Victor Hugo at the Place des Vosges
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 Read More …
Tag: Victor Hugo
Rue Corvisart
The street that is now called rue Corvisart, (after Jean-Nicolas Corvisart, the personal physician of Napoléon I) was formerly called rue Champ-de-l’Alouette (Street of the Field of the Lark). It Read More …
Tales of Broca Street
When I was staying in a studio apartment on Rue Broca, in the Croulebarbe quarter of the 13th arrondissement, I decided to take a walk up the street to see Read More …
Palace of the Prince-Bishops
For over eight centuries, from 980–1795, a large swath of what is now Belgium was ruled from Liège by a succession of Prince-Bishops (Princes-Évêques), who as the name implies were Read More …
Operas by Giuseppe Verdi
During his long career, Giuseppe Verdi composed twenty-six operas — or twenty-eight, depending what you count as what. The following list is the 28-opera version, with the year of the Read More …
Museum of the Sewers (Les Égouts)
The Museum of the Sewers is one of the few places in Paris that was not closed down by the coronavirus pandemic — but only because it was already closed Read More …
Guided walking tour of Saint-Germain-des-Prés
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 Read More …
Le Paris de Mitterrand
In the spring of 2019 I was invited to a book-signing in a Paris bookshop, because I had once ordered a book online from the publishing house Editions Alexandrines, so Read More …
Birth house of Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
Victor Hugo was born in Besançon for the same reason that the poet Paul Verlaine was born in Metz. Their fathers were military officers who happened to be stationed in Read More …
In the footsteps (or wagon ruts) of Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo’s first visit to Liège was in 1840, when he was thirty-eight years old. He was travelling by stagecoach, known in French as a diligence, and was on his Read More …