Paris Notes June 2006

PARIS NOTES

June 2006

Volume 15 Issue 5

Euro May 12: .773
Euro April 13: .825
Rain Days: 12
High Temp: 73°F/23°C
Low Temp: 55°F/13°C
Nat’l Holidays: June 4

Hundreds of thousands of people visit Paris at least once a year. Me, I go every day. I just go up a set of stairs into the global headquarters of Paris Notes, turn on my Mac and fasten my seat belt.

When I am writing about a particular location, I go to Google Maps (www.google.com/maps) and zero in on it from above. I can zoom so close I can make people out. If I want to see more, I go to the Pages Jaunes Photo de Villes at photos.pagesjaunes.fr (don’t add “www.”), where I can not only see a photo of a building’s facade shot from the street, but I can get a shot of what is across the street and what is up or down the street. If there is a particular landmark or area I want to see in detail, I go to Paris 360° (www.paris-360.com), where I can use my mouse to pan left and right 360 degrees, as well as upwards and downwards. I can go to Google Photos (www.images.google.com), do a search of even very esoteric Paris subjects and find photos of almost anything in Paris. There are literally hundreds of such websites. And now, there is Google Video (www.video.google.com) and many other similar sites where I can find videos of all sorts of Paris subjects, from personal travel logs to five-second telephone-camera clips.

Paris used to be a 6,000-mile trip for me; now it’s a few mouse clicks away. So, I ask myself, is there still a need for Paris Notes? Yes, I think. And, the rate at which you renew your subscriptions seems to confirm it. What this tells me is that, even though we have all these mind-boggling tools to access our favorite places, what people still want—and need—is context. Without context, which we work hard to provide you, Paris is just another city—like any other you can view from a satellite.

Done the walk, got the T-shirt—head east to discover the flip side of Haussmann’s Paris

Words can be misleading, can’t they? Seven days a week, the Place de la Concorde is a tumult of traffic and egos. There are no fields (heavenly or otherwise) along the Champs-Elysées; the Château d’Eau falls short on both counts. And, let’s be frank, a first glimpse of the towering concrete at the Place des Fêtes is sure to put you in mind of many things, but colored bunting and popping corks probably aren’t among them.

So what should we make of Belleville? For many Parisians, the area stretching eastwards beyond République has long stood for everything urban and un-lovely. It’s an area of high immigration and, despite the affectionate lens of Willy Ronis, decades of neglect and bad planning have taken their toll.

By now, no doubt, your imagination will have painted in a few details of its own. Perhaps you’re already concluding that “Belle” “ville” may be an accident of double-speak worthy of George Orwell. If so, prepare to be pleasantly surprised.

That’s the message behind A Bientôt à Belleville, an association set up by and for locals to preserve the distinctive heritage and character of their neighborhood. Not just a catchy name, it’s a project that has all the evidence of being backed up by imagination and energy. Arguably, too, it has been mobilized in the nick of time. Within the past couple of years or so, investors have started taking notice of the neighborhood’s potential for redevelopment. As change blows in, the association is there to bat for Belleville and for the “Bellevillois” in one of the last remaining “quartiers populaires” of Paris.

Among the association’s boldest ambitions is to put Belleville on the tourist map. On a bright spring day, I join five other people to check out “Belleville, Yesterday and Today,” part of a new program of guided walks recently launched under the name of Ça-Se-Visite! “Don’t expect ‘un guideage classique,’” warns Angénic Agnero, one of three full-time staff, and our guide for the next two and a half hours. Relief flickers across six faces. “Guideage classique?” Got the T-shirt, thanks: unconventional sounds good to us.

Our starting point is outside Métro Jourdain, at a busy, workaday junction remarkable only for its air of provincial ordinariness. Across from the church, there’s the usual sprinkling of shops, including a promising-looking boulangerie, which Angénic points out as the best in the city. Did I say provincial? Well, yes, though clearly it’s an illusion. Yet, somehow, it makes perfect sense when Angénic tells us that the locals still say they’re “going into Paris,” when they’re referring to a Métro-hop of only four or five stops.

Fittingly, there’s little of the “classique” about our guide. Hobbling gamely (a karate accident, it seems), Angénic’s gutsy humor and opinionated delivery are a breath of fresh air. She tells it like it is. “No, not one of the best,” she insists when someone challenges her about the supremacy of Mme Demoncy’s baguettes. “The best. She supplies the best places. It’s in the statistics. We don’t just tell you anything on Ça-Se-Visite. You get the facts.”

The facts are that, until it was annexed in 1860, Belleville was a hinterland of Paris. Under the ancien régime, it was on the wrong side of the Farmers General Wall, under which goods and people entering the city were subject to a hefty tax. In the nineteenth century, as the modern city of broad boulevards and “étoiles” took shape, Belleville became the first immigrant quarter, the refuge of the petty craftsmen and workers too poor to buy into the Haussmannian dream. In the following century, pogroms brought in the waves of Polish, Lithuanian and Russian refugees, followed by the Armenians, the Greeks and the Turks. Since then, Senegalis, Togolese, Algerians and Vietnamese—you name it—have continued to come. At the latest tally, Planet Belleville numbered over sixty nationalities.

As you stand by the traffic lights on Rue de Belleville, it takes a leap of imagination to picture the area as it was before the population soared and diversified. Up the gentle slopes once stretched vineyards, source of a strong, affordable, local tipple known as “guinges”—the origin, so they say, of “guinguette.” And Belleville, like Montmartre, was famous for its guinguettes. Before we get too carried away by images of dappled light playing on apple-cheeked, Renoiresque beauties, Angénic evokes the watering hole that once stood a little way from where we’re gathered. The “Cour de la Troisième Dimension” was a place where working men could drink themselves senseless—until their womenfolk arrived, sleeves rolled up and ready to haul them back into the here-and-now.

