Basilique – Taran's Tales

Provence part seven – Another touch of seafaring history and more of the fleshpots.

The French Riviera is, in reality, much more than a hedonists’ paradise, including as it does two of France’s most important centres of maritime and naval industry. We were already favourably impressed by Toulon [see Provence Part Six] when a rendezvous with Celine’s sister Dagmara, gave us a good reason to visit the other great seaport at the extreme western end of that coast.

Marseille and the islands from the Basilique.

Marseilles is a real working city, historically important to France’s foreign trade, and somewhat renowned in the past as a place one needed to be careful where one trod, that is, in the best traditions of the seafarer’s way of life, it used to be a bit rough around the edges. Therefore, in homage to its maritime past, we made la Basilique de Notre Dame de la Garde our first stop.

Impressive architecture of La Basilique de Notre Dame de la Garde

Built on top of an impressive rocky outcrop in the 6^th arrondisement, this stunning piece of religious architecture, visible from all over Marseille, is the place to visit if you want to have the best views of the city, the old port and the islands in the bay beyond. It also houses many fascinating artifacts, paintings and models of ships that set sail from the port over the years, commemorating the seafaring heritage of the city. Afterwards, we three took a short stroll through the old city, where we found artists and some amusing grafiti and back down into the port area; but, alas, the day was fading fast and we realized we had to return another day to do the town justice.

Walking back down to the port from the old town, with the Basilique in the distance.

Musée des Civilisations d’Europe et de Méditerranée

And one week later we did just that, Dagmara needing to meet up again with her ride home to Antugnac. Once we had said our “Adieus”, Celine and I proceeded to discover that this was yet another town where one can get hopelessly mixed up in it’s traffic system, and our assumption that the car park named “Les Terrasses du Port” would be convenient for another visit to the old port, proved to be very wrong. In fact Les Terrasses du Port is a modern shopping centre better situated for ferry passengers visiting the new port area, so we relocated ourselves to the car park nearby the somber-looking Cathédrale La Major and wandered down past Mucem, the ultra-modern Musée des Civilisations d’Europe et de Méditerranée sitting in its moat, and around the rebuilt Fort Saint-Jean, the sea-wall battlements of which provided many quiet corners for courting couples, including ourselves, to enjoy the afternoon sunshine away from the madding crowds.

Once in the old port, we decided to make the most of the autumn sunshine by taking a boat trip out on the bay of Marseille, to visit Château d’If, the island fortress on the tiny Île d’If, the smallest island in the Frioul archipelago about three kilometres off shore. Originally built in the mid-sixteenth century for King Francis I, to defend the port of Marseille, it never had to prove its worth in battle. Instead, the nineteenth century saw it become one of the most notorious jails in France, being escape-proof, even if Dumas’ fictitious hero, Edmond Dantès, proved otherwise in “The Count of Monte Cristo”. This fantasy resulted in one rough-hewn cell being maintained in honour of Dantès as the main tourist attraction! There really isn’t very much else to see in the chateau itself and the best parts of the afternoon were the boat trip itself, and the lovely views back towards Marseille, and of the two larger islands further offshore. I could see a large well-protected marina on Île Ratonneau which got me thinking what a great place it would be to berth my yacht, but then I get that dreamy feeling whenever I see a large fleet of sailboats!

A couple of other attractive small towns to the east of Marseilles are Cassis and La Ciotat, the latter also being the home of a small shipbuilding yard, Chantiers Navals de La Ciotat, where I once spent an interesting couple of weeks in my professional capacity as a marine engineer, and first discovered the French capacity for obstinacy when it comes to using the English language. Both towns were horribly busy on that late Saturday afternoon and as parking seemed to be a near impossibility, we decided to drive strait through; but it was evident that they were both popular places to live and, perhaps, for the wealthy Marseillaises to wine and dine.

