Some delightful suggestions for Paris
French historian and Academy Travel tour leader Dr Michael Adcock remembers ten of his favourite places in Paris that he enjoys sharing with travellers…
One of the greatest of touring rewards occurs when a traveller comments that they had just been introduced to an aspect of Paris they did not know about, and would never have discovered by themselves. The aim of a good tour, after all, is to ensure that people get to see all the famous things that one would expect to see, but also to show people things that they would not have found by themselves.
For people planning their own tour to Paris, the following suggestions might just provide some new experiences:
1. The indescribable museum: The Museum of the Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac
One of the most enthralling of the Paris museums is to be found well away from the beaten track between the Louvre Museum and the Orsay Museum, constructed under the auspices of President Jacques Chirac to house France’s collection of tribal art. It is, sadly, true that if you mention a museum of primitive cultures, most people will visualize some cobwebby ethnology museum with moth-eaten artifacts in dusty glass cases. Nothing, therefore, can prepare you for the new iteration of the ethnology museum built at the Quai Branly, not far from the Eiffel Tower.
From the outside, the ultra-modernistic building more resembles a gleaming space ship. One enters a vast foyer - still all metal and glass and ultra-modern - and espies a broad curving ramp mounting to the first level. Now the magic begins. There is an electronic light projection onto the floor of the ramp of thousands of words from various languages, be they ancient Mayan or modern Vietnamese, so you are actually walking on a luminous bubbling river of language flowing along the floor beneath your feet. At the top of the ramp, you discover the origin of the stream: it trickles out from under an actual doorway, as if flowing from a leaking tap. A witty little in-joke by the curators…
Inside the Musee du Quai Branly
Once you step into the museum proper, you have a most curious experience. First, there is no western-style ground plan, no square rooms with numbers on them, and so people immediately become disorientated and get ‘lost’. The architecture has just stripped away the rationalistic grid with which most of our modern world is shaped. The interior is made up only of curving corridors defined by tall walls that mimic traditional mud-brick dwellings and the organic forms of architecture in early days before the straight line and the right-angle took over. You actually walk between these organic walls with their soft curves and colloquial shapes, as if you were walking between the houses of a village back in time. The darkness serves to remind you that the people of these early civilisations lived in a world only partially lit at night by firelight, not by the uniform, unblinking glare of electricity.
Ancient idols and masks in the museum of Quai de Branly
The display space is generally plunged into a velvety black darkness, but with hypnotically brilliant spotlights on the individual items in the glass cabinets. Out of the darkness, a Papuan devil mask leers out at you, a Thai feathered headdress hangs like an apparition, a carved Yoruban drum stands with grotesque masks grimacing at you, a dark room is hung with ancient Coptic painted fabrics, another with aboriginal dot-paintings from the Western Desert in Australia. The effect is very powerful. We are looking at the phantasms of the human mind, the gods and demons that each population has to dream up for itself as a way of understanding and taming the world. Every set of phantasms is different, the only commonality is that all civilisations seem to feel the need to invent them. Thus every culture generates art, not just to depict the world, but to try to tame it. The display is not patronising of what we used to call ‘primitive’ cultures, but is informed and respectful.
2. A quiet relic of bohemian life: The Museum of Montmartre
For the lover of 19th century literary and artistic culture, a pilgrimage to the hill of Montmartre is de rigueur. It is indeed evocative of the Belle Époque in its quieter corners, but the famous Place du Tertre has long ago degenerated into a crowded, commercial and garish tourist centre.
There is, however, one hidden gem that can serve as a portal back to the turn of the century. I had long been aware of the existence of the Museum of Montmartre, and at an early stage had eagerly made my way there, only to find a relatively small – but very charming – museum with a modest collection of works. When I started doing Academy Travel tours in 2006, I would routinely brief the group not to expect too much from this museum. But the travel business always holds surprises!
