explained, the beer-drinking tradition continued, particularly in non-winegrowing zones such as this. So there was a ready thirst for the revival of beer-making in northern France, as the regional success of Ardwen shows.

Attached to the brewery is Ardwen’s brassserie-restaurant, the occasion to try several small glasses of their beer over lunch. (Don’t forget to appoint a designated driver, please.)

Sedan

Sedan sounds like an old car to American ears. To Kansans in particular it also sounds like the hometown of famou clown Emmett “Willie” Kelly. But to the French, and perhaps to Germans as well, Sedan calls to mind the site of the overwhelming Prussian siege that brought about the capture and fall of Napoleon III in 1870 and opened the way to France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.

At the center of the former military stronghold of Sedan, now with a population of 20,000, stands a fortress (château fort), much of it a remnant of the 15th and 16th centuries, the largest of its type in Europe. One enters its thick walls through a cool damp tunnel and into a museum that reveals the development of artillery through the centuries. It’s an impressive stop on the trails of military explorations in northern France, but while a fortress can certainly hold its own as an attraction for traveling families and soldierly visitors, I had beer on my mind.

Brasserie Artisanale du Château Fort

La Sedane, a local brand of beer, is brewed across the street in the vats at the back of the Brasserie Artisanale du Château Fort (Craft Brewery of the Fortress), under the brewmastery of Jean-Christophe Viot.

Viot began making home brew in 2005 and took over producing the La Sedane beer in 2008. The microbrewery now produces about 600 hectoliters per year, with about 60% being sold in bottles.

Despite the presence of brewing vats in the back, this isn’t a bar but rather a restaurant serving homey dishes such as calf’s head, calf’s knuckle, grilled meats, moules frites, sauerkraut and meat, and the boudin blanc from Habyes (a traditional white, i.e. bloodless, pork sausage that’s very much at home in the region) served with fries that I enjoyed with a glass of triple (a malty high-fermentation pale ale). Due to the Belgian influence to its beer production, triples are more commonly consumed along France’s northern border that further south.

I have no regular affection for either boudin blanc or triple beer. They do grow on you though. The French Ardennes grow on you. Walk around the corner to the pub Le Roy de la Bière (The King of Beer) and that’ll grow on you too.

Le Roy de la Bière

Lionel Passe reigns here as the third-generation owner, along with co-owner Annette, his ex-wife. In 1943, during the German occupation, Lionel’s grandfather Robert purchased what was then called Le Grand Bar Ardennais. Lionel’s father Michel took over in 1951, at the age of 21, and renamed it Le Roy de la Bière five years later. Lionel claims with pride that his father’s bar was one of the first in France to serve Guinness in the 1960s. With a pool table already installed in the back since his own father’s time, Michel looked to the British Isles for further inspiration, adding a dart board, a wide selection of beers on tap, dark wood and a red British telephone booth. Lionel, a commanding publican, took over the taps in 1990 at the age of 35. He set my glass on the table in the back (I now had a designated driver) and stated that he operates the first true pub in France.

Adding to its wide selection of craft and other beer, in 2013 he enlisted Jean-Christophe Viot at the nearby brewery to produce the bars 70th-anniversary brew, Le King’s Beer, using a combination of three hops: American, Czech and French. The Sedan brewery also produces Passe’s signature Passe Stout. The table on which my King’s Beer sat was once a door at the prison of Sudan. Nearby, old photographs show the room as it was during his father’s tenure. And among the historical paraphernalia and signs there’s a notice from the German Commander in Chief of the Army during the Occupation asking residents to “abstain from rash actions, sabotage of any kind and passive or even active resistance against the German army.”

Passe is the kind of large, voluble, initially wary but inevitably welcoming personality that one hopes to meet in a local pub. One might also meet his ex-wife Annette, co-owner, though Annette is more ready to retire and would like to sell the pub. Passe told me that he’d like to keep working the 80-hour weeks required to run the place but they’ve nevertheless put Le Roy de la Bière up for sale. “It’s tough to find a buyer because banks won’t lend money for bars,” he says, “including to me to buy her out, and for now that suits me fine.”

There are stories to be told here but I leave them for travelers to discover on their own—that’s part of the pleasure of visiting a watering hole such as this. You might then swallow enough of those stories to end up buying the place and settling in for the long run.

© 2014, Gary Lee Kraut

Return to The French Ardennes, Part 1: Charleville-Mézières: Beer, the Run-Away Poet and the Giant Lizard
Return to The French Ardennes, Part 2: Charleville-Mézières: Place Ducale and the Bare-Ass Casserole

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Tourist information for the Loops of the Meuse and its affluent the Semoy
Monthermé Place Jean-Baptiste Clément, 08800 Monthermé
Tel : 03 24 54 46 73
www.meuse-semoy-tourisme.com

Le Palais de la Bière
70 rue Pasteur
08800 Monthermé
Tel. 03 24 53 06 31

Ardwen (Brewery and Restaurant)
20 avenue Roger Ponsart
08430 Launois-sur-Vence
Tel. : 03 24 35 46 50
www.ardwen.fr

Office de Tourisme de Sedan et Pays Sedanais
35 Rue du Ménil
08200 Sedan
Tel. : 03 24 27 73 73
www.tourisme-sedan.fr

Brasserie Artisanale du Château Fort and restaurant
45, Promenoir des prêtres
08200 Sedan
Tel : 03 24 53 13 52
Open Tues.-Sat. noon-2pm and 7-10pm and Sun. Noon-2pm.
Bière La Sedane (Jean-Christophe Viot)
www.biere-sedan.fr

Le Roy de la Bière (Lionel Passe)
19 Place de la Halle
08200 Sedan
Open 10am-2am Tues.-Sun.