With the more down-to-earth ports of Toulon and Marseille ticked off on our bucket-list, it was time to return to the fleshpots of the Côte d’Azur, first stop Monaco. Our arrival there was a nightmare. In an effort to reduce the amount of traffic flowing above ground through the tiny municipality, the hillsides are now a warren of underground roadways, and having taken a wrong turn somewhere deep in the rocky depths, we found ourselves in an enormous never-ending tunnel, going goodness knows where. No longer in the most positive of moods, we eventually found our way out into fresh air and what we hoped would be a convenient car-park at the base of Le Rocher, upon which the ruling House of Grimaldi have built their palace, claiming for themselves the best views of this city-state. And then again, Grace Kelly, the subject of my early adolescent love, lived there once upon a time, so I could never hate the place whatever problems it presented.

It was easy to imagine how beautiful Monaco must have been a couple of centuries ago before the Casino opened in 1869. However, it is now the most densely populated state in the world and as one turns to face the city behind Le Rocher, the view is a seething mass of high-rise apartment buildings that severely mar the view of the hillsides on which they are built, and seem to extend in every direction except for seawards.

The spoiled beauty of Monaco greatly enhanced by my travelling companions!

It is by no means a pretty sight. However, the Jardins de Saint-Martin that stretch down from the front of the Palace around the edge of Le Rocher, with views over the Mediterranean and down over the Port de Fontvieille, are a pleasant place for an afternoon stroll among the lawns and interesting sculptures. But once you reach the eastern end of the gardens overlooking the marina crammed full of enormous luxury power yachts, the awfulness of such concentrated development smacks you in the face. One saving feature, the police do seem have a sense of humour; when asked to indicate the quickest way down to the quayside, one fine officer, standing outside the city hall, pointed straight towards the requested destination, that is down a fairly precipitous cliff face, then laughingly turned round and pointed us towards Avenue Saint-Martin, the road that curves down around the end of the rock, slower but decidedly safer! The pompous ceremony of the “changing of the guard” at the palace gates was also a bit of a farce, there being literally only one guard to change!

We eventually made our way down to the quayside and as we wandered along admiring the magnificent super yachts, we were apalled to find a large funfair spread across the end of the marina, making the place seem more like Blackpool on a drizzly Lancashire afternoon than the posh sophisticated ambience of Monte Carlo and its casinos that we had expected. Undeterred we continued our walk round past the Casino de Monte Carlo itself, till we arrived at La Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, thinking we would visit the advertised Musée de la Poupée. That, alas, was another disappointment when we learned that the doll museum had actually been closed for the last five years, and there was no other exhibition installed to replace it!

Whilst I am quite sure Monaco is still “The Place” for some people, I’m afraid it left us feeling very negative about it and so we quickly returned to our car for the less than 20km, but 45 minute drive further east to Nice, which, with it’s more demure fading elegance, was a great improvement. You arrive driving along the now infamous Promenade des Anglais, the scene of such terror just a few months earlier. This long boulevard is lined with lots of elegant houses and hotels facing the sea, and yet in stark contrast, the road just behind these buildings looked really very impoverished. We found a spot to park in Parking du Phare at the entrance to the small port just around the headland at the end of the long curving beach. Retracing our footsteps, we passed the powerful Monument au Morts de Rauba-Capéu, a memorial honoring Nice citizens killed during WW1, and once back round the headland of the same name, arrived in the Vieille Ville, the type of warren of narrow streets among old buildings, with restaurants and cafés at every corner, that are such a joy to wander through. Sadly the day was coming to an end and we had little time to really appreciate the place, let alone get a true impression of what is France’s fifth most populous city with a population of about one million, and the holiday destination of around four million tourists every year.

A couple of days later we headed back in that same general direction, to visit first of all, Grasse considered to be the world’s capital of perfume, up in the hills a few miles inland from Cannes. Following a succession of signposts, we eventually arrived on the edge of town at the Fragonard factory, where we took a guided tour to learn about the history and processes involved in perfume production.

