Pompidou Centre

When you emerge from the Chatelet-Les Halles metro station you are in the Forum des Halles. In centuries past a main market area, it is now a gigantic shopping complex of Escherian complexity and Westfieldian banality. It is a relief to escape, but the horror soon returns. The surrounding streets remind me of the Church Street mall – boring, bland, and bountiful with bogans – Parramatta on the Right Bank.

But a block or so east is the Centre Pompidou, the home of the Musée National du Art Moderne. I remember the furor when it was opened in the late 1970s, with the press screaming that the building was inside out, that it looked like it still needed cladding, and so on. (This was the press that a few years before had declared that ‘Blue Poles’ was a waste of money.) I remember being impressed that it had the escalator on the outside.

Now, I love the work of Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers – Aurora Place in Macquarie Street is a beautiful building, and ‘South Pacific’ is my favourite musical – sorry, that’s Rodgers with a ‘d’. But the plaza beside it is a failure – butt-ugly and with dodgy paving (not unlike outside Fisher Library), and with a slope that makes it very difficult for anyone with legs to walk on.

I dreaded that the building itself, designed to have the air conditioning, lifts etc on the outside so as to maximise the exhibition space within, might look as rundown and tacky as the knockoffs you see in office buildings and shopping centres everywhere (the exposed conduits and wiring are intentional features of one part of Macquarie Centre, not known for its architectural audacity). But it has aged far better than the plaza. The windows need a wash, but that’s simple maintenance.

The permanent collection inside is comprehensive and well-laid out. Here’s where you want to come if you want to see lots of Picasso, Braque and Leger, and Fauvists and Surrealists and Futurists and any other art movement from the twentieth century. A Chagall made Megan happy, and half a dozen Kandinskys and a case containing his brushes and paints and gouaches and crayons made me happy. I was also pleased to see one of Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Fontaines’, enclosed in a case lest anyone feel tempted to utilise it. (If you don’t understand that, Google it.)



The view from the top floor is terrific, with most of the Paris skyline around you (rather than below you, which you get at the Tours Eiffel and Montparnasse). A lovely view of Montmartre, which is as close as we’ll get to it on this trip.

A word of warning. The boutique is full of overpriced crap and snobby staff, the toilets haven’t been cleaned since the building opened, and the so-called café is really the Woolies cafeteria. We couldn’t face lunch with such vile conditions, so we went outside. Next to the Pompidou is the Stravinsky Fountain, a pool of kinetic sculptures which could provide hours of amusement if you have a supply of good coffee. And one of the cafés next to the fountain is Dame Tartine, which has a great atmosphere (they played Ella) and young staff with a good attitude and an idiomatic grasp of English. We had wonderful croque-monsieurs, made with ham off the bone, comte and green peppercorns – haute cuisine meets comfort food, and reasonably cheap.

The Catacombs

Lots of steps. Tunnel, more tunnel, another bit. Bones, millions of ’em, nearly a kilometre’s worth, mostly limbs, lots of skulls, all stacked neatly. Must have taken ages to get the patterns right. More tunnel. More steps, corkscrewing. Exit into a back street of Montparnasse.

Notre Dame de Chartres

Apart from a general idea of ‘large gothic cathedral, stained glass, Chartres blue, blah blah’ my understanding of Chartres to date has been garnered from the tales of Dornford Yates. Jonah Mansel and Richard Chandos would stop there for breakfast after unloading the Rolls early from the boat at Calais and bypassing Rouen because it is too ‘hot’. While Carson filled the tank and checked under the bonnet, Mansel and Chandos would admire the cathedral windows in the morning light. Actually I think it was Boy and Adele in one of the Berry books – Mansel would probably have only gone into the cathedral to meet an informer or pursue a villain. Anyway, my point is that I knew very little about it.

Notre Dame de Chartres makes Notre Dame de Paris look like a parish church. (Ok, it is, but that’s beside the point.) It is bigger, older, has more stained glass windows, and is more gob-smacking than any other church you are ever likely to be in. It’s also probably colder.