No, as we begin to walk, it’s the industrial heritage that is more in evidence. While each wave of immigrants brought along their native trades, leatherwork dominated, explains Angénic. We view an old sign overhead advertising custom shoes made by one of Belleville’s original manufacturing families. Italian in origin, the company is still in business today. Shoe factories called for nimble fingers. Not far away, we find ourselves in what appears to be a courtyard of modern, lock-up garages. A telltale sign gives the game away; these were once the communal laundry houses, where female factory workers organized themselves into collectives to enable each other to work their shifts.

Our route meanders purposefully around Haute Belleville before eventually plunging into the ethnic hubbub of lower Belleville. Here and there, the pace slows to an amble while we take in an astonishing diversity of building styles (old-Belleville architecture students are lucky to have such a repertoire on their doorstep). It slackens again for us to notice an eighteenth-century water “regard,” or admire one of street artist Nemo’s quirkier murals. Rue des Cascades has us dawdling once more. “No more mediocre apartment blocks!” screams a faded banner hung across the street: “Simone and Fernand deserve better!”

Simone? The incomparable Signoret, of course, who took the lead role in the 1952 classic, “Le Casque d’Or.” The movie, filmed at number 44, was based on the fabulous destiny of one Amélie Hélie, so-called “Queen of the Apaches.” A local blonde bombshell, she made the front pages in 1902, when her spurned lover and his rival (backed up by their respective gangs, armed to the teeth) fought it out to the death. Flush with notoriety, Amélie went on to briefly star in her very own racy revue. Photos of the day show her posing, scantily dressed and coiffured to kill.

As we thread our way through narrow Passage Platin, it’s hard to resist peeping into secluded gardens that once belonged to Belleville’s better-off workers. These days, they’re home to upwardly mobile “bourgeois bohèmes”—bobos, for short. (Lucky old judges, architects and dental surgeons, who have snapped up the gems of “cottage” Belleville.) Round here, “bobohisation” is pulling the neighborhood up by its bootlaces. Good news, surely? Well, yes and no says Angénic. It also means that some of Belleville’s most engaging passageways are disappearing behind locked gates. A Bientôt à Belleville negotiates with residents to keep a degree of access when it can.

At the edge of Belleville Park (shown), the city suddenly spreads out beneath us: the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Centre Pompidou in the distance, with its primary colors standing out like a convention centre for clowns. This grandstand view, with its symbolic vines and water cascades, nearly made way for a casino (Angénic still splutters at the memory). Popular protest finally scotched the development. Where the placards once waved is now the site of the educational Maison de l’Air. It’s taking a breather for renovations.

According to the official leaflet of Ça-Se-Visite!, groups are kept small to make for more conviviality. Not just literary license, it means participants get to “Meet the Locals” (or at least a few of them). And all the while, our guide has been working hard to deliver on her promise, phoning ahead to keep us on track for our appointment with Creative Belleville. Compact galleries and bijoux studios straddle both the high and low part of the quartier, which for some years has been home to a growing artistic community. At most of the places on Angénic’s calling list, space is genuinely tight, and it’s a squeeze to accommodate us all. On the other hand, it gets conviviality off to a flying start, and the conversation soon flows.

Gaby Rouchet restores and re-designs vintage jewelry; his creations sell in the vintage markets of London and beyond. Pliers in hand, a box of ancient buttons beside him, he works by the window where the light is best. In his little shop on Rue du Jourdain every surface drips with bakelite, chrome and crystal. He has lived all his life in Belleville. His natural enthusiasm and local knowledge are a PR person’s dream.

“When I was growing up, the area was full of cinemas and music halls. That was a cinema,” he tells us, nodding at the grim-looking Ecole Maternelle opposite us. “Whenever there was a storm, the rain came in through the roof, and they’d stop the film until it was over. And, you know, this whole area was full of water sources—fountains, ponds, cascades.” He reaches for an old map to give us a better idea. “In fact, Rue de la Mare, that was where people came to fetch water, that’s how it got the name.”

In time-honored fashion, Guy Honoré is a Belleville incomer who has brought his craft with him. He ushers us into his ceramic studio on Rue Dénoyez, apologizing: “There’s not much to see; it’s all down at an exhibition at the moment.” Maybe that’s just as well, given that most of the space is taken up by a work in progress, a vibrant tree trunk made from glazed flowerpots. It’s a private commission, destined to grace a large garden near Blois.

“It’s great when someone puts his trust in you,” says Guy, whose work is usually smaller scale. He admits he’s still figuring out the best way to fix the flat, painted leaves so they sprout from its branches, rather than, well, drooping “because that would be ‘con,’” he adds, grinning suddenly. He takes down an old earthen drinking flask to show us, handling it gently. “I found this in a stream, near where I grew up in Picardy. They used to make lots of things like this, but it’s all gone now. You don’t have to love money in a job like this, but then I love what I do.”

Happy are those who have managed to get a foothold in Belleville before the prices started going up, agrees Ismail Yildirim, who set up studio in Rue Piat some fifteen years ago, some time after fleeing Turkey. A painting on the wall incorporates his official paper of Safe Conduct; some of the busts he has sculpted are in marble and tufa from his native village. For Belleville, as for Bastille, Montparnasse and Montmartre before them, economics was what originally drew in artists like Ismail. “Who knows,” he reflects, “maybe in a few years’ time, people will talk about what came out of the Belleville scene at the turn of the twenty-first century.”

Now, there are around 300 “créateurs,” coming from as far afield as Cuba and the former Yugoslavia—a rainbow of nationalities in an area already known for its potentially volatile population and, let’s be clear, some fairly gritty social conditions. Which makes it all the more extraordinary to learn that while the “banlieue” erupted last fall, Belleville stayed calm. Angénic claims some credit for the A Bientôt team, who have kept open a long-running dialogue with local youngsters, but she doesn’t take all. “Young people round here always have in their minds the bad things outsiders say about Belleville,” she explains. “They’re immigrants, they’re criminals, it’s dirty ... They know what people say and they don’t want to prove them right.”

