Père Lachaise, Butte-aux-Cailles, the Catacombs, and two Opera houses

Today I started out strong by getting on the wrong metro line.  Fortunately, it was in the right direction to visit a different site that I had wanted to visit later in the day.  So I reordered my schedule and started my day by visiting Père Lachaise Cemetary.  There I saw the final resting places of Eugène Delacroix, Sir Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, Beaudelaire, and several other famous persons.

After that I took the tram to the Place d’Italie, and then walked to the Butte-aux-Cailles, a quiet, pleasant neighborhood where I bought a sandwich and ate lunch in a park.  After that, I took the metro back to Montparnasse in order to visit the Catacombs of Paris.

The Catacombs should be on everybody’s list of places to visit in Paris.  Deep underground, it is a chilling experience.  Underneath Paris are miles upon miles of tunnels and quarries.  The Romans in the colony of Lutetia mined the limestone beneath the modern city in large, open-air quarries.  In the Middle Ages, the mining went on underground for many centuries before they stopped.  Unfortunately, the city forgot about these mines until the 18^th Century, when the tunnels had eroded to the point where parts of the city had begun to cave into them.  In response, Louis XVI created a special bureau with the task of mapping out the extensive tunnels and reinforcing the weak points to prevent future cave-ins.  Not too long later, the city discovered that the primary cemetery in the middle of Paris was beginning to become overcrowded and pose a health risk to the neighborhoods next to it.  Somebody then had the creative solution to turn the abandoned tunnels into an ossuary, and so over the next hundred years, the central cemeteries were cleared out and the remains were brought down below ground.  During the Second Empire, the idea was had to carefully pile the bones into organized files and allow tourists to journey down to see the crypt.  That part of the tour is extremely chilling.  At the entrance to the ossuary, there is a foreboding doorway with the following carved into the top of the arch (translated): “Stop!  For this is the Empire of the Dead.”  It is very eerie walking through the rows upon rows of bones, with skulls staring emptily out from the piles.  Carved into the rock walls are inscriptions on the subject of death: poetry and biblical verse.  There is a very real stench of death pervading these tunnels.  It reminded me of the part in Return of the King when Aragorn, Gimili, and Legolas venture into the Paths of the Dead.

The catacombs were also used by the French Resistance during the occupation of Paris.  It allowed them to move around unseen to all parts of the city.  Because the Germans did not know about the catacombs, the Resistance was able have the headquarters there.

After seeing the catacombs and needing some daylight, I went to the famous Palais Garnier, the Paris Opera.  Fantastically ornate, everything is gilded: candelabras, chandeliers, columns, statues, anything that can be gilded is gilded.  I can imagine why a phantom would want to haunt such a place.   I was also reminded that in the novel by Gaston Leroux, the Opera Ghost’s lair was in the Catacombs beneath the Opera.  The opera house is named for its designer and architect, Charles Garnier.  It was originally called the Salle des Capucines, after the major boulevard that runs past it, but everyone in Paris simply called it after the name of its designer due to its extreme opulence. 

After seeing the Opera Garnier, I took the metro to the other opera in Paris, the newer Opéra Bastille.  Built over the site of the demolished Bastile fortress-Prison, it now hosts most of the operas in Paris.  The Garnier is nowadays mostly used only by the Paris Ballet.  The Opéra Bastille is much more modern in its architectural design, and far less opulent, but it is still neat.  Not as gorgeous as the Garnier, but it would be hard feat indeed to match that.

After that, I simply wandered the Marais for an hour or so until it got dark.  I enjoyed window shopping among the small boutiques.  It was a very pleasant way to spend my last full day in Paris.  Tomorrow I ship out for London.