Imagine my surprise then to return to this ‘little’ museum to find that it had been massively extended and renovated. The directors had purchased the adjacent building – where Suzanne Valadon had had her studio – and had then renovated both the existing museum and the massive new space of three floors that was now available. Far from being a little municipal museum, it had become a state-of-the-art institution, with good track lighting, signposting and a massively increased amount of artwork.
Musée de Montmartre - L'Atelier Valadon
In addition, the studio of Suzanne Valadon, with its great skylight window, had been set up again as a studio, with easels and canvases laid about, as if she had just walked out of the room. The room has not been prettified, but has been left drab, almost drear, and yet one senses the artistic activity of Valadon very strongly indeed. On my last visit, I found myself quite alone in the studio. Amidst the filtered light and the grey veil of dust, the silence seemed for a moment to thicken, as if another presence were there. I paused to think of this young woman who is both the pretty young girl in Renoir’s Dance at Bougival (1883, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) and the haggard, crumpled person in Toulouse-Lautrec’s heartrending The Hangover (1887-1889, Fogg Museum, Harvard). The story of her difficult life has now been expertly told by Catherine Hewitt in her masterful biography Renoir’s Dancer. The Secret Life of Suzanne Valadon (London: Icon, 2018).
The museum now has sufficient space not only to show its regular collections, but to mount significant temporary exhibitions. The two floors of exhibition space are quite small and intimate, and yet the curators were recently able to pack in a most sustained and satisfying retrospective exhibition of Kees van Dongen and the Bateau-Lavoir. As all such exhibitions should do, it provided a revelation of this Fauve painter, whose oils are so incandescent and violent they seem almost ready to set the canvas alight. He is just one of those painters whom we cannot possibly understand adequately from the pages of an art book.
The Swing, by former resident Pierre-Auguste Renoir, depicts the garden and was painted on site (1876)
The Museum of Montmartre held one more charm for the visitor who had been buffeted and dazed by the mayhem of the Place du Tertre: it has a garden out the back, and in it a small but most charming teahouse, serving drinks and a range of quiches. My group members sank gratefully into garden chairs as if into a sylvan paradise. This is known as Renoir’s Garden, and it still has the tree from which the swing shown in Renoir’s La Balancoire was affixed. He also painted his famous, albeit slightly fabricated, scene of Le Moulin de la Galette here in 1876, posing his middle-class friends as Montmartre bohemians. While we might question the accuracy of this charming, pretty, sun-dappled painting, we cannot question its importance: the mere sight of it had a stunning effect on a certain Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, to whom it was a revelation of his future artistic path. We thus owe the ever-genial Renoir the genesis of an oeuvre in which Toulouse-Lautrec really did capture the acrid, grimacing, desperate whirl of life in Montmartre.
3. The magic of a boat cruise below Paris: The Canal St. Martin
One of the most enchanting experiences one can have of Paris is to take the two-hour boat cruise that runs between The Quai d’Orsay and the outer suburb of La Villette. This is most emphatically not one of the ghastly bâteau-mouches (fly boats) that barrel up and down the Seine with loudspeakers blaring, but a far more intimate and stylish experience of the river.
On a recent occasion, our group - francophiles all - took the metro to the Parc de la Villette, and located our charming cruise boat moored at Quai de Charente. We were the only people on board, for a very simple reason: the cruise does not usually run in winter, unless somebody is willing to charter the entire boat at a significant cost. Academy had quizzed me whether this was really a crucial part of the tour, and I had assured them it was. There was no further debate and the cruise was booked. I find this typical of the Academy way of doing things.
A fine winter’s day, with a clear, silvery hivernal light, and a slight haze in air, the boat swings out and around into the basin, and the silvery water starts to work its magic, dazzling the eyes and exhilarating the mind with tiny dancing shards of glittering light. It is truly imposing to pass through the 13 locks of the Canal St. Martin that progressively lower you towards the level of the River Seine. If you want to understand the Industrial Revolution, just stand on the deck of a boat going through a lock.