According to my two sophisticated lady companions, our young guide was not very knowledgeable; and the inevitable sales pitch at the end of the tour was all rather nauseating in more ways than one, as we really didn’t like any of their perfumes, let alone their aluminium perfume “bottles”! Nevertheless, I was quite impressed to learn that some three thousand different essences, sourced from all over the world, are used in the manufacture of their range of perfumes and soaps, and a good “nose” can identify and distinguish each and every one.

The ingredients of today’s perfumes are sourced worldwide

The local perfume industry started to prosper at the end of the eighteenth century, and centered around Grasse because the micro-climate is particularly beneficial for the flower farming industry. Ironically, whereas in 1905 nearly six hundred tons of flowers were used in the local perfume production, modern methods and synthetic ingredients

Isnard, a local family-owned parfumerie.

mean that less than 30 tons of flowers were used in early 2000.

Heading back into the town centre we were much more impressed by visits to one or two of the many perfume shops, and especially liked that of Isnard. The proprietor, Mlle. Isnard, comes from a long family line that was able to trace their association with the town of Grasse back to the Middle Ages. And because we liked her products so much we came away with a bag well filled with perfume, soaps and even a liqueur to satisfy the driver!

Realising a need to fortify the body as well as the soul we had a delicious late luncheon at “Lou Pignatoun”, deep in the historic centre of the town, lured by their Friday speciality, “L’Aïoli”, a Provençal speciality of a platter of fish, prawns, hard-boiled eggs and lots of other tasty morsels served with a dip of garlic and olive oil mayonnaise. Sadly, we were just too late for that particular dish, but we still ate well of veal, steak, a mix of potatoes and smoked lentils . . . yummy. A quick visit to the very attractive cathedral completed our visit to Grasse, and a second brief stop in Cannes completed our Cook’s Tour of the fleshpots of the Côte d’Azur and also actually marked the end of our stay in Provence. Time for a change of language, and for a short tryst across the border in Italy, but that’s another story . . .

“Habit de Perfume”
Tomek Pawiak 1997
after a 17th century engraving.

Lyon – part four – A smörgåsbord of museums

Our time in Lyon was much more than language learning, food and markets. Among the seemingly limitless attractions in Lyon, we spent many enjoyable hours visiting just a sample of its wonderful museums.

At the ultra-modern end of the scale, there is the excellent Musée des Confluences. Built on reclaimed land at the point where the rivers Rhône and Saône come together, this highly futuristic, stainless steel and glass edifice houses a permanent four part exhibit on the Ascent of Man – Origines, Espèces, Sociétés and Éternités – as well as temporary exhibits, all of which were well designed, and beautifully presented. We hadn’t expected to spend the whole afternoon there but the combination of La Dance Moderne – a well choreographed series of videos and music on screens throughout a large hall, and an Exploration of the Antarctic with some quite amazing underwater film footage of penguins and seals, meant we had little time left for Les Chaussures de la Monde and Potieres d’Afrique, before grabbing a quick coffee and a snack in the unusual – unusual for France that is – self-service cafe, before the museum doors were locked behind us, and it was time to take the tram back to Place Bellecour.

The comprehensive and extensive system of trams and buses and underground trains operated by Metro de Lyon is another aspect of Lyon that makes the city so easy to explore. Although we walked most of our time there, we did take a tram and the underground a couple of times and found them comfortable and clean, and more importantly, on schedule. To get a better feel for the city as early as we could, on our first weekend we also made use of the hop-on/hop-off City Tour Bus. This really came into its own, for your scribe’s old knees at least, after a long, tiring, but fascinating walk around the amazingly ornate late nineteenth century La Basilique Notre Dame de Fourvière and the two beautifully preserved Roman theatres right next door.

The Fourvière hill was where the first Christian community was created in the country of Gaul. The hill’s dedication to the Virgin Mary supposedly saved the old city from the ravages of the Black Death in the fourteenth century, as well as the cholera epidemic in 1832 and the Prussian invasion in 1870; sceptics please remain silent! Certainly the marvellous view of the city from the top of the hill makes any pilgrimage to the Basilica very worthwhile.

