Category: Applied Arts

Palais Galleira

Palais Galliera Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris
10, Avenue Pierre Ier de Serbie 75116 Paris

 

18th-Century Dress Department

This is one of the world’s leading collections of eighteenth-century dresses. Home to some 1,600 items, it comprises men’s and women’s garments dating from the late 17th century to the year 1800, together with children’s wear and theatre costumes; these are an interesting reflection of both the fashions and the textile industry of the time.

The 900-plus male items represent more than half the department’s holdings, with such rare and elaborate pieces as a 1670s jerkin and court clothes of silver brocade or velvet embroidered with gilded silver thread – not to mention 350 waistcoats, whose quantity reflects an Ancien Régime fashion craze. The women’s collection includes a host of dresses à la française and à l’anglaise, as well as caracos and bodices. There are reminders of France’s royal past, too: two suits and a chemise worn by the Dauphin, the future Louis XVII, together with a bodice said to have belonged to Marie Antoinette. They are shown here both for their historical interest and as indicators of the fashions of the period.

The exuberance of the early 18th century can be seen in the men’s long basques, cut from dark fabrics with thick embroidery, and for women, large-patterned dresses with pleated backs and the skirts puffed out with hoops. Around 1750–1755 the dresses were made of silk, with long, sinuous trimmings testifying to the period’s rococo taste. During the reign of Louis XVI the male silhouette slimmed down and clothes were made of velvet or taffeta, either plain or with little patterns of delicate floral embroidery. Waistcoats were light-coloured and picturesquely embroidered. The feminine wardrobe became more varied, the dress à la française with its wide, pleated back alternating with the dress à l’anglaise, whose narrow waist highlighted feminine curves. At the end of the century close-fitting coats, straight waistcoats and tunic dresses of cotton muslin or lawn signalled a new relationship with the body: the natural replaced the artificial.

Fashion in 18th-century Paris saw many radical changes. The varied range was illustrated in published periodicals that conveyed the message with eye-catching engravings, while new materials and textiles – printed cottons, white cotton muslin, silk or silk/wool jersey – reflected technical advances and guaranteed the wearer unheard-of comfort and an aura of modernity. One iconic figure stands out in this century when modern fashion was born: the marchande de mode, or dressmaker/milliner, whose most famous representative was Rose Bertin, Marie-Antoinette’s ‘minister of fashion’.  Bertin captured royal and princely clienteles not only at Versailles, but in other European courts as well. With her arrival, the marchande de mode no longer settled merely for decorating dresses and selling lace, feathers, gauze, hats and fans; she imposed on her customers the need for a knowledgeable guide in the supreme realm of fashion.

Les Tuilerie Jardins

 

 

 

 

Click Refresh to view slides

 

The Tuileries Garden (French: Jardin des Tuileries) is a public garden located between the Louvre Museum and the Place de la Concorde in the 1st arrondissement of Paris. Created by Catherine de’ Medici as the garden of the Tuileries Palace in 1564, it was eventually opened to the public in 1667 and became a public park after the French Revolution. In the 19th and 20th centuries, it was a place where Parisians celebrated, met, strolled, and relaxed.[1]

Contents (Wikipedia)

History and development

Garden of Catherine de’ Medici

Th;;3t ng by Jacques I Androuet du Cerceau. (The engraving also includes a plan for the expansion of the palace which was never executed.)

In July 1559, after the accidental death of her husband, Henry II, Queen Catherine de’ Medici decided to leave her residence of the Hôtel des Tournelles, at the eastern part of Paris, near the Bastille. Together with her son, the new king of France François II, her other children and the royal court, she moved to the Louvre Palace. Five years later, in 1664, she commissioned the construction of a new palace just beyond the wall of Charles V, not far from the Louvre, from which it would be separated by a neighborhood of private hotels, churches, convents, and the Hospice des Quinze-Vingts near the Porte Saint-Honoré.

For that purpose, Catherine had bought land west of Paris, on the other side of the portion of the wall of Charles V situated between the Tour du Bois and the 14th century Porte Saint-Honoré. It was bordered on the south by the Seine, and on the north by the faubourg Saint-Honoré, a road in the countryside continuing the rue Saint-Honoré. Since the 13th century this area had been occupied by tile-making fabrics called tuileries (from the French tuile, meaning “tile”).

Catherine further commissioned a landscape architect from Florence, Bernard de Carnesse, to create an Italian Renaissance garden, with fountains, a labyrinth, a grotto, and decorated with faience images of plants and animals, made by Bernard Palissy, whom Catherine had tasked to discover the secret of Chinese porcelain.

The Tuileries Garden in 1615, where the Grand Basin is now located. The covered promenade can be seen, and the riding school established by Catherine.

The garden of Catherine de’ Medici was an enclosed space five hundred metres long and three hundred metres wide, separated from the new palace by a lane. It was divided into rectangular compartments by six alleys, and the sections were planted with lawns, flower beds, and small clusters of five trees, called quinconces; and, more practically, with kitchen gardens and vineyards.[2]

The Tuileries garden was the largest and most beautiful garden in Paris at the time. Catherine used it for lavish royal festivities honoring ambassadors from Queen Elizabeth I of England, and the marriage of her daughter, Marguerite de Valois, to Henri III of Navarre, better known as Henry IV, King of France and of Navarre.[3]

Garden of Henry IV

King Henry III was forced to flee Paris in 1588, and the gardens fell into disrepair. His successor, Henry IV (1589–1610), and his gardener, Claude Mollet, restored the gardens, built a covered promenade the length of the garden, and a parallel alley planted with mulberry trees where he hoped to cultivate silkworms and start a silk industry in France. He also built a rectangular ornamental lake of 65 metres by 45 metres with a fountain supplied with water by the new pump called La Samaritaine, which had been built in 1608 on the Pont Neuf. The area between the palace and the former moat of Charles V was turned into the “New Garden” (Jardin Neuf) with a large fountain in the center. Though Henry IV never lived in the Tuilieries Palace, which was continually under reconstruction, he did use the gardens for relaxation and exercise.

Garden of Louis XIII

The Tuileries Garden in 1652 with the Parterre de Mademoiselle east of the Palace

In 1610, at the death of his father, Louis XIII became the new owner of the Tuileries Gardens at the age of nine. It became his enormous playground – he used it for hunting, and he kept a menagerie of animals. On the north side of the gardens, Marie de’ Medici established a riding school, stables, and a covered manege for exercising horses.

When the king and court were absent from Paris, the gardens were turned into a pleasure spot for the nobility. In 1630 a former rabbit warren and kennel at the west rampart of the garden were made into a flower-lined promenade and cabaret. The daughter of Gaston d’Orléans and the niece of Louis XIII, known as La Grande Mademoiselle, held a sort of court in the cabaret, and the “New Garden” of Henry IV (the present-day Carousel) became known as the “Parterre de Mademoiselle.” In 1652, “La Grande Mademoiselle” was expelled from the chateau and garden for having supported an uprising, the Fronde, against her cousin, the young Louis XIV.[4]

Garden of Louis XIV and Le Nôtre

Tuileries Garden of Le Nôtre in the 17th century, looking west toward the future Champs Élysées, engraving by Perelle

Le Nôtre’s Tuileries Garden plan, engraving by Israël Silvestre (1671)

The statue of Renommée, or the fame of the king, riding the horse Pegasus, (1699) by Antoine Coysevox (1640–1720) at the west entrance of the Garden. Originally located on Louis XIV’s estate at Marly, it was moved to the Tuileries in 1719

The new king quickly imposed his own sense of order on the Tuileries Gardens. His architects, Louis Le Vau and François d’Orbay, finally finished the Tuileries Palace, making a proper royal residence. In 1662, to celebrate the birth of his first child, Louis XIV held a vast pageant of mounted courtiers in the New Garden, which had been enlarged by filling in Charles V’s moat and had been turned into a parade ground. Thereafter the square was known as the Place du Carrousel.[5]

In 1664, Colbert, the king’s superintendent of buildings, commissioned the landscape architect André Le Nôtre, to redesign the entire garden. Le Nôtre was the grandson of Pierre Le Nôtre, one of Catherine de’ Medici’s gardeners, and his father Jean had also been a gardener at the Tuileries. He immediately began transforming the Tuileries into a formal garden à la française, a style he had first developed at Vaux-le-Vicomte and perfected at Versailles, based on symmetry, order and long perspectives.

Le Nôtre’s gardens were designed to be seen from above, from a building or terrace. He eliminated the street which separated the palace and the garden, and replaced it with a terrace looking down upon flowerbeds bordered by low boxwood hedges and filled with designs of flowers. In the centre of the flowerbeds he placed three ornamental lakes with fountains. In front of the centre of the first fountain he laid out the Grande Allée, which extended 350 metres. He built two other alleys, lined with chestnut trees, on either side. He crossed these three main alleys with small lanes, to create compartments planted with diverse trees, shrubs and flowers.

On the south side of the park, next to the Seine, he built a long terrace called the Terrasse du bord-de-l’eau, planted with trees, with a view of the river He built a second terrace on the north side, overlooking the garden, called the Terrasse des Feuillants.

