My friend Susanna designed these gorgeous new cards for me…

and I’ve got a shiny new website to match! If you have friends visiting Paris, feel free to pass it along!

Looking forward to seeing you in Paris!

If it is actually Venus (there are arguments that it might be Amphitrite, wife of Poseidon, holding the apple that was the symbol of the island Milos), then this is the Golden Apple that she was awarded by Paris in a beauty contest against Hera/Juno and Athena/ Minerva.

And why is Venus de Milo called the Roman “Venus” instead of Greek “Aphrodite” since she is an original Greek statue found in 1820 on a Greek island? Ask the Louvre! I would suspect they would say, “Which sounds better? Venus de Milo or Aphrodite de Milo?”

Everything, my friends, including naming the most famous statue at the Louvre, comes down to marketing.

16-year-old twin sisters from Australia:

7-year-old Theo from Colorado:

A mom of 8- and 10-year old daughters from Washington D.C.

11-year-old Niko from Florida:

Over the last few years, I have discovered that my passion for art and history is contagious. One visitor turned to me halfway through the tour and said, “Do you realize, you radiate with enthusiasm. I can see it in your eyes, and it makes me feel just as enthusiastic!”

One mother sent this photo. I’m pointing out 12th century stone mason’s marks in the fortress wall beneath the Louvre, as her kids EAT IT UP.

And here I introduce tweens to the blessing god from Sargon II’s 700s B.C. Assyrian palace.

So what happens on a kids’ tour of the Louvre? I have a couple of different kids and teens tours: one is a time travel-themed scavenger hunt, and the other is a more creative draw-as-you-go game.

Kids’ tours are usually 2 - 2 1/2 hours. Usually the adults worry the kids won’t make it and we end up going over time because they get so involved. One little boy told me, “I wish this day would never end.” Tween sisters asked their parents at the end if we could “do it again tomorrow.” When you’re having fun, two hours race by.

Although some rooms are closed on different days (including Hammurabi’s Code and Sargon’s Palace on Wednesdays), the tour usually includes a minimum of:

• Philippe Auguste’s medieval fortress - under the Louvre. (photo above)

• The Sphinx of Tanis

• Greek and Roman gods (including Venus de Milo)

• Nike of Samothrace (Winged Victory)

• Veronese’s Wedding at Cana (the biggest painting at the Louvre)

• The Mona Lisa (and 1 or 2 other da Vinci paintings)

• David’s Coronation of Napoleon

• Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People

And if there are girls in the group I make sure to show Elisabeth Vigée LeBrun’s Self Portrait with her daughter Julie, so we can include a woman artist.

AND of course, I used to do the crown jewels…

ALL THIS TO SAY…

I would be thrilled to give you and your children an exclusive tour of the Louvre. There is more information and booking details on my website.

Venus and Nike and Mona and I will be waiting.

November 16, 2015

Friday night I put my 8- and 10-year-old kids to bed around 9pm, then went to bed myself around 9:30, ready to tuck into the new Robert Galbraith mystery, freshly downloaded onto my Kindle. I was just getting into the story, a few chapters along, when I heard sirens outside.

My apartment is on one of Paris’s major boulevards—the one leading from Place de la Bastille to Place de la République—which means that every time there is a parade, march, or marathon, it goes by my window. It’s exciting when thousands of bikers dressed as Santa roar by on motorcycles or the Republican Guards ride their horses past on their way to the Bastille Day parade. As for the other various demonstrations that happen at least once a week, I’m so protest-jaded that I rarely get up to look.

All this to say…sirens are background noise to me by now. I don’t usually notice. But when they continued for a full twenty minutes, I put my book down and got out of bed, opened my black-out curtains, and looked down at the street. My heart dropped when I saw that these weren’t just police cars blaring their way down the avenue. They were ambulances.

I opened my laptop and went to Le Libération’s website. The banner at the top of the page read, “Shootout happening in Paris’s 10th arrondissement. Several dead.” It was 10:15. I clicked on CNN and HuffPost. Neither said anything about Paris. This was new news. This was happening now.

At 10:18 I tweeted that there were sirens going by my window. Two German friends responded immediately that there had been explosions near the soccer stadium where their team was playing France.

That is when I got the feeling.

It was the feeling I got when I heard the first few details about 9/11. The feeling I had in January when I finally realized, an hour after seeing a stretcher being wheeled away from Charlie Hebdo’s offices while walking my daughter to ballet, that this wasn’t just a horrible shooting. It was a pre-planned terrorist attack. It was the numb feeling that something is happening that will change life as you know it. That you and your loved ones are in danger because the target isn’t someone in a gang or drug ring or the mafia. The target is everyday people. The target is you.

At 10:30 I got on the phone and called my ex-husband at his house in the Loire Valley. “The kids and I are safe,” I said. He was confused. “There are multiple shootings in Paris,” I explained. “In our neighborhood. People are dead. I just wanted you to know we stayed in tonight, and the kids and I are safe.”

By 10:35, sirens were going past my window non-stop. Someone Tweeted me a headline from CNN reading, “Breaking News: Several People Killed in Paris Shooting. 7 Others Injured.” The news was out. And French news sites were being more specific. There were several shootings: all in the 10th and 11th arrondissements. All nearby.

Le Petit Cambodge, a favorite restaurant near the Canal Saint Martin, had been attacked. There were dead bodies on the ground. The other addresses were ones I knew. Ones I have frequently walked by going about my daily business. Paris is small, and this is my neighborhood.

And then I heard the news about the Bataclan - the café and concert hall a five-minute walk from my house. It’s a block and a half from my children’s school. The Bataclan was under attack, I read. Gunmen burst inside during a concert.

The ambulances were now going in the other direction. Before, they had been going toward the Bataclan. Now, they were racing away. One after the other. I saw ten in a row. It was 11:32. Someone Tweeted me that 60 were confirmed dead. That’s when I started crying.

As seen from my living room window…

At 11:33 my children’s father called me back. He and his parents were following the news and were, understandably, very worried. I reassured him that we were fine, that the kids hadn’t even woken up, and that we would stay inside. He rescheduled his return to Paris for the next day. He wanted to see his kids.

By then I had been able to contact all of my friends who live nearby. One by one, they all confirmed they were safe, although a few had gone out and were stranded in other neighborhoods. They had decided to stay put, finding nearby friends to stay with instead of trying to return to the chaos.

I noticed the #porteouverte #opendoor movement starting on Twitter, where Paris residents were offering a place to stay for anyone needing shelter, mainly geared toward tourists who had become stranded. I offered my apartment since it was so close to Bataclan. Although news of my offer was spread quickly by social media, no one answered my ad. It felt like 9/11 once again: people were out there willing to help, but no one was there to take them up on it. Those who had internet access weren’t using it to find shelter. They were using it to call for help.

The next few hours were spent pacing. Outside my window, ambulances had begun to park along the side of the boulevard. Traffic grew sparser. At 12:45, I heard a loud noise, and looked outside to see that a motorcyclist had just been hit by a car. Within seconds, forty people, half of them policemen, were there to help him. One of the ambulances sped him away. Chaos reigned.

At 12:53 a few dozen police gathered on the corner just across the street from my house. After ten minutes, they all walked toward the Bataclan together. They were mobilizing to storm the building. The massacre was still taking place.

By 1:30 police had blocked all traffic on the boulevard. It had become a parking lot for ambulances. This was the view from my bedroom window:

Police tape was put up on my corner, and from time to time, an empty gurney was rolled from one of the ambulances past the tape. I discovered the next day that the block north of me was used to load the corpses. The ambulances in front of my house were taking them to the morgue.

On the news, the body count grew by the minute. The police had raided the Bataclan, and the attacks seemed to have stopped. By 3am, I knew I needed to sleep. I checked on my children. Though their bedroom curtains flashed blue and white in the glow of the ambulance lights and the sirens were never-ending, they slept soundly.

I went to bed, fearful of what the next day would bring. I wasn’t afraid of more killings. That thought hadn’t crossed my mind…yet. Instead, I feared the aftermath. The news of what had actually happened once the dust settled and the chaos ended. The body count. The grieving relatives and loved ones. I feared seeing Paris like it was just ten months ago after the attack on Charlie Hebdo. Paris in mourning.

But more than anything, I feared seeing my children’s smiling, innocent faces the next morning and having to tell them that something terrible had happened. Again.

My follow up the next week, titled “The Children”

November 23, 2015

I have avoided writing this for days. I feel like when I post it, it will be time to move on. And I don’t know if I can do that. I feel frozen. On hold.

Unlike after Charlie Hebdo, when my friends and readers allowed me to leap into action, posting more than three-hundred notecards for them at the memorial site with good wishes from around the world, this time I haven’t felt like doing anything.

Why is it different? Maybe because this time I’ve felt like hiding. Maybe because it feels like it’s not over.

The morning after the attacks, I slept until 8:30, when the kids came and piled into bed with me. I had finally fallen asleep at 3:30 a.m., after resorting to half a Xanax to help block out the ambulance sirens and lights outside my window.

“You can watch cartoons,” I croaked. My kids cheered at the unexpected treat and ran out to turn on the TV. I had a moment of panic, thinking that they might turn on a news channel, but as soon as I heard Spongebob speaking French, I knew they were safe.

Almost immediately, my phone started buzzing with messages from worried friends and family, and I gave up on the idea of sleep. In the living room, my kids stared at the screen, mesmerized by the mindless animation. And I had the overwhelming desire to press “pause” on the scene before me. I wanted to stay in the “before they knew” just a little longer.

I got breakfast and put it on the coffee table. That got their attention. Breakfast in front of the TV? The world must be coming to an end. Little did they know.

“Something bad happened last night,” I said. They looked at me, waiting. “It’s kind of like in January with Charlie Hebdo. Bad guys killed people in Paris, but this time it was worse. More people were killed.”

“Okay,” they said.

“I know we were supposed to go to the Science Museum and swimming today, but people are still upset, so the museums and swimming pools are closed. We’ll just stay at home. Daddy’s worried too,” I added. “He wants to come back to Paris to see you.”

“Is it dangerous outside?” my son asked.

“It could still be dangerous,” I admitted. “The police aren’t sure yet. That’s why we’re going to stay home.”

“Tell Daddy not to come until it’s safe,” he responded.

“If we’re staying home all day, can we have more screen time?” my daughter asked, fishing for more than their half-hour per day of games on weekends. I said yes.

They turned back to the TV.

And that was it.

There had been a massacre in Paris, the second terrorist attack in ten months, and my kids were more concerned about Spongebob and video games. As I went back to my room to start answering messages, I realized that this is my children’s reality. This is the world they are growing up in. One of random killings. Of unknown danger.

At lunch I did what we, as parents, had been told to do in January. Instead of dishing out information, I asked the kids if there was anything they wanted to know.

“How many bad guys?” my daughter asked.

“I think seven or eight,” I replied.

“Did they catch all of them?” she asked.

“Some of them are dead,” I responded, “but they might have friends. That’s why the police are asking us to stay inside.”

“How did they kill them,” my son asked.

“They shot them,” I said. If I mentioned suicide vests, that would necessitate an explanation. No way was I going there.

“How many people died?”

“A lot,” I said. “Do you want to know a number?”

“Twenty?” he ventured. “Thirty?”

“More than a hundred,” I replied. My kids gasped.

“It’s very sad,” I said, and they nodded. And that was it for question time. They didn’t ask, so I didn’t push.

I watched them later that day, when we finally went out. A friend down the street had texted, “If I don’t get my kids outside, we’re going to go insane.” We agreed to meet at a tiny park two blocks away. When we arrived, the park gates were locked. We headed for the next-closest park at Place des Vosges, only to discover that its gates were locked too. We opted for standing under the square’s arcade, where the kids used the bag of chalks and soccer net I had brought to turn the 17th century walkway into an art gallery and then a soccer field.

Another mom from our school joined us, just as desperate to get her little boy out for fresh air. I heard the children pass information between themselves. “There was a bomb at the soccer stadium.” “I know.” “A hundred people were killed in our neighborhood.” “I know.” “The bad guys have friends.” “Oh.” They didn’t even look at each other as they traded this information. They just checked in. Made sure they knew what their friends did. Showed they knew what was going on. It felt more like a ritual than communication. As long as they all knew what the others did, then they were fine.

My children hadn’t actually shown fear until my daughter saw an ambulance on the way to the park. She had grabbed my hand in fright, and I had said, “It’s okay. It’s just one ambulance. It only matters if you see a lot of them.”

On the way back from the park, a convoy of five ambulances, sirens screaming, rushed past us. My daughter looked at me, eyes huge. I checked Twitter. No new attacks. “It’s okay,” I said. “They’re probably just taking people from one hospital to another.” As soon as I said that, she relaxed. And I felt the weight of responsibility bear down on me. My children trust me to keep them safe. That was the scariest realization of the day.

The next day, my ex brought us croissants for breakfast. He was visibly relieved to see his children. “You know, it’s safer in the countryside,” he said.

“I barely survived the countryside,” I replied. “Living isolated amongst foreigner-hating farmers is not an option, but if you say you’ll move to New York, I’ll be packed in five minutes.”

“It would be the same in New York,” he responded.

“So I guess we’re staying,” I concluded.

Friends and family had been writing non-stop, suggesting, “Maybe it’s time to come home.” But this is home. My parents are dead, and I don’t have family in places I would live. Anywhere else would be picking a random American city. After living eight years in New York, I can imagine living there. But my ex is staunchly against the idea, and I know myself that Paris is more family-friendly. At least…it was.

I talked about it with an American friend whose kids go to school with mine. She lives next to Bataclan, and still had bloody surgical gloves scattered around her courtyard—leftovers from where paramedics had set up an emergency triage center on Friday night. “It seems paranoid to want to move,” she said. I agreed. “But I can’t help wondering,” she continued, “if this is one of those situations that people will look at in hindsight and say, ‘That’s when we should have left.’”

The next morning, I had an email from our school’s parents’ association. Attached was a letter asking for more security at the school. We were asked to sign it and forward to the mayor of Paris, the mayor of our neighborhood, and the police chief. It insinuated that the location of my children’s school—between the old offices of Charlie Hebdo and the Bataclan—dictated the level of future risk, and suggested scenarios that quite frankly scared the shit out of me.

Monday morning, I walked my kids to school thinking, “This must be what American parents feel the morning after a school shooting.” I was so frightened that my stomach was in knots. I saw fear on the other parents’ faces and knew they were similarly affected.

We watched our children until they disappeared down the hallway, and then stood outside and talked. One of my son’s friends lives on the same block as Bataclan. Her mother told me the 9-year-old had been asleep during the attack, but her 12-year-old son was awake. “He heard everything,” she said. “Explosions, shooting…” Trauma was etched into the lines of her exhausted face.

The mother of my son’s best friend texted me to ask how he was reacting. She was worried because her son wasn’t reacting at all. Le Petit Cambodge is on their street. She kept her kids inside until the blood was cleaned up, but said he had seen the bullet holes in the windows. She apologized for bothering me, saying she was just worried. I reassured her that my son hadn’t shown much of a reaction yet, and promised to keep in touch.

