Western Hérault is such an uncommon destination in southwest France that I was surprised when a Facebook friend posted a photo taken from the exact spot where I’d stood to take a similar picture two weeks earlier: on a bridge with a view of the town of Olargues and the Devil’s Bridge over the Juar River.

“Hey, Sarah,” I commented, “I was just there!,” and I posted my own shot, the one shown at the top of this article.

Sarah—that’s Sarah Diligenti, president of the Alliance Française of Washington, D.C.—was even more surprised. She, at least, had grown up in southwest France, in Toulouse, and had hiked those hills during her university years. She’d posted her photo during a bittersweet homecoming vacation; it her first return to western Hérault since the death of her mother in a nursing home there in 1994. She’d come to go hiking and to rediscover the area’s landscapes. But what possibly could have brought me to the region, let alone to that very same bridge? she asked.

There was no re to my discovery of the area, I told her. It was my first trip to the western portion of the department of Hérault. I’d only recently heard of the Orb Valley, my main destination within that area, and before going I’d had to zoom way in on the map to even read the unrecognizable names of the towns and villages I would visit: Boussagues, La Tour-sur-Orb, Colombières-sur-Orb, Gervais-sur-Mare, Villemagne-L’Argenitière, Olargues.

What had drawn me to the area wasn’t only that it represented the chance to discover a corner of France that I’d never visited before—a quest that increasingly takes me to remote areas—but, more importantly, the opportunity to meet a group of men and women who devote countless hours trying to preserve and promote an array of unspectacular cultural heritage sites that few would notice if abandoned altogether. I’d been invited, along with several other journalists, by Patrimoines Hérault Tourisme (PHT), a federation of local non-profit associations in a zone that has been largely bypassed and often ignored since the extinction of its industries in the 20th century. PHT recognizes that individually its members have little touristic, economic and cultural weight, but together, like Dr. Seuss’s Whos of Whoville, they may be able to draw attention to their territory.

Once Sarah Diligenti and I had explained to each other our respective reasons for being on that lesser-traveled bridge, she asked if I’d be interested in making co-presentation to the Alliance Française of D.C. via Zoom to talk about that little-visited area of Hérault that captivated us in very different ways. She would speak about her experiences and encounters; I would speak about mine. Certainly, I said. The video near the bottom of this article is a recording of that presentation.

… And Why You Should Meet Them

Meeting people who are dedicated to preserving heritage sites, no matter how off-track or seemingly insignificant those sites may be, is essential to understanding local and regional history and the layers of grassroot, economic and political efforts required to preserve them. One needn’t be a preservationist, or even have a prior interest in the site itself, to reap the rewards of such encounters. Meeting local residents with deep personal roots is always interesting, and meeting residents with a passion for their locality, whatever their (or your) point of view, is invariably a major marker of memorable travels. Furthermore, once you’ve shown yourself to be a curious traveler, that same resident may then introduce you to local chefs, winegrowers and other flavor-enhancers, as in the case of my visit.

Considering their territory ignored by regional and departmental tourist officials and other economic actors, the small non-profit associations that comprise PHT began banding together in 2020 with the aim of connecting and enhancing the building blocks for the touristic and economic development of the sparsely inhabited hills and valleys Hérault’s upper cantons. The federation’s co-founders Daniel Pierson, the owner of a Renaissance mansion that’s open to the public in a mostly medieval village, and Brother Marie-Pâques, a priest and monk overseeing the restoration of a medieval chapel, continue to be its main driving forces along with Annick Jeanjean, Linday Hancox and others whom I refer to in my presentation as “the heroes of heritage sites of western Herault.” (Hérault and héros [heroes] are pronounced quite similarly in French.) There are now 14 non-profit associations within the federation, each overseeing a small piece of the overall puzzle of heritage sites in western Hérault: an old lime kiln, a castle ruin, a toy museum, a church organ, an old mill, a museum of local traditions, and others.

Seen from a distance and given the diversity of civil, religious and industrial heritage sites that they represent, the men and women of Patrimoines Hérault Tourisme appear to form an improbable alliance. But from up close, they add up to a portrait of the history and current challenges and potential of this territory.

PHT states that western Hérault currently represents only 3% of that in the overall department of Hérault. Montpellier, the department’s capital, and the coast are the Hérault’s primary destinations, with Saint Guilhem le Désert being the rare cultural destination for those heading into the hills.