On the west side of the garden, beside the present-day Place de la Concorde, he built two ramps in a horseshoe shape and two terraces overlooking an octagonal lake 60 m (200 ft) in diameter with a fountain in the centre. These terraces frame the western entrance of the garden, and provide another viewpoint to see the garden from above.

Le Nôtre wanted his grand perspective from the palace to the western end of the garden to continue outside the garden. In 1667, he made plans for an avenue with two rows of trees on either side, which would have continued west to the present Rond-Point des Champs Élysées.[6]

Le Nôtre and his hundreds of masons, gardeners and earth-movers worked on the gardens from 1666 to 1672. In 1682, however, the king, furious with the Parisians for resisting his authority, abandoned Paris and moved to Versailles.

In 1667, at the request of the famous author of Sleeping Beauty and other fairy tales, Charles Perrault, the Tuileries Garden was opened to the public, with the exception of beggars, “lackeys” and soldiers.[7] It was the first royal garden to be open to the public.

In the 18th century

After the death of Louis XIV, the five-year-old Louis XV became owner of the Tuileries Garden. The garden, abandoned for nearly forty years, was put back in order. In 1719, two large equestrian statuary groups, La Renommée and Mercure, by the sculptor Antoine Coysevox, were brought from the king’s residence at Marly and placed at the west entrance of the garden. Other statues by Nicolas and Guillaume Coustou, Corneille an Clève, Sebastien Slodz, Thomas Regnaudin and Coysevox were placed along the Grande Allée.[8] A swing bridge was placed at the west end over the moat, to make access to the garden easier. The creation of the place Louis XV (now Place de la Concorde) created a grand vestibule to the garden.

Certain holidays, such as August 25, the feast day of Saint Louis, were celebrated with concerts and fireworks in the park. A famous early balloon ascent was made from the garden on December 1, 1783 by Jacques Alexandre César Charles and Nicolas Louis Robert. Small food stands were placed in the park, and chairs could be rented for a small fee.[9] Public toilets were added in 1780.[10]

During the French revolution

The Tuileries, renamed the “Jardin National” during the French Revolution- the Festival of the Supreme Being (1794)

On October 6, 1789, as the French Revolution began, King Louis XVI was brought against his will to the Tuileries Palace. The garden was closed to the public except in the afternoon. Queen Marie Antoinette and the Dauphin were given a part of the garden for her private use, first at the west end of the Promenade Bord d’eaux, then at the edge of the Place Louis XV.

After the king’s failed attempt to escape France, the surveillance of the family was increased. The royal family was allowed to walk in the park on the evening of September 18, 1791, during the festival organized to celebrate the new French Constitution, when the alleys of the park were illuminated with pyramids and rows of lanterns.[11] On August 10, 1792, a mob stormed the Palace, and the king’s Swiss guards were chased through the gardens and massacred. After the king’s removal from power and execution, the Tuileries became the National Garden (Jardin National) of the new French Republic. In 1794 the new government assigned the renewal of the gardens to the painter Jacques-Louis David, and to his brother in law, the architect August Cheval de Saint-Hubert. They conceived a garden decorated with Roman porticos, monumental porches, columns, and other classical decoration. The project of David and Saint-Hubert was never completed. All that remains today are the two exedres, semicircular low walls crowned with statues by the two ponds in the centre of the garden.[12]

While David’s project was not finished, large numbers of statues from royal residences were brought to the gardens for display. The garden was also used for revolutionary holidays and festivals. On June 8, 1794, a ceremony in honor of the Cult of the Supreme Being was organized in the Tuileries by Robespierre, with sets and costumes designed by Jacques-Louis David. After a hymn written for the occasion, Robespierre set fire to mannequins representing Atheism, Ambition, Egoism and False Simplicity, revealing a statue of Wisdom.[13]

In the 19th century

Édouard Manet, La Musique aux Tuileries, 1862

Camille Pissarro, The Garden of the Tuileries on a Spring Morning, 1899

Around 1900

In the 19th century, the Tuileries Garden was the place where ordinary Parisians went to relax, meet, stroll, enjoy the fresh air and greenery, and be entertained.

Napoleon Bonaparte, about to become Emperor, moved into the Tuileries Palace on February 19, 1800, and began making improvements to suit an imperial residence. A new street was created between the Louvre and the Place du Carrousel, a fence closed the courtyard, and he built a small triumphal arch, modeled after the arch of Septimius Severus in Rome, in the middle of the Place du Carrousel, as the ceremonial entrance to his palace.

In 1801 Napoleon ordered the construction of a new street along the northern edge of the Tuileries, through space that had been occupied by the riding school and stables built by Marie de’ Medici, and the private gardens of aristocrats and convents and religious orders that had been closed during the Revolution. This new street also took part of the Terrasse des Feuillants, which had been occupied by cafés and restaurants. The new street, lined with arcades on the north side, was named the rue de Rivoli, after Napoleon’s victory in 1797.

Napoleon made few changes to the interior of the garden. He continued to use the garden for military parades and to celebrate special events, including the passage of his own wedding procession on April 2, 1810, when he married the Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria.

After the fall of Napoleon, the garden briefly became the encampment of the occupying Austrian and Russian soldiers. The monarchy was restored, and the new King, Charles X, renewed an old tradition and celebrated the feast day of Saint Charles in the garden.

In 1830, after a brief revolution, the new king, Louis-Philippe, became owner of the Tuileries. He wanted a private garden within the Tuileries, so a section of the garden in front of the palace was separated by a fence from the rest of the Tuileries. A small moat, flower beds and eight new statues by sculptors of the period decorated the new private garden.

In 1852, following another revolution and the shortlived Second Republic, a new Emperor, Louis Napoleon, became owner of the garden. He enlarged his private reserve within the garden further to the west as far as the north–south alley that crossed the large round basin, so that included the two small round basins. He decorated his new garden with beds of exotic plants and flowers, and new statues. In 1859, he made the Terrasse du bord-de-l’eau into a playground for his son, the Prince Imperial. He also constructed twin pavilions, the Jeu de paume and the Orangerie, at the west end of the garden, and built a new stone balustrade at the west entrance. When The Emperor was not in Paris, usually from May to November, the entire garden, including his private garden and the playground, were open to the public.

In 1870, Emperor Louis Napoleon was defeated and captured by the Prussians, and Paris was the scene of the uprising of the Paris Commune. A red flag flew over the Palace, and it could be visited for fifty centimes. When the army arrived and fought to recapture the city, the Communards deliberately burned the Tuileries Palace, and tried to burn the Louvre as well. The ruins were not torn down until 1883. The empty site of the palace, between the two pavilions of the Louvre, became part of the garden.

In the 20th century

Jardin des Tuileries in winter

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, the Tuilieries garden was filled with entertainments for the public; acrobats, puppet theatres, lemonade stands, small boats on the lakes, donkey rides, and stands selling toys. At the 1900 Summer Olympics, the Gardens hosted the fencing events.[14] The peace in the garden was interrupted by the First World War in 1914; the statues were surrounded by sandbags, and in 1918 two German long-range artillery shells landed in the garden.

In the years between the two World Wars, the Jeu de paume tennis court was turned into a gallery, and its western part was used to display the Water Lilies series of paintings by Claude Monet. The Orangerie became an art gallery for contemporary western art.

During World War II, the Jeu de paume was used by the Germans as a warehouse for art they had stolen or confiscated.

The liberation of Paris in 1944 saw considerable fighting in the garden. Monet’s paintings Water Lilies were seriously damaged during the battle.[15]

Until the 1960s, almost all the sculpture in the garden dated from the 18th or 19th century. In 1964–65, André Malraux, the Minister of Culture for President Charles de Gaulle, removed the 19th century statues which surrounded the Place du Carrousel and replaced them with contemporary sculptures by Aristide Maillol.

In 1994, as part of the Grand Louvre project launched by President François Mitterrand, the Belgian landscape architect Jacques Wirtz remade the garden of the Carrousel, adding labyrinths and a fan of low hedges radiating from the triumphal arch in the square.

In 1998, under President Jacques Chirac, works of modern sculpture by Jean Dubuffet, Henri Laurens, Étienne Martin, Henry Moore, Germaine Richier, Auguste Rodin and David Smith were placed in the garden. In 2000, the works of living artists were added; these included works by Magdalena Abakanowicz, Louise Bourgeois, Tony Cragg, Roy Lichtenstein, François Morrellet, Giuseppe Penone, Anne Rochette and Lawrence Weiner. Another ensemble of three works by Daniel Dezeuze, Erik Dietman and Eugène Dodeigne, called Prière Toucher (Eng: Please Touch), was added at the same time.[16]

In the 21st century

Café de Pomone, Jardin des Tuileries, in springtime

At the beginning of the 21st century, French landscape architects Pascal Cribier and Louis Benech have been working to restore some of the early features of the André Le Nôtre garden.[17]

Areas of special interest

Jardin du Carrousel

Arc de triomphe du Carrousel

Also known as the Place du Carrousel, this part of the garden used to be enclosed by the two wings of the Louvre and by the Tuileries Palace. In the 18th century it was used as a parade ground for cavalry and other festivities. The central feature is the Arc de triomphe du Carrousel, built to celebrate the victories of Napoleon, with bas-relief sculptures of his battles by Jean Joseph Espercieux. The garden was remade in 1995 to showcase a collection of 21 statues by Aristide Maillol, which had been put in the Tuileries in 1964.