The stories began to roll in. A girl from my babysitter’s high school was missing. Her father had taken her to the concert at the Bataclan, and lost her during the stampede. Two days later she was reported as dead.

A mother of two kids at a local school was killed. Her husband was on business in China, and rushed to get back for his children.

A British friend had to choose between going downstairs and helping with the injured at Le Carillon and Le Petit Cambodge and staying put with her frightened 9 and 11-year-old daughters who had heard the gunshots. She stayed put.

When I picked up my children at the end of the school day, there were five police officers standing outside the school. However shocking it had been to read, our letter had worked.

This weekend marked one week since the attacks. Late Sunday afternoon, the kids and I were walking home down a long narrow one-way street. I was very conscious of the fact that on the next street over—identical to the one we were walking down—was the side-door concertgoers used to escape from the Bataclan. It’s where the video was shot with the woman hanging out of the second-floor window. I, of course, hadn’t mentioned this to my children.

The sun was beginning to set. Shadows lengthened in the doorways. The sky was turning dark. My daughter grabbed my hand with her pink fluffy glove, tossed a nervous glance behind us, and said, “I’m scared.”

“What are you afraid of?” I pulled her in to wrap my arm around her shoulders as we walked.

“I’m afraid that there’s a bad guy walking behind us, and he’s going to shoot me right here.” She bent her arm back to touch between her shoulders.

I turned toward her, bending down so that my eyes were level with hers. “No one’s going to shoot you, I promise,” I said…

Wishing that I felt as confident as I sounded.

Wanting to be able to shield her every moment of every day.

Torn between the urge to hide and a fierce inner rebellion against those who want me to. Furious that those two choices are even a part of my consciousness.

Feeling that primal animal instinct that wants to lash out and hurt anyone who endangers my children.

Knowing that hatred is not the answer.

Feeling.

And feeling.

And feeling.

Realistically, we probably won’t see them again. And so, I want to tell you more about each. Referring to them in past tense, it feels like I’m writing an obituary. So this is the obituary for the Grand Corsage Bow Brooch of the Empress Eugenie.

Every time I brought a group to this room, this was the piece everyone loved the most. At 9 inches long, it wasn’t the largest piece in the collection, and it didn’t have the biggest stones. But for my guests, it remained the blockbuster.

In the order I presented things, you had just seen the pearl diadem and gold and jeweled crown, so at first glance this bow-shaped brooch didn’t look like much. But once you got a little closer and looked a little longer, you could not look away. Its monochromatic beauty mesmerized you. Even after seeing it hundreds of times, I always got chills.

I don’t think it’s controversial to say that some artworks are just more beautiful than others. For example, Nike of Samothrace, also known as Winged Victory. Or Titian’s Venus of Urbino. This piece shared that essence they possess - it was an epitome of beauty. It had a perfect combination of color, symmetry, and boldness that endowed it with the power to produce awe.

Its beginnings were anything but humble. The Bow Brooch was created by jeweler François Kramer as the buckle of a diamond belt that contained more than 4000 stones. It was displayed at the 1855 World’s Fair before being worn by the Empress Eugenie, who was considered a style icon and the most fashionable woman in France. (Her nicknames included “Impératrice de la Mode,” “Countess of Crinoline,” and “Goddess of the Bustles,” and she never wore the same dress twice, selling her used gowns to benefit charity.)

Although there are no images of the Empress Eugenie wearing the diamond belt, documentation suggests she wore it twice. First to a reception for Queen Victoria at the Palace of Versailles, the year it was created. Second a year later, at a reception for the christening of her son, the Imperial Prince.

By 1864, she had the buckle adapted to wear it alone as a bodice brooch, its ribbons and uneven tassels falling to her waist. Without the belt, it comprised 2,634 diamonds, including 2,438 brilliant-cut diamonds weighing 140 carats.

Known as Lot 5 in the devastating 1887 auction of the crown jewels, the bow was bought for 42,200 French Francs (or 85,000 euros) by the jeweler Emile Schlessinger on behalf of Caroline Aster, and relocated to New York where it became known as “Mrs. Astor’s diamond stomacher.”

This is where things get murky. Christie’s claims that the brooch remained in the Astor’s collection for a century. The Louvre says it was bought from the Astors in 1902 by the Duke of Westminster for his daughter Lady Lettice Grosvenor upon her marriage to William Lygon, 7th Earl Beauchamp. This is her wedding photo.

And here she wears it tucked under a cape at the State Opening of Parliament in 1922.

By inheritance, it went to her son, and can be seen here being worn by his wife, Else Schiwe, 8th Countess Beauchamp in a portrait…

…and at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden in 1939.

The count and countess had no children to inherit it, and the piece was bought around 1980 by the New York jeweler Ralph Esmerian.

Those who believe the brooch stayed in the Astor collection claim this is a copy of the original. (If so, I would love to know where is it now.)

In any case, in 2008, the Louvre brooch was to be offered at auction at Christie’s New York, but instead a private sale was negotiated by the Louvre, funded by Mr. and Mrs. Michel Rouffet through the group Les Amis du Louvre. It was bought for a reported $10.5 million.

Of Empress Eugenie’s jewels, the Grand Corsage Bow Brooch is survived by the brooch that was left behind, also by François Kramer, as well as the crown that was broken as it was pulled out of the hand-sized hole cut into the case, both shown in the photo below. The window that was entered by the thieves is the one you see backlit in the distance.

At first, the excitement of the heist captured my full attention. But when it became clear that the jewels would not be quickly retrieved, sadness settled in. In ending this obituary, I can’t say that I will mourn the bow’s disappearance. But it remains in my memory the most exquisite piece of jewelry I had the fortune to know.

It wasn’t until the friend and I thought we might drop by the Louvre to look at the Greek and Roman statuary (we had been discussing mythology at breakfast) that he saw on his phone the Louvre had been robbed.

As soon as I got home, I read what French news sources were saying and began piecing together what happened. I know that room like the back of my hand. As a “guide conférencier,” once of France’s officially recognized tour guides, I have led tours through that room a couple hundred times.

So, as each detail was released, I began forming a map in my mind, trying to guess exactly what had happened and what was stolen. The number of items stolen kept changing in the news, but when the list of stolen items was finally given, I was thrilled to see that I had guessed almost all of them right. But, once the excitement wore off, I was devastated to realize those pieces were gone. Most likely forever.

If I were giving you a tour of the Louvre, I would have taken you through the Greek and Roman statuary rooms. As we look at Venus de Milo, you don’t even notice the understated room around you. But when we arrive in front of the Apollo Gallery, I pause and give you an introduction. I tell you this room was begun by Louis XIV before he left Paris for Versailles. It gives you a good idea of what Versailles looks like, since the Apollo Gallery was Louis’s inspiration for Versailles’s famous Hall of Mirrors.

Then we walk into the room.

Every available surface is covered in gold leaf (yes, real gold). Everything else is painted with scenes from Greek mythology, signs of the Zodiac, giant portraits of the men who had a hand in building the Louvre (including a few kings) or fronted with intricate stucco sculptures.

Entering this room is like walking into Paris’s Opera Garnier. It’s over the top. Overwhelming, because there is not an inch where your eye can rest. It’s ornate from floor to ceiling.

And it is enormous. The gallery is 73 meters long. (A football field is 109 meters.) There are a few windows along the left-hand wall, but the window opposite us, at the very end of the hall, is the one we should be thinking about. This is the window the thieves cut open with a circular saw to enter the gallery.

But we don’t yet notice the windows. We don’t even notice the objects showcased in the room. It takes several minutes of adjustment before we even notice the handful of cases lined up down the middle of the hall.

We pass a beautiful inlaid stone table, walk past cases with hardstone vessels—vases, cups, urns, and other pieces crafted out of precious stone. We stop in front of the first of three cases in the middle of the room that hold the crown jewels.

The first holds Louis XV’s crown. It’s impressive, even though the jewels have been replaced by glass. There are several other items in this case, including three enormous diamonds that have been in the royal collection for centuries: the Regent (which measures 140 carats), the Sancy, and the Hortensia.

When I first heard about the heist, I assumed they had targeted the three diamonds. Then, the press release revealed that the thieves broke open only two of the three cases, and those items were related to “Napoleon.”

So, moving past the case with Louis XV’s crown and the three gigantic diamonds, the second case holds several items, most of which relate to Napoleon I. The third case (closest to the end window that was entered) has items related to Napoleon III (Napoleon’s nephew). I assumed the media accounts were lumping the two Napoleons together, and I was correct.

When police found the Empress Eugenie’s crown on the street outside, dropped by the thieves in their escape, that confirmed to me that the third case had been robbed. Napoleon III’s wife was the Empress Eugenie. Everything in that case belonged to her.

That case is no more, its contents taken. But I’ll show you its contents from memory.

The crown that was recovered on the street (broken) was exhibited on the west side of the case.

Moving counterclockwise, on the south side of the case (closest the window) was the exquisite diamond “Bow” brooch that is everyone’s favorite. Everyone I showed it to—from little girls to older visitors—gasped when they saw it. It was huge and exquisitely crafted. I’ll tell you more about it in a separate article, but it was originally worn at the center of a diamond belt that Eugenie wore when she met Queen Victoria. After wearing it twice on the belt, she wore it subsequently only as a brooch. (It’s as big as an adult hand. Bigger.)

Moving counterclockwise again to the east side of the case, we had Eugenie’s brooch called “The Reliquary” with its fabulous blush-colored diamonds that were once used by Louis XIV as coat buttons. (Each piece that was stolen has such a rich story behind it, I think I will split them into separate posts.)

Moving counterclockwise to the north side of the box, was the Empress Eugenie’s pearl and diamond diadem. Some of the most magnificent stones in this diadem were taken from earlier pieces of jewelry in the royal collection, and each had their own special story.

This crown was a stunner. When I asked people which crown they would take home with them, this one won fifty percent of the time.

But what is VERY INTERESTING to me…which no one has mentioned so far, is that displayed right next to this crown was another brooch, less impressive than the other two, but worthy of its own exhibition if it weren’t grouped with such treasures.

Readers…this brooch is not listed as having been stolen. Which makes me wonder…WHY? If the thieves made the effort to saw into the case, and everything was taken except this brooch…WHY NOT TAKE IT TOO?

This is the detail that has stuck out most in my mind. Did they try to take it and drop it? Or were they given a list of items to steal and that wasn’t on it? There are only 5 pieces in that case. Why leave one behind?

My other theory is that, if the hole they cut was on the opposite side, in front of the bow brooch, they might have reached across the top and grabbed the pearl diadem, but the smaller brooch was too far away to easily reach. (And they were in a hurry…7 minutes from start to finish!)

Moving on…

The next box that the thieves robbed is several times larger than the Eugenie box. I am guessing that they cut into it from its south edge, nearest the window. Displayed on that end of the case were the emerald necklace and earrings that were a gift from Napoleon I to his second wife, the Empress Marie-Louise.

(Quick history lesson. Napoleon annulled his first marriage with his true love, Josephine, when she couldn’t have children for him, and married Austrian/Italian Marie-Louise, who gave birth to Napoleon II.)

The emeralds are stunning. This official photo from the Louvre doesn’t really do it justice – it makes it look cold and dark. In real life, the whole thing is warmer, the green much more lush. You want to rub the emeralds between your fingers, they are that inviting.

Just to the left of this set, taking up pretty much the whole west side of the case, are Queen Marie-Amelie’s sapphires.

Lightning-speed French history lesson: There was the French Revolution. Then Napoleon I. Then three kings. Then Napoleon III. After that, there have been no more kings or emperors.

Marie-Amelie, owner of the sapphires, was married to one of those in-between-the-Napoleons kings, Louis-Philippe.

This is what threw me off when I was guessing what was stolen. The news was reporting Napoleon’s jewels, and Marie-Amelie had nothing to do with the Napoleons. However, if you dig further – remember Josephine, Napoleon’s first wife? Well, she couldn’t have kids for Napoleon but had children by her first husband (who had been guillotined). Her daughter Hortense from her first marriage became queen of Holland, and the sapphires were hers before becoming Marie-Amelies. Thus, the link with Napoleon. (Whew!)

I am guessing that the thief who worked this box took the emeralds that were right in front of him first, then grabbed to his left for the sapphires, because he managed to get the crown and the necklace and just one of the earrings. Did he drop the other one, or is this the point when the two thieves fled the gallery and back out the window? Was he going to steal more if he had time? (The earring left behind makes that almost certain.)

If we stick with the Napoleonic theme, he missed Empress Josephine’s pearl and diamond earrings, which were on the east side of the case, as well as Empress Marie-Louise’s set of gold and micro-mosaic jewelry. On the north end of the case was the stunning emerald tiara of Princess Marie-Therese (the only child of Marie-Antoinette’s who wasn’t killed in the Revolution).

All he would have had to do (if I’m right about the hole being in front of the emeralds) was grab to his right to easily reach the mosaic jewelry. But he didn’t. Again…this could be a question of limited time.

BUT…it also might be a clue as to the thieves’ plan for the jewelry. The mosaic pieces did not have jewels that could be dismantled and sold. There were just gold and mosaic.

This leads to my three theories about what will be done with the jewelry.

Case 1: The pieces are kept intact.

Everyone agrees they can’t be sold in the state they are in. They would immediately be recognized. So, this case there are two options.

- The theft was contracted by an extremely wealthy collector who will keep the pieces hidden in their private collection.

- Or, as has happened with famous paintings and other artworks, the jewelry will be used as collateral in an underground marketplace. Arms dealers, drug dealers, and the like will use, say, a Picasso, as insurance against a shipment of drugs, or as interim payment. In this case the artwork is passed back and forth between criminals but rarely emerges into the public domain.

Case 2: The jewelry is dismantled and sold piece by piece.

This isn’t as easy as it sounds. Some of the smaller diamonds and pearls might not be easy to link to the pieces but still will be recognized as old stones. Many of the larger stones are famous in their own right, some even marked to identify them. To sell them, they would have to be re-cut, like the Hope Diamond when it was stolen from France in an even larger form.

Case 1 could be considered, since the thieves targeted items connected to the two Napoleons. Perhaps the collector ordering the theft had a passion for objects from the French Empire.

But the fact that one brooch was left behind and they ignored the mosaic pieces owned by Napoleon’s second wife (which were within grabbing distance) gives more weight to the Case 2, where they went after the largest stones.

Either way it is a catastrophe. Not in the a way war or famine are catastrophes. These are objects, not human lives. There are much worse things happening every day in the world.

But the crown jewels are an integral part of French history. Not only do they tell the stories of the people who wore them, but of the people who didn’t. When I showed them to guests, I always asked, “Can you see why the poor and starving of Paris were so upset with the royalty?” Wealth disparity is made even more blatant with beautiful objects like these.

Beyond this, however, is their more recent history. These jewels were sold off in an auction held on May 12, 1887, and dispersed among royal families and industrial barons throughout Europe and the U.S. After Napoleon III lost a war and was sent into exile, the newly formed Third Republic was afraid one of the pretenders to the throne would try to seize power. And, realizing the power of these objects—striking symbols of royal power—they got rid of them.

