One morning in September 2011, a group of VirtualTourist members met at the Square René Viviani in the Latin Quarter of Paris (with the church of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre in the background) for a walking tour led by VT member Paul Smith, who took us through some side streets of the Latin Quarter, Read More …
Hippophagy, meaning the eating of horse meat, wasn’t even legal in France until 1866, although there was a black market for horse meat long before that, especially in times of crisis. According to the French historian Sylvain Leteux, horse meat lost its taboo status and became a popular food in France Read More …
On my last evening in Paris in June 2006 I was walking to the Opéra Bastille, feeling somewhat sorry for myself because I had already turned in my bicycle to the rental place, and would have to leave Paris the next morning. I was walking through the Place des Vosges, Read More …
The original title of Victor Hugo’s blockbuster novel included the year, 1482. He chose that year because it was still in the Middle Ages but was a year without any outstanding historical events that might have interfered with his story. Many of the crucial scenes of the novel (known in Read More …
In striking contrast to the nearby Sainte-Chapelle and Notre-Dame, the Evangelical Lutheran Church des Billettes is austere and undecorated, with bare walls and plain-glass windows. I went there one evening in the summer of 2008 to hear a concert of Gregorian chants from the 10th to 13th centuries, sung by Read More …
April 15, 2019, was a Monday, two days before I was scheduled to leave for Paris. As it was the first day of the Easter vacation in Land Hessen, I was not teaching that evening, so I was at home in Frankfurt, working at my desk, when a notice popped Read More …
You might easily mistake this inconspicuous stairway for the entrance to an underground parking garage — which, in fact, is what it was originally meant to be. Here where the ancient Romans lived, worked and bathed from the first to the fourth centuries AD, here where tens of thousands of Read More …
In the fourth arrondissement of Paris, at the corner of Quai des Célestins and Boulevard Henri IV, there is a fine example of a belle époque apartment building from the beginning of the twentieth century. It is a solid stone building with seven floors above ground level, with the traditional Read More …
This seventeenth-century building in the fourth arrondissement at the corner of Quai des Célestins and Rue du Petit-Musc is one of the 1,823 buildings in Paris that are listed as Historical Monuments, which is intended to protect them from being demolished or grossly changed. The word Hôtel is used here Read More …
The Arsenal Library (Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal) was founded by a man named René d’Argenson (1652-1721) and was declared a public library in 1797. This historical sign about the Arsenal Library says that this was the site of a royal arsenal from the fourteenth century. There was a fire here in Read More …