Notre Dame de Paris and Marais

Today I took the metro to the Hôtel de Ville (city hall) and walked across a bridge over the Seinne to Île de la Cité to see the Cathedral Notre Dame.  The exterior of the building itself is, of course, iconic, but what many photographs fail to show are the intricate sculptures carved into it.  Not just the famous talking gargoyles providing comic-relief for Disney adaptations of R-rated epic literature by Victor Hugo, but a dazzling array of religious iconography, saints, maidens, and angels tromping on demons.  Inside is marvelous.  Beautiful architecture and paintings, the choir singing, the feeling of hundreds of years of devotion that seems to radiate from the stones… I arrived during a special Mass of Farewell to Brother Pierre-Marie Delfieux, who was the founder of the Monastic Brotherhood of Jerusalem.  It was presided over by Cardinal Andreé XXIII, the Arch-Bishop of Paris.  I stayed to observe the mass out of respect and because it has been a goal of mine to offer worship in Notre Dame.  On display were the new bells of Notre Dame.  The oldest bell hangs in the south tower; named Emmanuel, it was hung in 1681 and is tuned to E♭.    This is the giant one that rings out on the hour; it always rings first and at least five seconds before the others.  The north tower had four bells from the 19^th-century, which replaced the nine that were taken out during the Revolution.  The bells used to be rung manually, before it was discovered that, due to their size, when they were rung, the entire structure would resonate, threatening the stability of the foundation.  These four were taken down last year and recast into a new set of eight, to be placed back into the north tower to celebrate the 850^th anniversary of Notre Dame.  A ninth bell is currently being cast, called Marie, and will be hung with Emmanuel in the south tower. 

After seeing Notre Dame, I went to go see the Palais du Justice, but stumbled across a subterranean exhibit that showed off an archeological excavation.  Inside, it showed the remnants of foundations dating back to the Roman settlement Lutetia and Paris’s medieval days.

After that, I passed the headquarters of the Parisian police department.  On the wall there is a plaque commemorating the actions of the police during the Second World War.  A few days prior to the liberation of the city, the Parisian police and the remnants of the National Guard occupied the police station and began an insurrection against the occupying Nazis.  Elsewhere in the city, the Resistance began their own insurgency to throw out the occupiers.  Over 800 Parisians died in the fighting throughout the city before French General Leclerc’s 2^nd Armored Division arrived to turn the tide and drive out the occupiers.  It was a very dramatic history.

Continuing on, I went to Sainte-Chappelle, another cathedral on the island within the Palais du Justice.  It is famous for its intricate stained glass windows.  It was built between 1242 and 1248 in accordance to the wishes of King Louis IX, a deeply religious king (later canonized as Saint Louis) who wanted a place to store the relics of the Passion of the Christ that he brought home from the crusades, the most famous being the Crown of Thorns, which he purchased at a price which apparently far exceeded the entire cost of building the cathedral.  They were housed in the upper chapel (the lower chapel was were the staff of the nearby royal palace was allowed to worship), where worshipped the king, his family, and the churchmen leading the service surrounded by amazingly intricate stained glass windows.  There are 1,113 scenes on 15 stained glass windows telling the story of mankind from Genesis through the resurrection of the Christ.  My favorite was the giant rose-shaped set on the back wall giving an in-depth account of the Apocalypse (the more-accurate French name for the Book of Revelations).  The relics used to be housed in a shrine at the east end of the chapel (opposite the Apocalypse) before a set of windows detailing the Passion of Christ (the events leading up to his crucifixion), but the relics were moved during the Revolution to the vault at nearby Notre Dame.

After that I bought a panini and strolled across the Seine to the opposite bank where I paid a visit to Shakespeare & Company, a bookstore named in honor of a bookshop/publishing company that was founded in the period between the World Wars by an American ex-patriot named Sylvia Beach.  It was a gathering place for many of the famous authors of that era, including Hemmingway, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Man Ray, F. Scott Fitzgerald and James Joyce (but there is some contention about the latter that my English major friends will be happy to tell you about).  The original was closed during the Nazi occupation (there is a story that Beach had refused to sell a German officer the last remaining original publication of Finnegan’s Wake). The current shop was opened as a bookstore called Le Mistral in 1951.  The proprietor was George Whitman and his shop became a similar gathering place for the literary Bohemians of post-war Paris, frequented by beatniks.  After Beach’s death in 1964, Whitman changed the name of his store to Shakespeare & Company in her honor.  The shop contains a sleeping space with beds and it allows writers to live and work there in order to support themselves as they write in Paris.  After Whitman’s death, ownership passed to his daughter, Sylvia Beach Whitman, who runs it much the same as her father.  She also organizes writers’ workshops and cultural literary events.