The controversial sale was immediately regretted. And over the last half-century, France has been attempting to buy the pieces back. They have only succeeded with a few. Empress Eugenie’s pearl diadem was purchased by the Friends of the Louvre in 1992. The beautiful bow brooch, which went to the Astors in 1887, was purchased and returned to the Louvre in 2008.

It was only in 2020 that the repatriated objects were put into the three cases in this room. Now they are gone.

The room was already robbed in 1976. That time, armed thieves tied up security guards and stole Charles X’s sword. It was never recovered. It’s been almost fifty years, and the same room was broken into. Again. This heist was so much worse.

I feel lucky to have seen the jewels the week before they were stolen. Instead of just glancing at them and telling my guests their story, as you would expect after so many times, I couldn’t help gazing at them. Being mesmerized by their allure and their light. I felt fed by the beauty they radiated, like I always do by great art. They had that quality. There was a reason they were highly treasured, and it wasn’t because of the individual stones. It was because of the vision and skill of the craftsmen who created them.

I spoke last night with a reporter from Today. At the end of our conversation, she asked me a question she said might sound silly. “If you could say something to the thieves, what would it be?”

I replied, “I would beg them not to break up the pieces to sell for the stones, because their true value lies in the stories they tell.”

If we go by the statistics, we will probably never see these objects again. But one can hope they will someday be found. I do.

Fabulous article by Elaine Scolino here.

“This isn’t jam,” I respond. “It’s confiture. And it’s not just confiture. It’s THE confiture. The one you didn’t know you’d spent your whole life longing for.”

You raise a doubtful eyebrow as we walk into the teeny-tiny space of La Chambre Aux Confitures.

Once inside, I explain that this French jam company began in 2011. Since then, they have prided themselves on choosing the most delicious seasonal fresh fruits, flowers, herbs, spices and nuts, all from responsible farming, and combining them with just enough sugar to reveal the ingredients’ flavor. All of this testing and creating and fabrication is done in Picardy, east of Paris. These jams could not be more French.

Besides jams they sell honey, sweet and savory spreads, and (brace yourself) the a hazelnut chocolate concoction that puts Nutella to shame. (Using coconut oil instead of palm oil.)

Margot, the shop assistant steps out from behind the front desk and, seeing me, begins setting up a table for a blind tasting. “I’m here with the [your name] family from [your state],” I say and she smiles and acts like she knows where that is. If it is California or New York, she’s sure. Otherwise, she’s probably acting.

Margot chooses four or five jams, hiding the labels just in case you read French, and dips a spoon in the jar. She hands it to each one in your party, telling you to look and smell first and then taste. She says something like, “This one is our top-selling jams, and it includes two exotic fruits and a spice.”

Everyone in your group takes a spoon, and then holding it to your noses, inhale a whiff of the delicious aroma. You peer carefully at the jam on your spoon and notice tiny black dots in the deep orange jam. Then you put it in your mouth and your taste buds explode and you experience a vivid taste sensation. Some of your group close their eyes. Others open theirs wide in surprise. “Anyone?” Margot asks.

“Vanilla,” you say, having verified the hunch you formed when you saw the black dots. “Passion fruit,” your wife says. “Mango!” shouts one of your kids.

“You all get a point!” I exclaim. And now that they know they’re playing for points, everyone gets more invested, and with the next sample begin shouting out guesses as soon as their tongue touches the vibrant red jam on their spoons.

“It’s an alcohol and a red fruit,” says Margot.

“Raspberry,” you all shout.

“Correct,” she says. “And the alcohol?”

Your kids look concerned. “The alcohol burns out with the cooking process,” Margot reassures him, and your son lets out a sigh of relief and says, “Good. I didn’t want to get drunk!” He does a fake drunk-walk toward the wall of glass bottles until you grab him and pull him back into the safety of our group.

“It’s more like a wine than a liquor,” I clarify.

“For very special occasions,” Margot adds.

“Champagne!” your wife shouts.

“One point for Mom!” I crow.

Margot moves on to the Elysée collection. (The Elysée is the French version of the White House, and their kitchens co-created these three flavors.) The first is Fraise Gariguette et Piment d’Espelette (strawberry and mildly hot pepper), which your kids don’t quite know what to think about. The second is blueberry, lime zest and basil, which you love but the kids don’t rate as highly.

“I know,” I say, and give Margot a wink. “Could you bring out the Special Jar?” She nods and goes back to the refrigerator and brings out the hazelnut chocolate spread. Everyone, kids and adults alike, close their eyes and are silent. The spread is so good no one can talk. Finally your younger son murmurs, “This is the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.”

“Oh my God.” “Wow.” “Delicous.” Everyone begins commenting once their shock has dissipated. I tell you that a giant jar of this So-Much-Better-Than-Nutella is the one thing my son asked for for graduation.

You begin grabbing jars from the shelves to take back for yourself and for everyone on your guest list as Margot explains that the jams can be used on toast, ice cream, yogurt and some go well with cheese (like the hot pepper one).

Since I’m about to leave for the States to visit my cousin (Arizona) and my best friend (North Carolina) I go ahead and stock up for myself, getting giant versions of the Nutella (I bought the last one) and Mango, Passionfruit, Vanilla. Then I splurge and get Fig, Walnut and Cognac for my cousin’s nephew who makes bread, and for everyone else the Caramel Praline spread, the Strawberry and Espelette Pepper, black cherry, seedless blackberry, and cassis violet.

As we leave the shop, everyone is bubbling with excitement. “So now do you see why ‘jam’ is on the sweets tour?” I ask you with a grin.

“Might be my favorite thing yet,” you confess.

“Then prepare yourself for our next stop,” I say, and we head for the boulevard St. Germain.

and a few steps later we have arrived.

We are standing in front of Maison Le Roux, a chocolate and candy-maker from Quiberon, Brittany. I tell you where Brittany is (the north west corner of France that pokes out into the Atlantic) and that when you’re driving through Brittany you see lots and lots of cows.

“So what ingredients do you get from cows?” I prompt. Somehow, even though we’re standing in front of a candy shop, kids always say “beef.” With a little urging I steer us towards “butter” and then tell about how Henri Le Roux was the first person to use salty butter in his caramel. Then I point to a bowl of caramels in the window and say, “I have to confess, caramel is my favorite candy. And this is hands-down the best caramel in Paris.”

Eyes are wide and anticipation practically crackles in the air.

I tell your group that Henri won Best Bonbon in France prize in 1980 and Best Chocolate Maker in France in 2003.

At this point, the kids push past me to open the door and make a beeline to the caramel counter. So I’ll continue the story here for you, my readers.

Henri was the son of a famous pastry chef. After studying chocolate making at COBA in Switzerland, he took over his dad’s business and then opened his own chocolate factory in Quiberon in 1977. To distinguish himself from others, he decided to create his own signature candy, and using his local beurre salé. After 3 months of testing, he created a salted butter caramel containing crushed walnuts, hazelnuts and almonds. It was such a hit that it won him Best Bonbon in France in 1980. The next year he registered a brand name for it: CBS (caramel au beurre salé). Everyone tried to copy it, but never equalled Henri’s unique flavor and texture.

Having followed the kids into the shop, I point out the six bowls on the counter and tell you that everyone gets to try two flavors. The choice: the traditional CBS, lime, tarte au pomme (apple tart), chocolate and… (each month there are a couple of new flavors - this time it’s pina colada and orange ginger).

The smiling lady behind the counter hands everyone their two caramels on a pottery dish, and you pluck yours off, peel the plastic wrapping off the traditional caramel one, and pop it in your mouth.

And your senses explode in a taste epiphany. There is the overwhelming flavor of salty caramel, but with an underlying nutty note. The texture is very soft, almost gooey. But the crushed nuts hold it together and give you something to crunch on. The caramels are bite-sized, so in a moment you are done and you are left wanting more.

You try the lime caramel, and somehow the rich butter and sour lime go together and you close your eyes and think about being in a lime orchard somewhere far far away from your children. And then one of them yells, “Oh my gosh this is the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth!” And you’re back in Paris. In Le Roux. With me. And I’m smiling because I’m guessing where you were in your head. To cheer you up, I say, “Ready for the next stop? You can’t beat this for caramel, but this next place is the best product of its kind. Trust me, you’ll love it.”

And we leave the best caramels in Paris and strike out (one block) for the rue de Buci.

Luckily, the next street we come across bears the name of the boy in question:

We turn right and begin walking toward “the street named after a famous general who wore his hat sideways,” and if they don’t get that, “he then became an Emperor” and if they don’t get that, I just point and say, “Look!” And everyone sees this and forgets about the game:

We have arrived at the Bonaparte location of the renowned French pastry house, Ladurée. There are several in Paris, with the original being at 16 rue Royale and a super-fancy one on the Champs-Elysées (which also serves as my secret emergency bathroom stop when on the Champs-Elysées - always clean, you don’t have to purchase something, and it has bonus chandeliers).

Like the chocolate pistoles we tried at our last stop, the macaron has its beginnings in a royal story. Remember Marie de Medici, whose pastry chefs were credited with creating the chouquettes we tried in episode 1?

Well, they are also credited with bringing the macaron to France from Italy in the 16h century. (Venetian monasteries had been making them since the 8th century.) However, as often happens when digging around in history, another account (Larousse Gastronomique) claims an alternate origin story. It cites macarons as being the creation of two Carmelite nuns fleeing the French Revolution who became known as the "Macaron Sisters." Which would be a great name for a punk girl-band with Marie-Antoinette wigs.

Importantly, in both of these cases, macarons were just one half of the sandwich-style pastry we know and love today, and there was no special filling or icing.

In 1862, Ladurée Bakery was established in Paris by this guy, Louis-Ernest Ladurée.

In 1930 Louis-Ernest’s younger cousin, Pierre Desfontaines—who obviously wasn’t important enough for a photo—had the idea of joining two macaron shells together with a creamy ganache filling. AND PASTRY HISTORY WAS MADE.

There are other macaron makers now, some of whom produce pastries that are arguably more original or tasty than Ladurée (as my friend Cassi claims Pierre Hermé to be), but for this historical sweet tour, we will stick with the original.

Let’s walk into the shop and peruse the offerings.

The first thing we see in the showcase is this…

which I took at first glance to be soaps. You know what soaps I mean - the ones your mom forbade you from using because they were for guests. But these are not soaps. They are apparently Ladurée’s new gluten-free delicacy, named the Eugenie. I was going to make a gluten joke here, but I know people with celiac disease and am pleased for them that they have a no-gluten pastry option. Nevertheless, the Eugenie will always make me think of soap.

Here is what we came for:

These are the regular choices:

And these are the new special flavors created for the upcoming Olympic events.

On this tour, everyone gets to choose one macaron. Almost all of the kids choose chocolate, although some get raspberry. Almost all the women order passion fruit or caramel. With the men, it’s totally random.

But just this week I discovered the limited edition BRIDGERTON collection, described as “A honey-lemon macaron in the Featherington family colours and a Chai macaron in the Bridgerton family colours.”

Or you can opt for this “honey-lemon pastry, a nod to the bee that is emblematic of the Bridgerton family.”

I have not tried either, but am going to bustle on over to the Champs-Elysées location where they are offering a Bridgerton Tea Time in honor of the Netflix series.

What I see here is that Ladurée not only created what we know as the modern macaron almost 100 years ago, but is staying admirably relevant, celebrating not only the upcoming Olympic festivities, but also the most swoonworthy pro-pastry series on television.

As everybody savors their crispy, flavorful macarons, we exit the shop and continue down the rue Jacob. We stop at the beautiful Place Fürstenberg where I take a photo of you and your family in front of the five-headed lamppost that has been featured in Scorcese’s Age of Innocence, Fantastic Beasts, and the series Call My Agent. Artists also loved the tiny picturesque square, made evident by the museum on the right, the Eugène Delacroix Museum, situated in his old apartment.

We continue on toward our next sugary destination, with the children looking for the street containing the French word for “castle” and with me savoring the lingering bergamot flavor of my favorite macaron - the tea-flavored “Marie-Antoinette.”

See you in our next installment for some sweet treats from Brittany!

Our sign successfully spotted—the rue des Saints Pères—there is a bit of triumphant jumping around before we turn right and walk to the middle of the block to see the exquisite facade of Debauve & Gallais Chocolaterie.

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As everyone oohs and ahs over the prettily decorated landmarked building, I walk you up to the window and point out this portrait and begin telling you the story.

In 1779, the pharmacist of King Louis XVI, Sulpice Debauve, was tasked with creating a headache remedy for the queen, who suffered chronic pain. M. Debauve knew that Marie Antoinette loved chocolate and despised the bitterness of the medicines she was given. He came up with the idea of mixing his headache remedy with cocoa butter and almond milk to make the first dark chocolate with medicinal properties. He formed them into small crisp disks that Marie Antoinette claimed resembled the Spanish coin called the “pistole,” so that’s what Debauve named them.

Note - up until now, chocolate had only been consumed in liquid form. So Debauve is celebrated as the person who made chewable chocolate.

When no longer tasked with curing the queen’s headaches (insert guillotine joke here), Debauve went on to become Napoleon Bonaparte’s chocolatier. With his nephew, Gallais, Debauve founded the company that moved to this location in 1819. The company’s motto, borrowed from Horace, is “Utile Dulci!” or “useful sweets,” because since the beginning their focus has been on “healthy chocolate.”

Luxuriously decorated in the neoclassical style by the First Empire architects who designed the pink mini-arc de triomph in front of the Louvre as well as the arcaded buildings along rue de Rivoli, the facade and the elegant hemi-circular counter (reminiscent of a pharmacy) are now listed as historical monuments.

So, full disclosure: during our tour, I haven’t actually been able to tell you all of this. I shortened it for those with less patience to a 30-second story about Marie Antoinette and her headaches and her love of chocolate and naming them pistoles. And now we walk through the front doors and breathe in the inimitable smell of freshly made chocolate, and head to the right-hand counter to admire the pistoles.

Their medicinal properties are still touted, a fact that no one seems to care about when choosing the 1 pistole each that we will buy and sample. The choices of dark chocolate are: The King’s Pistole (vanilla), the Refined (coffee), the Connoisseurs (dark chocolate 74% from Madagascar), the Young Ladies (with honey flakes), the Ladies (orange blossom), for Evening (verbena), the Purists (dark chocolate 100%).

In the milk chocolate section, they were out of the plain milk chocolate, which is advertised as “La Pistole des Enfants”, shaming any self-respecting adult chocolate lover into selecting one of the dark chocolate choices. So for the kids we buy two milk chocolate pistoles with almond milk, called “La Pistole de la Reine.” For the adults, we buy honey flakes, verbena, coffee and orange blossom.

The children immediately crunch into their pistoles and shrug, as if to say, “Why all the hype? It’s just chocolate.”

This is because they didn’t read the instructions on the bag, which translate thus:

“Above all, take your time and make every moment of tasting a moment of eternity, in the peace and quiet of your home, surrounded by loved ones. With your mind at ease, absorb yourself in the enjoyment of a chocolate. The palate appreciates all the aromas as soon as the sensation of hunger is not pressing or the saturation of the taste buds following a copious meal wears off. Placed in the middle of the tongue, delicately broken with the teeth after a few seconds of controlled waiting, during which the coating warms up, the candy remains in the mouth until the intimate blend of subtle aromas it contains subjugates the palate with all its rich flavours.”