The windows live up to every encomium I’ve ever read. They are like enamelled jewel boxes, with intricate little pictures. Photos don’t capture the colours, the vivid reds and blues and golds and subtle greens. Like the Monets in the Orangerie you can sit and look for hours, and we would have if it hadn’t been so effing cold.

At Notre Dame in Paris I was impressed by the sacred surviving the onslaught of the profane. That is here too; while the cameras buzz and rude Japanese tourists barge and jostle, the devout carry out their private devotions in the chapels and consult the priest in a confessional in the ambulatory. The artisans who created this place found a way to combine the sacred and secular in their work. We don’t know their names because they donated the windows as guilds and did their work in teams. But the windows, the carving, the engineering all display craftsmanship as vocation and worship.


Another man who has found his vocation at Chartres is Malcolm Miller, a distinguished-looking gentleman who has guided tours in English here for fifty-three years. He first came here in 1956 as a student completing his French degree (he still wears his purple and white Durham scarf). The French government made him a Chevalier of the Order of Merit and of the Order of Arts and Letters for his work here and around the world writing and talking about the cathedral, so I think we can assume his delivery is informed. It is also amusing, full of witty comments and anecdotes about saints, tourists and art historians. Describing how the Allies almost bombed the building in 1944, he added, ‘I’m glad they didn’t, because I’d be teaching French to horrible school children in Birmingham.’ Rather than filling our radio headsets full of facts, Malcolm focused on the symbolism of the building, and how the windows, statues and other objects relate to each other, describing and commenting on Biblical narrative and theology – in other words, teaching us to read the building as the unlettered artisans and worshippers of the thirteenth century did.

When we walked out into the sunshine we took off our scarves, opened our coats to let the warmth in and had lunch at a little Italian restaurant called La Voûte Romane in Rue Fulbert on the southern (sunny) side of the cathedral. Brilliant food and atmosphere, and no tourist groups.

Timing is everything (or, heaven rewards the virtuous)

For example:

1. Our postal votes arrived in the mail the day before we left.

2. Our tickets for the Houses of Parliament tour arrived ten minutes before we rang for the taxi to take us to the airport.

3. This morning the Pont de l’Alma metro station was closed for repairs, which we didn’t know until we got there. So we had to change our plans. Instead of a pleasant walk through the catacombs, we walked over to the Place de la Concorde to go to the Orangerie. When we arrived just after 10am we thought that it too might be shut – there was no queue! But it was open. We were just lucky. We were able to look at Monet’s Nymphéas with maybe a dozen people around. That’s all.

Painted from about 1918 to 1926, these eight pictures were commissioned by the French government and and installed in the Orangerie in the Jardin des Tuileries after Monet’s death. They are so big it is a completely different experience to observe them than, say, the water lilies on display at the Musée d’Orsay or the Marmottan. There you have individual canvases about 1.8m square. Here there are twenty-two panels each 2 metres high and with a total length of 91m. They are housed in two oval rooms on the ground floor of the building, illuminated by filtered natural light from the glass roof. In the middle of each room are benches of generous length and padding, on which you can relax and gaze, watching the play of light on the water, the lily pads, the depths of the pool, the waving willows – it feels like you are sitting in Monet’s garden at Giverny.


There are no ancillary elements in these paintings; everything is subject. The silence is as important as the sounds; like Debussy and Ellington, the space between the notes counts. I don’t know how these pictures rate in terms of his technique, but they have to be Monet’s most successful in conveying an experience of time and place. People in these rooms are quiet, not in awe but in joy. If I could only come back to one thing in Paris it would be this.