In a quartier where such different races and religions live cheek-by-jowl, what emerges is a picture of determination, hard-earned tolerance and pride. A banner outside the Reformist Church in Rue Julien-Lacroix says “God is Love” in half a dozen languages. Several churches in the area offer a regular Mass of Nations (and in Belleville the event lives up to its name). For some years, the Catholic Church down the road welcomed Muslims into its crypt to practice their devotions while their mosque was being built. Under a scheme called “Vivons Ensemble” (“Let’s Live Together”) young Jews and Muslims are doing just that, taking turns keeping watch over mosque and synagogue.

As the tour winds to a close, it strikes me as having been one of the most educational strolls I have taken in a long while. Above us, on the corner of Rue Julien-Lacroix, two workmen are frozen in the act of hauling up a chalkboard sign. The installation is a favorite with those who like their art, well, off-the-wall. The sign has changed over the years, but the latest motto seems singularly apt for a community that is working so hard to rise above outside prejudices. Roughly translated, it says, “Beware of Words.”

Amen to that. But what’s in a name? Well, in Belleville, sometimes quite a lot.

•Ça-Se-Visite!: Belleville tours every Sat, 2pm. Tours start from a designated Métro exit. Tours in English by arrangement. Cost: 12E. Tel: 1-40-06-27-41. E-mail: info@ca-se-visite.fr. Site: www.ca-se-visite.fr.

• In 2004, 6.7 million people visited the Louvre; in 2005, 7.3 million did. Why the increase of over half a million? According to the Paris Bureau of Tourism, it’s because of the “Da Vinci Code” effect. In addition, the St-Sulpice Church, another important site from the book, got a tourism boost. It saw 20,000 more visitors in 2005 than in 2004. (Other Da Vinci Code sites include the Rue de Rivoli, the Champs-Elysées, the Ritz Hotel, the quays of the Seine and the Observatory of Paris.) Seems the Da Vinci Code makes people want to visit Paris—and the bureau is happy to oblige them. As we go to press the Da Vinci Code movie will be debuting in Paris (May 17), and, frankly, there’s a lot of hype surrounding it. In April, Columbia Pictures paid 160,000E to festoon the Concorde Métro station with Da Vinci Code signs and giveaways, and posters are all over the city. Tourist officials point out that since the book came out three years ago, over 1,000 lost copies have been found on the Eurostar train between Paris and London (another major location in the story). What that means, we’re not sure. There are many companies offering Da Vinci Code tours. Three that offer good walking tours are: Paris Muse (www.parismuse.com), Classic Walks Paris (www.classicwalksparis.com) and Paris Walks (www.paris-walks.com).

• Of all the ongoing renovations in Paris in the last ten years, the Musée de l’Orangerie (www.musee-orangerie.fr) has been the most anticipated by Paris Notes readers. In the last two years, we’ve received many anxious calls and e-mails asking about its status (there was a long delay because part of an ancient wall was discovered during some underground excavations). Well, after six long years, the wait is over. In May, the new Orangerie reopened, and the early reports are that it is spectacular (it will be the subject of our cover story in the July/August issue). Of course, the Orangerie is most known for its “Nyphéas” or “Water Lilies,” which Monet painted especially for a large oval room. The opaque roof was literally taken off the building and replaced with a special glass roof that will highlight the giant painting in different ways according to the light of the day. But, there is much more to the Orangerie (which attracted 500,000 people a year before its closure) than Monet’s work. It is also home to the Walter Guillaume collection of early twentieth-century paintings, which includes Cézannes, Gauguins, Matisses and Utrillos, to name a few—144 works in all. The Orangerie will also be a venue for temporary exhibitions, the first of which will be in November on seventeenth-century painting from Georges de La Tour to the Le Nain brothers.

• If you know the Paris Métro system, then you are probably familiar with the Carte Orange, the monthly or weekly pass that, while an incredible transportation value, is a pain to use. You have to obtain the “carte,” then you have to take a passport picture (photo booths are available in only a handful of Métro stations). You affix the photo and then take it to a “guichet” to be officially stamped. Then you buy your weekly or monthly ticket, which inconveniently starts on either the first of the month for the monthly (“mensuel”) or on Mondays for the weekly (“hebdomodaire”). The Carte Orange was introduced in 1975; the current version comes in a credit-card-sized plastic holder, but veteran Paris visitors will remember the old carte, a passport-sized card and plastic holder, which was rather cumbersome. Well, thankfully, the Carte Orange’s days are numbered. Over the last year the RATP has been testing a new offering, Navigo, a plastic card with a microchip that you wave over a Navigo reader to enter the Métro (most stations already have the readers). The test has been a big success. In theory, you’ll be able to charge the card over the Internet before you go to Paris. The cards will soon be in wide use.

• In this year’s edition of the Mercer Consulting Worldwide Quality of Living Survey, a study of the quality of life in 215 international cities, Paris ranked thirty-third. Zurich was the highest at 108.2; Geneva, Vancouver, Vienna and Auckland rounded out the top five. Scoring 102.7 on an index where New York is the base with 100, Paris scored well on public transportation, housing, leisure and sanitation, among others (there are 39 criteria). Baghdad scored 14.5.

• Shrouded in some mystery is the non-opening of the new Paris aquarium, which was scheduled for March, then mid-April, then May. The venue, occupying a pre-existing defunct aquarium (once the largest in the world) embedded in the Chaillot hill (Trocadéro), has passed inspection and its thirty-nine tanks are filled with fish. The delay in opening is said to be because of technical problems (some fish are dying), as well as a fishy financial problem between the City and the operator, Morita. No new opening date has been scheduled as of press time.

• If you like archaeology, you might want to visit the latest Gallo-Roman dig (enter at 193 Rue St-Jacques, 5th; open until June 30) in Paris. The site, one of many where Roman artifacts dating to the first century have been found, is being studied and cleared of artifacts to make way for a new building.