Basically, friends, this is a shameless attempt to hypnotize us with chocolate.

One of us bites into their verbena pistole, just to see what happens. Nothing. It’s a fine chocolate, that’s clear. But the flavoring is so subtle that, standing in the middle of the shop with young ones jumping around saying, “Let’s go to the next place!” it is basically impossible to detect any additional ingredient.

The rest of the party takes their cue from the guinea pig taster, and tucks their pistoles into their bags to taste later, “in the quiet of their home, surrounded by loved ones” and all the rest.

We leave the boutique and return to the street where I give the next clue. We are heading left out the door and the young ones must search for a boy’s name, at which point we will turn right.

(Fast forward to the evening. You take your orange blossom pistole out of your bag. Your loved ones are somewhere near, but not imposing. You sit in a comfortable armchair, put your tired feet up, and slip the pistole onto your tongue. You close your eyes and concentrate on the confection in your mouth. You taste chocolate. And then as it begins to melt…there it is. The slightest hint of orange blossom.)

See you in the next post to sample one of Paris’s current favorite delicacies!

On my training run, with a young Brazilian-Italian girl who fits into that rapidly growing category of “digital nomads,” I found that she was going pretty light on the history and vowed to do better once it was my turn. I studied up on the history of St. Germain, and then the history of each of our stops and a background on the specific sweet we tasted at each stop.

After giving a handful of the tours, I discovered why the young tour guide skipped giving the history. No one who takes the sweet tours actually cares. If I hadn’t understood it from my first solo tour, where I had a single mom at the end of her rope and her two under-10s who were literally swinging from lampposts, it was made exceedingly clear to me during a subsequent tour. As I pointed out the church where the tour started, St. Germain des Près, and told a mother-and-son duo that this was the oldest church in Paris, the 11-year-old boy (an age notably heavy on truth and light on politeness) told me he didn’t care about history, he just wanted to eat sweets. I looked at his mom, and she shrugged. “I’m glad you clarified the type of experience you want,” I told him. And we spent the next two hours, walking from sweet shop to sweet shop, talking about his dog and his brother who was back sick in the hotel and his mom’s obsession with K-pop.

So, just in case any of you lovely people are interested, I will retain a light smattering of history throughout this tour I’m about to lead you on.

I am waiting for you right here, in front of the Église St. Germain des Près. I introduce myself, find out who you are, where you’re from, and what you’ve seen so far so I can adjust the tour to your expectations. Then I tell you:

The Eglise St. Germain des Près is the oldest church in Paris. The original abbey, built in 543 by Childebert I, son of Clovis, King of the Franks, was destroyed in one of several Viking raids on Paris. The present church was built in the 11th century, although like many churches in Paris, new bits were added on over the years.

The name, St. Germain des Près, or St. Germain of the Fields, reveals the fact that the abbey and its surrounding fields and orchards were located outside of medieval Paris. Where we’re currently standing was once countryside.

By now, even your best behaved children start wiggling, so I pull out a paper bag and open it to show you a dozen of these:

These are chouquettes. I mention that they are my kids’ favorite after-school treats. They sell them in many bakeries, and they’re best when they’re fresh out of the oven.

The writer Jean Paul Didierlaurent said, “Chouquettes are to pastry what minimalism is to painting.” And I agree. They’re simple. And perfect. Add anything to them (cream, chocolate, or filling) and they are called something different (profiteroles, pièce montée, cream puffs).

Chouquettes, or “little cabbages,” were brought to France by Catherine de Medici’s pastry chefs. They are made of choux pastry—milk or water, butter, flour and eggs, with a pinch of salt—and are coated in lumps of granulated sugar.

When made correctly, they are light and airy and totally addictive. The bakery near me does not make them correctly. They’re always a little bit greasy and taste overcooked. So for the tour I get them here: Maison Thevenin - Buci.

I encourage you to take two chouquettes each. Depending on the size of the group there are often a few left over. In which case I may use them later to distract kids who are melting down after an hour of walking and talking. Otherwise, I take them home and enjoy them with a cup of tea.

We begin walking west on the Boulevard St. Germain, and I teach your kids the words for mother and father in French. I tell them we’re turning right at the street that has the word for father in the name. And while they’re busy looking for that, I slip in a few tidbits for you, the parents.

I tell you that the cafés of St. Germain were centers of Paris’s artistic and literary life in the 20th century. That artists, musicians and writers escaped their usually cramped, poorly-heated apartments and spent the days at Les Deux Magots or Café de Flore or Brasserie Lipp. This crowd included Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Ernest Hemingway, André Breton, Guillaume Apollinaire, Albert Camus, Pablo Picasso and many other luminaries of the time.

And we’re off to our second destination, ten minutes’ walk away, with sugar on our lips and stars in our eyes.

The most common model is the “grand model.” It is 9 feet tall with four caryatids standing back-to-back supporting a fountain that produces a stream of water flowing into a basin. Most are painted the same shade of green as the city’s Second Empire street furniture (benches, gates, etc.).

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They’re not just pretty. They actually work, providing clean delicious drinking water. They’re democratic, used by rich and poor alike. They reduce plastic use, although that wasn’t an original aim, since they were created long before plastic.

The originals date from 1872. And there are 109 remaining in Paris, located strategically to best supply the population with potable water from March 15 to November 15. (They are shut down during winter months to prevent pipes from freezing and breaking.)

If you ask a Parisian, they might know they are called “Wallace Fountains” or more familiarly “Les Wallaces,” but many won’t know who Wallace actually was. It’s a good enough story to tell you here, so buckle in for some Paris history you may not yet know!

It’s 1848. Napoleon’s nephew Napoleon III pulls a copycat of his uncle, is elected president, then 4 years later declares himself emperor. While Napoleon I wanted to take the world by force, his nephew wanted to take the world by seduction, and in 20 years pulled a total makeover of Paris along with his city planner Baron Haussmann and others. This included wide avenues, matching buildings, parks, railway stations, trees and benches everywhere, an updated sewer system, the buildings along the Champs-Elysées and the gorgeous department stores with indoor lighting (!) and elevators (!). Commerce was king and Paris was looking fabulous, dahling.

But in 1870 Napoleon III takes his eyes off the prize and is sucked into war against Prussia. He loses, the Prussians siege Paris for over 4 months and people are so hungry they eat the animals from the zoo and any other pet or rodent they can get their hands on. Destruction from artillery bombing destroyed aquaducts and other sources of clean water. Potable water was too expensive for most, and water sold by vendors was drawn from the Seine, which contained wastewater.

A few months later, the Communards take over, try to make things better, but in 3 months are massacred by the new government, who in 1 week killed around 15,000-20,000 people. (Blood was running into the river in streams.) By now, most people lived in complete squalor.

In the midst of this, a young Englishman named Richard Wallace was living in Paris and acting as secretary to the 4^th Marquess of Hertford, a bachelor who was probably Richard’s father. The Marquess, who sounds like a complete ogre, taking pride in never helping anyone while spending his time amassing his art collection, died and left his enormous fortune to Richard.

Richard could have easily turned tail and scampered back to his birth-city of London, but having lived in Paris since he was six, he was dedicated to the city and its people. Almost as if to make up for his father’s miserliness, he immediately began using his vast fortune to help the suffering citizens of the city, funding ambulances, food, clothing, housing, fuel and healthcare.

In the end, he decided to return with the art collection to London in 1872. But before he left, he wanted to make one last gesture to help the people.

Waterborne diseases were common, with new cholera outbreaks occurring following a major epidemic in 1832. With no clean water, people turned to drinking only wine and beer to be safe. Public drunkenness became endemic among the poor. Children were given bread soaked in wine for hydration and became sick from it.

Richard considered it his moral duty to keep the poorer classes from falling into alcoholism. The Temperance Movement began in France in 1872 and Wallace was a major donor. “Temperance fountains” had already become a trend in England, and later the U.S., so the concept was in the zeitgeist.

Wallace decided to provide Paris with clean drinking water in the form of fountains. he sketched out a plan and then handed it to an artist friend, Charles-Auguste Lebourg to perfect. From the official Wallace fountain website:

His exacting guidelines referenced size, form, materials and cost. He specified the fountains must be “tall enough to be seen from a distance, but not so tall as to destroy the harmony of the surrounding landscape.” Their form must be “both practical to use and pleasing to the eye.” Their materials must be “resistant to the elements, easy to shape and simple to maintain.” Finally, cost was a major factor. Wallace wanted them to be “affordable enough to allow the installation of dozens.”

Before moving back to London and founding the Wallace Collection (one of the finest private art collections ever), Sir Richard Wallace gifted the people of Paris with even more money and 50 fountains, the first of which was installed in July 1872.

The first run included 2 models: 40 “grand” models and 10 “wall-mounted” models.

A 1875 edition of the Joanne guidebook described them such: “In one model, the water falls in a continuous jet from the centre of a dome supported by four caryatids, filling a small bowl where the cups held by a chain are immersed. In another model, the water falls from a woman’s head, placed at the centre of a small circular pediment, filling a small wall-mounted bowl between two pilasters.”

There were practicalities that went into the design which make total sense when you look at them. They are elevated so stray dogs wouldn’t drink from them. (Those who weren’t eaten during the siege.) The caryatids are placed close enough that horses couldn’t use them. (Ditto.) There were originally two tin cups attached with chains that were left submerged in the continuously flowing water to be sanitary. And of course the continuously flowing water kept it from being stagnant and thus disease-prone. (Paris’s Council of Health had the cups removed in 1952.)

The fountains were so practical and popular that Wallace added ten more in 1876 and another ten in 1879. More were added later, at the request of each neighborhood, and two further models were produced: a colonnaded fountain and a “petite.”

Of the 4 original models, only 2 colonnaded examples still exist as well as 1 wall model. (The rest you find are the “grand” with the caryatids, and I’ve seen the “petites” all over the place, especially inside parks.)

Today’s 109 Wallace fountains are run by the “Eau de Paris” (“Paris Water”) company, which reports to the Paris government. (Including the Wallace fountains, there are 1200 water points through the city where you can fill your water bottle with clean, delicious water.)

Since the beginning, the water for the fountains comes from the same drinking supply that is run directly into apartments, so it’s the same as tap water. The fountains are fully disinfected every 2 weeks, and are on a constant restoration cycle, which is a major endeavor since they are each made up of 80 parts and weigh 1300 pounds (600 kilos). Cracks and damage are restored, they are repainted, and then placed back where they came from.

The caryatids are all distinct from each other by posture and draperies. They represent four virtues : Simplicity, Kindness, Sobriety and Charity, as well as representing winter, spring, summer and autumn. The base is octagonal, and the dome is covered with “fish scales.”

You can tell if the fountain is one of Wallace’s originals by checking the markings on the top of the pedestal. The oldest ones bear the name of the sculptor “CH. LEBOURG SC” and have the year 1872. On the opposite side is the name of the foundry “VAL D’OSNE.” The later replicas were produced by GHM and bear a “GHM” marking on the very bottom of the base.

And for those Atypical Paris nerds, the Wallace Fountains organization actually provides a checklist of every fountain in Paris so you can do your own scavenger hunt. If you send them proof you’ve found all of them, you get a certificate calling you a Friend of the Fountains. So you can bet your sweet bippy I’m starting ASAP.

As for Sir Richard Wallace, when he died in 1890, he was buried in Père Lachaise cemetery after a celebrated funeral cortege and was touted by all as “the Benefactor of Paris” and “the Providence of the Poor.” And to those who know the story, the fountains will forever remain as reminders of one man’s generosity.

I visited Paris's Ossuary for the first time in the 1990s. It's the part that’s open to the public, and is what everyone thinks of when you say "Catacombs." I was so enchanted that I returned several times over the years. Its well-ordered bones, beautifully arranged for visitors since the early 19th century, are fascinating partly for the creep factor and partly for the beauty of art made of, well...us.

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But the main reason I was drawn to it was because every one of those bones...more than six million people’s remains...has a story behind it. There are perfectly round holes in some skulls that suggest a bullet wound. (Or maybe even trepanation?) There are the black cloth-covered carriages that, between 1786 and 1788, traveled secretly by dark of night from Paris’s overflowing graveyards to a manhole, dumping bones into the empty mine shafts. (More were added later.)

And there is my curiosity as to just why Louis-Étienne François Héricart-Ferrand (director of the IGC after Guillaumot) decided to arrange all of the bones in geometric—even heart-shaped—patterns. Had he seen the Capuchin Crypt in Rome, with monks’ bones arranged in ghoulish maquettes complete with flying skeletons? (Which predated his designs by almost 200 years.)

But the Ossuary is blocked off from the area we were exploring. So it was to my surprise (and not a little bit of delight) when we turned a corner to see some bones lying on the floor. "Are those...human bones?" I asked. Gilles didn't answer, waiting to see if I would freak out.

I'm not sure if it was a relief or a shock to him when I crowed, "Bones!!! There are bones!!!" and ran around delightedly taking photos.

I have an…atypical…relationship with Death. The subject features prominently in all of my books. I was a goth teen, taking photos in cemeteries and have a pendent with my mom’s ashes. And I had a fabulous collection of taxidermy and (animal) bones until my Labrador puppy ate them all.

When my four-year-old dug up a beaver skull and presented me with it like a trophy, insisting I display it on our mantle, I knew she was flesh of my flesh, and unquestionably bone of my bones.

Back to the catacombs...we followed the bone trail, which grew larger as we proceeded down the tunnel.

Gilles explained that after an extension was built onto the Ossuary in 1859-1860, Paris planners realized they needed even more space for bone storage. After 1870, they decided to use the quarries under Montparnasse Cemetery (where we were standing) as well as Montrouge cemetery and elsewhere. And since these were not going to be viewed by a ticket-paying public, they were unceremoniously dropped through manhole covers and left to assemble themselves. Or not.

Finally we came to this corridor:

and I thought my joy was complete. Until we went just a little further and found this:

An actual THRONE OF BONES. Who knows when or by whom this was made, but it is morbidly spectacular.

As we left the Montparnasse Cemetery area, the bones disappeared. But death is referenced elsewhere in the catacombs, such as in this carving (which Gilles said was relatively recent)…

and this painting by an artist with the cataphile nickname "Lone." It is on one of the only large walls in the catacombs, in a "fontis" (a bell-shaped cave formed by a tunnel collapse). It took Lone the entire year of 2010, and is a rendering of the Swiss Symbolist artist Arnold Böcklin's painting "Isle of the Dead." (Incidentally, the original version, painted in 1883, was bought at auction in 1933 by Adolph Hitler, and is now part of the collection of the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin.)

The mural is so large and the space around it so small, that I could only capture it in several separate shots.

It depicts a shrouded corpse standing in a boat behind a white coffin, being rowed to the eponymous isle.