On the underground level you can see the Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume Collection, a selection of late 19th – early 20th century paintings some of which toured Australia while the Orangerie was closed for renovations a few years ago: Renoir, Pisarro, Cézanne, Gauguin, Laurencin, Modigliani, Rousseau, Derain, Matisse, Picasso, Utrillo and Soutine. We were pleased to renew our acquaintance with some old friends, and also noted the presence of Rousseau’s L’Enfant avec un poupée, a particularly ugly creature which we refer to as the Beastly Baby, after Edward Gorey.

Incidentally, another feature of the Orangerie which may dispose you towards a visit: the wash-basin taps are pedal operated, just the thing for us cleanliness fetishists.

We walked through the Jardin des Tuileries in a gentle rain, watching the Parisiens promenading even on a cold, wet day. It was the first time I have been able to use my new umbrella since I bought it a month ago. It is a black Shelta with automatic opening and closing, a thing of beauty. Megan was a little embarrassed about using her umbrella; Monet’s water lilies may look chic in Sydney, but in Paris...

Les Lézards de Paris

In our walks we have discovered a beautiful art nouveau building just around the corner. 29 Avenue Rapp was designed by the architect Jules Lavirotte in 1901.The front door is classic art nouveau, but we are curious about the identity of the lizard in the middle – he looks like a blue-tongue with big feet:





Perhaps he is a descendant of this bloke we saw on Rue Cler this afternoon:



Yes, that price is what you think it is. This is the seventh arrondissement, honey.

Touring without tourists

When I woke this morning I thought I was at home. I had set the alarm for 6.30 instead of 7.30, and when it went off I reached over to turn off Megan’s nose. ‘Other side’, she said, just before I made contact.

We’ve been to three of the monsters – Musée d’Orsay, the Louvre, and Versailles. All impressive, and packed to the rafters with two things: masterpieces and tourists. Is there anywhere where you can get the first but not the second?

Yes. We visited two such places today: the Musée Marmottan-Monet in the 16th arrondissement, and the Musée Jacquemart-André in the 8th.

Both started life as private collections. Paul Marmottan was a historian of the Napoleonic period, who lived in a former hunting lodge near the Bois de Boulogne. When he died in 1932 he left his house and collection of First Empire art to the Académie des Beaux Arts. In 1966 Michel Monet donated his father Claude’s collection of paintings held at Giverny. This included not only paintings by Monet himself but also paintings by his fellow impressionists. In 1996 Berthe Morisot’s grandson bequeathed his collection. So now the Marmottan has the world’s largest collection of Monets and Morisots. The Monets are mostly late: several Water Lilies and other paintings of Giverny, one of the Rouen Cathedral series, one of the Houses of Parliament, and the painting from which the movement took its name, Impression: Sunrise. These are housed in a large, specially-built gallery below the rear garden. The Morisots take up two rooms of the ground floor and are simply beautiful – they are what chocolate-box artists aspire to, pastel without being syrupy, in Megan’s words.

Up the Metro from La Muette to Miromesnil, and a short walk around to 158 Boulevarde Haussmann. The Musée Jacquemart-André was the mansion of Edouard André, a banker, and his wife Nélie Jacquemart, a painter. The house was built specifically to show off their collection of Italian art, as a work of art in itself. The décor is overblown Second Empire style, but the pictures are great. They include a Saint George and the Dragon by Uccello (one of my favourite paintings), a few Mantegnas and a couple of Botticellis.

Neither museum is crowded, and the customers are very upmarket – no bogan tourists in tracky-daks yelling at each other. The products in the shop at the Jacquemart-André are very high-end, a step up from the trinkets at the Louvre. Like many museums in Paris there are a lot of French, but many seem to go just for the restaurant (which has free entry). You may have to wait for a table but it’s worth it. For example, their lunch special (€16.50) is the quiche du jour plus a pastry. The quiche was exquisite, with a light shortcrust pastry and caramelised onions on the base. We both had a chocolate and caramel slice, the caramel tasting of honeycomb. Followed up by a traditional hot chocolate, it was the best meal we’ve had in Paris yet.

