Paris May Term 2019

The Parisian culture (and French culture in general) has a religious diversity that is very different than what I have experienced in the United States. This blog post is going to be all about how I’ve experienced it and what my thoughts about it are. Please take into account that I’ve only been here for a few weeks, and these are the observations I’ve acquired in that time. I’ve included a picture of the Parisian skyline from the top of the Arc-de-Triomphe because I think it is important to recognize that although there is a lot of diversity, it all makes up the city that we love and the recognizable Haussmann-inspired skyline that is ornamented with various churches and religious monuments. As a class, were given the opportunity to experience the religious and diverse aspects of Paris in local settings, but I’m also going to add in some observations I’ve noted while exploring the city in smaller groups.

On the first Sunday that we were here, we attended mass at Mass at Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. We were supposed to go to Notre Dame, but because of the recent fires, we were unable to even get close to it. I kind of liked going to this mass because we got to see how the local neighborhood interacted. I have been to mass before because I have some family that is Catholic, but personally I attend a Covenant church. Something I enjoyed about the service itself was the Gregorian style singing. I had no idea what they were saying because I don’t speak French, but it was beautiful. Even though the choir was only 3 ladies, they filled the space with music. I also liked seeing how the neighborhood worshipped together. It was interesting that the church members played a role in the service because I have never seen that at the other masses I’ve been to. Someone dressed up in Catholic attire always did it. I don’t really associate myself with some of the Catholic beliefs, but I enjoyed admiring the gothic architecture and beautiful stained-glass windows. I took a stained-glass art class in high school, and I will forever have an appreciation for these detailed windows. I love how the ones in churches tell a story. I also think the architecture is a form of worship because it makes you appreciate the beauty of a space and reminds you why you are there, to worship God. I also noticed this in the other churches we toured around Paris. Although we couldn’t go in to Notre Dame, the beauty of a place of worship is striking and same with Sainte-Chapelle: it might not be a working church anymore, but that stained-glass definitely makes you appreciate the beauty of a space and remind you of God’s presence. St. Pierre de Montmartre and Sacre-Coeur remind us of the history that a church community has gone through by showing the old and new churches of the area and how they got there/why they were established. The beauty and history of these churches definitely draw you in and I felt myself in awe that these places are places of worship, dedicated to God, yet we got to tour around them. I have a new-found appreciation for the many aspects that make up a church from this trip. Although I am not Catholic, I felt comfortable in these spaces and that I could find a way to worship in them as well.

I wasn’t really sure what visiting the Grande Mosque de Pariswould look like, especially because I’ve never experienced one before. I really liked how we had a guide because he explained things that I wouldn’t have understood otherwise and helped us navigate the place of worship. I thought that the detailing of the tiles and the engravings on the wall were really beautiful because they were representing their faith, kind of like the stained-glass. It was kind of odd touring it because I felt like a visitor and I didn’t feel welcome to worship in that space. I know that I have a different faith and all, but it just felt odd to be toured around a place of worship. Something that really left me pondering was the idea of the “holy city.” Everything the community of the Mosque needs is within the church. In a way, this builds the community of the church within the church, but I struggle with it because it seems really exclusive of the church. This is a newer building than most of the Catholic churches (exception being Sacre Coeur), but the third largest Mosque in Europe. It was built in the 1920’s to show gratitude to the Muslim soldiers who came from French colonies to fight for France in World War One. I’m glad that we got to visit because it gave us another perspective of religion in Paris. I really appreciate that we learned the history of it, because like the Catholic churches, it reminds us of the history of a church community: how they got there and why they were established. I think I found the most beauty in this and the engravings because it helped me recognize the role in community that this Mosque has. In comparison to our experiences with the Catholic churches where anyone is welcome to visit, this was a very different idea.

The immigration museum isn’t a place of worship, but it talks about the idea of diversity of France. It had a paragraph on the wall that talks about the various backgrounds of the French people and how they all come together to create the French story (I’ve included the picture below). I really like this idea because it points out how this diversity makes France what it is today, yet at the same time, I have a hard time comprehending this because of the idea of laicite that we talked about in class. This is the idea of secularism and how France is “blind to race.” It is really a conflicting theme in French culture, but I think the immigration museum does a good job portraying the juxtaposition. I liked how it pointed out immigrant contributions to French society and at the same time, how they are/were persecuted for not being French. This is displayed through the building the immigration museum is in, Palais de la Porte Dorée. I could write a whole separate blog post about this place, but let me sum up what it up. It was created for the 1931 Colonial Exposition in which the French displayed all the places they colonized. Think Epcot, but Civilizing Mission style: all the French colonies with buildings that represented their country, restaurants, and people working there from the colony. The building itself displays people bringing what their country offers to France (showing a dependence), but the inside displays the independent aspects of life that represent these colonies. It is a juxtaposition, but I think it really displays how diversity is represented in French culture.