At the base of the mural, the artist has given us a palindrome (reads the same in both directions) sometimes attributed to Virgil meaning, “We spin around the night consumed by the fire." (It's also the title of a French film, and was used by Umberto Eco in The Name of the Rose.)

It's a beautiful, if not morbid, metaphor for the catacombs: humans flit through its passages like moths, quickly devoured by the flame of time, while the tunnels remain a subterranean time capsule, preserving our traces for future generations.

And on that cheery note we headed to what I consider the creepiest part of the catacombs: the Nazi bunker.

It wasn’t originally built by the Nazis. Instead, it was built as protection against them.

Gilles told me that following WWI, France knew that Germany wanted vengeance. Only a few years after the armistice was signed—as early as 1923—thousands of shelters began to be prepared under Paris to protect the population against bombs and gas attacks.

Three of those shelters still exist in the catacombs, one of which is the bomb-proof bunker beneath Montaigne high school. During the WWII occupation of Paris, it was requisitioned by the very army it had been built to protect Parisians against. The German Luftwaffe made it their command post.

They marked the whole area of the catacombs near the bunker with three colors of arrows painted atop white backgrounds with the red leading to the high school and the blue and black leading to emergency exits.

The arrows are meticulously placed, and traces of gates or doors block alternate corridors so that no one can wander off—either purposefully or by accident. (Like the two Nazis who left their uniforms behind, far from the bunker area, in Part 1.)

Amid the floor-to-ceiling graffiti that dates from the last few decades, a few clues remain as to what this part of the catacombs was like during the German occupation.

Signs saying "Smoking Forbidden" and "Quiet" are stenciled in German on the walls.

The chemical toilet still stands in the bunker area, a reminder that the catacombs lie several levels beneath Paris's sewer system.

Reinforced metal doors with locking wheels (I'm sure there's a term for this) are propped around the area.

This door, which was dumped unceremoniously upside down, still has the German word for "Emergency Exit" painted on one side.

Although I expected to see some original graffiti from the time of the Nazi occupation, Gilles told me that very few German inscriptions remain. Apparently the Nazi commanders ordered their underlings not to write on the walls. And, as history shows us, soldiers are known to obey orders.

The things I haven’t shown you? There are wells throughout the catacombs, some dried up, others full of crystalline  water.

There are waxy-looking deposits on some walls, producing cave-like stalactites.

There is the absolute silence while you sit, waiting beneath a manhole cover...until someone steps on it 70 feet above and the sound reverberates through the room.

There are fossils visible where the limestone ceiling has crumbled away. And so much more. I’ve only shown and told you a fraction of what I saw.

After visiting the off-limit catacombs of Paris with Gilles a few times, I have returned many times on my own or taking friends, and once my younger child. (They of the beaver skull.) I now understand some of the mystery and even fear that surrounds the catacombs. While there was no talk of ghosts or spirits while we roamed the subterranean tunnels, something definitely exists down there in the darkness.

When you leave the catacombs, you do not leave whole. For three hundred years, they have claimed something from each and every visitor. Like they did with those before you, they take a piece of your mind. Of your heart. Of your spirit, if you believe in such things. And that piece will never be yours again.

It is waiting for you—with all of the others—calling you back to return…deep below the streets of Paris.

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Before I take you further into the catacombs, let me tell you a little about the people who venture down there.

The term cataphile is a self-appointed moniker by those who enjoy this particular form of urban exploring. People have been visiting the catacombs since the tunnels were first dug to connect the separate mine networks.

One of the most famous cataphiles dates from the Revolution. Philibert Aspairt's corpse was found in the catacombs in 1804, eleven years after he went missing. His widow identified his body, saying he had disappeared in November 1793, but she had no idea why he would have been in the catacombs. The cause of death was never stated, but one thing was clear: he died there because he couldn't get out.

His body was found in the quarry beneath the Capuchin monastery, near the locked door where the monks stored their homemade liquor. Which seems like a good motive to brave the catacombs. But Gilles said it would have been easy for Philibert to break into their basement from the street, if liquor theft had been his intention. He thinks Philibert's motive was the same as ours: curiosity and the thrill of exploration.

He was buried near where his body was found, not a very restful resting place since the noise of Paris's RER trains seems to be loudest in this spot. (Still just barely a rumble.)

Needless to say, Philibert's sad end didn't stop people from exploring. There was a boom in the 1980s, when crews of cataphiles regularly visited. One of the best known was "The Rats," who are behind some of the tunnels' most interesting artworks, including this AIDS-themed wall:

A whole vocabulary began to be used: there were cataboys and catagirls, one of the most famous of the latter being Foxy. When she died of cancer, a memorial plaque in the style of Philibert Aspairt's was created by her fellow cataphiles. My photo of the plaque didn't turn out since the guy taking a nap in his hammock (in Part 1) was blocking the view. But here is her portrait on a nearby wall:

and a mural facing her memorial plaque of a fictional bar made in her name:

But not all visitors of the catacombs are considered cataphiles. There are the cataclastes: people who come down with spray paint and deface old inscriptions, steal plaques, and leave their trash behind. They don't respect the place like the cataphiles, who have a worshipful we-are-the-keepers-of-the-catacombs attitude.

And then, there are the catacops (in French "cataflics"). They are a group of police assigned to the catacombs, as well as other surface-level activities. They visit the catacombs from time to time, giving 70-euro tickets to anyone they find there, and escorting them back to the surface level. They also keep track of any new passages made by cataphiles. (More on that later.)

The most famous catacop was Jean-Claude Sarette. He was known to respect the catacombs, unlike the catacops of today who spraypaint big ugly red numbers at crossroads so they can locate themselves on their own map. (Even though street names are clearly indicated on most corners, and used by the cataphiles, who don't need big red numbers to figure out where they are.)

Although Sarette ticketed cataphiles he found, they all loved him, and when he retired after twenty years on the force, they erected a street sign-style plaque in his name...

...and, according to Gilles, gave him a huge farewell party...in the catacombs. At the time of my tour, Gilles was still in touch with him.

The goal of the cataphiles isn't just to party underground or find a cool spot to make giant murals. It is exploration. And the reason Gilles, the artist, and I were able to worm our way quickly (in 10 hours) through the network was thanks to the vent holes (or chatières) the cataphiles dug to link one tunnel to another.

The reason they do this is twofold: one: to find spaces that were not included in the original survey. And the other: because a tunnel has been blocked, either accidentally because of cave-in, or (more often) because the City of Paris has blocked a tunnel so that no one will go there.

After everything I've told you, I'm sure you can imagine what cataphiles do when they find a tunnel cemented over. Yep. They dig around it. Like here:

The cataphiles have also cleared areas where the original workmen dumped the debris in order to have space to sit around and eat, or stand around and chat, or, in the case of La Plage (The Beach), throw huge dance parties.

(The right hand side of the Rats’ Hokusai pastiche was spraypainted over by cataclasts, and lovingly restored by cataphiles.)

We came across a small party at the beginning of our tour. It must have been around noon (on a Sunday), and there were a dozen twenty-year-olds sitting in a small cave, drunk and merry. Gilles went in and asked them what time it was. A boy said, "It's always night down here."

As we left, one of them followed us out. "That wasn't Gilles Thomas, was it?" he asked.

"Yes," I replied.

"No," he said, his face stretching into a Edvard Munchian scream.

"Yes," I replied.

"No. Really, don't joke about something like that. That wasn't really Gilles Thomas, was it?" He looked like he was about to faint.

"Yes," I replied.

He kept standing there arguing with me about Gilles's identity, until I finally turned and left him gawping, so that I could hurry after my legendary guide who had scuttled off to avoid hero worship. For it seems that, among all of the other cata-legends, Gilles holds his own place in cata-mythology.

Like I mentioned in Part 1, the story of the catacombs began with the collapse of a limestone mine in 1774, which swallowed a whole street of houses (and people) along what is now avenue Denfert-Rochereau. King Louis XVI named his architect, Charles-Axel Guillaumot, as chief inspector of the Inspection générale des carrières (IGC), charged with inspecting, charting, and reinforcing the mines. He took on the task whole-heartedly, working with a team of eighteen men.

Like I mentioned before, each inspector left their mark. And if you know the code, you know who was in charge when each pillar was reinforced. (Finding a "G" for Guillaumot is a special thrill!)

As you can see, Guillaumot was inspector twice: for 14 years, then a five year gap, then again from 1796-1807. Can anyone guess why? Yep...it was because of this little thing called The French Revolution.

Since Guillaumot was appointed by the king, the revolutionaries threw him in jail. But he was given his job back in 1795 when Napoleon recognized his importance to the project. His "G" began appearing inscriptions using the Revolutionary calendar, like the one below, and he continued working on his prize project until his death in 1807.

After Louis XVI was guillotined (21 January, 1793). all signs of royalty were ordered destroyed. Therefore, the fleur-de-lys carved into the catacomb's signs were scratched out.

But that wasn't the only thing that changed. Before Napoleon, the streets were numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... up one side of the street, and then coming back down 10, 11, 12, 13, etc. In 1805, Napoleon instated the system that is still used today: even numbers on one side of the street and odd on the other. (The numbers start at the Seine with 1 and go higher as you get further away from the river, or for east-west streets start with sunrise, at the east, and get higher in the direction of sunset, at the west of the city.)

So when you see a number scratched out, and the new address carved in its place—topped with a star—you know that dates from 1805 or later.

HOWEVER...the people tasked with scratching out the fleur-de-lys missed a few. Ten, to be exact. And Gilles led the artist and me on a mini-scavenger hunt for each and every one. They weren’t easy to find, which is why they were spared. One had been in a pool of water. The other behind a sign:

And others had lost their color or were in unexpected locations:

Also the Revolution mandated that all signs of religion be destroyed, so streets with saint names were changed. For example, rue St. Jacques becoming plain old rue Jacques. During the Restoration, some were changed back, but if there was no space a tiny "St" was carved in between words.

My favorite remnants of the Revolution aren't the official ones. They are the graffiti left by the cataphiles of the day.

As I learned while studying Napoleon with my kids, the general-turned-emperor became reviled for, as one poet said, "taking all of our sons." Napoleon's battles were bloody, and a great number of France's young men were killed during his short reign. One unfortunate boy went to the catacombs to express his grief over choosing a lottery number that ensured his army inscription. (I can only imagine it would be treason to express it anywhere above-ground!)

I can't read the whole thing, but it gives his name, says he was born in 1789.... "drew in 1809 the number 197"... and the rest basically says "in drawing that number, the people of France chose my fate." In just one of the battles of 1809, Napoleon lost 23,000 men to the Austrian army. We can only hope that this boy was one of the few to survive.

This one shows a Napoleonic soldier. The date 1813 is written above it, which happens to be the year of the Battle of Leipzig, which cost more than 90,000 men their lives.

Not far away, in the same corridor, Gilles pointed out a drawing and asked, "What do you think this is?"

After a moment's thought, I said, "A guillotine, with a ladder going up to its platform." Gilles looked at me so strangely that I thought I had gotten it wrong, but apparently I'm the first to correctly answer his question. (!) The theme is repeated in a more detailed drawing on the facing wall.

Which is quite similar to the one used to execute Robespierre, complete with side-railings.

However, in the catacombs version, the artist has gone all-out and included ladder-railings and a basket to catch the severed head beneath the guillotine.

And on that note, we will close today's history-lesson-slash-treasure-hunt, because in the next post I've got something I know you’ll love: BONES. Lots of them.

When it comes to Paris, I have always been drawn to “what lies underneath.” When I was 24 and living in a 17th century building in the Marais, the basement had an ancient set of stone stairs that lead down into the pitch black darkness. I would tiptoe down three or four steps, then chicken out. Because visiting my storage space down there I had seen rats. Big rats that scuttled around with supernatural speed. Rats were a deal-breaker for me.

I enjoyed visiting the official Paris Catacombs (the Ossuary, where all the bones are) enough to return four times. But I had heard tell of the non-tourist catacombs of Paris, the ones that stretched for miles beneath the city, and I wanted to go. All the stories I had heard of parties down there…even movies…were from the ‘80s, though, and I didn’t know anyone who had been since then.

It was when I decided that for my 50th birthday I would do something I’d never done, that I remembered my desire to see the unauthorized catacombs. I contacted a guide I’d used for private tours to ask if he would take me. He declined, but said he knew someone who could. He wouldn't give me the guy's name, saying he would contact me.

"The guy" turned out to be Gilles Thomas. He offered to take me and some author friends on a two-hour tour of the abandoned tunnels beneath Cochin Hospital. He said there were lights and we wouldn’t need any special equipment. I said that sounded wonderful, but what I really wanted was…you know…The Other Tour. Gilles kind of waffled about it and said I should come to his office to clarify what I was looking for.

This was obviously a test. He wanted to meet me in person and make sure I wasn't a complete wimp. Once I was sitting there in front of him, in real life, he had me define very specifically what I wanted.

"The illegal parts...yes, in the dark...yes, in the water...yes, for hours and hours...yes, I understand we could be caught by the police and given a fine." He warned me that if I was in the least bit claustrophobic, I shouldn't go. We might stay nine hours underground, and if I freaked out in the middle of the tour, it could be hours back to an entrance. I put on my brave face and told him that's exactly what I wanted. He got a little gleam in his eye and I knew I’d passed the test.

I asked him what his fee was. He said, "Homemade chocolate cake."

"For a nine-hour tour?"

"It has to be homemade," he repeated.

"But can't I give you something else? I could translate one of your articles. I translate historical documents, t.v. shows, books..."

He looked hurt. "My fee is chocolate cake."

"Chocolate cake. Fine!" I accepted before he changed his mind.

He gave me a time and a place to meet him—on a street corner in the south of Paris—told me to wear a head-lamp and shoes I didn't care about ruining...but not rain boots because they would just fill up with water. And that was that.

Now that I knew his name, I went home and looked him up. And I discovered I was getting a tour from The Expert of All Experts. The guy who, for the past thirty years, has held a mythical role in the hierarchy of cataphiles. (Those whose passion is exploring the off-limits catacombs.) The guy who has written eight books on the topic, including:

Les Catacombs: Histoire du Paris Souterrain, which the Académie française awarded with the Ève Delacroix Prize in 2016. (!!) Which kind of says it all, right?

Not to mention that he is the go-to guy whenever anyone important wants a visit. Including George R. R. Martin. And Pixar's team planning Ratatouille. And the makers of As Above, So Below. And every other important thing that is written or filmed about the catacombs. I thanked my lucky stars that I had somehow stumbled into this chance of a lifetime, and began getting my ducks in a row: buy headlamp, get dogsitter, plan a chocolate cake that would be worthy of a Gilles Thomas tour.

Gilles phoned me the night before my tour wondering if I had decided to back out. I told him the cake was baked and iced and I was ready to go.

I woke up the next day with full-blown jitters, after having a series of complicated nightmares where Gilles had given me a list of supplies that I couldn’t find, that the cake wasn't good enough, that my kids came along and I had to protect them. I choked down my breakfast, drank about four cups of coffee, and got together this:

(I opted for buttermilk brownies instead of cake.)