We sat on the patio overlooking the courtyard, where small children played hide and seek and older children played chasings around trees in planters that seem especially placed for just that purpose. People sat on benches and enjoyed the sun, and no one was in a hurry. For elegance and light, I prefer the Marmottan. But for food and relaxing…

Le Château de Versailles

I would like to see an episode of Grand Designs on Versailles. ‘Louis wants to convert this old hunting lodge into something he can bring the whole court to. But I don’t think he can do it without bankrupting the country.’ Apparently they went pretty close.

Versailles is not architecture, it’s the performance of power, from the layout of the wings to the rituals performed within them. It’s exciting to walk the corridors and imagine who has been there before, and what intrigues political and romantic they plotted.

The Hall of Mirrors is elegant and devastatingly beautiful, exciting when you consider it was where the Sun King held court, and tragic when you remember it was where the Treaty of Versailles was signed, destining Europe to another three decades of hell.

From the Palais to the far end of the canal is three kilometres, but the glare makes the lines indefinite, making it stretch somewhere out there. With the trees beginning to bud again, everything seems slightly diffuse and fantastic. It must look spectacular in late spring, but even now it looks like – really – a fairytale land.

When you go to Versailles make sure you go to the Trianons. They are a one-and-a-half kilometre trek from the main chateau, past water features and through maze-like gardens (think of topiary on forty-foot trees). The Grand Trianon has a similar sumptuousness but is warmer and more intimate than the Palais; the Petit Trianon just down the road is the granny-flat of the chateau, small and less flashy, but with a jewel of a garden, with paths and groves and caves and water features that must have been a delight to walk among, and a great place for kids to play.

The salon du thé in the Palais is run by the Angelina chain, and the chocolate l’Africain is the best in Paris.

How to use a Louvre

When I first saw the Grand Canyon I realised that here was something about as big as you could get and still retain some sense of scale. The Louvre is in this class. It is really, really big. You can’t see it all in one visit, unless it lasts for a year or so.

If you get there by opening time (9am today) you will get through the queue in about five minutes. Like the Musée d’Orsay and the Tour Eiffel, there is bag screening, but unlike those there are no soldiers with machine guns.

If you get there early you will also have a chance to get close to the Mona Lisa. After 10am she will be constantly surrounded by a hundred admirers, most of whom are either taking photos (‘Here’s me with the Mona Lisa, here’s my dog with the Mona Lisa’ etc) or shaking their heads and saying ‘Is that all?’ You can’t get close enough to examine the painting as a work of art – ten feet at most – so just acknowledge its presence on the wall and tick it off the list. There are other, much more interesting paintings in the room, so it won’t be a wasted visit.

There are many places to sit down. Use them. You will be glad you did.

If you can arrange it, try to see a group of about twenty eight-year-olds being marshalled for a toilet stop. Great comic relief.

Do your homework before you go. Work out what you want to see and stick to it. Otherwise you will become confused and listless. We decided on the Italian paintings, some of the French romantics, and a few major items. We covered them fairly superficially and then it was time for lunch.

Lunch! Mmmm. The Café de la Pyramid – great decor and great food. Or have chocolate and croissants while overlooking the gardens. Mmmm again.

Afterwards go for a walk in the Jardin des Tuileries and watch the people. Endlessly fascinating.

PS Make sure you see the Venus de Milo - she's far more attractive and doesn't have half as many hangers-on as Lisa.

Kátia Kabanová, Opéra national de Paris

When Joan Sutherland came back to Sydney in 1965 there was much complaint that the opening night has not been as glamorous as Melbourne’s. The problem was the venue. Her Majesty’s Theatre, in Quay Street near Central Station, had until a few years previously been the Empire Cinema, and its foyer was not big enough for women to show off their frocks and jewellery and be seen.

