Chenonceau and Chambord, or, why I want to be a princess

Quick belated post with some of my pictures from the two castles in the Loire valley that I went to last week, Chenonceau and Chambord. This was an AWESOME trip; these castles are amazingly beautiful, and we had great weather.

So, Chenonceau is where I want to live someday. I will make some truly ungodly amount of money doing something, and I will buy this castle from the french government. Really, I'd be willing to just rent one of the rooms.

Quick history is that it was inhabited by the movable French Court of the mid 16th Century, specifically by Henri II, his wife Catherine of Medici, and his mistress, Diane of Poitiers, who lived quite openly in the castle alongside Catherine and Henri. Catherine definitely got a raw deal - Diane's garden is bigger than hers, and even better, the monogram of Henry and Catherine have the H and C intersecting in such a way that they form a D for Diane. Klassy.

Anyway, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves - I honestly don't think I've ever been in a more beautiful building.



So that was Chenonceau. We next went to Chambord, the huge castle built by François I (father of Henri II and driving force of the french renaissance). We had an excellent guide at Chambord, although he had a great disdain for our lack of prior architechtural knowledge, and of our command of the french language. Chambord was never inhabited; its entire purpose was to demonstrate the power of the French monarchy, and it was the most ambitious architectural endevor of its time. It does a fairly decent job. Our guide took a shine to us, dispite his disdain, and took us into the back rooms of the castle in a sort of behind the scenes tour, and really, there's nothing better than that.

All in all, I prefered Chenonceau; there's just not as much history at Chambord, because no one ever lived there. There isn't any furniture in the castle, so it's become something of a museam, but I sort of feel like no one really knows what to do with the place; it's such a historical oddity. The outside looks just like the postcards, though.



This is the giant central staircase in Chambord - it's double helix shaped, with two seperate sets of stairs that twist around one another. It's open to the outside at the top; the only staircase that is its equal is in the Vatican. Incidentally, I want this in my house.

I'm baaack! and Poitiers.

So if none of you noticed, blogger is dumb, and flagged this thing as spam. Which is pretty funny. But anyway! Now I'm a week behind and need to actually write stuff down before I forget it all. SO. Poitiers. I went here a week ago now, but let's see what I can remember.

SO. The trip to Poitiers was one of 3 or 4 big group excursions we make to various places outside of Paris. So far we've done 2 excursions, and they're a pretty good deal - excellent tours in French (which is some of the best practice I've gotten since I've been here, trying to understand a guide talking about architecture). The program also feeds us very, very excellent, fairly expensive lunches at local restaurants, I think out of fear that our diets consist entirely of bread, cheese, wine, and the occasional ham sandwich. Both meals have been out of this world good, and a lot of fun.

But so! Poitiers is one of the most historic towns in France. And, see, in America, we would classify something like Colonial Williamsburg as historic. The French put us to shame. The oldest thing in Poitiers is a Roman Wall from the 200's. Old. And they apologize when there have been modifications made to churches in the 18th century. I want to shake them and say THAT'S STILL OLD. But that would be a strange thing to do.

So Poitiers was, for me, essentially "let's retake Ms. Eliot's 7th grade cathedral architecture course". Which was actually very cool, as I knew what things were called and what the different styles were.

The important history of the town is mostly that it was the seat for about 10 years of Eleanor of Aquitaine (otherwise known as single coolest female figure in history)


These pictures are of Notre Dame le Grande, which dates from the 11th and 12th centuries. The detailing on the facade is very detailed, although all the heads of the statues were broken in the Wars of Religion. So that was church #1. There are actually 7 churches in Poitiers (and this is a walled city where you can walk from one side to the other in about 20 minutes). At various times in History, there have been as many as 50 churches in that space. We saw 5 churches of 7 on the tour, and then I saw the other two walking around. I'll not subject you to pictures of all of them.

Poitiers is also a very cool narrow windy street town. The houses like the one on the left are the same ones built in the middle ages (although obviously, they've been fixed over and over through the centuries). Pretty cool. Also, notice the drain in the middle of the streets. Just think of all the wonderful things that was filled with in the middle ages!

This is the Cathedral built by Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry Plantaganet. It's sort of entertainingly haphazard - the facade isn't symetrical at all, for example. However, it also contains the oldest stained glass window in Europe, which somehow survived multiple wars and cannon fire. Supposedly, you can identify reall really old windows, as opposed to just sort of old windows, by the color blue; blue dye was very expensive, and so lighter blue windows are often the older ones, made before trade routes became more established and lapis lazuli became cheaper.
And lastly, the church of St. Radegonde, otherwise known as Saint-with-the-best-name-ever. She was the founder of one of the first nunneries in France, which was in Poitiers and still exists today. Her tomb is right in the middle of the church, which is a little freaky.