Let’s start this month’s Bites with a piece of trivia: which French city has the most restaurants per capita?

The answer is Lyon, where eating out is not merely a pastime but a consuming passion. Clearly it’s my kind of place, so I can’t explain why it took me ten years to jump on the TGV and spend a few days exploring its restaurants. Maybe it had something to do with the local specialty, tripe, which comes in various forms including the daunting-sounding gras double (rolled and sliced cow’s stomach) and tablier de sapeur, or fireman’s apron (tripe dipped in egg and breadcrumbs and fried).

But the city of “bouchons”—rustic inns made famous in the nineteenth century by the motherly cooks who came to be known as the “mères lyonnaises”—has also spawned culinary greats such as Paul Bocuse, Georges Blanc and the late Alain Chapel. Poised between Burgundy, the Rhône Valley and the Alps, Lyon has been a world food capital for well over a century and a new generation of chefs is injecting its cuisine with fresh creativity. I don’t have space here to tell you about all my finds, but two of my most remarkable meals were at Nicolas Le Bec—whose brilliant chef could rival any in the capital—and the newly opened Magali et Martin, a friendly bistro run by the former chef of Le Bon Accueil in Paris and his wife, who worked in the dining room at Astrance.

I was intrigued to learn that most of the young chefs who are redefining Lyonnais cooking were born elsewhere. Le Bec, who is from Brittany, explained that the city appeals to his hard-working nature. “There is still a lot to be accomplished in Lyon so it’s quite difficult for me. But that’s what I like.” Martin Schmied, whose dessert of knudel (plum dumpling) revealed his Austrian origins, chose to set up his own restaurant in Lyon because the city reminds him of Vienna. “It’s on a more human scale than Paris.”

So where are the talented young Lyonnais chefs, if they are not to be found in their own city? At least one of them is making a splash in Paris. Sylvain Endra looks barely old enough to shave, let alone single-handedly wield a knife in the kitchen of a successful neighborhood bistro. Yet ever since he and his wife took over Le Temps au Temps a year ago, they have put a “complet” sign outside every night. The formula behind its popularity is simple enough, if extremely hard to pull off: ambitious cooking + great value + enthusiastic service.

I visited on a strike night, which meant that I had spent the last half hour having the air squeezed out of me on the Métro. As a result I felt especially grateful to be seated in the buzzing little dining room, which opens not a minute before 8pm (as my friend found out when she showed up ten minutes early). In its former incarnation this restaurant housed a clock collection and kept quirkier hours. The current owners have retained one big clock while adding other tasteful touches, such as a huge bouquet of flowers and a big chandelier, decorated with paper butterflies, over the bar. The four seats at the bar look inviting for lone diners, though I didn’t see any on the night of my dinner (Le Temps au Temps also serves a bargain lunch, which might attract more solo eaters).

Out of curiosity I tried a Basque aperitif called Txapa (4.5E), which turns out to be a recent invention created to satisfy the tourist market in the Pays Basque. A blend of wines and fruit liqueurs, it was pleasant enough but paled in comparison to our bottle of Côtes de Nuits Village for 27E, which we had no trouble polishing off à deux in the course of our meal.

The chef’s dramatic style shone though immediately in a starter of mackerel filets perched atop an os à moelle (marrow bone). The marrow itself turned out to be too fatty to eat, but the mackerel was beautifully spiced with turmeric, ginger and coriander. Meanwhile, I lapped up a cream of asparagus soup topped with chunks of confit pork cheek and tiny zucchini dice. A main course of pork belly a la plancha, served with a daring frothy seafood sauce, was again not quite perfect—the pork was a little too chewy—but such flaws are easy to forgive considering the chef’s admirable willingness to take risks and the price of the set menu, a mere 27E. My dish of pollack with creamed artichokes and exceptionally moist chestnuts was spot on. For dessert we shared a chocolate terrine that had a wonderful, almost chewy texture and came with an obviously homemade honey sorbet.

As I squeezed into the restroom I saw the chef getting worked up in the kitchen—not about what he was cooking but over Lyon’s Champions League football match that night. “I’m taking it easy tonight,” he told me, meaning that he had booked just one sitting. His wife, who is normally an effusive presence in the dining room, is off on maternity leave but the service was not suffering during my visit—the restaurant runs like a well-oiled clock.

If it’s unusual to run into a Lyonnais chef in Paris, the country’s most poorly represented region must be northern France. The underdog of French gastronomy, the Nord-Pas de Calais is better known for beer and frites (both of which taste better in Belgium, to tell the harsh truth) than for refined cuisine, though there are of course exceptions such as the elegant La Laiterie in Lambersart, near Lille (my husband P’s home turf). It’s a little-advertised fact, then, that the chef of another promising new Paris bistro hails from this region. Twenty-eight-year-old Nicolas Duquenoy opened La Ferrandaise in place of La Table d’Aude near the Luxembourg gardens just a few months ago, but he has already established a solid clientele of local businesspeople and food lovers.

Ferrandaise is a breed of cattle, and portraits of cows line the stone walls of the narrow room whose focal point is a big chandelier. The chef’s penchant for meat shows on the 30E menu, with three fish offerings and six meat and poultry dishes. Visiting with a friend and her daughter, I was able to sample three starters, the best of which were the ravioles de foie gras with fresh herbs and slivers of beet. Snail fans will appreciate the potato stuffed with escargots and camembert, a rib-sticking dish. A seafood salad with marinated lisette (small mackerel) proved more ordinary. Meat dishes were outstanding, particularly the roast veal with squash blini and spinach. Desserts are mainly fruit based, though the most popular choice that day was the cappuccino “tout” café, more of a drink than a dessert. What was missing here was any reference to northern France—it would have been nice to see a potent Vieux Lille for the cheese course in place of the Saint Nectaire.