The Palais Garnier, the main opera theatre in Paris, has no such problem. When Charles Garnier designed it he made sure there were plenty of spaces for people to promenade during the intervals, and boxes facing the audience so that bejewelled bosoms might sparkle in the light of the huge chandelier. Most important is the great foyer, focusing on a huge marble staircase, and with balconies at all levels from which to see and be seen. It is a great example of form following function, years before the principle was encoded by whoever it was that encoded it.

And only one word can adequately describe the interior – wow. Look it up on the net. The auditorium is dominated by the chandelier and Marc Chagall’s gorgeous mural across the roof, a tribute to opera composers (the picture above represents Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov).

Oh, and the seats in our little box were comfortable (we didn’t try the chaise longue at the back, but the mirror came in useful for checking that we looked fabulous before we walked out into the lobby).

Janacek’s Kátia Kabanová is a short but intense three acts, here played consecutively without a break so as to run within 100 minutes. Thomas Netopil conducted skilfully; the music is angular yet lyrical, rhythmic and compelling, and with the right performers you get drawn in, even thought the words and the surtitles are in languages you don’t speak.

Christoph Marthaler’s production is set not in the rural village specified by the librettist, but in a contemporary apartment block by the Volga River. Two shabby walls of windows, and the people living behind them, look down on the courtyard where the action plays out. Unlike those in Orlando, of which the best that can be said is that they didn’t fall down, the sets participate in the action.

Kátia is caught between fidelity to her husband Tichon (Donald Kaasch) and the joy of her affair with Boris (Jorma Silvasti). Kátia is weighed down by boredom and something less intense and desirable than despair, which explains why she might find either of these harried and haunted men attractive or worthy of loyalty. Angela Denoke (Kátia) has the ability to convey that kind of inner life without grandiose gestures, and her strong soprano soars over the orchestra, making the Czech words flow with the melody. Vocally the only other interesting performer was Ales Briscein (Kudriach), a light tenor with a much stronger voice than you usually hear in this part. Jane Henschel (Kabanicha, Kátia’s mother-in-law) doesn’t have much chance to show off vocally but impresses with her acting. Kabanicha, is a plump ball of self-centredness teetering between her heels and her beehive, one of those rare characters in opera who do not develop but stay as they were at the beginning, and her indifference to Kátia is as fatal to her as anything else.

When we left the Opéra to catch the metro home, the lights of the Louvre were glowing in the distance, and breakdancers were performing for a crowd on the Opéra steps.

Orlando Furioso, Théâtre du Champs-Elysées

The first thing you need to know if you ever go to the Théâtre du Champs-Elysées is that the seats upstairs are ridiculously small. The place was built for a more petite age, and unless you are snake-hipped and have short legs, or are a child up to twelve, you will be crippled by the end of the evening. Even before the opera began Megan was sitting on the steps, and I was standing. It saved embarrassment to know that we weren’t the only ones.

If you go there to see Vivaldi’s Orlando Furioso, one thing you don’t need to know is the plot. A loves B who loves C and so, D casts magic spells and E goes mad for most of act III. The end. The important thing is the singing, a thought which comforted us when we saw the French surtitles.

Marie-Nicole Lemieux (Orlando) has a big contralto voice, bright and even throughout her whole range. She deserved the ovation for her act I aria ‘Troppo è fiero’, and the cheers and stamping that greeted her curtain call at the end. Jennifer Larmore was a fiery Alcina, ripping off ornamental runs like the spells she put half the characters under.

But we were there for Philippe Jaroussky, probably the first legendary voice of the 21st century. Jaroussky sang the small role of Ruggiero, but his stage presence and his extraordinary voice made his three arias stand out. His melancholy ‘Sol da te, mio dolce amore’ was perfect in every way. The review in Friday’s Le Monde simply said, ‘The Ruggiero of Philippe Jaroussky, miracle of poetry incarnate, is very beautiful.’

Jean-Christophe Spinosi conducted his Ensemble Matheus, their customary clarity and balance a joy to listen to. It has been said that we are in a golden age for baroque opera. It’s probably true. Pity about the seats.