Then packed a bag with this:

Towel in a plastic bag (because Douglas Adams), apple, sandwich with 10 euros and a metro ticket sealed in the bag with it in case I dropped everything in the water, my identity card in case someone needed to identify my corpse, scrunchie to tie back hair, and no bottles of water because I knew there wasn't a bathroom down there.

I waited nervously on the appointed corner until I saw Gilles walking toward me in thigh-high green waders. Within minutes, an artist friend of his joined us, and we were off. Through a gate, down a hill, along a very long, dark passage (Gilles asked me not to be more specific) until we reached this hole:

"Here we are!" Gilles said.

"Where?" I asked. "In the gutter?"

"The hole's right there." The artist pointed to a crack in the wall.

"I'm going to have to squash the cake," I said, trying not to hyperventilate.

"That's fine," Gilles said, and promptly squeezed his 6'2" body through the crack.

I mashed the bag I had using to hold the cake upright into my backpack, got on my hands and knees, and followed Gilles and the artist through the crack in the wall and down into the darkness of the catacombs. After a few yards of crouching, we were able to move standing up. Most passages are like this:

...wide enough to walk through, but not to stretch your arms out. I was slightly stooping most of the time. And about 1/4 of the passages ceilings so low we had to fold over double to scramble forward.

Let’s take a history break so I can tell you what these tunnels are.

Before Paris even existed as the city is now, there were mines on the outskirts of town...mainly for the limestone used to build the buildings you see in Paris today. At the time, the mines were under farmland. But as Paris expanded, homes were built on top of the hollowed out land, and the more heavy buildings perched atop these holes, the more dangerous it got.

This oblivious co-habitation of city and deep holes continued until 1774, when a whole street of apartment buildings and homes fell through the ground. Louis XVI ordered a commission to inspect, chart, and reinforce the mines. (The Inspection générale des carrières or IGC.) So Charles-Axel Guillaumot (the chief inspector) and his crew went around to all of the individual mines and dug tunnels to connect them. They raised the ceilings from the crouching height miners were forced to work in to a height that allowed for men pushing wheelbarrows. They reinforced the walls and ceilings and labeled them as they went.

So several individual mines were connected, thus creating the network of catacombs we have today. (I am simplifying greatly, but you get the idea.)

Having given you the context, let’s go back to our tour.

As we made our way through the tunnels, Gilles pointed out Guillaumot's handiwork and the system of labeling he had established. Markers were drawn on the walls in pencil/charcoal. Afterward, stone-carvers (those who carved gravestones) came through and carved the pencil markings into the wall. (Because of the humidity, most pencil marks are still visible.)

Here is one example:

Beneath the inscription “Caveau des Lazarists” (Graves of the Lazarists) is the number 12 (the marker identifying the reinforcement or pillar) F. (the initial of the IGC inspector currently in charge) and the date (in this case 1866).

Most of the markers in the catacombs follow this formula, except when the stone carver got confused like here:

and put the date first, the initial, and a 2 after. Then he scratched out the 2 and put “No2.” beneath. (And for those of you who can guess what the tiny drawing is beneath the numbers, it dates from the same year. More on that topic later.)

Besides the IGC markings all over the place, there are other official markings: street names and sometimes numbers of houses or names of important buildings directly overhead.

As for street names, they can be either on plaques (many of which have been stolen):

Or carved into the wall:

like "Dle ENTRE LA Gde ET LA Pte AVENUE DU MIDI”. (Diagonal between the Big and Little Avenue of Midi.)

End of history lesson (for the moment) and back to the tour.

Soon after crawling through the hole, we began walking through puddles of very cold water. It soaked through my hiking boots and chilled me right through. Gilles said it was because we were still near the entrance, and the water wouldn't be that cold throughout.

Which I soon discovered when we hit an area of waist-high water. Gilles showed the artist and me how to straddle the tunnel, putting our feet on a ledge at the base of either wall so as not to step in the deep bit. At one point, my right foot slipped, and I stepped down to the center of the floor, soaking myself up to my butt. (I'm 5'9", BTW.) I quickly regained my footing, and that was the deepest I went for the rest of the tour.

The water in the cave was usually crystal clear. When it appeared muddy, Gilles explained that it was because someone had recently walked through and stirred up the silt. Meaning we weren't down there alone. There was no odor besides humid rock except when we came across other cataphiles who were smoking (smoke smell), drinking (booze smell), burning candles (wax) or using some kind of lantern that had a chemical smell. This was rare, though, since we probably only saw 15 people in the 10 hours we ended up staying down there.

One note about smell, though. At one point I smelled a cigar, and even saw smoke hanging there in the air, as if it had no where else to go. I asked Gilles how long it would last before it diffused in the 90% humidity. "Three hours," he told me. "Like a woman's perfume."

It was also around the time that I was wading through thigh-high water that I asked Gilles about the fauna of the catacombs. There are no animals, he told me. Not even rats, because there is no food for them. The artist who was with us said she had heard about animals, like a fox, getting lost down there, but that was rare. And the whole time we were underground I saw only 2 spider webs (no food for spiders either?) and this:

oh...and this guy taking a nap...

who also counts as fauna, I suppose.

One last thing for today: depth.

This is how deep we were. (The ladder goes way up above where it disappears at the top of the photo.) Gilles said we were 20 meters (66 feet) below street-level in most places, and as high as 7 meters in others. Once we even climbed all the way to the surface, up a staircase and behind a locked metal door, and peeked out of this keyhole:

to see a sculpture across the street, and unsuspecting people walking just a few feet away from three very muddy and wet people wearing head-lamps.

Note on this particular locked door: Many years ago, two Nazi uniforms were found just behind it. Which means, unless they were ambling naked through the streets of Paris, two Nazis changed out of their uniforms into civilian clothes, walked through the door, and never made it back for their uniforms.

Alternate scenario...non-Nazis acquired Nazi uniforms, wore them underground to the Nazi bunker (coming later), then changed into their regular clothes before going out in the world. Since the uniforms are all we've got, the story is up to you. And trust me, there are a million stories lurking below the streets of Paris.

Part 2 to come!

(A longer, chattier, version of this article was first published on my author blog in 2017.)

And welcome to those who are joining us from my Amy Plum mailing list. This is my alter-ego’s new substack all about Paris (or the parts you don’t usually see).

If you walk west along rue de Rivoli from Hotel de Ville toward the Louvre, you will pass a tall stone tower that looks like it should be attached to something, but is standing alone in the middle of a tiny park. It is decorated with Gothic ornaments and topped with gargoyles, just like Notre Dame or any other Gothic ediface, but…where’s the church?

I have long been fascinated by the Tour Saint-Jacques. I even used it as the letter “D” in my Alphabet of Paris Zombies.

While planning my next young adult book, set in Paris in the late 19th century, I chose the Tower as headquarters and lair for a young inventor and thief. It’s the tallest thing around, I figured. And from the top, it must provide an unparalleled strategic view of the city. When I found it had been used as a shot tower (molten lead was dropped from the top of the tower through a sieve, droplets cooled as they fell and landed far below in a trough of cold water having solidified into rifle shot…tiny bullets) I knew I had chosen the right place.

Soon after I moved back to France in 2005, the tower was closed for renovations, and remained that way for years. Ever since, it’s been sitting there, pretty and clean and stabilized, but still closed off. Or so I thought. I recently discovered that it is open to visitors by guided tour 6 months a year on weekends. So last Sunday Tallie, Tibor and I took an hour-long visit, which included climbing the tower’s 291 steps to the top.

But first, to look into the history of this enigmatic solitary tower, I’ll start with the oldest source in my incredibly geeky home library: my 1899 edition of “Paris: Its Sites, Monuments and History.”

then a little later:

My 1924 edition of Baedeker’s holds a few more details. (But gets the dates a bit wrong.)

In a much more recent (and more whimsical) recounting, the French author Régine Deforges, wrote in her 2011 “Le Paris de mes Amours” (my own translation):

“In bad weather, certain evenings, the Tour Saint-Jacques looks like a Victor Hugo drawing. I’m never too reassured when I cross the little square that surrounds it. I look up to make sure no gargoyles will fall on my head, despite the renovation work undertaken. The Tour Saint-Jacques flanked the portal of a church that goes back to Carolingian times and was rebuilt in the 11th and 14th centuries. Public writers did business in the stands leaning against the north side of the church. The most famous of these scribes was Nicolas Flamel who lived on rue des Ecrivains. Nicolas Flamel, who was wealthy, gifted the church with an ornate lateral portal, on its tympanum a bas-relief showing him wearing the garb of a sworn writer, accompanied by his wife Pernelle, both kneeling at the feet of the Virgin Mary. The Church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie was sold in 1797, then demolished. Only the tower, which served as the church’s bell tower, was spared from destruction. It was the Parisian starting point for the pilgrimage to Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle. At its summit, a huge statue of the saint indicated the direction of the path to the pilgrims.

The church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie had the right of asylum. In 1405 a room was installed in the the sanctuary’s vault for those who wished to take refuge there. Where do the assassins and thieves go now, after finding shelter for centuries in the church? Are the street people stretched out on the square’s benches their descendants? Does the phantom of Nicolas Flamel, buried in the church, keep them company? Could it have been in memory to Blaise Pascal and his barometric experiments made at the top of the tower that it was spared at the moment of the Revolution?”

(Apparently Mme Deforges doesn’t have a high esteem of street people. But, then again, who has ever accused the French of being politically correct?)

Almost every source I saw mentioned that this church offered the right of asylum, or as Baedeker put it, “was once a sanctuary for criminals.” We’ve all read books or seen films where the hero is struggling to make it to a church to find safety from the law. But this was a real thing, and this church was famous enough for it to provide a room for those escaping the law. Just imagine what kind of people were turning up!

I find this absolutely fascinating. So did king François I, however, and he decided he didn’t like the fact that this effectively put the church above the government. He abolished the right to asylum in 1539.

Armed with all of this juicy historical information, I booked tickets and dragged my not-terribly-enthusiastic kids (“291 steps!?”) along to the tower tour. We were greeted by a guide who informed us we were one of only 17 people allowed to go up the tower at a time. She explained that the reason it was closed in winter was because of the high winds and bad weather at the top. At which point I had to resort to bribery to convince Tibor to continue with the ascent.

We started in the park, which would have been below-ground before Haussmann (under Napoleon III) dug up the whole neighborhood to make a straight path for rue de Rivoli. The workers dug so low that it exposed the foundations of the tower. So a huge, ornate pedestal was commissioned to surround and protect the base.

The guide unlocked the gate and we climbed the stairs to stand under the vault in front of a larger-than-life statue of Blaise Pascal.

The guide told us that the 12th century church had, indeed, been enlarged and paid for in the 14th and 16th centuries by Paris’s wealthy butchers, who lived nearby. “Dirty businesses” (like slaughtering animals) had been pushed off of the Ile de la Cité and out of the “center” of town, and the butchers had taken up residence near the market area that became Les Halles.

The church had other wealthy patrons, including Nicolas Flamel, who made his riches from real estate, not from his experiments with alchemy. (As was reported in that historically reliable treatise, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.) Flamel married an even wealthier woman and they helped pay for part of the church. They were buried beneath its nave in 1418 and their bones later transferred to the catacombs.*

The bell tower was built from 1509-1523 in flamboyant style. (Look at the architectural embellishments and think “flames” — you’ll see where the style got its name.)

Then from 1647-1648 Blaise Pascal did his experiments on the weight of air in this tower (or in the tower of another church named almost the same thing, thus confusing historians everywhere) resulting in his discovery of atmospheric pressure.

There was damage to the church and bell tower during the Revolution. The previous tower roof sculptures of 3 evangelists and St. Jacques were destroyed. Our guide told us that the revolutionaries hacked through ropes, causing the bells to crash to the ground, inflicting destruction on the tower’s base.

In 1797 the Revolutionary government sold the church for scrap. It became a “stone quarry” feeding the city’s building works. But the sales contract specified that the tower was to be saved. Why? Mme Deforge guessed it was out of respect for Pascal’s experiments. I surmised it might have been haunted by Nicolas Flamel’s ghost. (A much more exciting explanation.) But the alchemist-slash-real-estate-baron was long gone by the time the bell tower was erected. So there goes that theory.

It was bought by an entrepreneur named Dubois, who is the one who transformed it into a shot tower, transforming molten lead into rifle shot. Our guide told us that following several fires (imagine that!) the city bought the tower back in 1836 and integrated it into Haussmann’s plans with architect Théodore Ballu in charge of renovations. It was declared a national monument in 1862.

In 1891 it began being used as a meteorological station, and continued in this capacity for half of the 20th century. In the early 21st century it was discovered that the renovations had weakened the tower. So in 2006 a new renovation was undertaken, this time sourcing limestone from the same quarry in the Oise where the original stones were sourced, thus stabilizing the cracking tower.

Now it acts as the starting point for the pilgrimage road to Compostelle and, as such, is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The tower’s history explained, we began the climb. There is only one way up and down the tower, and this is it:

I was prepared to hike all the way to the top, but before long, the guide went through a side door and led us into this room:

which held decorative chunks of the original building that had either broken off or were replaced.

I took about a million photos of this guy:

because in my story this is what happens:

No thief had a better view in all of Paris. Martin could spy, unperceived, on everyone for blocks around. And now, what he spied was a figure in a blue smock over white pants flitting like a moth from shadow to shadow, avoiding the dim pools of light cast by the streetlamps.

He grabbed his spyglass from where it hung around the gargoyle’s neck. “Thanks, Victor,” he murmured to the statue, and focused his lens on the figure below.

Please tell me this is not a Victor…

…with his dashing mustache and goatee, pointy ears, and one remaining horn!

So I embarrassed my kids by doing a whole photo shoot of Victor and this guy…

who, unlike Victor, does not have a funnel and a spout and is thus a mere chimera…decoration only, no utility. So pff…he might not even get a name.

We then proceeded up the next set of stairs to this room:

which was where the meteorological experiments took place until around 1950.

The paint is wonderfully crumbled.

When you look up, you see all the way to the top. And the stained glass windows, which were installed during Ballu’s renovation, bear the initials NF for Nicolas Flamel and TB, for (surprise, surprise) Théodore Ballu.

When I saw this room, my heart gave a little leap. I love it when reality fits perfectly inside my fiction. (It happens more often then you think. Which is one way I know I’m on the right track.)

This is my description of Martin’s hideout:

The thief sat on a golden throne in his sumptuous lair, scheming his next heist. The room was lined with diamonds and gold with mountains of money stacked here and there. At least, that’s how it appeared in his mind. In reality, it was a drafty room furnished with a straw-stuffed pallet for sleeping, a box for his clothes and belongings, a stack of books that he used to teach himself to read, and a rickety chair, on which he balanced, leaning back on its hind legs. That, and a table holding a million parts and pieces and several half-made and barely made inventions. He called it his lab. He was not in the room, however. He was in his thinking place, outside on the balcony.

Perfect, right?

So, on to the next set of stairs. Finally we found ourselves on the roof of the tower, with a panoramic view of Paris, surrounded by giant statues representing the 4 evangelists.