What does all of this mean to me? It gives me a greater appreciation for my faith and it made me reflect on how I worship. I got to see how other people practice their faith—Christian or not—and it pushed me to find God in those spaces. I think it also reminded me of the importance of a Christian community to me. I got to see the community of the church at mass, and then, I felt a little out of place in a community that was meant for inside of the church at the Mosque. I also have included the photo from our picnic at St. Eustache because I really love how the Parisians use the space around the churches. They are so beautiful and by having parks nearby, it allows you to appreciate the outside of the churches. I got to see how the community uses these various spaces of worship and the areas surrounding them, something I would’ve just walked right by before. This reminded me how I love the beauty of all the churches here, and I need to take the opportunity to take in the beauty of the churches at home.

Photo from Paris Stories at Hope College Facebook

Today we did our final exam for this May Term, and I have to say: BEST. EXAM. EVER. Exploring new places in Paris? Yes please! We were given some expectations and then a list of sites to visit with a partner, and then left to figure out which route we would like to go! I’m glad I like directions and navigating because today was a whole lot of that.

(Note: I posted the pictures with the locations tagged on my Instagram, @kyliegtravels, if you would like to see exact locations. They are all under my “final exam” highlight.)

Picture from Paris Stories at Hope College Facebook

The following is the expectations/rules we were given this morning (bright and early at 8am) for the day.

Objective:

Demonstrate proficiency in Pairs by:

1.     Ability to successfully navigate mass transit. You must use the metro and/or the buses to get around. NO UBER.NO TAXI.

2.     Referencing only your Paris Pratique and Michelin Guide for directions—not cell phones. Should it be revealed that you used your cell phone for navigational purposes, you and your partner will receive an automatic failing grade on the exam.

3.     Find historically/culturally significant locations per the list provided, and experience them.

4.     Do so in an efficient way (within the 6 hour limit).

5.     We encourage you to take a break for lunch, snacks, etc.

Mechanics:

·     8 am start time from the Citadines Place d’Italie

·     You may NOT use computers and phones to plan the best route. Your sites are not listed in any geographical “order.”

·     2pm arrival (not earlier) at the professors’ apartment: rue Watteau

o  Please bring your laptops and your Michelin Green Guide to rue Watteau. (Pick these at the Citadines before arriving at rue Watteau)

·     YOU MUST VISIT EACH SITE WITH YOUR PARTNER

·     Each group must take a photo at each site, and slow down a bit, and think about the space.

·     Back at the professors’ apartment (or if you finish early, please feel free to begin working), make Tumblr posts documenting your groups journey—including each site visited.

o  Divide the blog posts between partners/group members.

o  If you reference a source, please be sure to include the citation. Your Michelin Guide is a great reference.

After reviewing these expectations, we were given our partners and the list of our sites.

Group 1: Rousseau (Emily and Kylie)

1.     In front of a street sign on rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1er)

2.     On the steps of the La Madeleine (8e), Place de la Madeleine

3.     In the Place des Vosges (3e)

4.     In the center of the Arenes de Lutece (5e), 49 rue Monge

5.     The exterior façade of St-Etienne-du-Mont church (5e), Place Sainte-Genevieve

6.     Galerie Vivienne (covered passage, 2e), 4 rue des Petits-Champs

7.     Inside the Gare Saint-Lazare SNCF (big trains) train station, the one painted often by Monet (8e), 13 rue d’Amsterdam

8.     Place Edith Piaf (20e)

9.     Temple of Sibyl, Parc des Buttes Chaumont (19e)

Emily and I went to work to figure out what the best way to find each of these places would be. We used our Michelin Green Guides and our Paris Pratique to craft our path. The following is the path we followed to complete our final exam. We started out by taking line 7 (La Courneve) to Place Monge to our first site.

Arenes de Lutece:

We decided to go here first because it was the closest to our hotel, and we had seen signs for it in the line 7 Metro. It was pretty easy to find when we came up out of the metro because there were signs for it, so I expected more people to be there. We were the only people there. I’m not sure if that’s because we were there at 8:15am. The Arenes De Lutece and is located in the Latin Quarter. It is an amphitheater and could originally hold 15,000 people. It is one of the only surviving evidence of the Roman period in Paris. It was interesting to see that apartment buildings have been built over part of the amphitheater. We enjoyed appreciating the calm arena before we set off on the rest of our day. We decided earlier to walk to the next site because it was in the same arrondisement and it didn’t make sense to take a Metro.