The post The French Ardennes, Part 3: The Meuse, Sedan, More Beer and the Big Boar appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

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Notre-Dame de Reims

The Gothic cathedrals of Europe were very much the skyscrapers of their time both for their reach to the sky and their intent to demonstrate the stature of the cities and of the bishoprics (a Roman Catholic cathedral refers to the church that is the seat of the bishop) in which they were built.

In 469 Clovis, King of the Franks, was baptized in Reims by Bishop-cum-Saint Remi. That fundamental consecration of the marriage of Church and King in France, is shown on the façade of Notre-Dame de Reims as it is in many other cathedrals in France. (The marriage was formally dissolved during the French Revolution. There were attempts at national therapy to patch things up in the 19th century, but for over a hundred years now the marriage has been declared over, with the separation of assets clearly identified by the law of 1905.)

In memory of the baptism of Clovis, it became firm tradition as of the 9th century that a king of France should come to Reims, 80 miles northeast of Paris, to confirm his divinely-inspired power over his kingdom and the Church’s intimate role in that power. That confirmation required anointing by a holy ointment kept in a holy vial. By the time this Notre-Dame was begun, in 1211, the construction of a cathedral in keeping with Reims’s stature and role as the site of royal unction was long overdue.

Since the coronation of Louis VIII in 1223, all but three of the French kings were crowned in this cathedral. Those three are: Louis VI, who received unction in Orleans in 1108 because he felt it would be dangers to travel to Reims; Henri IV, who was crowned in Chartres in 1594 because Reims was in the hand of his enemies; Louis XVIII, who returned from exile in England to become king in 1814 and for whom no coronation ceremony was held in France.)

The historical events surrounding the 1429 coronation of Charles VII in the presence of Joan of Arc, who’d heard voices telling her that that the king must quit cowering in the Loire Valley and assume his god-given role in France, is celebrated each year in Reims over the first weekend of June in an annual Joan festival called les Fêtes Johanniques. The major event of the weekend is the Sunday afternoon reenactment of the procession to the cathedral from Saint Remi Basilica, Reims’ other important and impressive architectural monument.

Visitors arriving by car will find that the frontal approach leading to Rue Rockefeller and then the vast square in front of the cathedral is regal indeed. American industrialist John D. Rockefeller got the honors of a street named after him in thanks for the enormous funding he provided in the 1920s to rebuild the cathedral which had been heavily damaged by bombardment during WWI. (Another sizable donation by the American industrialist Andrew Carnegie allowed for the construction of the beautiful Art Deco public library that’s near the cathedral.)

There are lots of 20th-century windows here because of war damage, including the bright blue windows that draws your gaze the far end of the cathedral when you first enter were created by Marc Chagall in 1974.

Unlike Chartres, where the cathedral is the destination, Notre-Dame de Reims often plays second fiddle to the town’s main attraction: its champagne houses. After all, Reims along with Epernay, 18 miles south, are the main centers for champagne production, with many small producers nearby along the slopes between the two towns. Millions of bottles lie fermenting in tunnels north and east of the cathedral. Those bottles will eventually see the light of day—or night—dressed in the labels of Taittinger, Pommery, Mumm, Ruinart, Veuve-Cliquot, and other champagne houses.

There’s no escaping the influence of bubbly in Reims, even in the cathedral, where a series of stained glass windows donated by the region’s winemakers show it being made as though a scene from a regional bible.

But the most joyful symbol of the marriage of Church and champagne is the smiling angel on the façade of the cathedral that has come to represent the city itself. It wasn’t created with sparkling wine in mind, yet no visitor now admires the angel without associating the two.

Like Chartres and Amiens, Reims also had a labyrinth on its floor, but it was removed by the Church in 1779. Nevertheless, its image, taken from drawings made when the labyrinth was in place, is now the French Ministry of Culture’s logo designating historical monuments.

Notre-Dame d’Amiens

The final spoke in these radiating Notre-Dames leads north to the Cathedral of Amiens, 80 miles north of Paris, which has the largest interior of all the medieval mastodons of France, twice as voluminous as its elder sister Notre-Dame de Paris.

Amiens is perhaps the most harmonious of these cathedrals because, following the destruction of a previous cathedral destroyed by fire in 1218, it was built in a relatively short period of 50 years, from 1220 to 1270, making this the rare cathedral that an individual might see started and consecrated during his lifetime.

Along with its architectural prowess, the cathedral reveals a treasure chest of biblical, spiritual, political, and local anecdotes in stone, wood, and glass, all in tip-top condition thanks to cleaning and restoration in the 1990s. That work brought to light evidence of the extent to which the sculptures on the facade were painted in the Middle Ages. We often think of these medieval churches as being the color of the naked limestone, but in fact they were highly colored. An impressive 40-minute sound-and-light show (after nightfall in spring and summer and again in December) projects estimates of the original colors on the façade. Reims and Chartres also have sound-and-light shows against the façade of their cathedrals.

For the quality and drama of its sculptural works inside and out, Amiens is a remarkable monument to the talents of 13th century sculptors. Among its most celebrated details are the cartoon-like images of Hell on the central door, the crying angel behind the choir that came to be dear to soldiers visiting during the First World War, and the Golden Virgin which has been brought inside from its original pedestal on the southern entrance, where a copy now stands.

By the time Amiens’ cathedral was underway, the French style of architecture had gone mainstream and was spreading throughout Europe; Gothic cathedrals then sprouted up in surrounding kingdoms and empires until the 15th century. Then new winds of architectural and artistic change, those of the Renaissance, began to blow across the continent, this time set in motion by Italy. Follow those winds on another architectural trip abroad.