Terrasse

The elevated terrace between the Carrousel and the rest of the garden used to be at the front of the Tuileries Palace. After the Palace was burned in 1870, it was made into a road, which was put underground in 1877. The terrace is decorated by two large vases which used to be in the gardens of Versailles, and two statues by Aristide Maillol; the Monument to Cézanne on the north and the Monument aux morts de Port Vendres on the south.

Moat of Charles V

Two stairways descend from the Terrasse to the moat (fr:fossés) named for Charles V of France, who rebuilt the Louvre in the 14th century. It was part of the old fortifications which originally surrounded the palace. On the west side are traces left by the fighting during the unsuccessful siege of Paris by Henry IV of France in 1590 during the French Wars of Religion. Since 1994 the moat has been decorated with statues from the facade of the old Tuileries Palace and with bas-reliefs made in the 19th century during the Restoration of the French monarchy which were meant to replace the Napoleonic bas-reliefs on the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, but were never put in place.[18]

Grand Carré of the Tuileries

Tuileries Garden panorama

The Grand Carré (Large Square) is the eastern, open part of the Tuilieries garden, which still follows the formal plan of the Garden à la française created by André Le Nôtre in the 17th century.

The eastern part of the Grand Carré, surrounding the round pond, was the private garden of the king under Louis Philippe and Napoleon III, separated from the rest of the Tuileries by a fence.

Most of the statues in the Grand Carré were put in place in the 19th century.

  • Nymphe (1866) and Diane Chasseresse (Diana the Huntress) (1869) by Louis Auguste Lévêque, which mark the beginning of the central allée which runs east-west through the park.
  • Tigre terrassant un crocodile (Tiger overwhelming a crocodile) (1873) and Tigresse portant un paon à ses petits (Tigress bringing a peacock to her young) (1873), both by Auguste Cain, by the two small round ponds.

The large round pond is surrounded by statues on themes from antiquity, allegory, and ancient mythology. Statues in violent poses alternate with those in serene poses. On the south side, starting from the east entrance of the large round pond, they are:

On the north side, starting at the west entrance to the pond, they are:

Plan of the Jardin des Tuileries

Le Grand Couvert of the Tuileries

The Grand Couvert is the part of the garden covered with trees. The two cafes in the Grand Couvert are named after two famous cafes once located in the garden; the café Very, which had been on the terrace des Feuiillants in the 18th–19th century; and the café Renard, which in the 18th century had been a popular meeting place on the western terrace.

The Grand Couvert also contains the two exedres, low curving walls built to display statues, which survived from the French Revolution. They were built in 1799 by Jean Charles Moreau, part of a larger unfinished project designed by painter Jacques-Louis David in 1794. They are now decorated with plaster casts of moldings on mythological themes from the park of Louis XIV at Marly.

The Grand Couvert contains a number of important works of the 20th century and contemporary sculpture, including:

Orangerie, Jeu de Paume, and West Terrace of the Tuileries

Westernmost portion of the Tuileries Garden

Claude Monet, Les Nymphéas (Water Lilies) 1920–26, oil on canvas, 86.2 × 237 in. (219 × 602 cm) in the Orangerie

The Orangerie (Musée de l’Orangerie), at the west end of the garden close to the Seine, was built in 1852 by the architect Firmin Bourgeois. Since 1927 it has displayed the series Water Lilies by Claude Monet. It also displays the Walter-Guillaume collection of Impressionist painting

On the terrace of the Orangerie are four works of sculpture by Auguste Rodin: Le Baiser (1881–1898); Eve (1881) and La Grande Ombre (1880) and La Meditation avc bras (1881–1905). It also has a modern work, Grand Commandement blanc (1986) by Alain Kirili.

The Jeu de Paume (Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume) was built in 1861 was the architect Viraut, and enlarged in 1878. In 1927 it became an annex of the Luxembourg Palace Museum for the display of contemporary art from outside France. During the German Occupation of World War II, from 1940 to 1944, it was used by the Germans as a depot for storing art they stole or expropriated from Jewish families. From 1947 until 1986, it served as the Musée du Jeu de Paume, which held many important Impressionist works now housed in the Musée d’Orsay. Today, the Jeu de Paume is used for exhibits of modern and contemporary art.

On the terrace in front of the Jeu de Paume is a work of sculpture, Le Bel Costumé (1973) by Jean Dubuffet.

Sculptures

Mercury riding Pegasus, (1701–02) by Antoine Coysevox (1640–1720). Originally at Marly, moved to the Tuileries in 1719 and placed at the west gate of the garden. In 1986 the original of marble was moved to the Louvre and replaced by a copy.

Nymphe by Louis Auguste Lévêque, (1866). In the Grand Carré, at the beginning of the Grand Allée.

Theseus and the Minotaur (1821) by Jules Ramey, in the Grand Carré

The Oath of Spartacus (1871) by Louis-Ernest Barrias (1841–1905)

Auguste Rodin, 1881–1904, L’Ombre (The Shade), bronze

Auguste Rodin, 1881–ca.1899, Éve, bronze

Auguste Rodin, 1881–ca.1905, Méditation avec bras, bronze

Le Baiser (The Kiss) by Auguste Rodin, (1934 cast of the marble original), West Terrace

  • Bibliography
  • Allain, Yves-Marie and Janine Christiany, L’art des jardins en Europe, Citadelles et Mazenod, Paris, 2006.
  • Hazlehurst, F. Hamilton, Gardens of Illusion: The Genius of André Le Nostre, Vanderbilt University Press, 1980. (ISBN 9780826512093)
  • Impelluso, Lucia, Jardins, potagers et labyrinthes, Hazan, Paris, 2007.
  • Jacquin, Emmanuel, Les Tuileries, Du Louvre à la Concorde, Editions du Patrimoine, Centres des Monuments Nationaux, Paris. (ISBN 978-2-85822-296-4)
  • Jarrassé, Dominique, Grammaire des Jardins Parisiens, Parigramme, Paris, 2007. (ISBN 978-2-84096-476-6)
  • Prevot, Philippe, Histoire des jardins, Editions Sud Ouest, 2006.
  • Wenzler, Claude, Architecture du jardin, Editions Ouest-France, 2003.
  • See also
  • History of Parks and Gardens of Paris
  • Sources and citations
  1. Emmanuel Jacquin, Les Tuileries Du Louvre à la Concorde.
  2. Jacquin, Les Tuileries — Du Louvre à la Concorde, p. 4.
  3. Jacquin, p. 6
  4. Jacquin, p. 10
  5. Jacquin p. 15
  6. Jarrassé, Grammaire des Jardins Parisiens, p. 51.
  7. Jarrassé, p. 47
  8. The statues in the park now are copies; the originals are in the Louvre.
  9. Chairs were still being rented for a small sum until 1970.
  10. Jacquin, p. 24.
  11. Jacquin, p. 25
  12. The two exedres have been restored, with plaster copies of the original statues.
  13. Jacquin, p. 26–27
  14. 1900 Summer Olympics official report. p. 16. Accessed 14 November 2010. (in French)
  15. Jacquin, p. 41
  16. Jacquin, p. 42–43
  17. Jarrassé, p. 49
  18. Jacquin, p. 46 

Giverny

 

 

 

The village of Giverny is a small village located north of France. The town of Giverny is located in the department of Eure of the french region Haute-Normandie in the township of Écos part of the district of Les Andelys.

 

 

 

Click Refresh to view slides

Nantes Parks – Parc de la Morinière in mid-Spring

 

 

 

 

Click Refresh to view slides

Archaeological site – Saint-Lupien in Rezé

The following content has been translated and adapted from the original work by lefildeculture in In the Estuary  25/07/2014.

Saint-Lupien in Rezé is one of the most important archaeological sites in this region. Recognized on a European scale, it is has been the object of programmed excavations and every year from June to July groups of 50 or so people have worked on exhumation of the Gallo-Roman remains. To explain the discoveries and the history of the city, a heritage interpretation and animation center (CIAP), or simply the Chronographe, has been constructed.

Rezé is a commune and former bishopric in the Loire-Atlantique department in the Pays de la Loire region of western France (Britanny or Bretagne prior to 1789). It was named Ratiatum by the Roman settlers in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, Ratiate in the Middle Ages and Rezay in the High Middle Ages. Inhabitants of Rezé are called Rezéens.

Archaeological excavations of Saint-Lupien

The first Gallo-Roman ruins in Saint-Lupien were excavated in the 19th century but it was especially during the construction of a subdivision in the 1980s that the City became aware of the size of the site and acquired the ground to protect it. In 2004, an archaeological service is created. Since then, planned excavations have been coordinated by the Inrap (National Institute of Archaeological Research), the City of Rezé and the University of Nantes and the Chronographe is the result of these studies, a presentation of the site which provides a viewing platform to better survey the remains and visualise the original site.