Source: https://www.parisinfo.com/musee-monument-paris/71451/Arenes-de-Lutece-et-square-Capitan

St-Etienne-du-Mont Church and Place Sainte Genevieve:

We walked down some winding streets, which is the character of the Latin Quarter to find St-Etienne-du-Mont Church. I’m not going to lie, this was pretty easy to find because it is so distinguishable. It was cool to see the Pantheon next to it too. In fact, in 1744 King Louis XV replaced the Saint Genevieve Abbey with the Pantheon. The abbey was looted and burned in the Revolution. It was attached to what is now called St-Etienne-du-Mont Church. This is why the place near the church is called the Place Sainte Genevieve. I had never heard of this church before and] the façade of it is quite grandiose, Renaissance style. It was restored after the revolution and actually slants left due to the shape of the ground. According to the churches website, it is a product of a transition period between gothic and Renaissance styles. I think this is for sure true because of what we have learned about the two styles in class. Another interesting thing about this area is that the original wall fortification is still present in some areas and we just happened to walk by, how cool! We then continued our walk to the Cardinal Lemoine station and took line 10 (Gare d’Austerlitz) to Gare d’Austerlitz and transferred to line 5 (Bobigny), exiting at Bastille.

Source: https://www.saintetiennedumont.fr/en

Place de Vosges:

Check out Emily’s blog for this entry at. https://thepariscollective.tumblr.com/tagged/scavengerhunt!

After exploring Place de Vosges, we walked to the Chemin Vert Station and took line 8 (Balard) to Republique and transferred to line 3 (Galleieni) and got off at Porte de Bagnolet.

Place Edith Piaf:

I was surprised because we popped out of the underground Metro station into a market and the statue of Edith Piaf was on our right. Emily has the entry for this site too! We enjoyed a walk through the market before embarking to our next site, which was the one we knew the least about. We went to the Gambetta station and took line 3 (Levallois) to Pere Lachaise, then transferred to line 2 (Porte Dauphine) and got off at Belleville.

Temple of Sibyl, Parc des Buttes Chaumont:

We found the Parc des Buttes Chaumont easily In our Paris Pratique, but the Temple of Sibyl wasn’t labeled so we ended up looking it up in our Michelin guide while on the Metro and finding a map of the entire Parc. It was quite a hike to find this site (which makes sense because the 19this near Montmatre) and it was definitely not a tourist area so it wasn’t labeled from the streets. I think this may have been my favorite site we visited. In 1860, Napoleon III integrated the areas surrounding the park into the city, creating a need to make these areas “Parisian.” Haussmann played a role in the installation of this park, a large English-style park, along with the Bois de Boulogne and the Bois de Vincenne. Adolphe Alphand created this park by buying 25 hectagres of the Buttes Chaumont. Originally this had been quarries, but they were abandoned in the mid 1800s. It was a three year process to form the park from construction of artificial cliffs (the one in the lake where the temple is located is the most prominent) to digging trails both steep and flat to planting new species. The lake was created by using a local water tank. The park was inaugurated with the Universal Exhibition of 1867, when Napoleon III wanted to show off his newly Haussmannized capital. I would love to go back and explore this park when I have more time because it looked like there was lots of trails and different paths to explore. Emily has a little more about the Temple of Sibyl on her blog if you would like to read more about that. We hopped on the 7b (Pre-St.-Gervais) and got off at Place des Fetes, then got on line 11 (Chatlet) to Arts et Metiers, and then line 3 (Levallois) to Bourse.

Source: https://www.histoires-de-paris.fr/parc-buttes-chaumont/

Galerie Vivienne:

I knew from our assignment sheet that this was a covered passage, but as we stepped into it, it was much more extravagant than I expected. It felt like I was in a department store because the ornamentation of the ceiling or the glass roof and the detailed floor felt too special to just be a street passage. It was built in 1823 and now houses a cute bookstore, boutiques of various kinds, food shops, and probably more that we didn’t see because the spectacle of the passage itself was so beautiful. We walked through it and on to Rue Etienne Marcel to find our next site.

Source: https://en.parisinfo.com/paris-museum-monument/100272/Galerie-Vivienne

Rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau:

This is the street our group was named after! Check our Emily’s blog to understand it’s importance. We walked from here to the nearby Etienne Marcel Metro stop. We got on line 4 (Cligancourt) to Strasbourg-St. Denis and transferred to line 8 (Balard) for the Madeleine stop.