Practical information for visiting the five Notre-Dames

The Notre-Dames of Paris, Chartres, Laon, Reims and Amiens are all open daily and free for all visitors. These cathedrals are designated as national monuments; they are property of and largely maintained by the state, with the Catholic Church having permanent use of them for religious purposes. Visitors can enter at all times during the day except in the case of special events. Portions designated for religious service may be cordoned off for those attending service.

Church policy requests modest dress, such as covered shoulders and skirts or shorts that aren’t too short, and men should remove any hats upon entering. But authorities are fairly relaxed about it these days. In any case, visitors should respect the fact that the buildings do have a religious function along with their secular appeal as historical monuments.

If traveling in spring and summer consider attending a sound-and-light show after nightfall at the cathedrals of Chartres, Reims and Amiens (whose show also takes place in December).

While you can visit any of those outside of Paris by radiating out from the capital, Amiens, Laon (to which can be added the Gothic Saint-Quentin Basilica between Amiens and Laon) and Reims can be visited in a driving tour of the regions north and northeast of Paris. These can be combined with explorations of WWI sites in the countryside, making for a fascinating two or three or four days of historical touring, ending with a glass or three of champagne in and around Reims. The central tourist offices of those towns can provide information about WWI sites (including those with an American and Canadian presence) and specialized tours in the surrounding area.

Paris: The official website of the Paris Convention and Visitors Bureau gives much practical information about visiting the city. The Catholic’s Church’s own information site about Notre-Dame provides details about the edifice as well as mass times, church-organized tours and concerts (the latter include free Sunday afternoon organ concerts which have been suspended during work on the instrument in 2012 and will resume in January 2013). Paris’s other great Gothic structure, the Saint Chapelle (Holy Chapel), the royal chapel of exquisite construction and mostly 13th-century glass, is just a few hundred yards from Notre-Dame in what was formerly a royal palace complex and is now the city’s judicial complex.

Saint-Denis: Saint-Denis Basilica, which is considered the first major structure built at the start of the Gothic era when reconstruction of its apse began in 1144, is located in the suburb/city of Saint-Denis, just north of Paris, and can be reached on metro (subway) line 13 at station Basilique de Saint-Denis. In 1966 it was also given the status of cathedral, so it is officially called the Basilica-Cathedral of Saint Denis. In addition to presenting extraordinary and luminous architecture, the basilica-cathedral contains dozens of royal tombs and funerary monuments since this was the traditional burial place of the royals of France. There is an entrance fee to visit the tombs and monuments. More information can be found here.

Chartres: 56 miles southwest of Paris; 1¼ hour by car; an hour by train departing from Paris Montparnasse Station; about $21 one way. In addition to its daytrip appeal, Chartres can be visited on the way to/from the Loire Valley or Brittany or as a detour to/from Normandy. Tourist information can be found here.  The church’s own website is here. A sound-and-light show takes place on the facade of the cathedral from April 20 to September 21.

Laon: 85 miles northeast of Paris; 2 hours by car; 1½-2 hours for direct trains departing every hour or two from Paris North (Nord) Station; about $30 one way. The Laon Tourist Office is beside the cathedral. Tourist officials have told me that few Canadians or Americans visit the town, so North Americans should stop into the tourist office while here and ask to be counted. Cathedral tours are worthwhile even when only in French because they give access to portions of the building that are otherwise inaccessible. Also see this photo reportage about Notre-Dame de Laon.

Reims: 80 miles northeast of Paris; 1¾ hours by car; 45-50 minutes by high-speed train (TGV) from Paris East (Est) Station; about $44. The tourist office is next to the cathedral and can provide information about visiting champagne house in the city. The church’s own website is here. A 25-minute sound-and-light show takes place at the cathedral certain evenings from June to September.

Amiens: 80 miles directly north of Paris; 1 ¾ hours by car; 70-100 minutes for direct trains leaving about every 1½ hours from Paris North (Nord) Station; about $29 one way. Amiens’ tourist information website is found here. Amiens projects a magnificent light show onto the façade of its cathedral. The last train back to Paris from Amiens leaves shortly after 8pm most days, though, so in summer you’ll have to miss either the show or the train. The 40-minute projection begins at 7pm during its December run, when Amiens’ Christmas market may add a bit of an attraction, so those willing to venture north at that time of year can catch part of the show before hurrying off to the station. Also see this article about Amiens.

© 2012, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Radiating from Paris: Our Glorious Ladies of Gothic Architecture (Part II: Reims, Amiens, Practical Tips) appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

April 16, 2019. In the wake of the fire that destroyed the roof and steeple of Notre-Dame to Paris, we republish this article paying homage to five glorious ladies of Gothic architecture, written in 2012 as Paris prepared the jubilee celebration honoring the 850th anniversary of the start of construction of the “new” cathedral of Paris.

As Paris prepares the jubilee celebration honoring the 850th anniversary of the beginning of construction of Notre-Dame Cathedral in 1163, France Revisited pays homage to that great Gothic monument at the center of the capital and to four other Notre-Dame Cathedrals within 100 miles of Paris. This article, of special interest to the historical and architectural traveler, is divided into two parts. Part I below concerns Notre-Dames of Paris, Laon and Chartres. Part II concerns Notre-Dames of Reims and Amiens and includes practical tips for visiting all five.

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Think Notre-Dame and the great cathedral of Paris comes to mind. Notre-Dame (Our Lady) needs no last name; it refers first and foremost to the Gothic monument at the heart of the world’s most visited city.

Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris, to use its full name, is just one the great dames of Gothic architecture in northern France, the region at the hub of European religious architectural evolution in the 12th and 13th centuries and further restyling in the 14th and 15th centuries. Within a hundred miles of the French capital, four other Notre-Dame Cathedrals, each remarkable in its own way and each easily reached by train, offer the artful traveler their treasures of stone, sculpture and stained glass: Notre-Dame de Chartres, Notre-Dame de Laon, Notre-Dame de Reims and Notre-Dame d’Amiens.

Properties of the State, these monuments are now the heritage of secular France as much as they are of Catholic France. Indeed, the great benefit of France’s devotion to maintaining and restoring them is that we, as visitors, have access to their technological and artistic magnificence and their craftsmanship without being asked to accept the doctrine and the politics that gave rise to their construction. One can naturally pray, reflect and/or confess there, but while these cathedrals continue to function as Catholic prayer houses, they do not require practice or belief in order to be appreciated for they also function is historical monuments—and not solely of French history, but of European history and world history as well.

The five Roman Catholic cathedrals described here are among the magnificent mammoths of French Gothic architecture. “French” Gothic is actually somewhat redundant for these structures begun between 1163 and 1120 since France’s role in developing techniques to build higher and wider structures and then to embellish them was so prominent that what we now call Gothic architecture was long referred to as “French style” or “the French art.”

Notre-Dame de Paris

The term Gothic was invented by culture mavens of the 16th century, dominated by Italian influences, because they saw the prior generation of churches as passé, lacking harmony and refinement, barbaric like the Goths of the Dark Ages. But try convincing the 13-14 million people that visit Notre-Dame de Paris each year that they’ve come to see something crass.

In 1160 Bishop Maurice de Sully of Paris decided that his city’s cathedral—at the time a hodgepodge of older structures built over successive foundations going back to Roman times—needed to enter the modern era. In 1163 the foundation stone of the new cathedral was laid in the presence of Pope Alexander III. The 850th anniversary of that event is being celebrated at Notre-Dame from Dec. 12, 2012 to Dec. 11, 2013, with some events beyond that date.

The anniversary has been the occasion to the replace tired old bells for the towers, design of new interior lighting, restore the organ, and create a new museography in the treasury. Conferences, concerts and other religious celebrations honoring the jubilee will take place throughout the year.

Though the footprint of the Notre-Dames was set in place when construction was launched, evolving techniques and styles would lead to modifications of plans over the decades, even centuries, that it took to complete the project. The central potion and towers of Notre-Dame de Paris took about 77 years to complete, the great rose windows another 20 years, and the light-infused chapels surrounding the choir another 70.

Gothic architecture began with decades in structural development of rib vaults by trial and error, so there is no single inventor of this type of architecture. Glimpses of the evolution toward the rib vault had come from various horizons, including from Moorish and Arab arches. But Saint Denis Basilica, just north of Paris, set the tone for the next three centuries of religious architecture in France (and well beyond) when in 1144 Abbot Segur, the man who gets the most credit, launched the reconstruction of the abbey church that was then affirming its status as the final resting place of the kings of France.

The main features of Gothic architecture such as the ribbed vault, the pointed arch, lancet windows, flying buttresses, even its gargoyles, were solutions to technical problems rather than decorative tastes. Previous techniques (Romanesque vaulting and buttressing) had reached its limits in height and width without the structure collapsing from its own weight. The solution was a new kind of vault able to bear the weight though relatively narrow pillars, with the outward thrust supposed by other arches and eventually supported by flying buttresses. Height and width increased while the most remarkable feature of these new structures was that walls now relieved of the role of bearing the full weight of the structure’s upward reach could now be opened to allow in light through fanciful windows.

While the craft of making colored or semi-transparent glass and joining them together with lead strips existed before the Gothic period, the accomplishment of structural techniques allowing for large opening (lancet windows, rose windows and assorted tracery) led to an explosion of stained-glass making, allowing for a craft to develop into an art.

Using metal oxides, minerals or plants, stained glass makers developed reds, greens, blues and yellows that not only flooded these structures with light but allowed the church to illustrate scenes from the Bible, to speak of the lives of saints, and to represent local life, including that of noble donors and trade guilds that helped finance construction. At a time when the majority of the population was illiterate, being able to present stories in glass and in stone was an educational tool as well as a treat to the eye and a glorification of the subject.

Notre-Dame de Paris represents a feat of technical and artistic prowess for the time. Higher and wider cathedrals exist. Stunning windows can also be seen elsewhere. Yet even first-time 21st-century visitors to Notre-Dame, now accustomed to light-infused interiors, emit oohs and ahs of appreciation when standing with a view of the long, high nave. Imagine then how a visitor entering in the early 1300s, when the cathedral was nearing completion, must have felt. The scene from the Wizard of Oz in which Dorothy and her three traveling companions first enter the realm of the great wizard himself comes to mind.

Visitors today can take a tour or borrow an audio-guide or find an app to better understand the main features of Notre-Dame’s windows, sculptures, paintings, architecture and history. Or you can follow in-depth guidebooks to learn the vocabulary of Notre-Dame: ambulatory, apse, baldachin, bay, chancel, chevet, clerestory, façade, frieze, gargoyles, keystone, lancet windows, narthex, nave, portal, portico, radiating chapel, rose window, stained glass, transept, triforium, vaulting, etc..