Tourist officials headquartered in Montpellier see western Hérault as a “green” destination, meaning for outdoor activities. Indeed, its hills, valleys, rivers and streams lend themselves to hiking, as Sarah Diligenti so well describes in her portion of the presentation. But PHT wishes those officials would also talk up the area’s heritage sites.

Patrimoine Hérault Tourisme is well aware that the touristic and economic development of the territory isn’t solely in the hands of local heritage associations seeking to preserve their obscure and/or remote sites. The Whos of this Whoville are therefore in constant search of partners among the economic actors and potential economic actors in the zone: hotels, B&Bs, winegrowers (vineyards of the Languedoc appellation Faugères), restaurant owners, artists and artisans, etc., in order to strengthen networks and make their voices heard. But nothing moves far in France without the local and departmental political will to direct subsidies and taxes so they’ve tried to get the area’s small-town mayors to lend their voices as well. Whether the political, economic and non-profit movers and shakers can come together audibly remains to be seen—rather, heard.

The folks I met from Patrimoine Hérault Tourisme are just a few examples of the heroes of heritage sites in France. There are thousands of them throughout the country. As I say, the sites they wish to preserve may seem insignificant at first glance, you may even think the devotion of the individuals in these associations quaint or misplaced or self-serving, but seeing the sites and meeting those who would preserve and promote them will allow you reap that great reward of travel to uncommon destinations: the opportunity to meet men and women who are deeply rooted there, who deeply care about their (natural, economic and historical) environment and who warmly, earnestly wish to share it with you.

And then when I post a picture of a view that I imagine myself to be the first non-local to view in centuries, you’ll write to me, “Hey, Gary, I was just there!”

The presentation

The video below launches at 29’46”, the beginning of my 40-minute presentation of February 17, 2022, to the Alliance Française of Washington, D.C. Move the cursor back to the start of the video to also hear Sarah’s presentation about certain historical aspects and hiking in the region.

In 2021 I organized and emceed for the Association des Journalistes du Patrimoine, France’s association of heritage journalistes, a presentation via Zoom of the work of Patrimoines Hérault Tourisme. A recording of that presentation, conducted in French, can be viewed here.

Post note: Several years after this article was published, Patrimoines Hérault Tourisme desolved as a federation, however the individual associations that comprised it continue their remarkable work.

If you go

Lodging

L’Ortensia, an attractive B&B and restaurant overlooking Saint-Gervais-sur-Mare.
Château de Colombières sur Orb in Colombières-sur-Orb. Weekly rental in a gîte on the property of Thérèse Salavin, the village’s mayor.
The Avène Hydrotherapy Center, a 4-star hotel and spa/treatment center operated by the Pierre Fabre Group.
Le Belleville, also a brasserie, in Lamalou les Bains.

Restaurants

La Forge in Bédarieux.
Le Bouchon d’Orb and Le Château de Lunas in Lunas.
Auberge de Madale and La Mécanique des Frères Bonano in Colombières-sur-Orb.
Le Village des Sources in Ceilhes.
L’Ocre Rouge in Hérépian.
Les Marronniers in Lamalou-les-Bains.
Chez Bourrel, also a hotel, in Truscas (Avène).

© 2022, Gary Lee Kraut

The post The Heroes of Heritage Sites in Western Hérault (video) appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Watch below the wide-ranging video interview with Kristen Grauer, the U.S. Consul General in Marseille, conducted by France Revisited’s Gary Lee Kraut on October 8, 2021. (With apologies for pronouncing Madame Consul General’s title as “counsel” instead of “consul.”) Also see further below Marseille & les Américains, a documentary produced with assistance by the consulate about the U.S. presence in southeastern France during and immediately after WWII, from August 1944 until early 1946.

Timeline for the 25-minute video interview
00:00 – Introduction and Kristen Grauer’s background as a career diplomat with the U.S. Department of State.
02:33 – How does the U.S. Consulate General in Marseille help Americans in southern France and Monaco? Lost passports, missing persons, natural disasters and civil unrest.
08:18 – Will the U.S. Consulate get me out of jail if I’m arrested?
10:07 – The U.S. Consulate’s involvement in American economic development.
12:21 – The consulate and the U.S. Sixth Fleet.
13:14 – Operation Dragoon and the invasion of southern France, “the Second D-Day,” in August 1944. (See further information about the landing and about Marseille and the Americans at the bottom of this page.)
17:03 – Kristen Grauer speaks about American WWII heroes Varian Fry, who helped writers, artists and other anti-nazis flee persecution in Europe (the square in front of the consulate has been renamed in his honor) and Vice Consul Hiram Bingham, who bypassed the official policies of the United States in order to provide visas and passports to allow many to obtain visas allowing them escape France.
19:11 – Kristen Grauer’s travels in and impressions of southern France and Monaco.
22:34 – Does Kristen Grauer enjoy the anise-flavored spirit pastis and the rosé wines of Provence? Does she play pétanque?