After lunch, I walked across the misleadingly named Pont Neuf (new bridge), the oldest bridge in Paris, back to Île de la Cité in order to find the Conciergerie, where prisoners were held during the Revolution before going to face the Tribunal (which would inevitably sentence them to the guillotine).  It has housed Louis XVI and his family, members of the aristocracy, leaders of the Revolution who had targeted by Robespierre during his Reign of Terror, Robespierre himself (after attempting suicide with a pistol in his mouth during his capture, I write “attempt” because he missed and spent the last several hours of his life missing half of his jaw, but he kind of deserved it), and American Thomas Paine (famous patriot and author of Common Sense) who’s life was saved due to his American citizenship.  Unfortunately for me, the Conciergerie was closed as they were in the middle of changing exhibits and it will not reopen for another week.

After that I strolled through the Marais district.  Once one of the ancient Jewish quarters, it is now a fashionable shopping district and one of the most popular areas for younger people to live in the city.  I enjoyed strolling past the boutiques, the district’s popularity was still young enough that it wasn’t full of itself like other parts of the city have become.  I went to the Musée Carnavalet, a history of Paris from the latter days of the Bourbon Monarchy through the Revolution and days of the Empire.  Its collection focusses mainly on artifacts.  There is a good deal of furniture, shop signs, paintings, busts, kitchenware, and personal belongings such as the chess pieces of Louis XVI which he used to play while in the Conciergerie awaiting his execution.  They also had a model of the Bastille prison carved out of a block taken from the actual fortress-prison when it was destroyed.

I then went to the nearby Place des Vosges, the oldest public square in Paris.  In a corner of the arcade that encircles it is the Musée Victor Hugo: one of the places where he lived that has since been turned into a museum.  Victor Hugo, while known primarily in the English speaking world as the author of Les Misérables and Notre Dame de Paris (the hunchback of Notre Dame), is most famous in France for his extensive poetry and also for his work as a playwright and as a politician.  He lived in the apartments at Place des Vosges for over a decade until his exile (due to his politics and political writing).  In his novels, Victor Hugo is known for his rather long and detailed asides.  He often uses entire chapters to describe the history and background of just a part of the setting.  In Les Misérables, he gives a long account of the construction and layout of the Parisian sewer network.  This essay is in fact longer than the entire scene which is set there.  This would be a problem if it was not, in fact, just so darn interesting.  In Notre Dame de Paris (the hunchback of Notre Dame), he gives a long history of what Paris used to look like as if it had been seen from an immense height (such as the top of the cathedral).  I learned in my journey into the architectural excavation that archeologists had used parts of his description to locate a starting point for their dig.

After that I wandered back through the Marais district to the Centre Pompidou, which is an extraordinary looking building which appears to have its insides on the outsides: pipes and tubes and clear-plastic surrounded stair cases.  After that I went to Les Halles, which were for over a thousand years the sight of Paris’s giant open-air wholesale meat, produce, and artisanal market.  In the 1970s, they were cleared out, moved to various outskirts of the city, and demolished in favor of digging a giant trench and putting a modern shopping mall in it.  The people of Paris were upset with this decision, because it looked so ugly (they called it “the great ditch”).  Thus, it has become a permanent construction site as the city tries one thing after another to attempt to beautify it, with little or no success.  It also the main metro hub of the city.  Fun fact.  

