Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [150]
The enemy no longer was England but Prussia and a reunited Germany. Yet the Thiers fortifications did little to stop the Germans during the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, and never saw action during World War I. One of the first things the French did to inaugurate the peace in 1919 was to pull down these outdated ramparts.
Originally, in addition to the unlamented wall, the Thiers fortifications included sixteen forts built outside the wall’s perimeter. Despite heavy bombardment and destruction during the Franco-Prussian War and the subsequent Commune uprising, many of these forts still survive and now serve as nuclei for more modern military installations.
Little else of the Thiers fortifications now remains except for the names of its many gates. But you can easily trace the wall’s general course by driving the Périphérique. Defining Paris’s current city limits (with the exception of the adjacent Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes), the Périphérique provides yet another shell around a city that has outgrown and cast off a remarkable series of ever-larger shells.
Perhaps you will remember this the next time you inch your way through bumper-to-bumper Périphérique traffic. You may indeed be gridlocked, but you are also following—albeit slowly—the latest in a succession of rings marking two grand millennia of growth for this remarkable city.
Affordable Gothic Thrills
ANNE PRAH-PEROCHON
“HOW TO LOOK at a Gothic Cathedral” would be a good subtitle for this piece. For the uninitiated, the three major elements of Gothic architecture are l’arc brisé (pointed arch), la voûte sur croisées d’ogives (vaulted arches which cross diagonally), and les arcs-boutants (flying buttresses).
If you read a little French and have a passion for architecture, look for the Grammaire des Styles series in Latin Quarter bookshops. (Gibert Jeune, gibertjeune.fr, is the best known, with eight locations around the Place Saint-Michel—the general-interest bookstore is at 5 place Saint-Michel—and one in the Grands Boulevards neighborhood.) The series, published by Flammarion and popular among students, covers architectural styles from all over the world; the three most useful titles for France are L’Art roman, L’Art gothique, and La Renaissance française. Each volume is an inexpensive, slender paperback featuring black-and-white photos and drawings.
ANNE PRAH-PEROCHON is an art historian, lecturer, and former editor in chief of France Today, where this piece originally appeared. She has been decorated by the French government as a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and Officier des Palmes Académiques. She also writes the history section of France-Amérique: Le Journal français des Etats-Unis, a monthly founded in 1943 by World War II France Libre exiles that became the international weekly edition of Le Figaro in the 1960s. In 2007, France-Amérique was bought by Journal français, the largest French-language journal published in America since 1978.
THE SHEER NUMBER of major churches that rose in France between 1170 and 1270 (six hundred of them!) is awe-inspiring. Even more impressive is the fact that they are still standing to this day, through numerous wars and hundreds of years. It is impossible to visit France without stumbling upon these lofty monuments in which you can appreciate, for free, masterpieces of just about any art form.
However, you might sometimes be perplexed about the best way to visit these awesome buildings. I hope the following tips and recommendations, based on personal experience, will contribute to your enjoyment.
Take along warm clothing—even in the middle of summer, a cathedral is usually chilly and drafty (the crypts are particularly icy). Also, wear comfortable shoes, because you will probably