One of three entertainment-oriented museums that we found really interesting was the Musée Lumière that we visited with our fellow students, as one of the cultural events arranged by Inflexyon, the language school we attended during our first couple of weeks in the city. Housed in the majestic Villa Lumière on the appropriately named rue du Premier-Film, in the Monplaisir district of the 8e arondissement, this fine collection pays homage to the brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière, and describes their invention and development of the ‘moving picture’. The exhibits include several of the first movies ever made, on subjects as diverse as the children at family gatherings, steam trains passing through Lyon station, young men doing physical jerks and some classic slap-stick comedy routines. There was also a fine selection of their very early camera equipment as well as some insights into their early experiments at colour photography and videography. This was particularly interesting to two people whose home is not very far from Hollywood, an address that may never have achieved its fame without the innovative thinking of the Lumière brothers!

To better understand the history and development of Lyon, we visited the Musée Gadagne in the St Jean quarter of Vieux Lyon. Located in the Hôtel Gadagne, the early sixteenth century home of the brothers Gadagne, the building houses two museums, La Musée de l’Histoire de Lyon and the aforementioned Musée des Marionettes du Monde. This latter whimsical exhibition celebrates the birth of the famous glove puppet, Guignol, and his comedic friends, Gnafron and Madelon, the predecessors of the Punch and Judy shows that many of us remember from our childhood. Guignol was the invention of Lyon resident Laurent Mourguet, an out-of-work silk weaver, turned peddler and tooth puller, who started ‘puppeteering’ to distract his tooth-aching customers from the early 19^th century terrors of primitive dentistry. Less entertaining, but of much greater historical interest, the story of Lyon is long and fascinating, going back to Roman times, and the history museum does it more than justice. Housed in the original Hotel Gadagne built by the Florentine family Gadagni in the early sixteenth century and, with a lot of stairs to climb between four floors of exhibits, it requires a fair degree of stamina and determination to see and read everything; however, the visit is well worth the effort. And, as a final reward, there is a very pleasant little cafe in a roof top garden, which in days gone by was a small urban vineyard.

Completing the portfolio of entertainment-oriented museums in this fascinating city, there is the unusual collection of exhibits that comprise le Musée Miniature et Cinéma, deux passions, deux collections, created by the American miniaturist Dan Ohlman. Housed in the celebrated seventeenth century Maison des Advocats, close to the St Jean Cathedral, this eclectic mix of bizarre, and fairly gruesome, cinematic props,

along with a collection of very impressive miniature models of house and shop interiors, both real and imagined, some of which have been used in major Hollywood movies, makes for an hour of fascination to satisfy all ages and interests.

If none of these museums strike a chord, art lovers can choose from the Musée des Beaux Arts, the Musée d’Art Contemporain and the Musée des Tissus et Musée des Arts Decoratifs, students of ancient history have the Musée de la Civilisation Gallo-Romaine adjacent to the two Roman theatres on Fourvière hill, booklovers might enjoy the Musée de l’Imprimerie, and budding anthropolgists should take in the Musée Africain de Lyon. A veritable smorgasbord for those who love displays of “all-things museum-related”, after all, in one way or another, there is a “museumist” in all of us – thank you www.museumist.com for that delightful confabulated word!

Step one, a month in Lyon.

The sun was shining brightly as these two weary travellers unloaded their bags from the taxi outside 24 rue Lanterne, on a medieval thoroughfare whereon blood flowed freely from the many boucheries of yesteryear, till the neighbourhood gentrified and became the home of famous goldsmiths, painters and surgeons, and finally the site of the Hot Club de Lyon, France’s first gallery devoted entirely to jazz, right next door at no.26. Greeted at the door by our new host, we entered our new temporary home within a noble 17th century building, with its tall, heavy, wooden front door, two steps up from the street, and after climbing another 150 steps upwards we arrived at the tiny garret we knew only as “Les Toits de Lyon”, a miniscule penthouse with 360 degree panoramic views across the rooftops of Old Lyon, that we would call home for the next four weeks.