St Martin's canal lock in Paris X district
The group is entranced. Then we plunge into the underground canal that takes us under the Place de la Bastille. The boat surges through the tunnel with its rounded vaults of brick, its engines thrumming and pounding against the walls. The boat rocks rhythmically as its own bow wave rebounds from the close walls back upon its hull. It is cold, very cold, but people remain either on the bow or on the upper deck, entranced by the spectacle of the boat ploughing forward in its own illumination though the arched tunnel. The tunnel is nearly completely dark, save where skylights above open into the Place da la Bastille. The vertical beams of sunlight are so bright down here that they seem like solid gleaming pillars of marble, and one almost fears crashing into them. At one point, the captain points out a slightly ruffled heron standing vulnerably on the towpath on the side of the tunnel, perplexed by our noisy intrusion; it has weathered the last four winters down here in the tunnel, a safe environment.
We approach the exit from the canal tunnel. We pause to check that the traffic light is green, and the boat surges on, emerging from the tunnel into an exhilarating vista of the River Seine. The fall from canal to river is usually three metres, but the Seine is in now full flood, so we drop only one and a half metres. Soon we are sailing past the back of Notre-Dame, admiring the glorious view of its flying buttresses, then heading downstream towards the Orsay Museum. By now, we have been on the water for two hours, and it is weaving its transcendental effect on our spirits and our minds. One member of the group starts to comment on the experience of the day, then tries to comment on the whole tour, but is so moved by the overwhelming beauty of it that she bursts into tears. I know the feeling: I am just the ‘fireworks master’, but I am still intensely taken by this experience every time.
It was late afternoon when we pulled in to the quay near the Musée Orsay, and the river was still luminous with a soft, poetic light. Academy’s judgment had been right: it had made a truly remarkable experience possible.
4. Dining where the modernists dined: The Restaurant of La Rotonde
One of the most delightful restaurants in Paris is redolent with history, and is still one of the most stylish places where one may dine affordably. I decide to take myself to Restaurant La Rotonde, the famous establishment where Picasso and Gertrude Stein and their mates used to meet to discuss modern art. To my delight, the manager offers me a table in my now favourite spot, near the corner of the restaurant overlooking the intersection of two boulevards. I settle in to my niche gratefully, and order. The garçon brings a little plate of bread, tapenade and olives.
It is a delight to sit here and look out. It is raining quite heavily. People hurry by, huddled beneath umbrellas, human tortoises shrugged and bowed against the elements. The wet streets are pools of pure black upon which the lights of cars shimmer and flicker red and orange and snake around. A river of humanity flows before you, each individual bent on his own mission and purpose. A tramp in a heavy coat and peaked hat rolls past, pushing an SNCF baggage trolley with all his worldly possessions loaded upon it and covered by a plastic sheet.
I order simply: a half dozen Burgundian snails, a mixed grill and a demi of Côtes du Rhône. The winter chill had made me feel ‘shivery’ today, and I think a hearty meal might do me good. The snails arrive promptly, and the attentive waiter pauses to check that I – as an obviously visiting ‘Englishman’ – am not discombobulated by the little tongs and fork you use to hold them. The mixed grill is hearty. But the feast on the table is matched by the visual feast of the people who literally flow up and down the boulevard outside. It is so entrancing it is difficult to remember to eat. I understand now why the poet Charles Baudelaire developed his theory of the flâneur ..
As I eat, I notice my garçon suddenly dropping everything and shooting out of the restaurant like a bullet. He sprints cross the rain-soaked street. I wonder whether he is perhaps rushing out to pick up some dish from another resto. He races like a gazelle between the nudging, pushing cars at the intersection, doing an acrobatic dance to avoid being hit by any of them, and catches up with an elegantly dressed young woman, a ‘runner’. She flutters her eyelashes and claims that she simply forgot to pay her bill, but he conducts her firmly back to the restaurant, and she stands abject and shamefaced as he makes her pay for the drink she had cunningly had at the furthest external seats.