Kristen Graeur is a career diplomat who previously served in France as the economic officer at the American Embassy in Paris (2010-2013). She most recently served at the U.S. Department of State as the Deputy Director in the Economic Bureau’s Office of Economic Policy and Public Diplomacy. Earlier in her career, she completed tours as an embassy economic officer in Baghdad, Iraq, and Moscow, Russia, and as a political officer in Monrovia, Liberia and Cotonou, Benin. As a career diplomat rather than a political appointee, her assignments don’t necessarily follow the election cycle. She has held her current position as Consul General in Marseille, a 3-year assignment, since the summer of 2020. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan, completed a mid-career Master of Science in National Resource Strategy at the U.S. National Defense University’s Eisenhower School, and is a graduate of the Foreign Service Institute’s long-term economic course. She is married and has two sons.

The U.S. Consulate General in Marseille covers southern France (Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur and Occitanie), Corsica and Monaco. For more information about services provided by the consulate, including its location and contact information, see here.

Operations Dragoon 1944 and Marseille & the Americans

Even among the millions who’ve toured the D-Day Beaches in Normandy, few American visitors to France are aware of the second major D-Day landing in France during the summer of 1944. Code-named Operation Dragoon, it involved the amphibious invasion on August 15, 1944 by the U.S. Seventh Army on a stretch of the Riviera just west of Saint Tropez.

After penetrating inland, forces veered west toward the Rhone Valley. Free French forces then entered the scene to capture the ports of Toulon and Marseille. Led by the Americans, together they pushing German forces to withdraw from the south. Within four weeks, the U.S. forces that had entered from the Riviera linked up with some of those that had earlier entered from Normandy to continue their northern and eastern drive.

Travelers to the region can visit the Rhone American Cemetery in Draguinan, 25 miles from the coast. It’s the burial site of 851 servicemen, with an additional 294 names inscribed on the Wall of the Missing.

After the southern landing and for the following two years, there were major American bases between Marseille and Aix-en-Provence through which two million soldiers would transit. The Consulate General assisted in the creation of a documentary about that American presence. The 4-part documentary entitled Marseille & les Américains is available in French and in English. Here’s Part 1 of the English version.

The Consulate General in Marseille also recently supported an upcoming film on Jamaican-American Harlem Renaissance author Claude Mckay who lived in Marseille from 1924-1929.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© 2021, Corinne LaBalme and Gary Lee Kraut.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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STOPPING BY VINES ON A SUNNY MORNING

Whose vines these are I think I know.
His cellar’s in the village though;
He will not mind this makeshift bar
To share with Claire an apéro*.

Our Giant bikes could take us far
Yet stop beside this great terroir
Between high woods and valley ring
Where ripen grapes pinot noir.

Our glasses make a little ping
To toast this Burgundy cycling.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and her laughing.

The vines are lovely, green and deep,
But we’ve got a schedule to keep,
Four miles to lunch though not too steep,
Four miles to lunch though not too steep.

*Apéro is an informal way of saying apéritif in French.

© 2020, Gary Lee Kraut

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However you like it it’s here.

.

.

.

.

Sing along with it:

Hum along with it:

Snap your fingers to it:

Cry yourself a River Seine of it:

Lift a glass and take a long draw of it:

Get in the mood of it:

Take it smooth:

Croon with it:

Stroll with it along the boulevard:

However you like your April in Paris it’s here.
How DO you like your April in Paris?

The post April in Paris appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

I do, and I was recently reminded of that while visiting Saumur.

It happened when I was exploring Saumur and the surrounding area, Le Saumurois, with friends, enjoying for several July days the calm and sweetness of the Loire Valley, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The fruit was young on the vine. The white tuffeau limestone shone bright in the sun.

And it shone bright in the lamp light.

We were staying in Montsoreau, 8 miles upstream from Saumur.

We lodged in a pleasing little rustically chic hotel named La Marine de la Loire, where an explosion of purple hydrangeas galore greeted us in the lobby.

The sunsets over the river were lovely.

One evening, on the way to the local creperie, a hot-air balloon passed overhead.

One afternoon we visited the former Abbey of Fontevraud, where the recumbent statue of Eleanor of Aquitaine, lying beside her second husband, Henry II, reminded us to cut back on social media time and pick up a good book.