Over the years and through many museums, I’ve taught my kids the symbols that are the key to reading European art. (My M.A. was in medieval painting.) So when I asked who the statues represented, they knew the answers: Matthew - angel (it’s supposed to be a “man” but it’s always a man with wings, so let’s just say angel). Mark - lion. Luke - ox. And John - eagle.

These are replacement sculptures for the originals, destroyed in the Revolution. (There were originally 3 + St. Jacques.) These four are apparently copies of others that are at the Cluny Museum.

Then, of course, there’s the massive St. Jacques pointing the way to Tours, which is the next step on pilgrims’ long walk to Compostelle, Spain.

Ooh - and look…a trap door. I’m DEFINITELY using that in my story. (Tibor freaked out when I tried to nudge it open, so I’ll save further research for another time when he’s not with me.)

So here’s the view…

And here’s a shot of me in my element. (History, art, architecture, urban exploring, and storytelling…all in one. Couldn’t get better.)

The 291 steps down were a cinch. And once at the bottom, I couldn’t help but look up. How majestic is that?

The whole family gave the visit a thumbs-up, with Tibor saying his favorite thing was the view from above on the Pompidou Center and Tallie choosing sitting at the top and looking out over the city. As for me, I’ll take the whole thing, every inch of it, and make it mine.

Tickets are 12 euros for adult/10 for students. Reserve here.

*Fun fact…Nicolas Flamel’s funerary stone was set high up in a column in the church, above an image of the Virgin. When the church was demolished, a fruit and vegetable merchant bought the engraved slab of stone and used it to hold his spinach. The city of Paris convinced him to sell them the stone, and it is now in the Cluny Museum.

Despite the name, the housing complex has nothing to do with Picasso, besides the fact that it was built on a plot of land named “La Place Pablo-Picasso." Conceived by Spanish architect Manuel Núñez Yanowsky, and inaugurated in 1985, it is supposed to be an abstract representation of an upside down chariot, the axis of the wheels parallel to the Equator.

The concept is impossible to see, however, when you’re standing in the large, fountain-strewn square smack dab in the center. The wheels are easy to decipher. Two round narrow buildings that locals call “the camemberts.” But the rest of the chariot? I was never able to figure it out.

What became quickly obvious was that the architect had decided to sample several eras of architectural history, give them a quasi-futurist update, then smash them all together into one site. You had flying buttresses mixed with Art Deco.

Baroque mixed with computer chip circuitry mixed with Moorish patterns.

The only word I could think of as we walked through was “mishmash.” It was unsettling. Unattractive. And, though the “camemberts” were impressive, the rest just felt like a failed art project.

But, compared to Abraxas, the community side of things seemed to be working. There are 540 apartments, a nursery, a secondary school, and boutiques. But half of the fountains are empty, with a couple of the pools containing brackish water, one housing some out-of-place looking ducks.

This video captures a lot more than I was able to in my photos:

Rosa and I followed our strategy from Abraxas, taking a good look around before pulling out our cameras. This time, we saw the inhabitants. Children played, parents chatted while keeping an eye on their offspring, and two Eastern European men walked in a zig-zag pattern around me and Rosa until they began to feel like sharks closing in on prey. We took this as our sign to leave, and jumped back in the car and headed towards Créteil, a suburb southwest of Noisy-le-Grand.

It should have taken us 25 minutes to get from one location to the other, but we got lost. There seem to be two housing complexes called “Les Choux" (short for “Les Choux-Fleurs” or “The Cauliflowers”). We headed into the one indicated on Google Maps, driving through an open gate toward ugly modern apartment buildings. The gate closed behind us, locking us into the parking lot. Once I realized that the “Choux” we were looking for weren’t hidden behind the complex we were trapped inside, I tried to get out. But the gate only opened with a beeper, and none of the people coming through the pedestrian gate had one on them. Finally, I asked a little girl walking a dog, and she told me she had one in her apartment. Minutes later, she was out on her balcony trying to beep the gate open for us…to no avail. After what seemed like forever, she came back out of the building, climbed into a parked car, fished out another beeper, and opened the gate. We were free, but still lost.

Google Maps kept pointing us back toward the gated parking lot. But after a bit of aimless driving, Rosa spotted the towers in the distance. A long, circuitous access road (boulevard Pablo Picasso…yes another namesake) took us around the circumference of the area, then between these two nightmarish sculptures of a boy and girl - seemingly the “gate” for this non-gated community. (His shirt says “Arthur” and hers says “Zoe”).

A google search of Arthur et Zoe brings you to a page where you can buy the pair for 2300 euros to act as 3D signage for school zones. The page says that they “very effectively ensure a real visual impact to naturally encourage drivers to slow down near risk areas such as schools.” (Merci, Google Translate.)

This, to me, is a disappointment. I was hoping they served as security for the Choux. As in, if you didn’t have the right license plate they would shoot lasers out of their eyes, or at least toss mini-grenades, protecting the community from invaders.

In the case at hand, Arthur and Zoe “very effectively ensured a real visual impact” by making us feel we were entering a post-apocalyptic zone where anything could happen, so watch the fuck out. They were fulfilling their original purpose, although I assume their creators were aiming more for positive community-spirited “look out for the kids” feeling rather than existential dread.

Minutes later, we found ourselves in the middle of the Choux. We pulled into a parking spot by the side of the road, and began wandering the property. This time, I felt completely safe. There were families packing up their cars for, presumably, Sunday lunch at Mami and Papy’s house. People walking dogs and chatting. As they strolled and enjoyed their weekend, these people held themselves confidently and openly, not protectively and suspiciously, like I had felt at the previous locations.

The buildings themselves are breathtaking. Ten round towers of 14 floors and one “ring-shaped” tower of 6 floors, they are decorated with panes in blues and greens and exude a faded beauty. The cauliflower petals looked more like lilypads to me. They form the apartments’ balconies, their 2m height insuring privacy while granting outdoor access. They were originally meant to be mini-gardens, trees and all, which would change color with the season. But the promoter refused to buy into it and the idea was scrapped.

The Choux predate Abraxas and Arènes de Picasso by almost a decade. Architect Gérard Grandval opened them in 1974 after five years of construction. The land had previously been one of the principal vegetable production centers of Paris, housing the largest sauerkraut (choucroute) factory. This was said to have been taken into consideration by the architect.

In 1998 the city decided to rehabilitate the area. They made the central building public housing for families in “precarious situations,” and then designated a quarter of the apartments for students in order to mix socioeconomic levels.

Getting closer, I saw that the units have unpainted wooden shutters, which mixes a natural component in with the concrete and glass.

On our way out, we saw that one of the buildings is being cleaned, and were able to imagine how the complex looked when it was newly opened. Gleaming white lilypads anchored by swaths of color. Entering the building in 1974 must have felt like being part of a brand new world, and standing out on your lilypad balcony looking across at a garden of Choux must have been thrilling beyond belief.

We left the peace and calm and utopian order of the Choux and headed back to Paris, only to be faced with the harsh reality of capitol city living: the Paris Marathon had started, and roads into town were blocked off. What should have taken twenty minutes ended up taking two hours, and it was only through sweet-talking a policeman that we were allowed to turn onto the road accessing the rental car return. Away from the ordered universe of 70s and 80s planned communities, we were back into the messy, beautiful chaos of Paris.

For my 50th birthday, that was booking the expert on the off-limit (e.g. illegal) Paris catacombs to take me for a 9-hour tour. (Okay, I didn’t imagine it would be more than 4 or 5 hours, but we were having so much fun we lost track of time. Plus I wanted to see the bones, the German bunker, the ‘80s graffiti, the Napoleonic-era sketches…everything.)

So this time, when my late mom’s best friend wrote to wish me happy birthday, I did my annual facepalm, then decided it was time to visit some Brutalist buildings that had been on my wish list for a few years, in particular one called Les Espaces d’Abraxas.

Now, the reason I hadn’t already visited Abraxas on my own was because you really want a car to do the visit, due to its reputation for being dangerous. As in, if you go during the day you run a chance of being robbed, beaten up, having objects like glass bottles thrown at you, or, if you get off easy, just verbally harassed or followed. One reason for this is that drug dealers and gangs live in the building complex. Then there’s the fact that if you are living near the poverty level and tourists of a socio-economic status higher than your own visit every day to gawk and take photos…well, how would you feel about that? Especially since a trickle of architecture enthusiasts has grown into a steady stream of movie fans since 2014, when the location was used in the 2nd Hunger Games film.

Since I just happened to have a rental car at my disposal for a couple of days, I decided it was time to pay a visit to Abraxas. My plan was to go early morning, while the gangs and drug dealers were hopefully sleeping off their Saturday night and the locals wouldn’t be up and about to witness two privileged White and Biracial girls oohing and aahing over their home. (Most of the population originates from sub-saharan Africa as well as north Africa: Morocco and Algeria.) So at 9am on a Sunday morning, Rosa, a friend I had convinced to accompany me, and I piled into the car, set our GPS for Noisy le Grand, and were on our way.

As Rosa and I drive east from Belleville, let me tell you more about Brutalist Architecture, for those of you who are new to the subject. The style originated in mid-20th century in England (during post-war rebuilding) and quickly spread throughout the world. It emphasizes materials and construction - mainly using big slabs of concrete to build quickly and cheaply. I’ve heard people say it looks Soviet, but the style didn’t reach the Soviet Union until the ‘70s, where it replaced the Stalinist style and quickly began being mass produced.

One famous example of Brutalism is the Barbican Center in London.

Another is the Geisel Library in San Diego (which houses the Dr. Seuss Collection).

I first heard about Brutalism around ten years ago from the writer Kerry Hudson, who is a self-professed fanatic. When I looked it up, I saw that there were several Brutalist buildings in the Paris area. And I’ve been meaning to visit them ever since. And then I did a gig writing for a Belgian handbag brand called Octogony who based the oval design of their bags on this building…

…and I was hooked! Since then, I’ve had my eye out for Brutalism, and have found it in Paris, Berlin, and London.

So, back to that cloudy, grey early-March morning, where Rosa and I are pulling into Noisy le Grand about 40 minutes after our departure.

We followed signs for Les Espaces d’Abraxas and scoped the area for a place to park that would afford a quick escape if needed. Just beside Les Espaces, we spotted a multi-level Brutalist parking garage that linked the housing complex with a shopping compound.

We pulled the Mini into the space closest to Abraxas, locked our handbags in the trunk (bringing only our phones with us) and set out.

We entered through a passage made of what looked like red stone, but is actually cement with oxides mixed in. (This was an innovation of the architect, which allowed for polychromatic - multi-colored - facades. Before him, most Brutalism was concrete-grey.)

We passed a mini-Greek temple placed there for no apparent reason that I could see, besides perhaps providing lighting with its cool negative-space columns.

As we entered, we passed one White guy - kind of tech-nerd looking - walking his dog, and then an older Black woman with a shopping cart. And those were the only people we saw the whole twenty-or-so minutes we were there.

Once past the passageway, we came up through the opening shown at the bottom of this chart and emerged into the Place des Fédérés.

The site was conceived by Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill, based on his “left-wing ideals.” Quoting Wikipedia, “The buildings’ post-modern design utilises classical motifs and new building technologies to achieve a luxury aesthetic previously reserved for upper classes.” The plan was to mix socioeconomic levels in one location and prove that a neighborhood could benefit from wealth diversity. As with many idealistic plans, this was awesome in concept. But in practice…not so much.

On the graphic, you can see it’s made up of 3 separate structures.

The Theatre is semi-circular, ten stories high, and has around 100 apartments. It had the bigger budget and was intended by Bofill to house a wealthier category of people.

Then there’s the Arch, which is 7 stories high and houses 20 apartments.

Then there’s the Palacio, which is made up of 3 buildings, is 18 stories high, and has 441 2- to 5-bedroom apartments.

So Bofill’s lofty ideas of constructively mixing classes instead created tension between the inhabitants, which was exacerbated by a lack of maintenance and a dearth of nearby commerce.

By 2014, the infrastructure had degraded to the point that the town discussed demolishing 600 apartments in the Palacio. But after an uproar from both the architect and conservation groups, it was decided in 2017 to “rehabilitate” the building instead. The architect agreed to come back and oversee the project himself, but when I googled him, I saw that he died in January 2021 from Covid, so who knows what that means for the buildings.

My visiting strategy, was to take in the space without taking pictures, then, before leaving, whip out the phones and take all the pictures we wanted, in case we got chased off. We wandered a bit, overwhelmed by the majesty of the place. But maybe majesty isn’t the word. It kind of catches you by the throat, but not in a good way. Your wonderment has to contain a good dose of respect because there’s an oppressive feel to it, and I don’t think it’s just from all of the eyeballs I imagined staring out at us. It’s heavy. Impressive. Beautiful enough to bring tears to your eyes. But scary as hell.

We filmed a little, took some photos, then both got creeped out enough to decide to wrap up our visit. We made a quick sweep near the Palacio to get a closer look at the details, since it didn’t look that “degraded” to us. It was only in getting closer that you started to see the ugly side…

We took a few last photos and then got the hell out of there, walking briskly back to the car. Once inside, we both breathed sighs of relief that we hadn’t realized we were holding.

And as Rosa and I make our way to our next destination, I’ll let you see what Hollywood did with this spectacular setting.

Next on my list was the abandoned “Double Helix” parking lot, which was supposed to be right near Abraxas. But I couldn’t find it on Google Maps, and internet searches didn’t give an exact location, so we drove around for a little while before giving up. I was disappointed to miss something with such strong Jetson vibes, but there was more to see and the neighborhood was waking up.

The Brutalist Birthday wasn’t over yet! There were two more destinations, and there are enough photos and comments to justify splitting that into a second post. So for now some advice.

If you want the “odds to be ever in your favor” while visiting Abraxas, I would highly recommend not taking the train (RER), because that way if you get in a pickle, you’ll be stuck. For us, parking in the adjacent parking garage for a short visit was perfect. And going early morning worked well for us. I saw other people advising people to only visit with someone from the neighborhood. Good luck with that. So I’m not going to recommend going, because I would feel awful if anything happened to you. But if you have already seen it, or decide to take your chances (please be careful), then let us know in the comments. As for me, I’m so glad I finally got to experience Abraxas for myself.

On our third day, I had a good wander around town, then Tallie met me at the head and we went to the National Museum to see art by Polish artists.

I did this in St. Petersburg on a visit five years ago, and was blown away by works of Russian artists I had never heard of. This museum brought the same kind of delight. We discovered works by artists whose careers were overshadowed by those who left home for Paris or other art havens with patrons, buyers and dealers with the power to make an artist truly famous in their lifetimes. (Many of these probably did spend time in Paris, but, for whatever reason, made more of a name for themselves at home than on the global market.)

Some of my favorites:

We did a lot of wandering and saw things like:

Quite honestly, we were getting travel fatigue, so wandering aimlessly seemed perfect. Tibor and I even spent a few hours reclining in the grassy area encircling Old Town (where the city walls used to stand) planning the D&D (Dungeons & Dragons) campaign that he was being forced to DM (dungeon master) since everyone in his group has to take a turn. (Tibor doesn’t think he’s creative, but when we start talking through a project, he shows flashes of brilliance!)