Of course, not everyone is interested in all of those details. Still, the impression, the eye appeal, remains and may be sufficient to feel that one has discovered something special in seeing Our Lady of Paris. Even more special, it’s worth noting that Paris is graced with two extraordinary monuments representing major advancements in the evolution of construction over the past 900 years: Sully’s cathedral and Eiffel’s tower. Some may even see in the Eiffel Tower an echo of Notre-Dame’s spire, a 19th-century addition to the cathedral

The height and fame of the Eiffel Tower tends to make it the elevation of choice for visitors who want to see over the rooftops of Paris, but the Quasimodo view from atop Notre-Dame, 402 steps up (and a painful 1½-2½-hour wait in line at most times of year), is actually the city’s most telling view since the cathedral stands on an island at the geographical and historic center of the city.

Notre-Dame de Laon

Laon’s Notre-Dame, 85 miles northeast of Paris, is a luminous cathedral that dominates the surrounding town and countryside from atop the last outlier plateau of the northern edge of the Paris region. This is another first-generation or primitive Gothic structure, begun at about the same time as the cathedral of Paris. Few of the millions of visitors to Paris’s Notre-Dame come this way, primarily because from Paris Laon isn’t on the direct route to any major city or region. It’s well worth the detour and is gratifyingly off the beaten track.

Other medieval churches and cathedrals rightfully boast about their stained glass windows, but on a sunny day the clear windows in the lantern tower of Notre-Dame de Laon allows the naked stone inside to bathe in a seductive, uniform light.

While Laon can’t pride itself on its colored glass, it’s got gargoyles galore. And what would Gothic cathedrals be without their gargoyles? The short answer: infiltrated by water. Indeed, gargoyles, from the French word for gurgle, are firstly water spouts, designed to direct water away from the building. Their decorative aspect is secondary.

We generally think of gargoyles as representing devilish figures warding off evil along with rainwater. Yet gargoyles and other carved figures on the sides and tops of cathedrals aren’t all grotesques or chimeras. Along with the fabulous bestiary of water spouts on its outer walls, Laon has the particularity of presenting sculptures of oxen near the top of its towers, placed here in homage to their role in hauling stones to create the edifice.

Medieval architects, the masons, the craftsman, and the general population clearly had a different sense of time in launching such a massive project. In fact, the towers of many medieval cathedrals were never completed. Two of the seven towers originally planned for Laon were never built.

Guided tours take visitors up to the second-floor walkabout or tribune, giving a rare plunging view from inside a Gothic cathedral as well as the treat of seeing up close a collection of dismantled old gargoyles and weathered original sculptures—they truly are magnificent sight, a kind of medieval-cum-contemporary art that may even be more dramatic and telling now than when first created. Refashioned copies of these now adorn the cathedral outside.

From the second floor, the tour goes up to the towers, near the oxen, for a wonderful view of the cathedral’s heights, the old town below, and the surrounding countryside. Notre-Dame de Laon isn’t the highest of these cathedrals as measured from its base, but built on a plateau and has a wide view over the region. This Notre-Dame fully deserves its place among the great dames of France.

(More views of Notre-Dame de Laon can be found in the photo reportage here.)

Notre-Dame de Chartres

The French sculptor Auguste Rodin, a forward-looking artist who was never afraid to look back, called the Cathedral of Chartres “the Acropolis of France” for the way that it brought together the best that France had to offer in a building: rock for the walls, arches and sculptures; wood for the roof timbers; plants and minerals to color the stained glass, and the sun to stream through them.

Well, maybe not always sun here in northern France, but Chartres, 56 miles southwest of Paris, nevertheless stands out in any weather or season as one of the foremost jewels of Gothic art and architecture.

As all of these Notre-Dames, the cathedral seen today at Chartres stands on the remnants of a succession of religious buildings on its site. War, fire or a need to expand led to the construction of successive churches here. Some claim, without proof, that this site was already sacred to the Druids who led religious affairs for the Celtic tribe defeated during the Roman conquest of 52 BC. Pourquoi pas? The crypt of a 9th-century church that was destroyed by fire still lies under the current cathedral. Another fire in 1194 destroyed much of the 11th and 12th-century Romanesque basilica that replaced, though the western façade and its tower bases remain.

As for most of the rest, that 1194 fire coincided with a period of near mastery of Gothic architecture, and the builders, craftsman and artists involved with the relatively quick construction of Chartres took full advantage of that know-how. The cathedral was consecrated in 1260.

The silhouette of Notre-Dame de Chartres’ two uneven towers can be seen from miles away as you arrive by train or by car through the region’s wheat plains.

More than Notre-Dame de Paris, Chartres, a second-generation or classical Gothic construction, reveals the technological, artisanal and artistic prowess of the 13th century in part because it is exceptionally rich in stained glass from that time. That’s why so many travelers choose Chartres for their primary cathedral excursion from Paris. Though Amiens is a more entertaining town, Laon is more of an off-the-beaten-track discovery, and Reims offers more history plus champagne, Chartres Cathedral is rightfully deserving of its status as the ideal monument, for those willing to spend the time, for an in-depth understanding of Gothic art, craft and architecture.

Though most people now come to Chartres for the splendor of the cathedral rather than for prayer, it’s not uncommon to see some visitors following the 13th-century labyrinth inlaid on the floor beyond the entrance. Walked (or shuffled along on one’s knees) at a steady rhythm in silent prayer or meditation, movement along the labyrinth can symbolize a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the route to Christian redemption. It can also be seen simply as pleasant decoration. (An American company builds copies of the labyrinth for churches in the United States—choose your pavers.)

There are 4000 statues on the entranceways yet the cathedral is most celebrated for its stained glass windows, 28,000 square feet (or just over three-fifths of an acres) of them, mostly dating from 12th and 13th centuries. At a time when the majority of the population was illiterate, these representations in glass and in stone—of scenes from the Bible, of the lives of saints, of local life, and of noble donors and guilds that helped finance construction—were not simply decorative; they were an educational tool and a glorification of their subject.

