Désamiantage is a new French word I learned recently. It means asbestos removal, and is one of the reasons the Centre Pompidou aka Beaubourg will be closed for five years, from 2025 to 2030. Originally the closure was scheduled for 2023 to 2027, but it has been postponed because of Read More …
Some time ago, on a whim, I typed “7 rue des Rosiers Paris” into Google Maps, just to see the building where I had lived for two months in 1962 and for a month and a half in 1966. I was surprised to find a listing at this address for Read More …
This house in the Marais district of Paris is where I lived for two months in the autumn of 1962, and again for a month and a half in the autumn of 1966. I learned of this place from a handwritten notice that was taped to a light post nearby. 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 …
Victor Hugo was 35 in the year 1837, when this bust was sculpted by his friend David d’Angers. By that time, Hugo had already published his novel Notre-Dame de Paris (known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame), as well as several volumes of poetry and plays such as Hernani 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 …
Louis XIII (1601-1643) has not gone down in history as one of France’s outstanding kings. He was not a popular swashbuckler like his father, Henri IV, nor was he an awesome long-lived Sun King like his son Louis XIV. At age eight-and-a-half Louis XIII became king when his father was 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 …