The garçon comes back to me and I ask him for l’addition, and I say in French, “You did well to catch the person who ran away without paying…” He replies, “You saw that? Yes, I had to catch her.” “Well, that is disgusting”, I say, carefully using the French slang word ‘dégueulasse’, instead of the insipid ‘mauvais’. “Yes”, he says, “it is disgusting. It happens all the time.” To judge from his gazelle-like alacrity, it must do…
5. The best-kept secret in Paris: The Museum of the Petit-Palais
Apart from the great National Union of Museums (Louvre, Orsay), there is a second, quieter group of museums run by the City of Paris. Some travellers do not know about them. Of these, the absolute gem is the Museum of the Petit-Palais. One gazillion tourists walk past it on the way to the Champs-Elysees, wondering what that building is! Answer: an exquisite building built in 1900, fab collections, free entry, gorgeous shop … And if you can get in to the Grand-Palais just over the road, that will be equally compelling.
6. The intimacy of the artist’s studio: the Eugène Delacroix Museum
One of the most lovely, quiet and secluded studio-museums in Paris is the Eugène Delacroix Museum. It consists of his house in the rue Furstemburg, as well as his studio in a separate building behind it. Both are well hung with works by Delacroix and his peers in the museum’s own collection. The museum often has special visiting exhibitions which are of stunning quality, considering its size.
7. A network of shopping arcades: The ‘covered passages’ of Paris
The shopping arcade familiar to us today did not always exist. It had to be invented. This happened in Paris late in the 18th and early in the 19th centuries. Thanks to the recent Industrial Revolution, iron was now strong enough to be a building material, and prompted the revolutionary idea of roofing over a narrow street, blocking traffic and installing shops.
For the first time, people could actually stroll, stop and look without being run down by carriages. Le Shopping was born! There are maps to show you how to move from one to another; the shops are unspeakably quaint and interesting. If you just want to see one, try the easily accessible Galerie Vivienne, pictured above.
8. Do you want an aerial view of Paris without going up the Eiffel Tower?
The experience of going up the Eiffel Tower is, admittedly, stunning, and it is far more historically significant than just a tourist jaunt.
However, if you want to avoid the cost and the crowds at the Eiffel, you can more quickly and conveniently get a panoptical view to make sense of Paris by going up the Montparnasse Tower (metro stop Gare Montparnasse). The lifts whizz you up a thousand feet in a few minutes to the top, where the second last floor is a 360 degrees glassed-in observation deck.
The roof of the building is open to the skies, although the edges are now neatly closed in with perspex and glass so that you are sheltered from the wind and protected from any fear of heights. (I do note, however, that many people dislike the tower for sound ideological reasons, because its construction was a violation of the inner city planning limits of Paris. It also entailed the demolition of much the historic Montparnasse district, home of the modernist artists of the early 20th century.)
9. A restaurant that defies belief: The Blue Train
One of the most ornate restos in Paris is the famous Train Bleu (Blue Train), which is located in the actual railway station at the Gare de Lyon. Its opulent interior has led to it being featured in many films. You are allowed to just walk in and have a look, providing it is not the rush hour of lunch or dinner.
It is quite an experience to sit there and have a drink, although even a cup of tea and a glass of water will cost a fortune … but it is worth it.
Recommended readings
There are so many good guide-books available for Paris. My personal preference is for those that try to look beyond the obvious, and to winkle out some of the most intriguing and little-known aspects of the city. Two current favourites are:
Michael Kerrigan, Best-Kept Secrets of Paris (London: Flame Tree Publishing, 2012).
Sybil Canac, Renée Grimaud, Katia Thomas, One Hundred and One Places in Paris that you shouldn’t miss (Dortmund: Emons, 2017).
