In July 2014 I took a guided walking tour (in French) of the Saint-Germain-des-Prés quarter of Paris. We met at the exit of the Métro station Mabillon, because this is a small station with only one exit, so there was no danger of anyone picking the wrong one. Our guide Read More …
Rue Jacob is a fashionable street in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés quarter of Paris, with a number of art galleries and such, but it is actually not very pleasant because of the narrow sidewalks and the parked cars on both sides of the street. As nearly everywhere in Paris, the car drivers Read More …
It was Maillol himself who first broached the idea that his model Dina Vierny should open an art gallery after his death. In her words: “Maillol had always dreamed of a gallery for me. The trouble was, I did not see myself as a business person, not at all.” After Read More …
The Pont des Arts (Bridge of the Arts) is one of the six bridges in Paris that are reserved for circulations douces, a nice French expression meaning soft or mild traffic, i.e. non-motorized. For several years the Pont des Arts was better known to tourists as the “love lock bridge”, Read More …
My only disappointment with Molière’s L’Avare (The Miser) was that it doesn’t include a maid. In all the other Molière plays I have seen or read, there is a clever maid who has the funniest lines and helps prevent the daughter of the house from being married off to some older Read More …
Mundolingua is a small museum devoted to a huge subject, namely “language, languages and linguistics.” Topics include definitions, phonetics, vocabulary, grammar, first language acquisition, foreign language learning, language problems, myths and origins, religion, etymology, ethnolinguistics, political linguistics, dead languages, dialects, sociolinguistics, alphabets, invented languages, codes, lies, humor, slang, tongue-twisters, proverbs Read More …
Since the name of this theater means ‘Theatre of the Old Pigeon-House’, I used to think the theater building was just that, an old pigeon-house (dovecote) that somebody decided to re-purpose after a sharp decline in the demand for pigeon meat. Considering the size of the theatre, I thought it Read More …
Le Lucernaire is a “national center for the arts and experimentation” in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, between Saint-Germain-des-Prés and Montparnasse. It includes three theaters, three cinemas, a bookshop, a restaurant, a bar and an art gallery. I first heard of the Lucernaire when I attended a play at the Read More …
The painter Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) had an apartment, studio and garden in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés quarter of the sixth arrondissement in Paris for the last five-and-a-half years of his life, while he was working on the decoration of a chapel at the nearby church of Saint-Suplice. Delacroix was a prolific artist Read More …
I’ve always liked the big Gibert Joseph bookshop on the Boul’ Mich’ (Boulevard Saint Michel) in the Latin Quarter because that’s where I used to buy my books when I was a student in Paris half a century ago. The store is still very much the same now as it Read More …