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 I was on their mailing list. The book in question was Le Paris de Mitterrand by Michèle Cotta, the 30th Read More …
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 for other reasons. This museum, which is in fact down in the sewers at the south end of Alma Bridge, Read More …
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 …
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 these out-of-the-way places in the eastern frontier provinces of France. Verlaine’s father was only a captain, whereas Hugo’s was (later) Read More …
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 way from Paris to the Rhine Valley in Germany. In his book Le Rhin he described his approach to Liège Read More …
The Théâtre Royal de Liège, home of the Royal Opera of the Wallonia, was closed for several years to be reconstructed and enlarged. When I was there in 2011, I had the impression that the original building would be dwarfed by the new tower for stage machinery which was under Read More …
The Austerlitz Bridge is a stone bridge with five arches. It was originally built from 1801 to 1805, but it was widened and strengthened twice during the nineteenth century. The bridge was named after the Battle of Austerlitz, a French victory under the command of Emperor Napoléon I in 1805. Read More …
The sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) lived and worked in the Hôtel Biron in Paris for the last decade of his life. (The word Hôtel is used here in the old sense, meaning mansion.) In his will, he left the building and most of his sculptures to the French state, for Read More …
On August 11, 1858, the emperor Napoléon III arrived in Brest in his uncle’s boat, the Canot de l’empereur, rowed by twenty oarsmen, with a golden Neptune on the front (sorry, the prow), gold trim all along the edges and a huge golden crown on top. The audio guide at Read More …
In Paris back in 2011 I saw an insightful theatrical revue about the Second Empire, the eighteen-year period from 1852 to 1870 when Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte ruled France as Emperor Napoléon III. The musical spectacle “Hugoffenbach” combined texts by Victor Hugo (1802-1885), expressing his outrage at Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte’s seizure of power, Read More …