You know that, even as you stand on the steps and focus, you’re doomed to failure. There’s no way your trusty digital camera can do justice to the superlatives of Versailles. Take some 550,000 square feet of palace set in 1,900 acres of grounds. Add twenty-nine miles of trellises, fifty fountains and an army of stone nymphs and satyrs, and it’s clear that what you really need is a film crew. Preferably one primed to tell a story of irresistible drama, and one under the direction of one of Hollywood’s sharpest talents.

And, lo, your wish has been granted. Last spring, Sofia Coppola (“Lost in Translation”) began shooting her latest movie, “Marie Antoinette,” on location in Versailles. The access granted was unrivaled and, for a brief moment, “empty” interiors came alive again with powdered wigs and rustling silks. Set to be released in October (U.S.), the movie stars Kirsten Dunst as the Austrian princess in her salad days. Arguably, though, the real star of the piece will be Versailles itself. For, as this grand old dame of 300-odd years embarks on a multi-million dollar makeover, the improbable has become fact. Versailles has become cool.

Don’t take my word; a glance back at last year’s diary confirms the fact. For starters, there was the one-off live hosting of the Fête de la Musique. Next came the Fête du Cinéma; then there was Live 8, with Bartabas’ equestrian extravaganza hot on its heels. October saw Versailles still scintillating into the small hours for the Nuit Blanche festivities. Spanning high aesthetics and popular culture, the place hasn’t dazzled so much in centuries. And, though this year’s program may be a little less frenetic, the many developments within the estate itself will be enough to keep Versailles in the limelight for a while to come.

So which came first, homegrown cool, or Coppola? Christine Albanel, Presidente de l’Etablissement Publique de Versailles, is best placed to answer that. “Let’s say ‘Marie Antoinette’ was a very welcome factor for us,” she confirms. “We saw it as a real stroke of luck, an opportunity to be able to project some of what is to be seen at Versailles.”

Therein lies the conundrum Madame Albanel inherited when she took over the helm of Versailles in July 2003. In a typical year, around three million visitors flock to the château, some seventy per cent of them from overseas. Traditionally, that has meant that the principal attractions such as the State Apartments have suffered from visitor bottlenecks during high summer, while other parts of the huge estate have languished, out of bounds, unexploited or unknown save to the relative few.

The answer is “La Grande Versailles,” a rolling program of renovation, modification and re-organization that will run through to 2010. “It will transform the aspect of the château and the way in which we welcome visitors,” says Madame Albanel. “The result will be a visit that is richer, more interesting, altogether more pleasant.”

The exciting news is that it’s already underway, and on several fronts. In March this year, the statue of Louis XIV on horseback was winched away for restoration, enabling the necessary overhaul of the ankle-turning cobblestones at the entrance. In due course, the Royal Gate will be replaced, and the enclosed courtyard will look much as it did in the days of the Ancien Régime. That, in turn, will pave the way for the kind of re-think needed to cater to twenty-first-century visitor numbers. An appropriately sized ticketing area is in the cards and ultimately, maybe, a restaurant in the north wing (because even culture-vultures get hungry).

In the meantime, other projects are already coming to fruition. Last December, along with many others, I was lured back to the Hall of Mirrors—my first visit in years—to see it returned to its former glory. Part of a 12E million restoration sponsored by the construction company Vinci, it has taken eighteen months and a team of sixty restorers to reach this halfway mark.

Already, the result is gratifyingly splendid. Freshly applied gold leaf gleams from ornate stucco, and the famously high mirrors have gotten their period luster back. The highlight is the freshness of Le Brun’s painted ceiling, a triumph of vibrancy and propaganda celebrating the Sun King’s brightest moments. Look out for the intense blue hue of lapis lazuli. It was the most expensive of pigments, and it seems its lavish use here was almost as symbolic as it was artistic.

At the far end of the grounds, however, a quiet revolution is taking place. This was where the last real queen of Versailles escaped the stifling rigors of court protocol, where she could entertain company of her own choosing and follow the dictates of her own taste. And whatever Marie Antoinette’s shortcomings, taste was something she didn’t lack. (It’s also where she gained her reputation for excessive spending—and we all know how that ended.)

The Petit Trianon (shown) was a gift from her husband in 1774. “Madame, vous aimez les fleurs,” Louis XVI is reported to have said. “Je vous offre un bouquet.” What girl could resist? Not Marie Antoinette, who set about furnishing it to the latest standards of fashion and convenience; witness her graceful, duck-egg-blue salon with its ingenious moving mirrors designed to render tête-à-têtes all the more cozy.

Now, with funding from Swiss watchmakers Breguet (whose founder, as it happens, was patronized by the queen), the Petit Trianon’s interiors are at last being treated to the TLC they deserve. Tapestries, colors and décor are being reinstated, and if the work lives up to its promise, visitors won’t just be offered cool authenticity but something more, a sense of the original personality that lay behind it.

The story doesn’t end there. Close by, Marie Antoinette’s cherished Jardin Anglais has been neglected over the centuries, and it suffered still more during the terrible storm of 1999. At present, the dandelions still sprout, but their days are numbered. This summer, the garden will open to the public along the same artfully rustic lines as its original concept. Picture a landscape-in-miniature; winding streams, cascades, lakes, the colonnaded Temple d’Amour. If it was a queen’s elegant rebellion against the regimented lines favored by her predecessors, it was also the very last word in late-eighteenth-century garden design.

It’s part of an ambitious restoration project embracing the Pavillon Français, the Belvedere and Grotto, even the Queen’s Theater, where Marie Antoinette indulged her acting talents with the Troupe des Seigneurs. You need no excuse for a stroll around the Queen’s Hamlet, her über-fantasy village with its thatched roofs and whiskery carp, but soon you’ll be able to enjoy it as part of a wider picture of Versailles’ past. The Domaine de Marie-Antoinette opens this July. “Together, the whole ensemble will give a sense of her affections, her privacy, her life as an individual,” Madame Albanel sums up.

I suggest Versailles is getting in touch with its feminine side again. She agrees: “On one side, you have the Versailles of kings. On the other, there’s a more charming experience, reflecting the quality of daily life.” Vive la difference, I say.