Notre-Dame de Chartres is so rich in sculpture, stained glass and architectural details that having a guided tour or an audio-guide or book to point out some of the most significant ones can go a long way in helping you understand the cathedral’s hows and whys.

Click here to continue to Part 2 of this article covering Reims, Amiens and practical tips for visiting the five Notre-Dame Cathedrals.

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The Orsay Museum had long claimed that Liberty rightfully belonged within its walls rather than in the Luxembourg Garden, where it previously stood, since it is heir to the collection of work from that period at the Luxeumbourg Museum, where the French State had originally planned to show this 1899 nine-foot version of Auguste Bartholdi colossal statue in New York Harbor.

Bartholdi (1834-1904) himself had ordered the casting of this 1/16 scale version. It was initially displayed at Paris’s Universal Exhibition of 1900, the same world’s fair that saw the construction of the Grand and Petit Palais. At Bartholdi’s request, the French State purchased the statue by paying only the casting cost, with the intention of placing it in the Luxembourg Museum, the oldest museum open to the public in France (1750), located on the edge of the Luxembourg Garden.

Soon, however, the statue got sidetracked.

For lack of room inside the museum, which then had a significant permanent collection of art and sculpture, and to make it more visible, Liberty was placed in the Luxembourg Garden in 1906. It remained there until 2011.

The national collections from the Luxembourg Museum, a space now dedicated to high-quality temporary exhibitions, have since moved to the Louvre and the Orsay, hence the Orsay’s claim to Liberty.

Nevertheless, the French Senate, overseers of the hallowed ground of Left-Bank well-being that is the Luxembourg Garden, was reluctant to give up one of its prized possessions. Liberty’s position in the Senate’s backyard was further underscored in 2002 when an American oak, a gift of the American community in Paris, was planted nearby in commemoration of the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Liberty began its trip to the Orsay Museum last fall when the French Senate finally approved its transfer from the Luxembourg Garden. Senatorial elections of September 2011 gave a majority to the Socialist Party and its allies for the first time in that body’s history. The desire of newly elected Senate President Jean-Pierre Bel to settle the old dispute about the statue’s rightful place wasn’t necessarily due to a question of left-right politics since it was likely also influenced by vandalism in the garden, most recently the theft of Liberty’s gilt flame.

The statue was restored thanks to funding by from the American Friends of the Musée d’Orsay (AFMO), including a recasting of the flame. The AFMO is “dedicated to raising public awareness and financial support for the Musée d’Orsay and Musée de l’Orangerie.”

A new casting will eventually be placed in the Luxembourg Garden where Bartholdi’s casting was, so the American oak by the empty pedestal won’t look so lonely.

The black Statue of Liberty (“La Liberté éclairant le monde,” by its original French name, “Liberty Enlightening the World”) was inaugurated in its new home on July 2, 2012 in the presence of…

… left to right in the photo above: AFMO co-chairs Peter J. Solomon and Susan Solomon, American Ambassador to France Charles H. Rivkin, AMFO chair Susan M. Tolson, Senate President Jean-Pierre Bel, and the president of the Orsay and Orangerie Museums Guy Cogeval.

Liberty’s tablet, which in its American version reads “JULY IV MDCCLXXVI,” reads in its Orsay version “15 DE NOVEMBRE 1889,” the date on which the 1/8 scale version on the Ile aux Cygnes, an island just beyond the Eiffel Tower, was inaugurated. The year 1889 also commemorates the centennial of the French Revolution.

Information about and images of the Ile aux Cygnes version and other Liberty’s in Paris can be found here.

As to the American version, the full-scale statue overlooking New York Harbor was created as a gift from the fairly young Third Republic of France to honor the centennial of the United States of America in 1876. Bartholdi and friends were already working on the idea during the final years of Emperor Napoleon III’s reign as a form of artistic opposition to the lack of democracy during the emperor’s reign. France made a painful transition from the imperial rule of Napoleon III to the democratic Third Republic during and following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871. However, it took a while for the project to get legs both metaphorically and physically. The colossal version was finally dedicated in New York Harbor in 1886.

© 2012, Gary Lee Kraut

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“There’s nothing to see here, but people still want to come,” he says.

He is Dominique-Charles Janssens, proprietor of the Auberge Ravoux, which now functions not as an inn but as a placeholder for the memory of Vincent Van Gogh. Mr. Janssens is also director of the Institut Van Gogh whose goal for for the past two decades has been to purchase a painting by Van Gogh to hang in this tiny attic room since the artist once wrote that he dreamt of having an exhibition in a café.

“There’s nothing to see,” he says, “but everything to feel.”

Yet I don’t feel much. If his room wasn’t such a tourist attraction would I be more inclined to feel the artist’s presence, his poverty, his mix of hope and despair in the final, prolific 70 days of his life?

I was here about 20 years ago, when there was a bit less to see and a bit more to feel but still didn’t feel much. Has revisiting dampened my interested in the subject? No, I was rereading Van Gogh’s letters to his younger brother Theo the other day and found them just as fascinating as when I first read them in my 20s.

Perhaps Mr. Janssens, a former marketing director with the Danone group, who purchased the inn 25 years ago, has given this presentation a few too many times and I’m overly aware that the “nothing to see but everything to feel” line is in the brochures.

There is nothing to see in Van Gogh’s room other than a small skylight, an old bistro chair, and a secure wall awaiting the painting. A 13-minute video about the artist is shown two rooms away.

I’m not disappointed, though, just ready to move on. I actually like the feel downstairs of the old bistro/café circa 1890 where we had coffee and a crossant. There was something to see there, some atmosphere to feel, a cup of coffee where Vincent had dinner.

