Paris in the autumn – the Promenade Plantée

The Promenade Plantée is a 4.5km path that runs between the Bois de Vincennes and the Place de la Bastille following the track of an overground railway. For most of its course it runs on a viaduct giving an unusual perspective on the rooftops and buildings of the surrounding area.

The railway that used to run on this line stopped functioning in 1969, but it’s only over the past 10 years or so that its old track has been restored and turned into a wonderful urban walkway. The path has been planted in a variety of styles that make for a delightful stroll. We did the walk on a Sunday morning when it was so thronged with joggers, that you had to keep your wits about you to avoid being crashed into by earplugged fitness fanatics.

At this height you really start to notice the elaborate ornamentation of the mainly nineteenth century buildings along the Avenue Daumesnil:

The oddest site on the walk is this building on the Rue Abel (I think) near the Gare de Lyon with its giant narcissistic statues.

The building that they grace is a police station, but it’s hard to believe that these statues were commissioned by the police. I have not been able to find out anything about them online, but it would be interesting to know who they depict, why they were commissioned, how they came to be there and what the building was originally.

After the peace and quiet of the Promenade Plantée, the descent to the Avenue Daumesnil and then on to the busy Place de la Bastille is a bit of a shock.

 

Paris in the autumn – street scenes

Here are various shots from my visit to Paris:

An interactive art installation on the edge of the Place de la Concorde just outside the Jardin des Tuileries:

The classic sign for a Paris underground station.

Now some shots from the market in Boulevard Richard Lenoir, one of Paris’s biggest Sunday food markets:

Finally a street singer in the same market. I am not sure what instrument he is playing, but he fed pianola paper through it while he turned a handle. You can see a pile of the sheet music behind him to bottom left.

Paris in the autumn – Notre Dame

Here’s another iconic Parisian building – the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Work started on the building  in 1163 and took 170 years to complete.

Just opposite the Cathedral on the left bank is a little haven of calm around the old bookshop Shakespeare and Co. The original bookshop was opened by Sylvia Beach in 1919 and became a gathering point for expatriate American writers such as Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Pound and Gertrude Stein. Sylvia Beach also remembered as the first publisher of Joyce’s Ulysses. However that bookshop was in a different location in the rue de l’Odeon and it closed during the German occupation of Paris in World War II.

The current Shakespeare and Co was set up in 1951 by an American ex-serviceman in rue de la Bucherie and has recently opened a great little cafe next to it.

Paris in the autumn – Place de la Bastille

The Place de la Bastille, the former site of the notorious prison of the Ancien Regime famously stormed by the Paris mob on 14 July 1792,  is dominated by two monuments.

One is the glass-fronted monstrosity of the Opera National de Paris Bastille opened in 1989. The other is the Colonne de Juillet pictured above, a memorial to those who died in the street fighting that led to the overthrow of Charles X in  July 1830.

Paris in the autumn ; Arc de Triomphe

Work started on building the Arc de Triomphe in 1806 after Napoleon’s victory at Austerlitz, but it wasn’t completed until 1836. One of the most iconic monuments in Paris, it’s difficult to get a good, clear shot of it because of the many lanes of traffic that circuit it. Fortunately, an underpass allows access to the arch so that when you are actually standing next to it you get a true sense of it size.

I particularly liked the four huge statues on each side of the main columns.

Paris in the autumn – La Sainte Chappelle

La Sainte Chappelle on the Ile de la Cite is hemmed in by buildings on all sides which adds to the sense of a pinched structure that is being forced upwards. Its external appearance however gives no clue to the magnificence of its internal decoration.

It was built in 1248 by Louis IX (Saint Louis) to house two relics that he had bought from the Emperor of Byzantium, the Crown of Thorns and fragments of the True Cross.

The 15 recently restored, soaring Gothic stained glass windows depict over 1,000 religious scenes and the light filtering through the rich colours in the glass creates an atmosphere of enchantment.