•Château de Versailles: open daily except Mon, 9:00am-6:30pm (5:30pm in winter). Gardens, Grand and Petit Trianon: open daily. Tel: 1-30-83-78-00. Site: www.chateauversailles.fr. Advance transport and tickets available from SNCF train stations.

Montparnasse has been a bastion of creative activity for hundreds of years. According to local lore, sometime in the fourteenth century, Sorbonne students began traipsing south into the then countryside, where they scaled a grassy knoll and recited verse. They eventually christened their preferred hillock Mount Parnassus, after the Hellenic peak that was sacred to Apollo and the Muses and that inspired ancient wordsmiths. From the 1880s to the 1940s, Montparnasse flourished and, along with Montmartre, become an artistic epicenter. Thousands of artists and writers from around the world—stars like Brancusi, Man Ray, Matisse, Hemingway and Modigliani as well as lesser known personalities like Angeline Beloff, Pablo Gargallo and Robert Desnos—lived, worked and socialized in this Parisian neighborhood’s numerous ateliers, art academies and cafés (most notably, the Rotonde and Dôme). The modest but charming Musée du Montparnasse (MDM) is dedicated to preserving and documenting this illustrious history.

Tucked at the back of a picturesque, leafy cul-de-sac off raucous Avenue du Maine, the MDM was inaugurated in 1998. It occupies one of the thirty or so artists’ studios constructed along the alley at the dawn of the last century. (Artists and artisans still reside in the majority of these quaint dwellings.) The space once served as domicile and workshop for Marie Vassilieff (1884-1957), a colorful Russian-born artist who, according to Man Ray, was “one of the institutions of the Quarter, friend of all the painters.” During World War I, for example, she transformed the place into a canteen, catering to the appetites of her destitute neighborhood comrades. “On the walls,” a Swedish artist recalled, “were paintings by Chagall and Modigliani, drawings by Picasso and Léger, and a wooden sculpture by Zadkine in the corner. Vassilief would put different colored papers around the lights to change the mood ... For sixty-five centimes, one got soup, meat, vegetables, and salad or dessert, everything of good quality and well-prepared.” After dinner, the spirited Vassilief performed Cossack dances for her guests.

The MDM consists of two stories. On the ground level to the left of the entrance is the ticketing area. In this spacious room is displayed a selection of period photographs, drawings and prints of and by individuals who contributed to Montparnasse’s repute. Next to a portrait of a downtrodden Modigliani, for instance, hangs a beautiful graphite drawing of a female figure (1918) by the artist. Robert Doisneau’s portrait of Fernand Léger at the Rotonde accompanies those of Zadkine and Alberto Giacometti in their studios. “Le Café, Le Couple” (1925), a character study by Bulgarian native Jules Pascin, depicts a fashionable couple relaxing in an area watering hole. All these intriguing documents set the tone for the visit.

The remainder of the MDM, a small gallery on the ground floor and two larger ones on the pitched-roofed upper floor, is given over to temporary exhibitions. (There is no permanent collection.) Such events take the neighborhood as their point of departure. Past shows have explored the work of Japanese painter Foujita, women artists of the quarter, poet and artist Jean Cocteau and the celebrated artists’ residence La Ruche (The Beehive), a peculiar twelve-sided building that still stands. Upcoming exhibitions include Black Montparnasse, 1916-1966 (June-Oct 2006), Modigliani’s Paris, 1906-1920 (Nov 2006-April 2007) and a survey of Alice Prin, a.k.a. Kiki of Montparnasse, Man Ray’s model-lover and the self-styled queen of the quartier (unscheduled).

Despite its humble appearance, the MDM offers an informative introduction to the abundant artistic heritage of Montparnasse and an excellent foundation for exploring its other marvels.

•Musée du Montparnasse: 21 Ave du Maine, 15th. Tel: 1-42-22-91-96. Open: Tues-Sun, 12:30-7pm. Site: www.museedumontparnasse.net.

Every year, about the middle of May, I get rose fever. It started when I happened on the lovely little rose garden at the Jardin des Plantes at just the right moment, and was charmed by the fragrant, multicolored blooms that covered its arching trellises. When I learned about the Bagatelle, in the Bois de Boulogne, I made my way out there by Métro and bus and was dazzled by the profusion of roses in that much larger garden. Rose season is so short and sweet that I’ve been happy to follow Herrick’s advice to “gather ye rosebuds while ye may,” enjoying an annual visit to both parks at rose time.

Then last year, an American garden enthusiast told me about L’Haÿ-les-Roses, launching me on my longest and most rewarding rose pilgrimage to date. On a warm, sunny Sunday in June I took the RER to Bourg-la-Reine, located the right bus stop and found my way to one of the world’s earliest, and most beautiful, rose gardens.

La Roseraie du Val-de-Marne, as it’s officially called, is literally breathtaking, filling the air with the mingled perfumes of over 3,000 rose varieties. With twice as many rosebushes as the Bagatelle, it has nearly three times the varieties. Visually, it’s overwhelming, with roses covering lattice walls, domes and pergolas, spilling over trellises, cascading fountain-like from pillars and billowing lavishly from overhead planters. French-style parterres are laid out in geometric arrangements, but there’s none of the restraint and formality that makes some French gardens look so cold and cerebral. This garden is a wild riot of roses.

The genius behind the garden was Jules Gravereaux, one of the founders of the Bon Marché department store. In 1892 he bought a sizeable property in L’Haÿ (pronounced “lay”) for a family vacation home. The domain already had an early nineteenth-century villa and an English-style park when he bought it, and soon he began collecting roses in a serious way. In 1899 he hired landscape designer Edouard André to design a garden for his collection, which already numbered 3,000 varieties. The result was so remarkable that in 1910 the town changed its name to L’Haÿ-les-Roses.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the roseraie is its emphasis on history. Collecting the flower’s earliest forms, Gravereau arranged his garden so that the visitor can follow its evolution from the simplest flat wild roses to today’s most highly developed hybrids. To this end, the garden is divided into thirteen sections, with old roses on the right, modern ones on the left.

