Random Cool Things in Paris, part 2

Here's another couple of fun or interesting things we've seen over the past couple of months, which for one reason or another we didn't write a whole post about at the time.

1) Les Passages de Paris
We Minnesotans like to take the rather dubious credit for inventing the indoor shopping mall (oh how I do loathe Southdale). But we can blame the concept on the Parisians, who began building covered, semi-enclosed shopping passages in the early 19th century. Frankfurt school philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote a great deal about them, if you're into that kind of thing. One day back in February, Jeff and I set out to explore some of them.

Some of them are lovely, with what appear to be original lamps and decorations, and are filled with high-end clothing, antiques, gift shops, little cafés and restaurants, or design offices. Others are less well-preserved and a little ratty, but still retain some charm. If you get out of the center of town, you can find passages that are full of cheap wholesale clothing shops. Up by Porte St-Denis, some of them seem to host prostitutes, but we're not sure.

2. Église St-Eustache
We went into this church on a whim - we just happened to be walking by, and we wondered what it was like inside. Pretty cool, it turns out. This church was built in the late 16th-early 17th century, so it is a good example of the late Gothic style. Here's their website, in French, but if you've got Google translator you can figure it out.

And here's the apse end, peeking out through the Passage St-Eustache.

The nave and the organ.

Not sure who scandalized Peter Lorre so much,

but we didn't know he was a Catholic cardinal, either.

St-Eustache is right by les Halles in the 1st, for centuries the largest wholesale food market in Paris and the setting of Émile Zola's novel, Le Ventre de Paris [The Belly of Paris]. But the old market was demolished in 1971 and the food vendors banished to the suburbs. The diorama below dramatizes their departure.

There is now an underground shopping mall and a large, not terribly appealing park where the old Halles used to be. The city has ambitious plans to remake the space yet again.

We have just over two weeks left here in Paris, and parts of them will be pretty busy, but we'll try to update a couple more times before we leave.

La Commune de Paris

While you mostly see pictures of Jeff and I in various states of leisure, there are certain practical reasons the University sent me to Paris. One of my goals while here was to learn more about the city and its history during the 19th century, a time when France in general and Paris in particular was a pretty crazy place to live. An event that's always been fascinating to both Jeff and me is the brief, four month period when Paris had its own revolution and formed its own socialist government. 

This was right after the rather humiliating loss of the Franco-Prussian war and a very long, painful siege that left Parisians in bad shape. When the French army came in the middle of the night to get some canons that the Parisians had bought for the National Guard, on March 18, 1871, people in the working class areas of Montmartre weren't having it. Along with their local National Guardsmen, they chased the national army out of the city entirely.

We recently went to an exhibit of photos and other documents from the Commune at the Paris Hôtel de Ville. You can see some photos of the city under the Commune here. 

This poster is calling for the construction of barricades to defend the city streets. 

When Parisians have a revolution, they like to tear up the cobblestones and build giant walls out of them. That is the correct and traditional way to do it.

These posters publicized the new laws established by the Commune. Among them are the separation of church and state; free, universal and secular education; and the abolishment of night work for bakers. Some of these things later became French law under the Third Republic.

Unfortunately, things didn't go so well for the Commune. Internally, things were tough - the city was once again under siege, now by the national French forces. There was little money to pay soldiers or employees, and though they probably could have raided the Banque de France, they did not. Besides, not everyone was excited about the new government, and I imagine the formation of a Comité du Salut Public (Public Safety Committee) didn't reassure them - that's the same committee Robespierre lead during the Terror.

Long story short (here is a more detailed version, from a pro-Communard standpoint, for those interested), during the week of May 21-28, things turned ugly. The national army invaded the city with the help of some Prussian troops who were still hanging around. There were battles in the streets. Knowing they were about to be defeated, angry Communards decided if they couldn't have Paris, nobody could, and set fire to a number of major buildings, like the Hôtel de Ville, the Palais de Justice, the Palais des Tuileries, and the Palais Royal, among others. 

A lot of the fires were blamed on working-class women called "Les Pétroleuses," 

later vilified in the press.

In order to put a definitive end to the Commune, the French government decided that all support for it was a serious crime, punishable by death or exile. Accordingly, they summarily executed many people believed to have fought for the Commune - sometimes this belief was based on light evidence, such as  looking at a man's hands and deciding he might have shot a gun recently. People disagree about how many people were killed during la Semaine sanglante (the Bloody Week), but estimates range between 10 and 30,000. 

A good number of them were shot against one of the walls of Père Lachaise cemetery. There is now a sculpture and a monument on either side of this wall, commemorating the people who fought and died in Paris's 1871 Revolution.