Anyway, it isn’t for Van Gogh alone that I’ve come to Auvers-sur-Oise this time. It’s for Zadkine.

This summer Auvers-sur-Oise celebrates the 50th anniversary of the inauguration in town of a bronze statue of Vincent Van Gogh by the sculptor Ossip Zadkine (1890-1867).

Zadkine’s name may have been mislaid among the hit-parade of artists and sculptors who made their mark in Paris in the 20th century, yet his work has maintained its strength and depth and originality. The Zadkine Museum near the Luxembourg Garden, where the Russian emigree lived and worked from 1928 until his death, is a personal favorite of mine among the small museums of Paris.

Why Auvers
Daubigny, Corot, Cézanne, Pissarro, Vlaminck and others contributed to placing Auvers and surroundings on the map for the Impressionists and their kin both pre- and post. Daubigny is the least bankable of the names above, but it’s largely thanks to him that Auvers, where he lived from 1861 until his death in 1878, became known as an Impressionist hang-out. But it was Van Gogh, the least successful of these during his lifetime, who, in creating 70 paintings in 70 days and in dying here two days after shooting himself in the stomach, gave Auvers its lettres de noblesse as an art town.

We all now recognize the work he did during this final, prolific period of his life: his portraits (e.g. Doctor Gachet, Madame Gachet, self-portrait) and landscapes (e.g. the wheat field with crows) and views of Auvers’ major buildings (e.g. the church, town hall, the chateau). Nineteen plaques have been placed around Auvers with weathered reproductions showing where he mostly likely stood while painting the given view.

Across the street from the inn, Van Gogh painted the little town hall decorated for the 14th of July (Bastille Day) Ball; in the evening the square would be full of people, a brass band playing, the whole town dancing, laughing, drinking. But as he paints there is no one to be seen.

He painted the town’s church, wobbly in the evening nightfall, at the end of a lush, green day, a peasant woman walking by.

Van Gogh arrived in Auvers on May 20, 1890, and died on July 29 in that room where there’s nothing to see at the Auberge Ravoux. He was 37. His younger brother, confidant, and primary supporter Theo died of syphilis six months later. He was 33. There isn’t much to see at their plots in the cemetery, just two simple rounded tombstones, pillows on a single ivy-covered bed, but that’s enough to make you want to go home and read Vincent’s collected letters (primarily to Theo).

Beyond the wall of the cemetery is a field, where Van Gogh saw crows. He shot himself in such a field.

Why Zadkine

Local admirers of Van Gogh selected Zadkine for the commission of creating a statue to the artist in 1955. Zadkine’s Van Gogh stands in a non-descript park, a simple public green space where otherwise you’d scarcely want to stop on your way to the market. It shows a tall, thin figure, his hatch-marked face tense and focused, marching into the sun with his easel and paint utensils slung along across his chest and back. Zadkine described him as “an escaped prisoner who has left with his bars.”

Subsequent to the inauguration of his Van Gogh here in 1961, Zadkine received two other commissions for sculptures in places associated with the artist:
– a sculpture of Vincent and his brother Theo that stands in the Dutch village of Zudent, his birthplace;
– a bust of the artist that can be seen at the asylum at Saint Remy de Provence where Vincent interred himself from May 1889 to May 1890 following a troubled winter during which, after a fight with Gaugin, he cut off his earlobe and offered it to a prostitute.

From Saint Remy, Van Gogh returned to Paris then moved to Auvers, already known to his contemporaries and elders as a peaceable painter’s town. There was countryside here, and the Oise River passes by. Also, Dr. Gachet, who would watch over Van Gogh during his stay, lived here. Van Gogh’s portrait of Dr. Gachet is among the artist’s works at the Orsay Museum; it was a gift to the State by the doctor’s son. Dr. Gachet’s house is also being used to honor Zadkine this summer with a presentation of 19 lithographs.

Far more notable is the selection of sculptures, on loan through August 31 from the Zadkine Museum, that are exhibited in the Orangerie of the 17th-century Chateau d’Auvers. The selection shows the variety of Zadkine’s work from 1926 to 1963.

Another venue for Zadkine’s work this year is the Musee Daubigny, which is showing various sculptures and photographs relative to the creation and installation of his statue of Van Gogh. They give insights into the sculptor’s efforts to create a work honoring a fellow artist. It’s a small but worthwhile exhibit that includes a video showing Zadkine riding from Paris on the bed of a truck with his Van Gogh on the way to Auvers—quite amusing actually, the sculptor looking like a proud tourist as he rides along the Seine, past the Louvre.

On May 21, 1890, the day after Vincent’s arrival in Auvers, he wrote to his dear brother in what may have been a rather manic moment and lauded the beauty of Auvers’ thatch roofs and picturesque countryside.

But Auvers isn’t beautiful anymore, and probably hasn’t been for some time. It isn’t beautiful, it isn’t easy to get to, and there’s isn’t much to see at the inn, but there’s a lot to discover here… and possibly to feel. That’s up to you.

(c) 2011, Gary Lee Kraut

If you go
Zadkine in Auvers. Zadkine’s statue of Van Gogh is a permanent presence in Auvers. Zadkine’s works elsewhere in town are only on display April 2-Aug. 31, 2011.