Les toits de Lyon, seen from our bedroom window.

Why then did we start in Lyon? A very good question, the simple answer to which is that that beautiful city was more or less halfway between Paris, our initial European landing place, and Provence, our first designated area of investigation, and from all accounts was a city that deserved the attention of two discerning travellers. We had also discovered that it was home to several worthy learning establishments where we might further our knowledge of the local language, plus the draw for one of our number who was particularly intrigued by its reputation among the gourmands of this world, and . . . why not? Why not indeed, for as we soon discovered Lyon is a truly wonderful city to experience. Built around the confluence of two great rivers, the Saône and the Rhone, it has a history that goes back to ancient times when it was the capital of the Roman province Gallia Lugdunensis. The oldest medieval and renaissance parts of the city straddle the River Saône and spread eastwards to the banks of the River Rhône, across the other side of which the city spread as industry boomed during and after the French Revolution and on into the 19th and 20th centuries. Lots of history to explore, museums to visit, churches to admire and gastronomy to discover, and plenty of time in which to do these things; for this is not touring à la Thomas Cook, more along the lines of The Grand Tour, so admired by the wealthy young bloods, poets and artists in the days of the horse and carriage, when luggage meant a whole lot more than one can cram into a carry-on on Ryanair!

Having established ourselves into our little nest, five flights – and no lift – high above rue Lanterne, with it’s birds eye view of the corrugated red clay roof tiles of the old city and across to La Basilique de Notre Dame de Fourvière

La Basilique de Notre Dame de Fourviere, from our studio window.

sitting imposingly atop the hill of Fourvière above the bouchons of La Vieille Ville de Lyon on the western bank of the Saône, we soon settled into our daily life as students at L’Inflexyon, a small establishment offering language courses at many levels of competence. It is fair to say that we were certainly the elders among our classmates, an eclectic group of fifteen or more Asians and Europeans from many different walks of life, some studying to gain credits for university and others like us, wishing to hone our language skills to better appreciate the finer points of conversations and life in La Belle France. We studied there for a fortnight, about five hours a day, five days a week, enjoying our walk to get there for 09:00 hours, in the fresh morning air among office workers, parents taking their children to a creche or to school, shop owners preparing themselves to open at 9.30 or 10, small delivery lorries, city trams and buses and street cleaning vehicles, the sidewalks nearly all cleaned of the previous day’s detritus, past the few cafes open to satisfy the early morning caffeine fix, and up the hill towards Croix Rousse and so to our destination, on the narrow, unimposing rue René Leynaud. Our, mainly young, teachers were also an interesting ethnic mix, French born and bred by no means in the majority it seemed. After studying assiduously for three hours we would take a lunch break, which gave us a reason to test out the local cafes, several of which, such as Le Tigre on Montée de la Grande Côte, offered good healthy options so we weren’t obliged to over-indulge on well-filled crispy baguettes, coffee and patisseries, despite the protestations of one of our number who continuously found the temptations of french fromages, saucissons and various offal-based delights extremely difficult to resist. Being close to the Opera National de Lyon and the Hotel de Ville, we would often walk off our lunch wandering around the handsome streets, enjoying the warm September sunshine. Sometimes we’d just sit beside the fountain in the corner of Place de la Comédie and people-watch, that time-honoured activity that is so much a part of European cafe culture. After a further hour or so of study, we would wend our way back to rue Lanterne, sometimes stopping for groceries at a Bio store on the way, at other times detouring to take in the beauty of the city of Lyon, it’s superb position between two great rivers and surrounded by hills on three sides and its delightful architectural mélange. Our first taste of daily life in France suited us very well!