Court of the Crimson King

source (clic)

Recently, we celebrated All Saints' Day (fr. La Toussaint). In France, the celebrations aren’t so solemn as in our country. Still, All Saints’ Day is a good opportunity to become engrossed in meditation and think for a while about those who passed away.

            For this reason I would like to propose a trip to the one of the quietest places in Paris. Built on order of King Louis XV in the Latin Quarter at the end of XVIII century, the Panthéon became an eternal shelter for the greatest personalities of Republic since the French Revolution.

source: midnights-in-paris

            I can’t tell you how many times I went there. Every time I had to think, I choose chill and gloom of Panthéon. I simply love the way how the art of Greek architecture was applied to the French taste for monumentality. As the building had been a temple before the French Revolution (and then became a mausoleum and again a church, and… the French can’t decide what do they want!), you can find there large paintings covering all the walls and telling you the story of St Genevieve – the patron of Paris.

            Panthéon has been enrapturing me with its eclecticism. Just beside St Genevieve you can find the sculpture named Autel de la Convention nationale ¬¬prepared by François-Léon Sicard to commemorate The National Convention – first republic government of France. And next to politics and religion, there is the Foucault pendulum hanging from the roof and providing a tangible proof of the rotation of the Earth. This is how Panthéon works – it gives place for each domain of human being. And when you leave the ground floor and go down, you will find (almost) all those people who covered the France with glory.

source (clic)

I can't stop thinking about the pattern for choosing those greatest of the greatest. Why, for example, I can meet in the Panthéon Hugo, Zola and Dumas but to meet Molier I need to go to Père Lachaise Cemetery? Why I can put the flowers on the grave of Maria Curie-Skłodowska here and to do the same thing for Frédéric Chopin I have to cover a pretty long distance to the cemetery? I do not deny the greatness of the people who are buried in the Panthéon (Voltaire, Rousseau…) but I simply like to puzzle over it, trying to find an explanation, it can be absorbing and helps me to memorize the biographies of French intellectuals, artists and politicians.

I strongly recommend you to visit the Panthéon when the opportunity will come. You will find there the calmness and silence. The mausoleum will give you also an idea how the French perceive the concept of nation and its leaders. What is more, standing so close to the personalities like Victor Hugo or Jean-Jacques Rousseau gives a shiver and assures you that they really existed.

 

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As an addition to this post, I suggest watching the ceremony of transfer of Dumas’ remains to the Panthéon. It was in 2002, the day of 200^th birthday of the writer. Jacques Chirac, who leaded the funeral service, said: "With you, we were D'Artagnan, Monte Cristo, or Balsamo, riding along the roads of France, touring battlefields, visiting palaces and castles—with you, we dream". Just look, who carried the Dumas’ coffin and how the procession looked like! 

Alaminadura

Source: RTL.fr

            What is your very first thought when you think about the beginnings of your one-year stay in Paris? Is it the Eiffel Tower? Or is it a very long walk alongside the Seine? Well, it didn’t happen to me. My adventure started from a distant corner of the City of Lights: Porte de Clignancourt, the very last station of the line 4, the 18th district. What was I doing over there on the 5th of September? Well, people responsible for preparing the French classes for the Erasmus students were thinking that it could have been the great place for the very first metro trip, so I had to sacrifice over 40 minutes of walking each day for two weeks to reach the centre of Clignancourt (one of the buildings of the Sorbonne University) and another 40 minutes to get back.

            Don’t worry, I don’t intend to bore you with the reports on my French classes. I would like to invite you to join me for a walk to one of the most known flea markets…

            Narrow streets and old market stalls – it’s probably the only right reason to visit Porte de Clignancourt. The flea market in this district had been highly influenced by the oriental cultures. You can get an original (or almost…) saree which looks like it’s hand woven, but yeah, it costs 15€ so you can be sure that the only thing that has really been “handmade” was to dress the dummies with those fabulous clothes.

Apart from the dresses, you can find there a dozen of stands with spices. Cumin, harissa, anise, black-caraway – imagine all those smells and colours! But the Clignancourt Market isn’t really food-centered (I will tell you later about the place with the most delicious fruits in the entire Paris). You can literally be a Treasure Hunter in this place. Digging in bric-à-brac can be amazingly fun. I used to spend a couple of minutes each day after my French classes to discover the most interesting objects of the whole marketplace: the kettle which seemed to be created for Alice in Wonderland, the watch with the Kama Sutra scenes instead of hours, carving-letters openers with a fancy edge – you can have them all if you are patient enough to find them among the pile of pieces of various, completely unpredictable things.

When you’re not interested in old things, you can simply walk around, talk with people and discover the diversity of cultures which came from across the seas. Arabs are the most noisy of the mall, they are great to practice with them the art of haggling and they let you win (sometimes…). Algerians, on another hand, are really helpful and polite, they love to tell the stories (and I will mention them some more in the next note). When it come to Moroccans, they are short-tempered (much more than I could possibly think) but at the same time they are sociable (and we’ll get back to them again in another post). It might sound like a bit of generalization but that’s what my very first impression was like when I’ve met all those nations in one place. After some time I started to distinguish them by the accents and single words in their dialects. And I fell in love with the diversity of Paris from the first visit at one of the stalls in Clignancourt.

Source: https://www.airbnb.pl

Source: https://www.airbnb.pl

I guess you wonder what could possibly this post’s title mean. Well, I remember one song which I used to hear every single day during those two weeks of my French classes. One man had a stand with this really old record player. All he did was listen all day long to this one particular song. Alaminadura sung by Bi Kidude – the oldest singer in the world who died in 2013. Her birth date remains unknown. You can read about this extraordinary woman here, as I believe her story is trurly heart-touching. 

At the beginning

Let’s begin…

So, you may think that this is just an another blog about Paris. And maybe you’re right. But when I asked myself about what I would be able to write during the whole semester, that was my very first thought.

I spent last year in Paris, studying at Paris-Sorbonne University. And let’s be honest: the studies weren’t in the centre of my life over there…

I made the effort to see as many interesting places as it was possible. I tried to get to know both people and town. I would like to tell you about the process of exploration of the City of Lights. It won’t be a guide blog, nothing like that. But I will try to smuggle some facts about Paris and its history. And, above all, I will try to enthuse you with my adoration to the City of Love.