Auberge Ravoux/Maison de Van Gogh (pronounced von gog in French), Place de la Mairie, 95439 Auvers-sur-Oise. Tel 01 30 36 60 60. Open early March to end October, Wed. to Sun., 10am-6pm. Entrance: 6€. Visit to room + 13-minute video + explanatory panels. During those months the dining room serves lunch Wed.-Sun. and dinner Sat. and Sun.
Auberge Ravoux, the original inn, has been restored as it would have been in 1890, though much of the meal space is in a new construction behind the inn. (At the time of Zadkine’s commission the inn where his admirers gathered bore the name Restaurant Van Gogh before reverting to Auberge Ravoux.)

The Chateau d’Auvers houses a permanent multimedia show that seeks to bring to life the art and leisure of the Impressionist period. There’s a café inside. Entrance: 13€.
The Zadkine exhibition is in the Orangerie, a separate entrance from the chateau. Entrance: 3€.

The Auvers-sur-Oise Tourist Office is located in the Manoir des Columbières, rue de la Sansonne. Tel. 01 30 36 10 06. Various tourist information can be found on the town’s website.

Musée Daubigny, within the building that houses the tourist office, is open afternoons Wed-Sun. as well as 10:30am-12:30pm Sat. and Sun. April-Oct. Entrance: 4€.

The Auvers-sur-Oise International Music Festival
An annual event bringing classical music to town from early June to early July (June 4-July 7, 2011).

Getting to Auvers
Access to Auvers from Paris by public  transportation can be complicated since it consists of taking the train from Paris’s Gare Saint-Lazare to the town of Pontoise then changing  trains for Auvers. Alternatively, take the train from Gare du Nord to Valmondois then change trains for Auvers. The trip takes about an hour with a decent connection. Or taxi from Pontoise (6 miles) or Valmondois (3 miles). Check the train schedule on any given day here.

On Satudays, Sundays and holidays from April through October, there is a direct 33-minute train from Paris Gare du Nord to Auvers departing Paris at 9:56am. The return train departs Auvers at 6:15pm, meaning that you’d be required to make a day of it. One could, I suppose,  but I suspect that I’d find myself waiting around for the train. Furthermore, the Auberge Ravoux recommends avoiding weekends, if possible, due to crowds since only small groups are allowed into Van Gogh’s room at any one time.

Staying in Paris
Musée Zadkine, 100 bis rue d’Assas, 6th arrondissement. Metro Notre-Dame-des-Champs or Vavin. Closed Monday and most holidays.

(c) 2011, Gary Lee Kraut

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On the court of honor’s west side stands the Comédie Française, the national headquarters of classic theater and fine diction. On its east side sits the theater’s patron, the Ministry of Culture. On the south side is the royal palace itself, Cardinal Richelieu’s palace that became royal when, as a child king, Louis XIV and his mother lived here so as to avoid the crushing, plotting crowds in the Louvre. The palace is now home to the Conseil d’Etat, France’s highest administrative jurisdiction and advisor to the government on the legality of draft laws and decrees.

To the south side extends the garden. It’s open to passage yet intimate enough to feel confidential, as though everyone but you has gone off to church, to work, to school, or more likely to the Louvre.

But I’ve come here today not to luxuriate in French Classicism but rather to visit that other element that makes the court of honor a microcosm of culture in Paris: the newly restored work by artist Daniel Buren, Les Deux Plateaux (1986).

The Two Plateaus, generally referred to as Buren’s Columns, are a series of black and white columns of different heights that, in the mid-1980s, served as a side dish in an ongoing debate about the role that modernism plays in the city . But urban planners, royalist presidents, culture mavens, and critics of every stripe had and have bigger fish to fry: the Montparnasse Tower, the Pompidou Center, the Pyramid of the Louvre, the Mitterand National Library, the Branly Museum, and the Beaugrenelle Quarter, to mention the most hotly debated urban projects of the past 40 years.

Due to the important role that the French state plays in developments in Paris, the national passion for abstract cultural debates, and the Parisian tendency to cultural possessiveness, no unveiling is complete in Paris until every one of its residents—and a good many of its visitors—has provided an opinion.

The debate over Buren’s Columns already seemed quaint by the time the Pyramid of the Louvre was underway a few years later. I’ve walked by the columns numerous times with visitors, and invariably those visitors make the same comment “What’s this?”

My own “What’s this?” moment came over 20 years ago. It took a few years after that, but Buren’s Columns have grown on me in a way that Pei’s Pyramid, which leaves me indifferent, has not. I see the Columns as an amiable yet off-beat guest at a formal party and the Pyramid as a highly polished guest who’s forever trying to both fit it and stand out.

So what is this?

Prior to Buren’s Columns the Palais Royal’s court of honor was essentially lost space. The intent of offering the space to art (perhaps this is better called archisculpture), was to make the space inviting yet not too comfortable so that it would remain a place of passage, an integrated and inquisitive place of passage.

Buren’s work nonchalantly takes up the stripes of the window awnings and the columns of the court of honor and then goes about filling and ordering its own space. The surrounding buildings, having been acknowledged and questioned, are left to fend for themselves.

Habitual passers-through never fail to slow down and take notice as they pass, as though glimpsing a forgotten game of chess to see if any of the pieces have been moved. Meanwhile, for visitors, Buren’s work gives rise to excitable and restless communication as they shout to or photograph each other from the columns or walk about them as though trying to fathom who put them here.

A metal grid reveals the passage of a stream beneath the plateaus. There are visitors who try to throw coins onto a column that stands in the middle of a streamonly to have their dreams fished out by children with string and magnet.

The restoration work was mainly necessary so as to stabilize the plateaus, so other than being cleaner and shinier now the appearance is much the same as before. If you’ve never been to Paris, by all means come by to take part in the conversation. If you have been here before, come again to see if your opinion has changed. And if you live in Paris, stop by whenever you need a reminder of why you do.

© 2010, Gary Lee Kraut

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