 

The history : the ancient city of Ratiatum

During the Roman conquest, independent tribes shared the Gallic territory. North of the Loire, the Namnetes founded the city of Condevicnum, future city of Nantes. In 56 BC, the Venetians, a people of the Armorican region, resisted. In order to defeat them, Caesar allied with Pictons, whose capital is Limonum (Poitiers), which provides him with wood, soldiers and ships. The Venetes are then defeated. It is possible that in the form of a reward, the Pictons could expand their territory to the Loire. They then founded Ratiatum, the future town of Rezé, which stretches for two kilometers along the banks and 500 meters deep inland. It does not seem like much today, but it was an important agglomeration. It was cited by geographers of the time, Strabo and Ptolemy.

The remains of the ancient quay

The strategic position of Ratiatum made it the ideal place to establish a port to promote trade, especially with the Namnètes, neighbors of the north of the Loire. Ceramics, now preserved in the departmental museum Thomas Dobré (closed for renovation), testify to exchanges with provinces sometimes very far away, for example the Palestinian region. In 2011, remains of monumental docks were discovered. This is an exceptional case in France, which indicates the wealth of the ancient city of Ratiatum.

 

 Digital reconstruction of the facilities of the Gallo-Roman port

 

These terraced wharves advanced into the river, connected by bank walls. Composed of oak beams and micaschist fragments, their state of preservation is exceptional. On the front, a series of posts at regular intervals are fixed by mortise and tenon on a sandpit (a large horizontal beam). These woods have inscriptions: Roman numerals that served as benchmarks for the assembly. Dating from dendrochronology, using growth rings of trees, it is established that these poles come from oaks felled in the winter of 88-89 AD.

 

The monumental docks in front of the Saint-Lupien Chapel

 

In the photograph, the beams are covered with a geotextile veil to keep them in a damp environment and away from light. Near the docks were warehouses, workshops and shops, following a typical checkered pattern of Roman cities. At the end of the second century AD, the port began to decline. Scientists do not have the explanation yet. Several hypotheses are formulated, including that of a silting of the Loire at this location, making the port of Ratiatum obsolete. Today, the banks of the Loire are 500 meters from the site.

 

The archeological millefeuille of Saint-Lupien Chapel

The chapel Saint-Lupien is an archeological millefeuille because it contains vestiges of all eras. Two large Gallo-Roman walls intersect at right angles. They lined the street that overlooked the wharf.

 

Gallo-Roman remains located under the chapel

 

In the Middle Ages, the site becomes a center of pilgrimage around the tomb of one of the first Christians of Rezé: Saint Lupien. Until the twelfth century, a necropolis with different types of burials occupies the site. Sarcophagi are used for the foundations of the first chapel, built in the 9th century.

 

Sarcophagi and bones in the foundations of the first chapel

 

Sarcophagus with carved head

In the fourteenth century, a new chapel that corresponded to the current plan was erected. Until the eighteenth century, it belonged to the priory of Geneston Abbey. Sold at the Revolution, the chapel Saint-Lupien became a place of storage of hay, adjoining a farm. In the nineteenth century, the owner of the farm discovered bones that he believed belong to Saint Lupien himself and built a vault. At the same time, the walls were raised and a new frame installed.

The archaeological site of Saint-Lupien continues to unveil new secrets. Villas, workshops, thermal baths, a small temple, a main street with porticoes, warehouses and monumental docks make up the ancient port district of Ratiatum, on the site of the current Saint-Lupien area. In the Middle Ages, the use of some buildings for the necropolis allowed a conservation of the foundations which gives much information on the Gallo-Roman life but also on the evolution of the site. Today, the City of Rezé wishes to highlight this heritage and make the Saint-Lupien site a cultural and tourist center at the local and national levels.

 

 

 

 

Click Refresh to view slides

 

Applied Arts

Categorising Art and Design

Applied Arts

 

This category encompasses all activities involving the application of aesthetic designs to everyday functional objects. While fine art provides intellectual stimulation to the viewer, applied art creates utilitarian items (a cup, a couch or sofa, a clock, a chair or table) using aesthetic principles in their design. Folk art is predominantly involved with this type of creative activity. Applied art includes architecture, computer art, photography, industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, interior design, as well as all decorative arts. Noted styles include, Bauhaus Design School, as well as Art Nouveau, and Art Deco. One of the most important forms of 20th applied art is architecture, notably supertall skyscraper architecture, which dominates the urban environment in New York, Chicago, Hong Kong and many other cities around the world. For a review of this type of public art, see: American Architecture (1600-present).

Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris

 

 

Musée des Arts Décoratifs, a museum of the decorative arts and design, located in the Palais du Louvre’s western wing, known as the Pavillon de Marsan, at 107 rue de Rivoli, in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France.

 

 

 

Click Refresh to view slides

 

Official website

Nantes Parks – Parc de la Morinière au début du printemps

Moss still thrives from the moisture on stones and trees from the night cold.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CLICK Refresh FOR SLIDES

Bois de Boulogne

 

Wikipedia

The Bois de Boulogne is a large public park located along the western edge of the 16th arrondissement of Paris, near the suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt and Neuilly-sur-Seine. It was created between 1852 and 1858 during the reign of the Emperor Napoleon III.

It is the second-largest park in Paris, slightly smaller than the Bois de Vincennes on the eastern side of the city. It covers an area of 845 hectares (2088 acres), which is about two and a half times the area of Central Park in New York and slightly less (88%) than that of Richmond Park in London.

Within the boundaries of the Bois de Boulogne are an English landscape garden with several lakes and a cascade; two smaller botanical and landscape gardens, the Château de Bagatelle and the Pré-Catelan; a zoo and amusement park in the Jardin d’Acclimatation; GoodPlanet Foundation‘s Domaine de Longchamp dedicated to ecology and humanism, The Jardin des Serres d’Auteuil, a complex of greenhouses holding a hundred thousand plants; two tracks for horse racing, the Hippodrome de Longchamp and the Auteuil Hippodrome; a tennis stadium where the French Open tennis tournament is held each year; and other attractions.

For the two 1896 short films, see Bois de Boulogne (film).

History

A hunting preserve, royal châteaux, and a historic balloon flight

The Bois de Boulogne is a remnant of the ancient oak forest of Rouvray, which included the present-day forests of Montmorency, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Chaville, and Meudon. Dagobert, the King of the Franks (629-639), hunted bears, deer, and other game in the forest. His grandson, Childeric II, gave the forest to the monks of the Abbey of Saint-Denis, who founded several monastic communities there. Philip Augustus (1180–1223) bought back the main part of the forest from the monks to create a royal hunting reserve. In 1256, Isabelle de France, sister of Saint-Louis, founded the Abbey of Longchamp at the site of the present hippodrome.

The Bois received its present name from a chapel, Notre Dame de Boulogne la Petite, which was built in the forest at the command of Philip IV of France (1268–1314). In 1308, Philip made a pilgrimage to Boulogne-sur-Mer, on the French coast, to see a statue of the Virgin Mary which was reputed to inspire miracles. He decided to build a church with a copy of the statue in a village in the forest not far from Paris, in order to attract pilgrims. The chapel was built after Philip’s death between 1319 and 1330, in what is now Boulogne-Billancourt.

During the Hundred Years’ War, the forest became a sanctuary for robbers and sometimes a battleground. In 1416-17, the soldiers of John the Fearless, the Duke of Burgundy, burned part of the forest in their successful campaign to capture Paris. Under Louis XI, the trees were replanted, and two roads were opened through the forest.

In 1526, King Francis I of France began a royal residence, the Château de Madrid, in the forest in what is now Neuilly and used it for hunting and festivities. It took its name from a similar palace in Madrid, where Francis had been held prisoner for several months. The Chateau was rarely used by later monarchs, fell into ruins in the 18th century, and was demolished after the French Revolution.

The Chateau de Madrid in the Bois de Boulogne, built in 1526 by Francis I of France.

The Chateau de la Muette was the home of Queen Marguerite de Valois after her marriage was annulled by King Henry IV of France. It was demolished after the French Revolution.

Despite its royal status, the forest remained dangerous for travelers; the scientist and traveler Pierre Belon was murdered by thieves in the Bois de Boulogne in 1564.[6]

During the reigns of Henry II and Henry III, the forest was enclosed within a wall with eight gates. Henry IV planted 15,000 mulberry trees, with the hope of beginning a local silk industry. When Henry annulled his marriage to Marguerite de Valois, she went to live in the Château de la Muette, on the edge of the forest.

In the early 18th century, wealthy and important women often retired to the convent of the Abbey of Longchamp, located where the hippodrome now stands. A famous opera singer of the period, Madmoiselle Le Maure, retired there in 1727 but continued to give recitals inside the Abbey, even during Holy Week. These concerts drew large crowds and irritated the Archibishop of Paris, who closed the Abbey to the public.[7]

Louis XVI and his family used the forest as a hunting ground and pleasure garden. In 1777, the Comte d’Artois, Louis XVI‘s brother, built a charming miniature palace, the Château de Bagatelle, in the Bois in just 64 days, on a wager from his sister-in-law, Marie Antoinette. Louis XVI also opened the walled park to the public for the first time.