Les Invalides, la Tour Eiffel et le Musée d'Orsay

I began today by taking the metro to the Place de la Concorde and then crossing the Seine and walking to the Hôtel des Invalides.  It was constructed by Napoléon as a hospital/residence for the soldiers who had been handicapped while serving in his army.  It is a very large, beautiful structure surrounded by pleasant gardens.  Today it houses France’s Army Museum, showcasing arms, armor, and military effects from the Middle Ages (and earlier, given that the Royal Family’s collection of antique Greek and exotic Oriental weaponry was added) all the way up to the WWI and WWII museum.  The first thing I saw were wax figures mounted on horses bearing the uniforms and equipment of French cavalry from the Napoleonic Wars just up to the Franco-Prussian War, which was perhaps the last time that cavalry was used effectively in European warfare (swords and horses are no match for the power of a machine gun or tank).  My next stop was a very large series of galleries showcasing the history of French warfare from Louis XIV up through the Second Empire.  The exhibit did a good job remaining relatively unbiased, presenting both France’s good fortunes and its defeats.  After that, I went through the exhibit of medieval arms and armor, the exhibit showing the evolution of weapons, the armor used to defend against it, and how the weapons were then adapted to nullify these improvements in defense.  It really showed mankind’s dedication and finding new and exciting ways to kill.  A special mention must be made to Switzerland, who has shown throughout history to love taking weapons up to eleven. 

That’s a cool axe you have there, but check out this one that I attached to a five-foot pole!  Oh, sweet sword, but mine is so big that you have to use both hands to use it!  You attached a knife to a pole?  I attached a full-sized sword to an even bigger pole!

Often laughing at the Swiss obsession with size, I went and saw the tomb of Napoléon, who is interred in the cathedral attached to the building.

The cathedral is spectacular in and of itself.  Added to the Hôtel des Invalides during the Restoration (the return of the Bourban kings in the years following the abdication of Napoléon), the architect was presented with a peculiar problem.  The king wanted to celebrate mass there, but he didn’t want to have to do it with a bunch of commoners.  It was, however, the only place that a number of the crippled soldiers residing in the Invalides could go to mass.  The architect simply portioned the building into two: there was an entrance from the Invalides and an entrance from the other side and the two halves of the structure met at the altar.  Thus, everyone was happy.  After his death in exile, Napoléon’s remains were brought back to Paris and interred in the half opposite that of the Invalides.   During his exile on the island of St. Helena, Napoléon had written of his desire to be buried "on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people [whom I] loved so much".  This inscription is carved on the entrance to his resting place.  Also entered at the Invalides are several members of his family, several generals who served with him and under him, and several French war heroes.  The dome of the church also served as the inspiration for the dome of the US Capital Building.  Surrounding Napoléon’s casket are the carved figures of twelve amazons, each bearing the name of one of the general’s greatest victories.

After taking a brief break for lunch, I set out next for the Eiffel Tower.  It is quite a landmark, visible from most places in Paris, always looming just over your shoulder.  As you approach, it gets larger and larger, filling up more and more of your vision until at last you stare up at it, head back as far as it can go, vision filled by the massive metal structure.  The tower is 1,040 ft tall.  The plans for the structure spanned 58,000 ft² of paper.  It weighs 7,000 tons, but exerts the same amount of pressure on the ground as an average person sitting in a chair.  It is the master work of engineering by designer Gustave-Alexandre Eiffel, who built it for the 1889 World Fair.  Like the World Fair itself, the tower also celebrated the centennial of the French Revolution and contains 1,789 steps, the date of the Revolution.  During the Second World War, as the German army approached, elements of the French army cut the elevator cables inside the tower, preventing the occupiers from using them to reach the top.  The only way up would be climbing those 1,789 steps.  When Hitler visited Paris, he expressed interest in going to the top of the tower, but changed his mind after being told that he would have to do it on foot.  Thus it is a source of pride for the Parisians, who say that even while the city around it was occupied, Gustave Eiffel’s tower was never conquered.