The strong colours and detail of the individual images is very impressive, but there are so many images and most of them not easily seen, that it almost discourages looking at the detail. Again and again you are forced back to try and absorb the cumulative effect of this extravagant decoration:

 

The rose window over the main royal entrance, for example, is quite breathtaking, but it’s impossible to see the detail:

La Sainte Chappelle is very beautiful but all a bit overwhelming to take in at one go. I liked focusing in on some of the detail:

My favourite detail is these two angels on the central column between the royal entrance doors. Why are they smiling?

Finally, right next door to La Sainte Chappelle is a site familiar to fans of the French TV series Les Engrenages (Spiral), the Palais de Justice.

Les Invalides, Paris

The dome of Les Invalides was built between 1679-1708 for Louis XIV as a royal church and an addition to the existing Hopital des Invalides which housed disabled army veterans. Inside it is an enormous space and feels like a piece of state propaganda, dwarfing the viewer and making you feel insignificant in the face of this massive celebration of royal power.

Here for example is the high altar and in the background you can see part of the Soldiers’ chapel with standards captured in battle and the 17th century organ.

Looking up into the dome itself you can see a painting by Charles de la Fosse from 1692 depicting the Glory of Paradise with St Louis offering his sword to Christ:

Of course the centrepiece of Les Invalides is the porphyry tomb of Napoleon in the crypt. Porphyry is the quintessential expression of imperial power and was the colour and preferred stone of the emperors of Byzantium. Over the entrance to the crypt are recorded Napoleon’s own words about being buried in Paris: “Je désire que mes cendres reposent sur les bords de la Seine, au milieu de ce peuple français que j’ai tant aimé”.

Also in the crypt is this statue – very much not life-size – of Napoleon in Imperial robes and holding imperial regalia.

Les Invalides also houses the tombs of some of France’s greatest military leaders, including Marechal Foch:

On the other side of Les Invalides is the Hopital des Invalides with its vast Cour d’Honneur (parade ground) – used most recently as the site for the event to celebrate the victims of the Bataclan terrorist attack:

Overlooking the Cour is Seurre’s rather sinister statue of Napoleon (‘Le petit caporal’):

Finally here’s the front of the Hopital des Invalides:

Paris in the autumn – Seine views

Here are some views of the Seine from the Pont Royal on the way from the Louvre to the Musee d’Orsay.

First looking up river towards Notre Dame and the dome of the Pantheon:

Then looking down river towards the Grand Pavillon:

The Grand Pavillon itself:

and finally the Musee d’Orsay:

Paris in the autumn – Eiffel Tower

I’m going to do a short series of picture posts on a visit to Paris last October about three weeks before the terrorist attack at the Bataclan. In hindsight that tour bus below the tower with its strange slogan now looks like some sort of  encouragement to face the threat of terrorism.

Looking right up the inside of the tower:

And finally some attempts at pattern shots using the girders:

Bookends of the Search

I have previously blogged about my literary pilgrimages to Proust’s Illiers-Combray and to Montaigne’s Tower. It seems odd that there is no explicit reference to Montaigne in A la recherche du temps perdu: how could he not have been one of Proust’s favourite reads? This great article on Sharon Girard’s wonderful Proust and Other Matters blog shows in fact that there is a hidden homage at the start and end of the novel. The whole site is well worth exploring for its thoughtful and insightful posts on Proust.

Proust and Other Matters

The Bookends of the Search Contain a Secret

The first paragraph and the last form a stunning pair of bookends which contain a secret.  The secret is an homage to an unnamed titan of French letters.  The titan’s name appears nowhere in The Search, but his legacy is felt and Proust knows it and cherishes it.  I call this homage a secret because I’ve never come across it in Proust commentary.  But it’s out of the closet now.  Remember, you read it here first.  (If you find it somewhere else, please let me know!  I first revealed the secret to my Yahoo Proust group in 2003.)

The beginning of The Search, page 1, paragraph 1, takes place in that dusky state of hypnagogia where all is possible.  In bed, M holds a book and reads by candlelight.  Just barely drifting off, he imagines that he himself is the subject of…

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