On 21 November 1783, Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d’Arlandes took off from the Chateau de la Muette in a hot air balloon made by the Montgolfier brothers. Previous flights had carried animals or had been tethered to the ground; this was the first manned free flight in history. The balloon rose to a height of 910 meters (3000 feet), was in the air for 25 minutes, and covered nine kilometers.[8]

 

The first free manned flight was launched by the Montgolfier Brothers from the Chateau de la Muette, on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, on November 21, 1783.

 

Following the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1814, 40,000 soldiers of the British and Russian armies camped in the forest. Thousands of trees were cut down to build shelters and for firewood.

From 1815 until the French Second Republic, the Bois was largely empty, an assortment of bleak ruined meadows and tree stumps where the British and Russians had camped and dismal stagnant ponds.[9]

The design of the park

The Bois de Boulogne was the idea of Napoleon III, shortly after he staged a coup d’état and elevated himself from the President of the French Republic to Emperor of the French in 1852. When Napoleon III became Emperor, Paris had only four public parks – the Tuileries Gardens, the Luxembourg Garden, the Palais Royale, and the Jardin des Plantes – all in the center of the city. There were no public parks in the rapidly growing east and west of the city. During his exile in London, he had been particularly impressed by Hyde Park, by its lakes and streams and its popularity with Londoners of all social classes. Therefore, he decided to build two large public parks on the eastern and western edges of the city where both the rich and ordinary people could enjoy themselves.[10]

These parks became an important part of the plan for the reconstruction of Paris drawn up by Napoleon III and his new Prefect of the Seine, Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann. The Haussmann plan called for improving the city’s traffic circulation by building new boulevards; improving the city’s health by building a new water distribution system and sewers; and creating green spaces and recreation for Paris’ rapidly growing population. In 1852, Napoleon donated the land for the Bois de Boulogne and for the Bois de Vincennes, which both belonged officially to him. Additional land in the plain of Longchamp, the site of the Chateau de Madrid, the Chateau de Bagatelle, and its gardens were purchased and attached to the proposed park, so it could extend all the way to the Seine. Construction was funded out of the state budget, supplemented by selling building lots along the north end of the Bois, in Neuilly,[11]

Napoleon III was personally involved in planning the new parks. He insisted that the Bois de Boulogne should have a stream and lakes, like Hyde Park in London. “We must have a stream here, as in Hyde Park,” he observed while driving through the Bois, “to give life to this arid promenade”.[12]

The first plan for the Bois de Boulogne was drawn up by the architect Jacques Hittorff, who, under King Louis Philippe, had designed the Place de la Concorde, and the landscape architect Louis-Sulpice Varé, who had designed French landscape gardens at several famous châteaux. Their plan called for long straight alleys in patterns crisscrossing the park, and, as the Emperor had asked, lakes and a long stream similar to the Serpentine in Hyde Park.

Unfortunately, Varé failed to take into account the difference in elevation between the beginning of the stream and the end; if his plan had been followed, the upper part of the stream would have been empty, and the lower portion flooded. When Haussmann saw the partially finished stream, he saw the problem immediately and had the elevations measured. He dismissed the unfortunate Varé and Hittorff, and designed the solution himself; an upper lake and a lower lake, divided by an elevated road, which serves as a dam, and a cascade which allows the water to flow between the lakes. This is the design still seen today.[13]

In 1853, Haussmann hired an experienced engineer from the corps of Bridges and Highways, Jean-Charles Alphand, whom he had worked with in his previous assignment in Bordeaux, and made him the head of a new Service of Promenades and Plantations, in charge of all the parks in Paris. Alphand was charged to make a new plan for the Bois de Boulogne. Alphand’s plan was radically different from the Hittorff-Varé plan. While it still had two long straight boulevards, the Allée Reine Marguerite and the Avenue Longchamp, all the other paths and alleys curved and meandered. The flat Bois de Boulogne was to be turned into an undulating landscape of lakes, hills, islands, groves, lawns, and grassy slopes, not a reproduction of but an idealization of nature. It became the prototype for the other city parks of Paris and then for city parks around the world.[14]

 

Jardin d’Acclimatation en 1868, Henri Corbel

 

The plan of the park from 1879 shows the two straight alleys of the old Bois, and the lakes, winding lanes and paths built by Alphand.

 

L’aquarium; vue intérieure, 1860.

The Jardin zoologique at the Bois de Boulogne included an aquarium that housed both fresh and salt water sea animals. The interior is depicted here.

The Construction of the Park

The building of the park was an enormous engineering project which lasted for five years. The upper and lower lakes were dug, and the earth piled into islands and hills. Rocks were brought from Fontainbleau and combined with cement to make the cascade and an artificial grotto.

The pumps from the Seine could not provide enough water to fill the lakes and irrigate the park, so a new channel was created to bring the water of the Ourcq River, from Monceau to the upper lake in the Blois, but this was not enough. An artesian well 586 meters deep was eventually dug in the plain of Passy which could produce 20,000 cubic meters of water a day. This well went into service in 1861.[15]

The water then had to be distributed around the park to water the lawns and gardens; the traditional system of horse-drawn wagons with large barrels of water would not be enough. A system of 66 kilometers of pipes was laid, with a faucet every 30 or 40 meters, a total of 1600 faucets.

Alphand also had to build a network of roads, paths, and trails to connect the sights of the park. The two long straight alleys from the old park were retained, and his workers built an additional 58 kilometers of roads paved with stones for carriages, 12 kilometers of sandy paths for horses, and 25 kilometers of dirt trails for walkers. As a result of Louis Napoléon’s exile in London and his memories of Hyde Park, all the new roads and paths were curved and meandering.[16]

The planting of the park was the task of the new chief gardener and landscape architect of the Service of Promenades and Plantations, Jean-Pierre Barillet-Deschamps, who had also worked with Haussmann and Alphand in Bordeaux. His gardeners planted 420,000 trees, including hornbeam, beech, linden, cedar, chestnut, and elm, and hardy exotic species, like redwoods. They planted 270 hectares of lawns, with 150 kilograms of seed per hectare, and thousands of flowers. To make the forest more natural, they brought 50 deer to live in and around the Pré-Catelan.

The park was designed to be more than a collection of pictureque landscapes; it was meant as a place for amusement and recreation, with sports fields, bandstands, cafes, shooting galleries, riding stables, boating on the lakes, and other attractions. In 1855, Gabriel Davioud, a graduate of Ecole des Beaux-Arts, was named the chief architect of the new Service of Promenades and Plantations. He was commissioned to design 24 pavilions and chalets, plus cafes, gatehouses, boating docks, and kiosks. He designed the gatehouses where the guardians of the park lived to look like rustic cottages. He had a real Swiss chalet built out of wood in Switzerland and transported to Paris, where it was reassembled on an island in the lake and became a restaurant. He built another restaurant next to the park’s most picturesque feature, the Grand Cascade. He designed artificial grottoes made of rocks and cement, and bridges and balustrades made of cement painted to look like wood. He also designed all the architectural details of the park, from cone-shaped shelters designed to protect horseback riders from the rain to the park benches and direction signs.[17]

At the south end of the park, in the Plain of Longchamp, Davioud restored the ruined windmill which was the surviving vestige of the Abbey of Longchamp, and, working with the Jockey Club of Paris, constructed the grandstands of the Hippodrome of Longchamp, which opened in 1857.

At the northern end of the park, between the Sablons gate and Neuilly, a 20-hectare section of the park was given to the Societé Imperiale zoologique d’Acclimatation, to create a small zoo and botanical garden, with an aviary of rare birds and exotic plants and animals from around the world.

In March 1855, an area in the center of the park, called the Pré-Catelan, was leased to a concessionaire for a garden and amusement park. It was built on the site of a quarry where the gravel and sand for the park’s roads and paths had been dug out. It included a large circular lawn surrounded by trees, grottos, rocks, paths, and flower beds. Davioud designed a buffet, a marionette theater, a photography pavilion, stables, a dairy, and other structures. The most original feature was the Théâtre des fleurs, an open-air theater in a setting of trees and flowers. Later, an ice skating rink and shooting gallery were added. The Pré-Catelan was popular for concerts and dances, but it had continual financial difficulties and eventually went bankrupt. The floral theater remained in business until the beginning of the First World War, in 1914.[18]

The park in the 19th and 20th century

The garden-building team brought together by Haussmann were Alphand, Barrillet-Deschamps and Davioud and went on to build The Bois de Vincennes, Parc Monceau Parc Montsouris, and the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, using the experience and aesthetics they had developed in the Bois de Boulogne. They also rebuilt the Luxembourg gardens and the gardens of the Champs- Elysees, created smaller squares and parks throughout the center of Paris, and planted thousands of trees along the new boulevards that Haussmann had created. In the 17 years of Napoleon III’s reign, they planted no less than 600,000 trees and created a total 1,835 hectares of green space in Paris, more than any other ruler of France before or since.[19]

During the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), which led to the downfall of Napoleon III and the long siege of Paris, the park suffered some damage from German artillery bombardment, the restaurant of the Grand Cascade was turned into a field hospital, and many of the park’s animals and wild fowl were eaten by the hungry population. In the years following, however, the park quickly recovered.

