Paris History
Every city has a unique history and it contributes to the magic of the location and the people.
Second Chance - Hotel de Duc de Lauzun
Duc de Lauzun makes a surprise appearance
Photo by Mme Soleranski ©2007
Those of you who were out of town for the May 10th visit to the Hotel de Lauzun now have another opportunity to visit the ‘Petit Versailles’ which is normally closed to the public.
This visit will be organized on June 14th. Reservations must be made in advance by calling:
01 42 78 14 96. You will meet your guide in front of #17 Quai d’Anjou, Ile St. Louis, Metro: Pont Marie
The tour, conducted in French, is thorough and thoroughly enjoyable. Admission is …
Date: May 30th, 2007 |
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First Hundred Days continues
Yesterday, Aujoudhui newspaper or Le Parisien in Paris (www.leparisien.com)
published the ‘official picture’ of Nicolas Sarkozy which will appear in all of France’s mairies i.e. ’soon to appear in a mairie near you’.
I took a picture of our village mayor, Pierre Espaldet, in front of Charles de Gaulle - or I could have taken his picture of former president Jacques Chirac. Now, the former president will have to move over one slot to make room for President Nicolas Sarkozy’s picture.
During election week, Aujourdhui also took a featured a photo of Nicolas Sarkozy in 1976 -
…
Date: May 24th, 2007 |
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Time Travel on Ile St. Louis
Charles-Jean de Rarecourt de La Vallee Marquis de Pimodan (aka Marc Soleranski)
Photo by Chris Card Fuller ©2007
If you had arrived in front of #17 Quai d’Anjou at 7:45 last night, you would have been just as surprised to see as we were that the guide we had expected to meet, Marc Soleranski, had a curious replacement.
It was Charles-Jean de Rarecourt de la Vallee, the Marquis de Pimodan who greeted us at the front door of the Hotel de Lauzun. He explained that since the Revolution when he was forced to hide in a crawl …
Date: May 11th, 2007 |
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The Indefatigable Marc Soleranski: An Excellent Guide to the Latin Quarter
Photo by Bernard Rautureau ©2007
Paris is a forever tantalizing city whose layers upon layers of history defy total absorption. Marc Soleranski has made it his business to take on this challenge – and if you have the stamina to follow his lead, and if your command of the French language is reasonably good, prepare yourself for total immersion in the Paris of ‘autrefois’ or other times. The Latin Quarter tour we joined was organized by the Société de la Littérature de la Poste et France Télécom.
Date: April 30th, 2007 |
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When do I shut up?
How does a writer, artist, musician, or film director survive physically and spiritually within a repressive society? In a totalitarian or Fascist regime? And finally, when great art, music, books, are even architecture is created with the approval, support, and even use of enforced labor to create such works within such regimes, what is THIS art – and what is our relationship to THIS art wrought from suffering? Do we boycott the pyramids and the Taj Mahal?
I’m asking these questions today, partly as a culmination of reading about Paris during the German World War …
Date: April 6th, 2007 |
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Isis in Paris, The Black Madonna
Image from www.pantheon.org
Most guidebooks will tell you that the early settlers along the Seine River were called Parisii. The Paris Blue Guides suggest that the Parisii or Quarisii were part of the Celtic population of the Second Iron Age, coming from Germany.
Today I read another theory: “By certain archeologists, the word Paris is supposed to be a corruption of the word ‘Bar-Isis becoming through Roman pronunciation ‘Parisii’, the name of the tribe that inhabited the site on which Paris now stands. The boat in the coat-of-arms of Paris is supposed to be the bark of the Negro goddess. Isis was the goddess of navigation. According to De Breuil, a statue of Isis existed in the Abbey of St. Germain-des-Pres, Paris as late as 1514, when it was ordered broken by Cardinal Briconnet.”
Date: May 29th, 2007 |
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Theatrical Tour of the Hotel de Lauzun
wikipedia.org
History, for so many people seems a to be a dull litany of dates and trends until suddenly some place, event or personnage from the past literally collides into your own past. That’s how I felt last Thursday May 10, 2007 when we sat in the Salle des Guardes at the Hotel de Lauzun.
Date: May 15th, 2007 |
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Electric Car Power in Paris: 1899
www.musee-chateau-compiegne.fr
May 1st, 1899. A driver called the Red Devil (because of his red hair) reached the speed of 105.99 km per hour in Camille Jenatzy’s electric Jeauteuad at Acheres, just outside of Paris. This unusually shaped car resembled a rocket. Its design may have been inspired by Jules Verne.
Date: April 30th, 2007 |
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Education for One and for All
Normally you might think of free universal higher education as being uniquely Socialist, so it might come as a surprise to you that a king - Francois I - created the College de France (1515-1545)in Paris’s Latin Quarter as a free college. The rule of thumb goes like this: the classrooms are open until every seat is filled up. The College de France still exists and the rules of entry haven’t changed. You may have to wait in line for an hour or more for a popular course.
Currently, the situation on the …
Date: April 29th, 2007 |
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Do Miracles Still Happen?
You may remember in a past post the story of Sr. Catherine Laboure, a nun living in Paris who had a vision of the Virgin Mary back in the 19h century? From that vision arose the creation of the Miraculous Medal. The site of of her vision at the Chapel of the Miraculous Medal is located on Rue du Bac.
Certainly, visions can be contested. But how does one explain the amazing recent recovery of Sister Marie-Simon Pierre from Parkinson’s Disease? Plagued with the disease since 2001, in June of 2005, Sr. Marie-Simon-Pierre …
Date: April 3rd, 2007 |
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