On the steps of the La Madeleine, Place de la Madeleine:

You would think finding the front of the church would be easy, but it turns out we got turned around. We got out of the Metro and went towards the back of the church, and got super confused because it was locked. Not to mention, it was under construction, so that might also have added to the confusion of where the front was and it also doesn’t look like other churches in Paris, so we were a little shocked by that. Don’t worry though, we wandered around the place and found the front steps of the church. After looking into this place later, it is now well known for the little cookie/cakes that Marcel Proust made famous, but there is a deep history of the church. The church is situated between Place de la Concorde and the Palais Garnier. It is different than a religious building because Napoleon wanted it to be a pantheon to honor his armies. The iconic Corinthian colomns were under construction, but we still got to see some of them. We also saw many signs for concerts, which the church hosts regularly. From here we walked to our last location. We followed Rue Torchet towards Printemps and then Rue de Havre straight to the station.

Sources: https://en.parisinfo.com/transport/73127/Place-de-la-Madeleine,https://en.parisinfo.com/paris-museum-monument/71158/Eglise-de-la-Madeleine

Gare St. Lazare:

Emily wrote about this site too, but I want to mention how modernized this building was. I expected it to be more like what Monet painted, yet instead, it felt more like a mall. We had a hard time getting a picture inside of ourselves without it looking like a mall, so we took a few pictures inside and headed outside to get our selfie with the iconic sign.

We chose to go to Musée de l’Armée to see the Picasso and War exhibit. Why you may ask? The art students wanted to see if Picasso was represented the same way in war as they had learned about, but the history students thought that this art exhibit might have some more history that we would be interested in.

The exhibit webpage says that they wanted to show how warfare influenced Picasso’s art throughout his life. He always said that his work was a journal that only he could understand. It states that the goal is to “explore the various ways that warfare informed and impacted Picasso’s creative output throughout his career.” They wanted to approach it chronologically and chrono-thematically by exhibiting Picasso’s works and archives along with other historical artifacts of the time period, focusing especially on the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and his painting of Guernica. As the pamphlet from the exhibit says, it is understood that he has pre and post Guernica works, and this exhibit will help explain how warfare impacted these eras of Picasso and his political stances.

I thought it was really interesting that the exhibit is being held in the Musée de l’Armée, a war museum. I mean, it makes sense because this exhibit is about understanding the effects of warfare. But at the same time, its art focused, so I didn’t expect to see works of art displayed in an Army museum. It surprised me how hard it was to get to the exhibit itself. We bought tickets and followed the signs, but it seemed like there were more signs after every corner. We finally got to the beginning of the exhibit on the third floor of a wing of the museum. The exhibit was also split into two hallways, so once you finished the first part, you had to walk back through it and across the atrium to the other hallway. This seemed very odd to me because usually famous artists have the best of the best areas for their art to be displayed. I really loved how the museum was set up. The chronological and chrono-thematic organization really helped my history-minded-self understand the art Picasso was creating. I also thought it was really cool that they had some of his drawings and sketches from his school days because those were so different than the distorted work that is so famously known of Picasso. I enjoyed the timelines presented at each stage of the exhibit because they had the events of the world, the events of Picasso’s life, and his paintings marked on them. The area that struck me most was the one titled “history painting – history is painting.” I think that this phrase is what the goal was of the exhibit: to portray Picasso’s art in a way for us to understand how the war-filled history impacted his content. I really enjoyed wandering the museum and reading about the history that happened while Picasso was creating different works. It helped me understand his art more and sympathize with the other people of that time period and what they had experienced.

For my visual analysis, I chose to do Le Vert Galant. Picasso painted in 1943, which is towards the end of the exhibit and a post-Guernica work of art. The material, oil on canvas, seems to be typical of what we see of Picasso’s work in museums. It really allows us to see the hand of the painter. Picasso’s brush strokes create the texture of the trees and the lawn beneath them, distinguishing the plants from the smooth buildings in the background. He also uses his brush stroke to create the leaves of the plants and trees. The color also distinguishes the buildings from the flora and fauna. Greys and neutral colors were used for the buildings and structures, while tones of green, a blueish color, and brown are used for the flora and fauna. Light is displayed in this paintings through darker green colors representing the shadows of the trees. The windows in the buildings also have darker shades of grey. The size is pretty similar to the other paintings in this gallery, yet larger than the drawings and sketches. I think that the subject is some sort of square (or place) and the tree lined path leads the eye to the monument in the middle of the painting.

I think it is important to compare art with history because it helps the viewer understand what the artist and the audience at the time were going through. This exhibit communicated their goal very well and it makes me want to understand the dialogue between history and art even more. 