I climbed the 340 steps to the second level and took the elevator up to the top.  The view really is spectacular and should be on everyone’s Paris to-do list.  It is worth the 11 Euros and even the long line filled with crying children.  It is truly a unique experience to see the once-tall spires of the other monuments miniaturized beneath you.  You can see just about every single other great monument of Paris from the tower.  You can also see the geometric city street layouts of Paris, which came into being in the mid-1800s when Baron Haussmann, under orders from Emperor Napoléon III, leveled the center of Paris to rebuild it as a modern city.

After the Eiffel tower, I went to the Musée d’Orsay.  I have to say that it is my favorite art museum so far.  While the Louvre is impressive, it is almost too overwhelming.  The Musée D’Orsay’s works are more at an eye-level and many of the sculptures are scattered about in the middle of the exhibits, all of which allows a much more intimate experience as you explore the art.  By this point in the day, it was rather late in the afternoon/early-evening.  The museum closed before I was able to see everything, so I may return for another half-hour, just to complete the experience.

The Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe

Today I went to the Louvre.  I hoped to avoid the larger crowds by coming on a Monday, as advised by the man running the desk at my hostel.  It opened at 9:00, and I arrived very shortly after that, hardly having to wait in line at all, which is amazing considering the length of the line as I was leaving. 

Greeting me on my arrival was the famous glass pyramid, designed by architect I. M. Pei in 1989.  In the lobby at the entrance was the glass inverted pyramid, which features prominently in Dan Brown’s The da Vinci Code.  What you don’t see in the film version, however, are the shops encircling said inverted pyramid.  I am inclined to support the filmmaker’s decision to edit out the Apple Store in the background.  Somehow, it might have detracted from the sense of mystery.

Today I have truly come to love my student ID card from Paul Valéry.  Counting yesterday and today, it has gotten me in free to four museums that I otherwise would have had to pay for.  It is not enough to be a university student; you have to be a student from the European Union in order to get in free.  Technically, I am officially enrolled at the University of Montpellier III, Paul Valéry, and so I am a student at a French university.  Which was great for getting in free to the Louvre.

The Louvre was originally a fortress, constructed in the late 12^th Century by Philip II.  In the 14^th Century, Charles V converted it into a dwelling and a century later, François 1^ier had it renovated in the style of the French Rennaissance.  Patron of the famous Leonardo da Vinci, François 1^ier contributed “the nucleus” of the museum’s collection, including La Jaconde, known in English as the Mona Lisa.  Louis XIV chose to move the royal residence to Versailles, which led to the site’s temporary decline.

During the Revolution, both the Palais de Louvre and the royal family’s art collection became property of the state, which opened the palace in 1893 as a museum for preserving the “national memory.”   The collection was expanded by the confiscation of Church property as well as the property of the French Nobility who had fled the country from the Revolution.  The Revolutionary Army also brought home works as part of spoils or treaties.  Under Napoleon Bonaparte, the museum had a rebirth.  The building underwent expansion and its collections were augmented by paintings and sculptures “gained” during his military conquests.   After Waterloo, the original owners sought their property, which prompted the Louvre to hide many of its paintings in private collections.  The Restored monarch, Louis XVIII, negotiated a big art trade with Italy in order to keep certain important Italian paintings.  Throughout the next hundred years, the museum continued to expand its collection at a startling rate.  The administrators of the Louvre began to grow worried in the late 1930s at the threat of war with Germany, and beginning with the German occupation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, the museum began to discreetly ship away its most valuable works to more obscure, rural museums or monastaries.  When the Nazis occupied Paris, the Wehrmacht officers rushed to the Louvre, eager to loot it for the profit of their private collections.  They found the museum almost completely empty, save for a few works too large or heavy to carry out and left in the basement.  After the war, the art miraculously flowed back to the museum.  

Setting off from the entrance, I first headed to the Richelieu wing.  It is named for the infamous cardinal who was the antagonist mastermind of Dumas’s The Three Musketeers.  The real life Richelieu was indeed the chief minister to Louis XIII and is probably most responsible for the political maneuvering that centralized power in the French monarchy that made Louis XIV so powerful when he assumed the throne.