Alright, given that I actually go to school here (gasp! school!), I'm going to do the rest of the posts of cool french castles later. And write that paper I have that's due monday. Sweet.

Le Centre Pompidou, or, things I did not have the capacity to understand at 12.

I went down to the Centre today with a bunch of girls from my classes today before our dégustation de vin et fromage (wine and cheese tasting) which, as a sidenote, was very, very cool. It was all in French, which at this point is to be expected - I'm noticing that the French, including my teachers, can all definintely speak English, but really, really would rather not. Whenever we tell various administrators that we speak french (as not all the students at the University of Chicago Center do - the other programs have classes taught in English) the French tend to immediately breathe a sigh of relief and launch off. So it was definitely nice to have the wine and cheese tasting done the "right" way, in the sommelier's native language. The guy who did it was very nice, though also quite distainful of our complete lack of knowledge. After he carefully explained everything, however, I feel an urge to become a total wine snob while I'm here. It really is a lot of fun to know something about the different varieties and such.

Also, Christine will be happy to know that I have decided that I was entirely wrong about goat cheese. That stuff is excellent.

Anyway, Le Centre Pompidou.

I don't remember very much, honestly, from the first time I went to Paris, with the family in 2000 or so, when I was 12. This is odd, because I usually have a creepily clear memory, but I think the truth is that much of Paris didn't make a particularly huge impact on my 12 year old self. I remember enjoying it very much; I loved the pastries, and I remember certain things I adored - Chartres, in particular, but I also remember just going to a lot of art museums and not really getting it. I remember particularly disliking Le Centre Pompidou, the modern art museum. This is because I was stupid and 12. The museum is awesome. The French really know how to write painting descriptions; the museum was incredibly informative, and actually managed to make me appreciate modern art, which I very rarely do.

I am overly pleased with how this picture came out, which is why I'm posting it. Le Centre Pompidou is a really cool building just in general, with lots of exposed steel, exterior escalators, and great views of Paris from the top floor. As an added bonus, we now have student cards which blatantly lie and say we're art history students at Université Paris VII, so we get into all art museums, essentially, for free. There is no piece of paper I love more than that ID card.




The view from the top floor.













I'm not usually a fan of modern art, as I said, and this painting is the kind of thing I would usually brush off as weird. However, the useful little blurb next to the painting tells me that all of the tiny scribbles (which you can only barely see in this photo) that form the background of this painting are in fact the words of various philosophical texts painstakingly written out in layers over many, many months. The patterns and imperfections formed by the overlapping words were what he considered his favorite thing about the painting. Thought that was kind of awesome. The name of the painting is escaping me at the moment, but the artist is a contemporary of Jackson Pollack's; I'll have to look it up.

Anyway, it's 10:46 here, and I have to be up at 6:00 to head to Poitiers for the day, which should be pretty awesome. Au revoir!

Their cathedral is prettier than my cathedral

So, I was going to update this thing every Sunday, but then I realized that was ridiculous, because there'd be way too much to put in each post. So I'm updating now, with some photos from last weekend, and I'll make another post with some ones from today.

So on Saturday, still horridly jetlagged and sans cell phone I decided to go to Notre Dame, mostly because it's the easiest site to get to on our closest metro system line (the RER B, for those interested - I also live about 2 blocks from the very southern end of the 4). We were, of course, greeted by this. Welcome to Paris.

Now. I'm a cathedral snob. It's what comes from 7 years in the beautiful building that is Washington National Cathedral. I know the names of every architectural feature, I know how to identify saints by what their statues are holding. I sorta felt like I'd been there, done that with gothic architecture.

I was completely and utterly wrong.

Notre Dame is a different thing entirely. The detail in the carvings, the absolutely stunning windows, the fact that it's just so friggin OLD makes it a completely different kind of experience than the one I have at WNC. I took a TON of pictures; here's just a couple:


The sheer number of tiny chapels in Notre Dame is impressive. The light that day was absolutely stunning.

The outside, in general.



The clerestory windows and ceiling.

It's funny; as I put up these pictures, I find myself thinking the same thing that I thought going in; that Notre Dame is really just another beautiful gothic cathedral. The pictures simply do not do it justice. There is a gravitas to the building unlike any I have ever experienced. The care that went into it, the history it has seen, and the sheer dramatic beauty of its art is an amazing testament to human achievement, and you can feel it. If you think I'm being over dramatic, I just have to say come see for yourself.