I’ll tell you about two more highlights of Krakow before finishing this travelog. (Our last stop was Berlin, but I’m itching to write about other things, so will save that for another time.)

The first is the bugle that sounds from St. Mary’s Cathedral tower every hour. We heard it when we first arrived, but were confused because after playing for a minute, the song suddenly broke, mid-melody, and just…stopped. People clapped afterward, as if that was normal, so I knew it was something I’d have to look up.

(someone else’s video since mine didn’t work…)

And this is what I discovered: in the middle ages, a bugler played from the tower at sunrise and sunset, signaling the gatekeepers to open and close the city gates. If he played at any other time, it was a warning signal.

So it was that in 1241, when a Mongol army arrived at the gates, the trumpeter sounded the alarm. They closed the gates in time, but before he finished playing a Tartar arrow hit and killed him. Since then, the song breaks off mid-note to commemorate the brave bugler who gave his life to save the city.

This led to a heated discussion between Tibor and Tallie about how skilled the archer must have been to have hit the bugler from outside the gates, including much speculation as to distances and types of weapons. Once we knew the story, every time the bugler played, it was thrilling to listen for the final broken note.

Secondly, we did a tour of town, including the Jewish Quarter, Kazimierz, in one of the little golf carts that line the streets around the main square. It was our last morning and we had a couple of hours after check-out and before our train, so I splurged for the tour.

We had had lunch in the Jewish square a couple of days before, where I had eaten an award-winning soup (or so I was told) served in a bread bowl.

But we hadn’t seen the site of the actual ghetto. And I had read that it was used by Steven Spielberg to film Schindler’s List and is considered an area of great historic value. So after a quick breakfast in our room…

…we left our luggage to pick up later and piled into a golf cart. Our driver, Alex, shuttled us around as we listened to the pre-recorded woman’s voice tell us the history of the city.

I unfortunately tried to make conversation with Alex, which led to him telling me exactly what he would do next time he ran into his ex-boss, a gangster who owed him a chunk of money for “errands run.” Since bloody vengeance and anti-immigrant sentiments were all he wanted to talk about, I finally made it clear I didn’t feel like chatting and instead focused on the recorded tour.

As we made our way past monuments into the Jewish district, the unembodied voice told us about how the Jewish population began settling in Krakow in the 12th century, with about 64,000 Jews living there before WWII. Kazimierz was seen as the ideal Jewish community for the rest of Poland, the best craftsmen, business leaders, and active civic participation. Between 1939 and 1941 Krakow’s Jews were displaced and then forcibly removed from their homes. They were resettled into Podgórze, a ghetto that the Nazis completely closed off from the rest of the city.

There, people lived in misery, ill and starving, until they were either actively liquidated or sent to the concentration camps. Only 10% survived, many of them thanks to Oskar Schindler. Most of the survivors never returned to Poland. But the few who stayed managed to revive their cultural identity and create in Kazimierz a place of cultural significance.

We stopped outside Pod Orlem pharmacy, where a Roman Catholic pharmacist, Tadeusz Pankiewicz, is credited with saving many Jewish lives by continuing to serve the people of the ghetto. He was recognized by Yad Vashem as being “Righteous Among the Nations.”

Four pharmacies operated in the Podgórze district before it was closed off. The Germans offered to relocate them to the gentile side of the city. Pankiewicz was the only one to refuse the offer, and he and his staff were given permits to enter and exit the district.

I’ll let Wikipedia take over here to explain what this meant to the Jews of Krakow:

“The often-scarce medications and pharmaceutical products supplied to the ghetto's residents, often free of charge, substantially improved their quality of life…. In his published testimonies, Pankiewicz makes particular mention of hair dyes used by those disguising their identities and tranquilizers given to fretful children required to keep silent during Gestapo raids.

The pharmacy became a meeting place for the ghetto's intelligentsia and a hub of underground activity. Pankiewicz and his staff, Irena Drozdzikowska, Helena Krywaniuk, and Aurelia Daner-Czortkowa, risked their lives to undertake numerous clandestine operations: smuggling food and information, and offering shelter on the premises for Jews facing deportation to the camps. One of the surviving 'Schindlerjude' Stella Müller-Madej described Pankiewicz as “a wonderful human being” and remained close to him after the war. On one occasion, he hid Stella under his desk during a German Aktion or roundup in the ghetto.”

The building is now a museum. Spielberg donated $40,000 towards its preservation.

Since it’s hard to imagine how people were “shut in” to the ghetto, here is a still-remaining part of the walls that was constructed around the district. Armed guards were stationed outside.

Heroes Square was the biggest open space in the Krakow Ghetto. It was the site where families were separated in the mass deportations, people were beaten and executed…basically a site of horrors. The square was made into a memorial, with 37 giant chairs and 33 regular-sized chairs, symbolizing loss and absence. Some of the regular-sized ones are near bus-stops and people are encouraged to use them…demonstrating that the victim could have been any of us.

I would love to go back and spend a couple of days studying this history and visiting the important locations in its narrative. However, with two teenagers along for the ride, I appreciated the amount of information I was able to get and the fact that they enjoyed the golf cart ride, except when passersby LOOKED AT US, and then…oh the shame!

We had Alex stop in front of the ice cream shop for ONE LAST CONE,

and then booked it to the station to begin our 8 1/2 hour train trip to Berlin. We had exchanged our tiny apartment in Paris for the home of Tallie’s German exchange-student family, which turned out to be palace-sized. It had the original early 20th century moulding and Art Deco wall painting and AN ACTUAL ORGAN.

But that is a story for another day.

The organized tour leaving from Krakow looked too expensive, so I took a chance, booked a taxi (a 35 minute drive), and bought some tickets that I thought looked inclusive enough. (There are a few choices - you can do an intensive tour that goes even further than the regular one, but I wasn’t sure how Tibor would feel about that.)

We arrived and stood in line, only to find that I had booked the tickets for the following night. Mixing up dates and times is one of my superpowers. (Thank you, dyscalculia.) I have to check several times, saying the dates and numbers out loud so that I don’t miss planes, trains, events, etc. (Which, even so, happens often enough.) Obviously I hadn’t checked this well enough, because we were sent back to the ticket office to see if there were any free tickets later that night. Luckily enough…there were.

Since the mini-fair positioned around the salt mine entrance seemed to only offer candy and soft-serve ice cream, we crossed the street to a tavern, sat outside (I didn’t even try for inside…it was a tavern), and ate strange fried food that didn’t really taste good, but didn’t taste bad either. Then, when our tour time arrived, we crossed the street and entered the mines with our English-speaking guide for a 3-hour tour underground.

The 700-year-old salt mines were on the very first UNESCO World Heritage list in 1978. Its labyrinth of passages is so immense that only 2% is included in the visit. Industrial salt mining stopped there in 1996 when it was decided that the risk of leaks and flooding from groundwater was becoming too great. At least, that’s what our guide told us, but when you look it up online, there are all sorts of other reasons given. I only remember it as well as I do because Tibor, who seemed not to be listening, immediately started quizzing me on the chances of flooding and if we were going to get trapped and drown.

But more on that later. To get to the first level, we followed our guide down 380 stairs to Level I (64m or 209 feet deep). As we passed some dioramas of Neolithic settlements, the guide told us that the area was known since ancient times for springs producing briny water that could be boiled down to salt: a valuable material to possess or trade.

When the salt springs began to disappear in the 11th and 12th centuries, people dug wells to access the briny water. And in the 13th century, during the digging of one of these wells, the first lumps of rock salt were discovered. This was revolutionary. People realized salt could be mined. Thus began the mining of salt in this region.

Or, if you prefer the folklore version, it was all thanks to a princess. Namely, princess Kinga. Kinga was the 15-year-old daughter of King Béla IV of Hungary, and was betrothed to marry Polish Duke Bolesław V to ensure the region’s political stability. Not the most romantic of reasons, but we’re talking royalty here. The legend says the duke sent Kinga a beautiful engagement ring. So at least he was trying. (He was thirteen years old. Hopefully someone helped him choose.)

Kinga asked her father if, instead of gold and jewels, her dowry could be something the people of Poland really needed. Like salt. Her father gifted her with a Hungarian salt mine, but unsure of how she would transport an entire mine to Poland, she proceeded to THROW HER RING INTO THE MINE. This seems totally crazy until you remember that it’s a fifteen-year-old girl who is being forced to marry a tween she’s never met.

Near the end of her journey to meet her betrothed, she stopped and asked some salt miners who were inexplicably accompanying her on her trip to dig in a certain spot. Hitting rock, they halted digging. Kinga asked them to bring her a sample of the rock. It turned out to be a nugget of salt, and when she broke it open, behold…there was her engagement ring.

So this was how Kinga basically teleported a salt mine from Hungary to Poland, and in doing so became a patron saint of Poland, as well as the patron saint of salt miners, who never tired of making paintings and statues and dioramas of her, like in this one we saw…

depicting a miner handing Kinga the rock containing her engagement ring. So everyone lived happily ever after. Or did they?

You see, whether or not you believe the mine teleportation part of the story, I wondered if the “throwing the engagement ring in a mine” part might be based in truth. And then I noticed that the Duke Kinga married was famously called “Duke Bolesław the Chaste.” Cue the rabbit-holing.

All of the sources I researched gave different details. So I had to puzzle a few pieces together to get a picture of these starcrossed spouses. What I found: When they married, Boleslaw’s mom was pretty much running things. But even as an adult, he was “strongly influenced by his mother until her death,” a trait most people wouldn’t consider sexy in a husband.

Kinga was “reluctant” to marry Boleslaw, only agreeing to go through with the ceremony if he promised her a sexless marriage. She claimed religious reasons, and had her older sister model the contract after her own chaste marriage. A scholar later wrote that this was a difficult arrangement for Boleslaw “because Kinga was so beautiful.”

Once the deed (and by that, I mean the ceremony) was done, it seemed like the couple got on well, with Boleslaw attributing some of his decisions to his wife’s wise council. (We can assume this happened after his mom was no longer available to make his decisions.) When Boleslaw died, Kinga (then 54) gave up her worldly goods and joined a convent.

Which seems like a good way to arrange things if you didn’t want to sleep with someone. Or some people. Or all people. Seriously, if you were gay or asexual in medieval times, what better way to avoid a traditional arrangement than claim a holy mission? I have a personal theory that this accounted for a great number of the female saints who were killed for refusing to marry because they were too in love with God. I mean, who’s going to argue with that? (Except their dad or spurned lover or whoever ended up killing them, of course.)

I know this medieval love story is veering off topic, but it was too juicy not to tell you. But, believe it or not, the story actually gets better.

Because he was obviously childless, due to all that chastity, Boleslaw the Chaste adopted a fully grown man named Leszek the Black (his hair color) to be his heir. And Leszek married a seventeen-year-old princess named Gryfina who, six years after they married, ran away to Krakow and blabbed to everyone who would listen that their marriage had never been consummated because Leszek was impotent. Four years later, Boleslaw and Kinga intervened and talked Gryfina into returning to her husband.

Leszek agreed to be treated by the famous physician Mikołaj of Krakow, who prescribed eating frogs and snakes. But the true reason Leszek resorted to medical assistance? Because "the lack of offspring caused a great abomination into the nation." Not because his wife was sexually frustrated.

Which makes me think that Boleslaw and Kinga might not have been the best people to be handing out marriage advice. Especially since, in the end, Leszek and Gryfina never had children. Which makes you wonder if the frogs and snakes didn’t work. Or if it had more to do with Leszek’s sexual orientation. (Again, what if he just…couldn’t?)

When Leszek died, Gryfina joined her adoptive MIL’s convent, taking over for her as abbess when Kinga died. One can only hope that she had a bit of fun in the four years she was in Krakow. Because after leaving someone for not performing, then having to spend fourteen more years more with the same someone who now has snake-breath and still can’t perform, then joining a convent at age forty until you died around twenty years later, well…one hopes she found a special friend at some point.

But let’s return to where we were, 209 feet down in a salt mine.

Our guide led us to the next phase of history for the mine, which several decades after Boleslaw with King Casimir III. He was the only king to be called “the Great” by his descendants, and that is probably due to the wealth he accrued thanks to the salt mine, which produced as much as 1/3 of the royal treasury’s income.

By the end of the middle ages, more than 300 miners were working in the mine. The guide told us that horses were kept there, underground, to help turn the huge wheels that raised the salt to ground-level. Some of these horses never saw daylight again.

We gave this part of the story zero stars, do not recommend.

After the tragic horse story, we continued descending level by level. In one room, we stopped and the guide pointed out a chandelier that was completely made of salt.

Which we thought was impressive until we got here:

and found an ENTIRE CHAPEL made of salt: the altar, the floor, the sculptures, the chandeliers…everything! This is Saint Kinga’s chapel, carved over 70 years by miners.

The kids and I wandered the place, oohing and aahing and hahaing. (The guide explained that some of the earlier miner/sculptors didn’t quite know what they were doing.) We were told that masses are still celebrated there and concerts are held there, displaying the space’s unique acoustics.

The Last Supper bas-relief was based on Leonardo da Vinci’s painting. And the pope statue is Pope John Paul II, who was supposed to visit before his health declined. The guide proudly stated that it is the only salt statue in the world depicting the pope. This did not seem incredible to me. Then again, I am not an expert on salt statues.

After visiting the chapel, we descended even further underground. Here’s a professional view from the website, since I couldn’t get a good photo myself.

What it looked like from our POV was this:

…so basically a forest of beams used to hold the structure up. Let’s just say that the tour guide could have explained it in a less dramatic manner than, “It takes a whole forest of trees to support the massive amounts of rock, especially in places where cave-ins are possible.

This was the point where past leaks and flooding were mentioned. Tibor did not take this news well. “What did they mean cave-ins? And flooding?” He started shaking. “I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here.”

“Tibor, just look at this place. Look at how many people are down here. You saw how many people were in line upstairs. It’s practically like Disney. We are safe.”

“Then why did they say that?”

“It was in the past. And look at all of the trouble they went through to secure it.”

“Fine. But I don’t like it,” he growled. In the end, his fear of people looking at him trumped his fear of getting crushed under tons of salt and rock, so he managed to fend off freaking out for the rest of the tour.

We passed a huge underground saline lake (which is hard to see in my image, so here is the official photo…)

We saw a working chapel that holds services every Sunday morning.

We saw a tunnel where there used to be a raft that carried tourists to an adjoining room. But a few years back, some soldiers started singing and dancing in the middle of the tunnel and capsized the raft. After they drowned, that part of the tour was discontinued. (This did not scare Tibor. The soldiers broke the rules, so of course they drowned.)

We reached the deepest level for public tours, at 135m, having descended more than 800 stairs. (The mine goes down to 327m at its deepest point.) Thankfully there was an elevator back to the top, although it was a bit strange - one car stacked on top of the other, pausing to let groups in and out and going really fast in between - so we were thankful to step out above-ground.

We didn’t reach the hotel until near midnight. After all that exercise and adrenaline, I slept so soundly that even with the screeching tram outside our window and the rowdy piano bar two floors down, my sleep wasn’t disturbed in the slightest.