Notre Dame

In an age that has seen it all, it is remarkable that every day thousands flock to Notre-Dame de Paris. We don’t view it with the eyes of our predecessors: we don’t look for God, and we have seen bigger buildings. But today the square in front of the cathedral was full of tourists, street performers, hawkers and beggars, and the fat pigeons approached them boldly, showing that this was not an unusual day.

Some go there to tick another sight off the list. Others go because of its mythologies, real and imagined. I am one of those; as we approached from the Petit Pont, I could see the crowds storming the cathedral in search of the hunchback, and inside I could see where Napoleon I (they don’t call him Bonaparte here) grabbed the crown and made himself Emperor.

It’s a lot like the Musée d’Orsay or the Louvre, using culture and history to turn a quid. The cathedral shop sells books and cds, jewellery and rosaries. If you put 2€ in a machine you can get a (very good) little book in any of nine languages describing the cathedral. If you put 2€ in another machine you can get a souvenir medal. Across the road, one side of the Rue d’Arcole is lined with souvenir shops, and within a couple of blocks you can find Le Quasimodo brasserie, the Hotel Esmeralda, and the Café Notre Dame (which serves great crepes).

But among the profane the sacred continues. The clerics get on with the business of God, holding mass for the faithful while the tourists shuffle around, gawking at the roof and the stained-glass windows. The priest reads the homily and prays, the communicants respond to the formulas, and the great organ rings through the nave. For those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, it is a window into the numinous, something beyond the stone and glass. Somehow it is quiet.

We're here

Sitting at the table in our flat on the 7th floor in the 7th arrondissement,

• having flown in to Charles de Gaulle at 6.30am to 7ºC and fog, and got through immigration, baggage collection and (non-existent) customs with a few confident bonjours and mercis;

• having caught the Air France bus into Paris at peak hour, and realising that the Boulevard Peripherique is an eight-lane version of Parramatta Road, only uglier (‘C’est impossible!’ I hear you cry);

• having caught a cab and experienced the thrills and danger of the traffic at the Arc de Triomphe, and remembering that the French invented Grand Prix motor racing;

• having found our flat and realised that the lift will take both of us, or the luggage, or one and some luggage, but not everything, and that we can see the spire of Les Invalides from our kitchen window;

• having strolled over to the Champs du Mars to see the Tour Eiffel and take a few photos, and having contemplated which boulangerie we might grab a coffee at later;

• having bought a few days’ supplies from the G20 supermarché down the road, and having lunched on inexpensive camembert purchased at said supermarché;

• having discovered that French people are not rude and arrogant but friendly and welcoming, even the checkout fille at the G20;

we contemplate, what shall we do next? What is the best way to spend the afternoon that stretches before us, that is a natural consequence of what we have so far experienced, and will prepare the way for new adventures to come?

A shower, and a sleep. That flight is LONG.

We have liftoff! (almost)

We’ve dreamed, we’ve planned, we’ve scrimped, we’ve saved, we’ve booked, we’ve learned the languages and watched the movies, and now we’re off (well, next Wednesday we will be).


Just a quick list of where we’re going and what we’ll be dressing for:

16 March – Sydney to Paris
17-30 March – Paris (min 5.1, max 11.8)
31 March-10 April – Hamburg (min 3.3, max 12.3)
11-17 April – Berlin (min 4.2, max 13.2)
18-19 April – Köln (min 3.6, max 14.2)
20-26 April – Paris and Northern France (min 6.8, max 14.7)
27 April-11 May – London (min 8.7, max 17.0)
12 May – Paris (min 10.5, max 19.0)
13-14 May – Paris to Sydney (min 11.5, max 19.3)

Five countries (if you count Belgium and Singapore in transit), seven cities, ten operas, a million cathedrals and art galleries – it’s a culturepalooza!

Watch this space for updates on our exciting adventures.