So while many people may think Paris is about luxury goods, or "who can doubt that Paris is a woman?", or la vie de bohème or whatever, and it is all those things (except a woman), but it's good to remember it's also a battleground.

Château de Vincennes

Before coming to France, my mental image of the word "château" was a stately manor, probably in the country, surrounded by grape vines and a rigidly symmetrical garden with precisely trimmed hedges. I assume I absorbed this correlation along with the untold number of French wines that bear such a scene on their labels. 

Something like this:

Lia at Château de Sceaux

It wasn't until I began exploring the sights of l'Île-de-France and learning a little of the French language that I discovered that château can also mean, quite literally, castle. 

As in a giant war fortress with a moat and dungeon. 

Like this:

let's step back for a shoddily constructed panoramic view:

Château de Vincennes is a very castley château. Handily located at the eastern terminus of Metro Line 1, it lies outside the Périphérique, but technically within Paris, because the surrounding Parc de Vincennes is a part of the city. Like many large houses on the outskirts of Paris, it was founded, in the 1100s, as a hunting lodge for the royalty. In the 1300s, things got fortified- walls were erected and the keep was built. It is, wikipedia tells me, "the tallest Medieval fortified structure in Europe." 

Keep(hah!) in mind that the above photo is just the donjon, or keep, of the Château- the oldest and most protected part of the complex. Below is a map of the entire layout. The keep is the the square area on the bottom. It is surrounded by a moat, as are the exterior walls. The doorways on the right and left traverse the surrounding moat and are the only ways to access the grounds. The chapel is the caterpillar-looking thing above the keep.

http://www.cheminsdememoire.gouv.fr/page/affichelieu.php?idLang=en&idLieu=1621

The site from which I stole this image has a wealth of information and photos. Check it out.

 While the whole complex is cool, the keep is definitely the star of the tour.  

 the moat and bridge

above: looking up from the bridge

below: the bridge from the gatehouse to the keep

The surrounding lower area, between the moat walls and the keep tower, housed servants and workers.

Inside the tower are the royal living quarters.

There are a lot of large fireplaces.

Amazingly, many of the decorative elements are still intact. With bright new paint and the original wood wall panels, it must have looked very regal indeed.

Many of the walls were adorned with paintings and graffiti, mostly done by prisoners.

here's one with Lia looking scary

After touring the royal living area, you can descend into the lower level of the tower.

The most protected room housed the well and was also used for food storage.

Château de Vincennes hosted many prisoners over the years, the most famous being the Marquis de Sade. Here is one of his letters, displayed in the room in which he wrote it during his seven years of captivity.

Upon finishing our tour of the keep, we found the chapel beautiful and closed to visitors. 

Here's the exterior. The interior? My guess is high ceilings, stained glass, crosses and saints.

We had lunch and crossed "Visit a Castle" off the to-do list.

Random smattering of cool stuff

We go walking practically every day, and we see many interesting things and take pictures of them. Sometimes these things are worth a post on their own, but sometimes they just sit on the computer, languishing away. So here are a bunch of mostly disconnected shots from a couple of different days.

One recent sunny day, we went to Passy with the goal of walking on the Petite Ceinture, a converted railbed, and seeing the Maison de Balzac. I was totally excited about seeing the Balzac house - apparently he moved there under an assumed name to escape his creditors - but it was closed for renovations. So we looked at the map and said, what's this long narrow thing in the middle of the Seine? Turns out, it's the Allée des Cygnes, a nice little walkway with trees and people playing with their dogs and kids, right in the middle of the river. 

At the west end of the Allée, there's a version of the Statue of Liberty. 

Small as Statues of Liberty go, but still a big statue.

Another day, we went to the Parc André Citroën. You may have noticed in some of our previous posts, in early spring, certain trees around here cover themselves with tiny pale pink flowers, smelling heavenly and looking ridiculously beautiful. This park has rows of those trees.

It also has a hot air balloon! You can ride 150 meters in the air! though you actually remain tethered to the ground. We did not go up on the day in question - in any case, I would probably curl up in a ball on the floor of the basket and weep with terror until we returned to sweet sweet Earth - but we did take stupid tourist photos of it. 

Look, it's balancing on my finger! I swear, Jeff made me do this.

On another day, we went to see Saint-Sulpice, a church that became one of the major Temples of Reason during the French Revolution in 1793. The Revolutionaries were not fans of Catholicism or any other organized religion, so they invented the atheistic Cult of Reason, which Robespierre later replaced with his Cult of the Supreme Being. There is still a sign over the main door of Saint-Sulpice from when it was the Temple de la Victoire. 

If you squint (or the digital equivalent), you can still read:

"Le peuple français reconnoit l'Être suprême et l'immortalité de l'âme" 

(The French people recognize the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul)

More random outtakes to come on another rainy day!