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| On the grounds of the Grand Palais |
Our first project in Paris was to see the Velasquez exhibit at the Grand Palais on Monday morning, but there was a 2-hour wait to get in. Silly us, not buying tickets ahead!
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| Figure on Grand Palais, Paris |
So we went over to the Grand Palais coffee shop (not connected) and used my phone to sign up for Velasquez on Wednesday, while we had a darling lunch, what in Rome we would call "antipasti" but which here are called "entrees."
We got a French cheese sampler with rounds of bread, and samoussa which were three little fried pockets with cheese and sausage inside. A house white and a house red. We waited rather a while for the service, but hey, it took all that time and more to sign up for the tickets - setting up an account with full info and password, confirming, confirming again, selecting the tickets, confirming again, paying by credit card, confirming and confirming, and saving the image to the phone.
Eventually it worked, and our food came, and we ate with pleasure, and then I went over to the Petit Palais for a different show while Julianne sat in a pretty little park, but the Petit Palais was closed.
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| Petit Palais, closed |
I bought a map of Paris and we sat in the park and figured we'd go to Sacre Coeur, which neither of us had seen After a few false starts as to direction, we got to the right bus stop and the right bus, and up the hill we went, up and up and up.
The day got a whole lot better. Especially as our bus passed Gare St. Lazare, which I actually remembered (never having seen it before) as the locale of a painting by - who? Renoir? no, by Manet - of a woman and child surrounded by the fog of the steam engine on a walk above the tracks. A statement about modernity, there in 1873. I remembered the painting, sort of. Turned out my memory wasn't quite precise, for you can hardly see the station. So how did I place it correctly? Ah, memory is a marvellous trickster! The painting itself is in the National Gallery in DC, but I don't recall seeing it there.
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| The Railway by Manet |
Well, never mind. We got to the top of the bus route, got another bus, got to the top of that route, and there was Sacre Coeur in its glory.
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| Sacre Coeur from the southeast |
Really worth the trip. From the plaza, this view:
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| From the steps of Sacre Coeur |
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| Facing the city, King Saint Louis |
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| Griffin downspout |
Now it turns out there was a tremendous amount of political turmoil surrounding the creation of the basilica. The French Revolution (1793), and rise of Napoleon, the re-establishment of a monarchy, the secular/democratic uprisings of 1848 all over Europe, the establishment of the 3rd Republic in 1870 and the loss of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 - France had been through a lot.
The basilica would never have been built if France had won the Franco-Prussian War. Seems the fearful situation France found itself in made many people wish for a safe haven, and they turned to old verities. Construction was authorized in 1873, the year of Manet's painting (above).
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| Discussing the war in a French cafe, 1870 from Wikipedia article on Franco-Prussian War |
Wikipedia has a good outline of the controversy between the progressive secularist communards and conservative religious royalists. See the article on Sacre-Coeur, scrolling down to "Basilique of the Sacre Coeur." Perhaps the article supports the religious fervor of the conservatives, but of course it was only a moment in French history, which is resolutely secular these days. Church-minded people all over France contributed to the start of the work, but public money was used to finish it. The cornerstone was laid in 1875, and it was essentially completed in 1897.
The basilica is white. Why is that? Because, it turns out, it's made of travertine, which exudes calcite, which flaking away removes the pollution. Mainly. A bit of pollution helps work out the wonderful carving in this detail near the main entry. It's actually carved in 3-dimensions:
We went inside, which is quite grand, but there were 3 or 4 eagle-eyed guards spoiling the atmosphere by hissing No Photo!, so no photos.
However, after that we went around behind the church to where there are a thousand-million tourist shops and hawkers, and had coffee in a so-called Irish bar. Along came a guy selling the experience of supporting a parrot on your shoulder, and I got this shot of a redhead with parrot:
A very nice finish to our time at Sacre Coeur. We took the funicular down the hill, got a bus through Montmartre neighborhood (8 or 9 sex shops per block), and came home uplifted.
by Nancy
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