We had a glass of local sparkling wine and some regional cheese at the bar in one of the abbey’s former chapels, where we were the only clients.

Before leaving the abbey I bought a refrigerator magnet.

Just outside the abbey, we had a fine dinner at Le Plantagenêt, restaurant of the village’s appealing hostellerie La Croix Blanche.

In the morning we drove past fields of sunflowers, wheat, scallions and roses to Rochemenier, where the bell tower was missing one eye.

We enjoyed lunch in the shade at Les Délices des Roches before stepping down to explore Rochemenier’s troglodyte abodes and farmyards.

After several days we began our drive back to Paris, crossing to the right bank of the Loire, where we stopped for one last view of Saumur.

Returning to the car we noticed that someone had posted a note on a tree.

It read like poetry.

Blond Girl, (that’s my only information)

I suppose you’re an English girl and
I’m sure you speak English…
I think you cleary see who I am.
I would like to see you again and
if my desire is yours too, my number
is written in the spot where I was
sitting when our eyes met for the
second time.

See you soon, I hope…

© 2014, photos, videos and text by Gary Lee Kraut, except for the text of the letter, author unknown.

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The two bridges in the heart of Paris that have been most defaced decorated with love locks are the Pont des Arts, the footbridge and fine-weather picnicking bridge that goes between the Louvre and the French Institute, and the Pont de l’Archevêché, the short bridge behind Notre-Dame that connects the City Island with the Left Bank.

They are presented here in a beautiful audio-slideshow featuring photographs by Joe Wilkins and music and text written, played and read by LaRae Raine Garretson. A France Revisited Production.

(c) 2011, All rights reserved.

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That may have been intended as a sound bite since Monet did in fact work in a studio as well as outside. Two studio spaces that he used subsequent to that interview can still be seen at his home in Giverny. He also installed something of a studio on a boat while there. Nevertheless, the point was well taken: nature and the outdoors were where Monet lived as an artist.

And the Seine was not Monet’s studio alone. It also served at times as the studio for many of his fellow Impressionists—e.g. Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro, Caillebotte—as well as for those who preceded and came after the heydays of Impressionism of the 1870s and 1880s, such as Courbet, Corot, Turner, Jongkind, Saurat and Signac.

A new book, La Seine Impressionniste, at once guidebook and small encyclopedia, revisits those “studios” along the Seine and its surroundings. In it authors Monique and Georges Lucenet present a step-by-step view of the 471 miles (776 km) of the river and the sights along the way, from its source in Burgundy to its estuary in Normandy.

This handsomely illustrated 464-page paperback reveals the artistic and general history of the sights and space that inspired or attracted (or were merely easily accessible to) the Impressionists and others as they developed what I think of not so much as an art of nature but an art of place. The text, in French, is accompanied by 160 reproductions of works coming from more than 40 museums. The book also tells of the literary figures of the time who were also attracted to these riverbanks.

La Seine Impressionniste by Monique and Georges Lucenet, 24.90€.

* * *

But you don’t read French, you say? Or you’re tired of the Impressionists?

Here then is another way of regarding the banks of the Seine as it passes through Paris.

The video below, entitled Notre Train Quotidien (Our Daily Train), examines the contemporary relationship between the left and right banks of the Seine.

Our Daily Train was filmed between the metro stations Gare d’Austerlitz and Quai de la Rapée. That’s where metro line 5 crosses over the Seine, mid-way between the zone of the historical Left Bank/Right Bank at the center of the city (arrondissements 1 through 7) and the Left Bank/Right Bank developments of the past 25 years on the eastern edge of the city (arrondissements 12 and 13).

The video was filmed by Gonzague Petit Trabal, with music by Rémy Klis. It is posted on France Revisited with permission from the authors.

Grab a glass of wine or your relaxation drug of choice, place the video on full screen mode, and let yourself get transported back and forth between the left and right banks of the River Seine.

© 2011, Gary Lee Kraut

See also on France Revisited: “The Art of Punching, Kissing and Lunching: Monet, Renoir and the Impressionist Island at Chatou” and “Paris Rive Gauche: a 21st Century Left Bank.”

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Brandon Eckhoff has captured that atmosphere though a series of photographs focusing on the variety of chairs and benches found in the green spaces of the city—before the greenery appears.

Without lamenting the arrival of spring, France Revisited is pleased to presents Brandon Eckhoff’s slide-show entitled Winter Benches, Paris, with text by Gary Lee Kraut.

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