The “antique” section has beds of small bushes, each labeled with name, date and place of origin. Fragrant wild roses are there, and a section of “Gallic” roses includes varieties dating from antiquity to the eighteenth century, including Damask roses brought to France by returning Crusaders. Another plot contains plants from the château of Malmaison, where the Empress Josephine, one of France’s first rose collectors, cultivated some 250 different types. Few roses remain at Malmaison today, but, fortunately, many found a home here. Since most of these varieties are no longer cultivated commercially, this “ancient” section is a rare treat for rose lovers.

Modern roses, those developed from 1950 to the present, blanket the rest of the garden. Bred to produce huge blooms and a whole paintbox of colors, these include Asian varieties, tea roses and variegated blooms, all presented in wild profusion. Enough to satisfy anyone’s rose fever.

•La Roseraie du Val-de-Marne: Rue Albert Watel, 94240 L’Haÿ-les-Roses. Tel: 1-43-99-82-80. Open: daily 10am-8pm mid-May through mid-September. Peak rose season is in June. Entrance: 3E. RER B to Bourg-la-Reine, then bus 192 or 172.

This year marks the centennial birthday of Josephine Baker, the famed black American who took Paris by storm in the 1920s and who lived to celebrate her life, with its astonishing ups and downs, for another half-century.

She was born in the slums of St. Louis, and by the time she was 15 had already discarded her first husband and her birth name (Freda J. McDonald) in a determined attempt to make it in the theater. A second husband and a shot at the gold soon followed; Josephine went from road shows to New York, and from there to Paris. Here, the girl who had been known to family and friends as “Tumpy” became the toast of the town, and although she went through many husbands and countless lovers afterwards, Paris remained the one constant love of her life.

She was, of course, black at a time when being black in America meant not only suffering the daily indignities of segregation, but also the dangers of racial hatred. Growing up black in St. Louis during the early twentieth century, Josephine saw it all, including bloody race riots. Her most treasured memory of her opening night in Paris was that for the first time in her life, she was invited to eat with white people.

Everyone else who saw the show that night, though, remembered Josephine. When “La Revue Nègre” opened at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées (13 Avenue Montaigne, 8th) on October 2, 1925, Paris already was enamored with jazz and with the American blacks who made it. In response to this welcoming atmosphere, Caroline Dudley Reagan, the wife of an American foreign service officer stationed in Paris, had decided to bring Parisians an all-black musical revue. She couldn’t afford Ethel Waters to headline, but she spotted 19-year-old Josephine in the show that Waters was then doing in New York, and decided that this young phenomenon would be her star.

What is generally forgotten is that at this stage in her career, Josephine was primarily a clown. A dancer, too, but primarily a clown. From early childhood she had sent her family and friends into stitches with her cross-eyed chicken walk, which in time morphed into a comic Charleston routine. In fact, it was as a comic that she made her first appearance in “La Revue Nègre.” But the show’s producers had already concluded that the revue, as good as it was, needed something more to make it a hit. That is how, at the show’s finale, a virtually nude Josephine Baker came to be carried onstage, slung over the back of a muscular black dancer named Joe Alex. The audience gasped—as it was meant to—and then watched in amazement as the two slithered and jerked in a kind of frenzied mating ritual, accompanied by a pounding jazz beat.

Scarcely more than a decade before, Stravinsky had made the same sort of pounding impact in exactly the same theater with his ballet, “The Rite of Spring.” Stravinsky and Josephine may have had little else in common, but they both set off cultural fireworks at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, to the accompaniment of primal rhythms.

Primitivism was “in,” of course: there had been an African influence on Paris’ avant-garde as early as Picasso’s ground-breaking “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” in 1907. But Josephine added a new element of sophistication and eroticism—as well as comedy. Her famous “banana dance,” which she inaugurated at the Folies-Bergère (32 Rue Richer, 9th), was supremely funny as well as sexy. Having jettisoned “La Revue Nègre,” she now donned a belt of bananas and continued to wow her audiences. The image of an ebony dancing girl clad in nothing but a skimpy skirt of bananas quickly became Josephine’s symbol, which has endured.

But while Josephine made her name with the bouncing banana belt, she determined not to let this particular icon define her. She quickly immersed herself in Parisian nightlife, remaking herself into an elegant and sophisticated woman. In part, this was the result of her own innate sense of drama and style, but credit also goes to Giuseppe Abatino, or Pepito, the man who became her third husband. Pepito made a lady of Josephine, teaching her manners and proper French. At the same time, he took charge of her business interests, arranging international tours and encouraging her to open her own club, Chez Joséphine (40 Rue Fontaine, 9th; two others followed). Both club and career flourished, and as Baker’s voice improved (thanks to lessons), she added singing to her repertoire. In time, her rendition of “J’ai Deux Amours” (I have two loves) became almost as closely associated with her as her earlier banana dance.

The two loves of which Baker sang so movingly were Paris and France. Parisians adored her, and she adored them right back, especially as her color never was an issue in France. She frequently criticized the United States for its racism, and eventually came to support the 1960s civil rights movement, joining in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s March on Washington.

Racism of any sort angered Josephine, and Nazi racism as well as her love for France propelled her into working for the Resistance (for which she was later awarded the Medal of Resistance, the Legion of Honor and the Croix de Guerre). After the war, with her career in decline, she focused on erasing racial discrimination on a more personal level, by adopting children from many different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Never able to bear children herself, she adopted twelve in all (she called them her “Rainbow Tribe”).