The Bois de Boulogne became a popular meeting place and promenade route for Parisians of all classes. The alleys were filled with carriages, coaches, and horseback riders, and later with men and women on bicycles, and then with automobiles. Families having picnics filled the woods and lawns, and Parisians rowed boats on the lake, while the upper classes were entertained in the cafes. The restaurant of the Pavillon de la Grand Cascade became a popular spot for Parisian weddings. During the winter, when the lakes were frozen, they were crowded with ice skaters.[20]

The activities of Parisians in the Bois, particularly the long promenades in carriages around the lakes, were often portrayed in French literature and art in the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. Scenes set in the park appeared in Nana by Émile Zola and in Education Sentimentale by Gustave Flaubert.[21] In the last pages of Du côté de chez Swann in À la recherche du temps perdu (1914), Marcel Proust minutely described a walk around the lakes taken as a child.[22] The life in the park was also the subject of the paintings of many artists, including Eduard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Vincent van Gogh.

In 1860, Napoleon opened the Jardin d’Acclimatation, a separate concession of 20 hectares at the north end of the park; it included a zoo and a botanical garden, as well as an amusement park. Between 1877 and 1912, it also served as the home of what was called an ethnological garden, a place where groups of the inhabitants of faraway countries were put on display for weeks at a time in reconstructed villages from their homelands. They were mostly Sub-Saharan Africans, North Africans, or South American Indians, and came mostly from the French colonies in Africa and South America, but also included natives of Lapland and Cossacks from Russia. These exhibitions were extremely popular and took place not only in Paris, but also in Germany, England, and at the Chicago Exposition in the United States; but they were also criticized at the time and later as being a kind of “human zoo“. Twenty-two of these exhibits were held in the park in the last quarter of the 19th century. About ten more were held in the 20th century, with the last one taking place in 1931.

Le jardin d’acclimatation en 1860, gravure d’A. Provost.

In 1905, a grand new restaurant in the classical style was built in the Pré-Catelan by architect Guillaume Tronchet. Like the cafe at the Grand Cascade, it became a popular promenade destination for the French upper classes.[23]

At the 1900 Summer Olympics, the land hosted the croquet and tug of war events.[24][25] During the 1924 Summer Olympics, the equestrian events took place in the Auteuil Hippodrome.

The Bois de Boulogne was officially annexed by the city of Paris in 1929 and incorporated into the 16th arrondissement.

Soon after World War II, the park began to come back to life. In 1945, it held its first motor race after the war: the Paris Cup. In 1953, a British group, Les Amis de la France, created the Shakespeare Garden on the site of the old floral theater in the Pré-Catelan.[26]

From 1952 until 1986, the Duke of Windsor, the title granted to King Edward VIII after his abdication, and his wife, Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, lived in the Villa Windsor, a house in the Bois de Boulogne behind the garden of the Bagatelle. The house was (and still is) owned by the City of Paris and was leased to the couple. The Duke died in this house in 1972, and the Duchess died there in 1986. The lease was purchased by Mohamed al-Fayed, the owner of the Ritz Hotel in Paris. The house was visited briefly by Diana, Princess of Wales and her companion, Dodi Fayed, on 31 August 1997, the day they died in a traffic accident in the Alma tunnel.

 

 

The Villa Windsor (originally named Chateau Le Bois) is a graceful 19th-century building of 14 rooms surrounded by a large tree-filled garden. It was built around 1860 and once owned by the Renault family but the French government sequestered the property after World War II and Charles de Gaulle occupied the house in the late 1940’s.

References

  1. Dominique Jarrassé, Grammaire des jardins Parisiens, p. 94.
  2. Jarrassé, Dominique, Grammaire des jardins Parisiens, p. 94.
  3. Its name is commemorated in the communes of Rouvray-Catillon and Rouvray-St-Denis.
  4. http://www.paris.fr/loisirs/paris-au-vert/bois-de-boulogne/un-peu-d-histoire/rub_6567_stand_16149_port_14916%7CHistory Archived 7 March 2013 at the Wayback Machine. of the Bois de Boulogne on the site of the City of Paris (in French).
  5. The current Church of Notre Dame des Menus in Boulogne-Billancourt is built on the foundation of Philip’s chapel.
  6. Serge Sauneron, ed. Belon, Le Voyage en Égypte de Pierre Belon du Mans 1547, (Cairo 1970) Introduction.
  7. | “Archived copy”. Archived from the original on 7 March 2013. Retrieved 2013-03-07. The history of the Bois de Boulogne on the site of the City of Paris (in French).
  8. “U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission: Early Balloon Flight in Europe”. Archived from the original on 2 June 2008. Retrieved 4 June 2008.
  9. Patrice de Moncan, Les jardins du Baron Haussmann, pp. 57-58.
  10. Patrice de Moncan, Les Jardins du Baron Haussmann, p. 9.
  11. J. M. Chapman and Brian Chapman, The Life and Times of Baron Haussmann: Paris in the Second Empire (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) 1957:89.
  12. Charles Merruau, Souvenirs de l’Hôtel de Ville de Paris, 1848-1852 (Paris 1875:37), quoted in David H. Pinkiney, “Napoleon III’s Transformation of Paris: The Origins and Development of the Idea” The Journal of Modern History 27.2 (June 1955:125-134), p. 126.
  13. George-Eugène Haussmann, Les Mémoires, Paris (1891), cited in Patrice de Moncan, p. 24.
  14. Jarrassé, p. 97.
  15. Patrice de Moncan, p. 60.
  16. Patrice de Moncan, p. 60.
  17. Patrice de Moncan, pp. 29-32.
  18. Jarrassé, p. 107 and Patrice de Moncan, pp. 64-65.
  19. Patrice de Moncan, p. 9.
  20. Patrice de Moncan, p. 65-70.
  21. Patrice de Moncan, p. 9.
  22. Jarrassé, p. 100-101.
  23. Jarrassé, p. 107.
  24. Sports-reference.com Summer Olympics Paris 28 June 1900 croquet mixed singles one-ball results. Accessed 14 November 2010.
  25. Sports-reference.com Summer Olympic Paris 16 July 1900 tug-of-war men’s results. Accessed 14 November 2010.
  26. Jarrassé, p. 107.

 

Paris Railways and Stations

Intercity Paris Stations – National

 

 

Paris Metro

Plan-Metro

 

Paris Metro website

 

 

 

Paris and outer suburbs

RER/Metro

Plan-RER-et-transiliens

 

Link for summary of all stations showing line numbers and photos

 

Paris and outer suburbs

Bus

 

Plan-des-Bus

 

 

 

History

During the initial construction of the Métro, the tunnels were excavated in open sites and then covered.

Bastille station at the beginning of the 20th century

By 1845, Paris and the railway companies were already thinking about an urban railway system to link inner districts of the city. The railway companies and the French government wanted to extend main-line railroads into a new underground network, whereas the Parisians favoured a new and independent network and feared national takeover of any system it built.[9] The disagreement lasted from 1856 to 1890. Meanwhile, the population became more dense and traffic congestion grew massively. The deadlock put pressure on the authorities and gave the city the chance to enforce its vision.

Prior to 1845, the urban transport network consisted primarily of a large number of omnibus lines, consolidated by the French government into a regulated system with fixed and unconflicting routes and schedules.[10] The first concrete proposal for an urban rail system in Paris was put forward by civil engineer Florence de Kérizouet. This plan called for a surface cable car system.[11] In 1855, civil engineers Edouard Brame and Eugène Flachat proposed an underground freight urban railroad, due to the high rate of accidents on surface rail lines.[11] On 19 November 1871 the General Council of the Seine commissioned a team of 40 engineers to plan an urban rail network.[12] This team proposed a network with a pattern of routes “resembling a cross enclosed in a circle” with axial routes following large boulevards. On 11 May 1872 the Council endorsed the plan, but the French government turned down the plan.[12] After this point, a serious debate occurred over whether the new system should consist of elevated lines or of mostly underground lines; this debate involved numerous parties in France, including Victor Hugo, Guy de Maupassant, and the Eiffel Society of Gustave Eiffel, and continued until 1892.[13] Eventually the underground option emerged as the preferred solution because of the high cost of buying land for rights-of-way in central Paris required for elevated lines, estimated at 70,000 francs per metre of line for a 20-metre-wide railroad.[14]

The last remaining hurdle was the city’s concern about national interference in its urban rail system. The city commissioned renowned engineer Jean-Baptiste Berlier, who designed Paris’ postal network of pneumatic tubes, to design and plan its rail system in the early 1890s.[14] Berlier recommended a special track gauge of 1,300 mm (4 ft 3 3⁄16 in) (versus the standard gauge of 1,435 mm or 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in) to protect the system from national takeover, which inflamed the issue substantially.[15] The issue was finally settled when the Minister of Public Works begrudgingly recognized the city’s right to build a local system on 22 November 1895, and by the city’s secret designing of the trains and tunnels to be too narrow for main-line trains, while adopting standard gauge as a compromise with the state.[15]

Fulgence Bienvenüe project

Construction of Chevaleret station, 1903

Line 2 near Jaurès station

On 20 April 1896, Paris adopted the Fulgence Bienvenüe project, which was to serve only the city proper of Paris. Many Parisians worried that extending lines to industrial suburbs would reduce the safety of the city. Paris forbade lines to the inner suburbs and, as a guarantee, Métro trains were to run on the right, as opposed to existing suburban lines, which ran on the left.