The Richelieu wing is probably my favorite part of the museum.  The ground floor bears large sculptures from the last three-hundred years, all very impressive.  The floor above that contains furniture and ornamentations from the monarchy and from Napoleon’s years as emperor.  It is all very lavish and very impressive.  Above that reside paintings from the Northern European schools and from the French schools.  This was my favorite section.  I entered in the Holland School area, which is probably my favorite style.  It is very emotive and the lighting is used to make it very dynamic.  The persons in the painting show both intricate detail and personality, and there is so much going on in the backgrounds of the painting that each painting bears several minutes of careful scrutiny.  In the collection of French artists, there is plenty of Delacroix, who is my favorite French artist.  Most famous for Liberty Leading the People, Delacroix has a very unique style that allows him to convey powerful emotion through his scenes.

Passing from the Richelieu wing on my way to see the Mona Lisa, I passed by the Apollo Gallery.  It is breathtaking.  My jaw literally fell.  Constructed to celebrate the Sun King, Louis XIV, at the pinnacle of France’s glory, it combines paintings, murals, and sculpture, all combined and intricately gilded and woven together in a massive hall.  Swirling with mythological allegory, the zodiac, and the allegories for the months of the calendar, it contains portraits of Frances’s greatest architects up to that point as well as Louis XIV and several of his illustrious ancestors.  My feeble words fail to do it justice.

From that point onward, in touring the Louvre one must remember to always look up.  The ceilings of many of the galleries are often as ornately decorated as the masterpieces below.  It is probably the most beautiful building that I have ever been in, disregarding its content.

My next stop was la Jaconde, the Mona Lisa, center of so much history and intrigue.  Surrounded by a massive crowd and protected by bulletproof glass, it has its own wall dedicated to it.  Confession time: I found it overhyped.  Compared to the other Italian works around it, it just seemed another portrait to me, especially after seeing the French, Hollandaise, Flemish, and German masterworks before.  Call me tasteless, but it was a letdown for me.

I finished my tour of the Louvre at a special visiting gallery of important American works that were on loan from American museums.  The Louvre considered them to be important defining works in the launching the American school of art.  They were quite good and I was filled with patriotic pride at their inclusion.

I left the Louvre just after 2:00, five hours after first setting foot inside of it.  I traversed the Tuileries Gardens, which I imagine are very beautiful in the summer, but seemed forlorn in the winter.  I will definitely have to come back in the warmer weather.  I visited the Orangerie Museum next, home to Claude Monet’s Nymphéas, a series of eight massive murals of the water lilies on his private estate that he painted over the course of his final years, from 1915 until 1926.  It also houses the donated private collections of John Walter and Paul Guillaume, including 25 paintings by Renoir, 14 by Cézanne, 11 by Matisse, 12 by Picasso, 9 by Rousseau, 10 by Utrillo, 22 by soutine, and 28 by Derain.  They were all very good.   Once again, my University of Montpellier student ID got me in free.

After that, I walked the Champs Élysées.  As I stopped for lunch, I came upon a realization.  It is a well-known fact that in expensive restaurants, you pay just as much for the atmosphere as you do for your food.  In Paris, you pay extra just because you have the privilege of being in Paris.  It is almost like a culture tax.   I also came to the understanding that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

After lunch, I decided that come wind, snow, sleet, hail, rain, or some ungodly combination of all five, I would press on to see the Arc de Triumph before heading in for the evening.  Sure enough, I got my wish and received what can only be described as Spite-Precipitation, which is an ungodly combination of wind, snow, sleet, hail, and rain.  I pressed on despite the horrible weather and got to the massive structure.  Again, worth it.

Tomorrow, most of the museums are closed, so I am not exactly sure what I’m going to be doing.  I have narrowed it down to either seeing Notre Dame and the sights nearby along the Seine or else doing my work at the Bibliothèque Nationale for my thesis.   I’ll update you tomorrow of what I settled on.