Sadly, Josephine’s last years were marked by grandiose dreams and insufficient income. Her decaying château in the Dordogne, occupied by her huge family, was a constant drain on her time, energy and money, even while her extravagance and lack of practicality undermined her best efforts. Yet, as always, she continued to do it her way. At the end, she was exhausted, but fortunately, not forgotten. Many friends and supporters still remained, including Princess Grace of Monaco, Brigitte Bardot and the manager of the Bobino theater in Montparnasse (20 Rue de la Gaîté, 14th), who in 1975 unexpectedly offered her an engagement at his theater.

Baker was delighted. She was 69 and in bad health, but she took to the stage like the trooper she was, summoning up miracle after miracle. Opening night was a triumph—a full house gave her a thirty-minute standing ovation. But it was too much for her health and strength, and she became severely ill.

Her death came as a shock to Parisians, thousands of whom flocked to her funeral in the church of the Madeleine (she is buried in Monte Carlo). Many still remembered the young girl who had won Paris fifty years before, and others merely knew the story. But they were all there to pay tribute to a remarkable woman, one who had triumphed over adversity and had, despite every admonition to the contrary, done it her way.

•Note: Paris has paid permanent tribute to Baker by dedicating Place Joséphine-Baker (14th) in her honor.

•Mary McAuliffe’s “Paris Discovered: Explorations in the City of Light” will be published in Sept 2006 (www.parisdisc.com).

“L’Envolée Lyrique”—waxing lyrical—presents paintings from the fertile decade following WWII in Paris: Serge Poliakoff, Nicolas de Staël, Pierre Soulages, et al. As always, the Luxembourg Museum puts on a glorious show—a profusion of light and color. •Musée du Luxembourg. Until Aug 6. Site: www.museeduluxembourg.fr.

After six years of renovations, the Orangerie has reopened. See “Petites Notes,” page 2. •Site: www.musee-orangerie.fr.

The public opening of the much-anticipated museum for the “primitive arts,” the oddly named Musée du Quai Branly, is promised for June 23. Designed by famed French architect Jean Nouvel at a cost of 232 million euros, Paris’ newest museum is “a building built around a collection.” •Site: www.quaibranly.fr.

This is the first time that American artists are shown at the Louvre. Whistler, Hopper, George Catlin and others open the “American Season.” •Louvre. June 15-Sept 18. Site: www.louvre.fr.

Starting with the Chavin art works (1500-300 BC), via the Wari period (fifth-eleventh centuries AD) and the Chimu Kingdom (900-1470), these are the treasures of Peru. 200 exceptional examples: ceramics, jewelry, ornaments and textiles. •Petit Palais. Until July 2. Site: www.petitpalais.paris.fr.

Paintings and sculpture from 1900 through the Fascist period (1922-1945) to 1950 show the radical evolution of Italian art in the first half of the twentieth century. •Grand Palais. Until July 3. Site: www.rmn.fr/italia-nova/index.html.

150 life-size cows created by Hervé Di Rosa, Chantal Thomas, Christian Lacroix and other artists are grazing on the streets of Paris, from the Champs-Elysées to the Carrousel du Louvre to St-Germain-des-Prés. •Until June 26. For all the locations see: www.vach-art.fr.

The life and work of the eccentric Spanish filmmaker, Pedro Almodovar, in seven “sets.” Film extracts, photos, posters and much more. •Cinémathèque Française. Until July 31. Site: www.cinemathequefrancaise.com.

Ten contemporary Senegalese artists are shown here: brilliant colors, strange visions and amazing power. •Musée Dapper. Until July 13. Site: www.dapper.com.fr.

Meticulous attention to detail, bizarre and often witty juxtapositions of everyday objects in unexpected settings—this is the work of the enigmatic Belgian artist René Magritte (1898-1967). •Musée Maillol. Until June 19. Site: www.museemaillol.com.

Dragons, the myths, the legends and the creatures that inspired them. •Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle. Jardin des Plantes. Until Nov 6. Site: www.mnhn.fr.

This expo shows the complicated organization of the fabulous Parisian fashion parades, from the nineteenth century to the present. 300 videos, films, haute couture clothes, revues and objects. •Musée Galliera. Until July 30. Site: www.galliera.paris.fr.

Paintings, sculptures, installations, photos, films and videos present twenty-five years of art in Los Angeles. •Centre Pompidou. Until July 17. Site: www.centrepompidou.fr.

If you have ever been tempted to visit Maxim’s but were reluctant to pay 300E or so to dine there, this is your chance. For 8E you can now see an exhibit of eighty drawings by Toulouse Lautrec; for 20E you also get a guided tour of the building, with its “salons,” imperial bar, Art Nouveau windows and lamps. •Maxim’s: 3 Rue Royale, 8th. Wed-Sun, 10am-5pm. Until June 25.

The French “primitive” painter Le Douanier (i.e., the customs official) Rousseau is shown here: exotic jungle scenes with bold linear forms and bright colors take us into a scary dream world. •Grand Palais. Until June 19. Site: www.rmn.fr.

This is Paris as presented by filmmakers, from the Lumière brothers and René Clair to Vincente Minnelli, Roman Polanski, Jean-Luc Godard, etc. •Hôtel de Ville, Salle Saint-Jean (enter by Rue de Lobau). Until June 30. Free.

The art and science of glass in first-century Rome. Lamps, bottles, dishes, tiles, jewelry and even green houses show the many ways in which glass was used in daily life. •Cité des Sciences. Until Aug 27. Site: www.cite-sciences.fr.

The work of Danish artist Jens Willumsen (1863-1958). •Musée d’Orsay. •June 17-Sept 17. Site: www.musee-orsay.fr.

Paris’ all-day/all-night musical celebration, with musical performances in the streets all over Paris. •June 21. Site: www.fetedelamusique.culture.fr.

The annual event to see and to be seen at—oh, and you can watch a little tennis, too. •Roland Garros Stadium. May 28-June 11. Site: www.rolandgarros.com.

The art and influence of the Disney “animated-art” studios. •Grand Palais. Sept 16-Jan 15.

A major retrospective of Hogarth’s work. •Louvre. Oct 17-Jan 8. Site: www.louvre.fr.