Unlike many other subway systems (such as that of London), this system was designed from the outset as a system of (initially) nine lines.[16] Such a large project required a private-public arrangement right from the outset – the city would build most of the permanent way, while a private concessionaire company would supply the trains and power stations, and lease the system (each line separately, for initially 39-year leases).[further explanation needed][16] In July 1897, six bidders competed, and The Compagnie Generale de Traction, owned by the Belgian Baron Édouard Empain, won the contract; this company was then immediately reorganized as the Compagnie de Chemin de Fer Metropolitan.[16]

Construction began on November 1898.[17] The first line, Porte Maillot–Porte de Vincennes, was inaugurated on 19 July 1900 during the Paris World’s Fair. Entrances to stations were designed in Art Nouveau style by Hector Guimard. Eighty-six of his entrances are still in existence.

Bienvenüe’s project consisted of 10 lines, which correspond to today’s Lines 1 to 9. Construction was so intense that by 1920, despite a few changes from schedule, most lines had been completed. The shield method of construction was rejected in favor of the cut-and-cover method in order to speed up work.[18] Bienvenüe, a highly regarded engineer, designed a special procedure of building the tunnels to allow the swift repaving of roads, and is credited with a largely swift and relatively uneventful construction through the difficult and heterogeneous soils and rocks.[19]

Lines 1 and 4 were conceived as central east-west and north-south lines. Two lines, ligne 2 Nord (line 2 North) and ligne 2 Sud (line 2 South), were also planned but line 2 South was merged with line 5 in 1906. Line 3 was an additional east-west line to the north of line 1 and line 5 an additional north-south line to the east of line 4. Line 6 would run from Nation to Place d’Italie. Lines 7, 8 and 9 would connect commercial and office districts around the Opéra to residential areas in the north-east and the south-west. Bienvenüe also planned a circular line, the ligne circulaire intérieure, to connect the six main-line stations. A section opened in 1923 between Invalides and the Boulevard Saint-Germain before the plan was abandoned.

Nord-Sud competing network

Main article: Nord-Sud Company

A Nord-Sud station signage

On 31 January 1904, a second concession was granted to the Société du chemin de fer électrique souterrain Nord-Sud de Paris (Paris North-South underground electrical railway company), abbreviated to the Nord-Sud (North-South) company. It was responsible for building three proposed lines:

  • line A would join Montmartre to Montparnasse as an additional north-south line to the west of Line 4.
  • line B would serve the north-west of Paris by connecting Saint-Lazare station to Porte de Clichy and Porte de Saint-Ouen.
  • line C would serve the south-west by connecting Montparnasse station to Porte de Vanves. The aim was to connect B with C, but CMP bought before: B renamed 13, C 14. Both were connected by RATP as current Line 13.

Line A was inaugurated on 4 November 1910, after being postponed because of floods in January that year. Line B was inaugurated on 26 February 1911. Because of the high construction costs, the construction of line C was postponed. Nord-Sud and CMP used compatible trains that could be used on both networks, but CMP trains used 600 volts third rail, and NS −600 volts overhead wire and +600 volts third rail. This was necessary because of steep gradients on NS lines. NS distinguished itself from its competitor with the high-quality decoration of its stations, the trains’ extreme comfort and pretty lighting.

Nord-Sud did not become profitable and bankruptcy became unavoidable. By the end of 1930, the CMP bought Nord-Sud. Line A became Line 12 and line B Line 13. Line C was built and renamed line 14, that Line was reorganized in 1937 with Lines 8 and 10. This partial line is now the south part of line 13.

The last Nord-Sud train set was decommissioned on 15 May 1972.[20]

1930–1950: first inner suburbs are reached

Paris Métro network in 1939

Bienvenüe’s project was nearly completed during the 1920s. Paris planned three new lines and extensions of most lines to the inner suburbs, despite the reluctance of Parisians. Bienvenüe’s inner circular line having been abandoned, the already-built portion between Duroc and Odéon for the creation of a new east-west line that became line 10, extended west to Porte de Saint-Cloud and the inner suburbs of Boulogne.

The line C planned by Nord-Sud between Montparnasse station and Porte de Vanves was built as line 14 (different from present line 14). It extended north in encompassing the already-built portion between Invalides and Duroc, initially planned as part of the inner circular. The over-busy Belleville funicular tramway would be replaced by a new line, line 11, extended to Châtelet. Lines 10, 11 and 14 were thus the three new lines envisaged under this plan.

Most lines would be extended to the inner suburbs. The first to leave the city proper was line 9, extended in 1934 to Boulogne-Billancourt; more followed in the 1930s. World War II forced authorities to abandon projects such as the extension of Lines 4 or 12 to the northern suburbs. By 1949, eight lines had been extended: Line 1 to Neuilly-sur-Seine and Vincennes, Line 3 to Levallois-Perret, Line 5 to Pantin, Line 7 to Ivry-sur-Seine, Line 8 to Charenton, Line 9 to Boulogne-Billancourt, Line 11 to Les Lilas and Line 12 to Issy-les-Moulineaux.

World War II had a massive impact on the Métro. Services were limited and many stations closed. The risk of bombing meant the service between Place d’Italie and Étoile was transferred from Line 5 to line 6, so that most of the elevated portions of the Métro would be on Line 6. As a result, Lines 2 and 6 now form a circle. Most stations were too shallow to be used as bomb shelters. The French Resistance used the tunnels to conduct swift assaults throughout Paris.[21]

It took a long time to recover after liberation in 1944. Many stations had not reopened by the 1960s and some closed for good. On 23 March 1948, the CMP (the underground) and the STCRP (bus and tramways) merged to form the RATP, which still operates the Métro.

1960–1990: development of the RER

Line 5’s Viaduc d’Austerlitz, crossing the river Seine

The network grew saturated during the 1950s. Outdated technology limited the number of trains, which led the RATP to stop extending lines and concentrate on modernisation. The MP 51 prototype was built, testing both rubber-tyred metro and basic automatic driving on the voie navette. The first replacements of the older Sprague trains began with experimental articulated trains and then with mainstream rubber-tyred metro MP 55 and MP 59, some of the latter still in service (line 11). Thanks to newer trains and better signalling, trains ran more frequently.

The population boomed from 1950 to 1980. Cars became more popular and suburbs grew further from the city. The main railway stations, termini of the suburban rail lines, were overcrowded during rush hour. The short distance between metro stations slowed the network and made it unprofitable to build extensions. The solution in the 1960s was to revive a project abandoned at the end of the 19th century: joining suburban lines to new underground portions in the city centre as the Réseau express régional (regional express network; RER).

Saint-Lazare station

The RER plan initially included one east-west line and two north-south lines. RATP bought two unprofitable SNCF lines—the Ligne de Saint-Germain (westbound) and the Ligne de Vincennes (eastbound) with the intention of joining them and to serve multiple districts of central Paris with new underground stations. The new line created by this merger became line A. The Ligne de Sceaux, which served the southern suburbs and was bought by the CMP in the 1930s, would be extended north to merge with a line of the SNCF and reach the new Charles de Gaulle Airport in Roissy. This became line B. These new lines were inaugurated in 1977 and their wild success outperformed all the most optimistic forecasts to the extent that line A is the most used urban rail line in the world with nearly 300 million journeys a year.

Because of the enormous cost of these two lines, the third planned line was abandoned and the authorities decided that later developments of the RER network would be more cheaply developed by SNCF, alongside its continued management of other suburban lines. However, the RER developed by SNCF would never match the success of the RATP’s two RER lines. In 1979, SNCF developed line C by joining the suburban lines of Gare d’Austerlitz and Gare d’Orsay, the latter being converted into a museum dedicated to impressionist paintings. During the 1980s, it developed line D, which was the second line planned by the initial RER schedule, but serving Châtelet instead of République to reduce costs. A huge Métro-RER hub was created at Châtelet-Les Halles, the world’s largest underground station.[22]

The same project of the 1960s also decided to merge lines 13 and 14 to create a quick connection between Saint-Lazare and Montparnasse as a new north-south line. Distances between stations on the lengthened line 13 differ from that on other lines in order to make it more “express” and hence to extend it farther in the suburbs. The new Line 13 was inaugurated on 9 November 1976.

1990–2010: Eole and Météor

Franklin D. Roosevelt station on Line 1

In October 1998, Line 14 was inaugurated. It was the first fully new Métro line in 63 years. Known during its conception as Météor (Métro Est-Ouest Rapide), it is one of the two fully automatic lines within the network along with Line 1. It was the first with platform screen doors to prevent suicides and accidents. It was conceived with extensions to the suburbs in mind, similar to the extensions of the line 13 built during the 1970s. As a result, most of the stations are at least a kilometre apart. Like the RER lines designed by the RATP, nearly all stations offer connections with multiple Métro lines. The line runs between Saint-Lazare and Olympiades.

Lines 7 and 13 are the only two on the network to be split in branches. The RATP would like to get rid of those saturated branches in order to improve the network’s efficiency. A project existed to attribute to line 14 one branch of each line, and to extend them further into the suburbs. This project was abandoned. In 1999, the RER line E was inaugurated. Known during its conception as Eole (Est-Ouest Liaison Express), it is the fifth RER line. It terminates at Haussmann – Saint-Lazare, but a new project, financed by EPAD, the public authority managing the La Défense business district, should extend it west to La Défense – Grande Arche and the suburbs beyond.

2010 and beyond: automation

Pointe du Lac station, opened in 2011

In work started in 2007 and completed in November 2011, Line 1 was converted to driverless operation. The line was operated with a combination of driver-operated trains and driver-less trains until the delivery of the last of its driver-less MP 05 trains in February 2013. The same conversion is on-going for Line 4, with an expected completion date in 2022.

Several extensions to the suburbs opened in the last years. Line 8 was extended to Pointe du Lac in 2011, line 12 was extended to Aubervilliers in 2012 and line 4 was extended to Mairie de Montrouge in 2013.

Paris Métro lines
Line name Opened Last
extension		 Stations
served		 Length Average
interstation		 Journeys made
(per annum)		 Termini
Paris Métro Line 1 Line 1 1900 1992 25 16.6 km / 10.3 miles 692 m 213,921,408 La Défense
Château de Vincennes
Paris Métro Line 2 Line 2 1900 1903 25 12.3 km / 7.7 miles 513 m 95,945,503 Porte Dauphine
Nation
Paris Métro Line 3 Line 3 1904 1971 25 11.7 km / 7.3 miles 488 m 91,655,659 Pont de Levallois
Gallieni
Paris Métro Line 3bis Line 3bis 1971 1971 4 1.3 km / 0.8 miles 433 m Porte des Lilas
Gambetta
Paris Métro Line 4 Line 4 1908 2013 27 12.1 km / 6.6 miles 424 m 155,348,608 Porte de Clignancourt
Mairie de Montrouge
Paris Métro Line 5 Line 5 1906 1985 22 14.6 km / 9.1 miles 695 m 92,778,870 Bobigny
Place d’Italie
Paris Métro Line 6 Line 6 1909 1942 28 13.6 km / 8.5 miles 504 m 104,102,370 Charles de Gaulle–Étoile
Nation
Paris Métro Line 7 Line 7 1910 1987 38 22.4 km / 13.9 miles 605 m 121,341,833 La Courneuve
Villejuif
Mairie d’Ivry
Paris Métro Line 7bis Line 7bis 1967 1967 8 3.1 km / 1.9 miles 443 m Louis Blanc
Pré Saint-Gervais
Paris Métro Line 8 Line 8 1913 2011 38 23.4 km / 13.8 miles 614 m 92,041,135 Balard
Pointe du Lac
Paris Métro Line 9 Line 9 1922 1937 37 19.6 km / 12.2 miles 544 m 119,885,878 Pont de Sèvres
Mairie de Montreuil
Paris Métro Line 10 Line 10 1923 1981 23 11.7 km / 7.3 miles 532 m 40,411,341 Boulogne
Gare d’Austerlitz
Paris Métro Line 11 Line 11 1935 1937 13 6.3 km / 3.9 miles 525 m 46,854,797 Châtelet
Mairie des Lilas
Paris Métro Line 12 Line 12 1910[33] 2012 29 13.9 km / 8.6 miles 515 m 81,409,421 Front Populaire
Mairie d’Issy
Paris Métro Line 13 Line 13 1911[33] 2008 32 24.3 km / 15.0 miles 776 m 114,821,166 Châtillon – Montrouge
Saint-Denis
Les Courtilles
Paris Métro Line 14 Line 14 1998 2007 9 9 km / 5.6 miles 1,129 m 62,469,502 Saint-Lazare
Olympiades

References

  1. Notes
  1. “The Network – The Metro: a Parisian institution”. RATP. Archived from the original on 18 February 2017. Retrieved 29 January 2014.
  2. “RAPPORT D’ACTIVITÉ 2015” (pdf). STIF. p. 18. Retrieved 2017-03-17.
  3. “Brief history of the Paris metro”. france.fr – The official website of France. Archived from the original on 26 September 2013. Retrieved 21 September 2013.
  4. Statistiques Syndicat des transports d’Île-de-France rapport 2005 (in French) states 297 stations + Olympiades + Les Agnettes + Les Courtilles Archived 17 June 2012 at the Wayback Machine.
  5. “Archived copy”. Archived from the original on 18 September 2016. Retrieved 17 September 2016.
  6. Demade 2015, p. 13.
  7. [1] Archived 15 February 2010 at the Wayback Machine.
  8. [2]
  9. Bobrick, Benson. Labyrinths of Iron: A History of the World’s Subways. New York: Newsweek Books, 1981. p135
  10. Bobrick, Benson. Labyrinths of Iron: A History of the World’s Subways. New York: Newsweek Books, 1981. p138-140
  11. Bobrick, Benson. Labyrinths of Iron: A History of the World’s Subways. New York: Newsweek Books, 1981. p141
  12. Bobrick, Benson. Labyrinths of Iron: A History of the World’s Subways. New York: Newsweek Books, 1981. p142
  13. Bobrick, Benson. Labyrinths of Iron: A History of the World’s Subways. New York: Newsweek Books, 1981. p142-148
  14. Bobrick, Benson. Labyrinths of Iron: A History of the World’s Subways. New York: Newsweek Books, 1981. p148
  15. Bobrick, Benson. Labyrinths of Iron: A History of the World’s Subways. New York: Newsweek Books, 1981. p148-9
  16. Bobrick, Benson. Labyrinths of Iron: A History of the World’s Subways. New York: Newsweek Books, 1981. p149
  17. Bobrick, Benson. Labyrinths of Iron: A History of the World’s Subways. New York: Newsweek Books, 1981. p149.
  18. Bobrick, Benson. Labyrinths of Iron: A History of the World’s Subways. New York: Newsweek Books, 1981. p151
  19. Bobrick, Benson. Labyrinths of Iron: A History of the World’s Subways. New York: Newsweek Books, 1981. p150-1,162
  20. “1968–1983 : le RER et la modernisation du réseau parisien” [1968–1983: The RER and the modernisation of the parisian network]. Musée des Transports – Histoire du Métropolitain de Paris (in French). Retrieved 6 February 2011.
  21. Bobrick, Benson. Labyrinths of Iron: A History of the World’s Subways. New York: Newsweek Books, 1981. p. 286.
  22. Aplin, Richard; Montchamp, Joseph (2014-01-27). Dictionary of Contemporary France. Routledge. ISBN 9781135936464.

 Métro ticket

See also: Paris ticket “t+” and Public transport fares in the Île-de-France

 

Fares are sold at kiosks and at automated machines in the station foyer. Entrance to platforms is by automated gate, opened by smart cards and simple tickets. Gates return tickets for passengers to retain for the duration of the journey. There is normally no system to collect or check tickets at the end of the journey, and tickets can be inspected at any point. The exit from all stations is clearly marked as to the point beyond which possession of a ticket is no longer required. The standard ticket is ticket “t+”. It is valid for a multi-transfer journey within one and a half hours from the first validation. It can be used on the Métro, buses and trams, and in zone 1 of the RER. It allows unlimited transfers between the same mode of transport (i.e. Métro to Métro, bus to bus and tram to tram), between bus and tram, and between metro and RER zone 1. When transferring between the Metro and the RER, it is necessary to retain the ticket. The RER requires a valid ticket for entry and exit, even for a transfer. It costs €1.90 or ten (a carnet) for €14.50 as of June 2017.[28]

Other fares use the Navigo pass, an RFID-based contactless smart card. Fares include:

  • daily (Mobilis; the Ticket Jeunes, for youth under 26 years on weekends and national holidays, is half the cost of a Mobilis pass[29]).
  • weekly or monthly (the former Carte orange, sold as the weekly Navigo (“hebdo”) and the monthly Navigo)
  • yearly (Navigo intégrale, or Imagine R for students)
  • The (Paris Visite) travel card is available for one, two, three or five days, for zones 1–3 covering the centre of Paris, or zones 1–5 covering the whole of the network including the RER to the airports, Versailles and Disneyland Paris. It was conceived mainly for visitors and is available through RATP’s distributors in the UK, Switzerland and Belgium. It may be a better deal to buy a weekly card (up to €10 saving) but a weekly card runs from Monday to Monday (and is reset every Monday), whereas the Paris Visite card is valid for the number of days purchased.