Sources: https://www.musee-armee.fr/en/programme/exhibitions/detail/picasso-and-war.html?L=0&cHash=b5af99fb222f7767cba8e61fa37cae4c

We decided to go to the Memorial de la Shoah, a museum dedicated to remembering the Holocaust. This may have been one of my favorite museums here so far. The art museums are cool and all, but seeing how a country memorializes a historical event that was incredibly impactful for the world was very interesting to me.

This building of this museum began taking place in 1943 with the collection of Jewish documents. They had a mission to preserve the persecution of the Jews. This is interesting to me that they began compiling the information before the war was even officially over in 1945. The museum was inaugurated in 2005 with the intention of it being a place of memory, a museum, and a place for cultural events. (It’s important to note that there was a monument in commemoration of the Jewish people in the years before this, but this is now the primary place of remembrance along with various smaller monuments in Pere Lachaise.) It is really inspiring to me that this place was created for so many different uses which point to the idea of preserving and remembering the persecution of the Jews.

I absolutely loved my experience at this museum. It was really interesting to experience a museum of French memory. In fact, the temporary exhibitions and most of the permanent museum were entirely in French. Thank goodness for google translate! We used it to understand the main ideas of the different rooms. I liked the temporary exhibition because it was focused on children during the war, specifically their art. It was cool to see children memorialized in that way, but incredibly sad to see what they had gone through and how the war had taken away their innocence.  The other temporary exhibition was about the art march during the war, and it was interesting to see art from during the war. When we entered the museum (which is free to go to, by the way!), it seemed pretty easy to navigate our way around, but we ended up going into the permanent museum the wrong way. All in all, the organization of the permanent collection was amazing. It talked about how the French people were persecuted through the war, gave a general synopsis of some ideas, and then talked about the perseverance of the French people. I didn’t expect to see them talk about the perseverance so much, but it was interesting to see how the French see this because they had been helpers to Hitler during the war. I would say about half of it was focused on the remembrance of the perseverance of the French throughout the persecution.

Something I must emphasize before I discuss the narrative is that the museum was almost entirely in French, except for some of the main parts of this exhibit, and the girls I was with and I were definitely the only Americans there. There was a lot of technology to interact with and you could find names of French people in the museum by searching for them or interact with the stories of people in pictures by listening to them. In fact, there was a whole hallway of videos of survivors being played. I enjoyed looking at the artifacts and the maps while interacting with the story being told. All of these clues lead me to understand that this museum is telling the history of the French for the French. It’s a remembrance of THEIR people and this museum shows how they choose to remember. I could engage with the history by having prior knowledge of France’s part in the war and knowing that this museum is purposeful in how they remember their people.

As I mentioned, the narrative of the permanent exhibit was really impactful to my understanding of how the French view this part of their history. I thought that this exhibition portrayed the narrative and story of the French influence/impact during the Holocaust. This exhibit was very informative, yet I found myself needing to take a break from attempting to translate and understand the information because it was quite heavy, especially towards the middle of the exhibit. The beginning of it was some backstory but heavily focused on the Germans and how they began the war, while the end was about how the French healed from the war and ended with a room of images to remember the people. The middle struck me the most because it discussed the narrative of French perseverance. There was a section about resistance groups and a section purely telling the stories of the people during the war. I loved that this area allowed you to interact with history, actually hearing the people tell their story (or a family member if the person didn’t survive). This entire exhibit struck a chord with my history-minded self because the French acknowledged their mistakes and celebrated the people who persevered. It was also very cool that they acknowledged how the areas that they had colonized were affected and how they reacted to the war. This narrative is quite striking for a museum like this. I learned how the French choose to memorialize this time period, but also I learned about the war from a French perspective which was different than I have been taught in the US. The primary lessons are those of perseverance, but also another lesson was how important it is to remember all the aspects of the event. Remembering not just the stories of the people in power or the government, but the stories of the people who actually lived it. They chose to preserve how their people persevered through such a difficult time in global history. As much as this exhibit displayed this narrative, I think the whole museum pointed to these ideas as well. The history being told here is the history of the French, and I really appreciate that I had the opportunity to interact with the narrative that they chose to memorialize in their memorial to the survivors. 

I’ve been to Sainte Chapelle before, but I’ve never heard the history of it—especially during the 1789 French Revolution. Sainte Chapelle is absolutely stunning, so hearing what it has been through makes me appreciate it even more. I’m going to talk about the history in this post, but if you want to see a video of the concert we saw, check it out on my Facebook (in the “Paris May Term” album).

The Crown of Thorns worn by Jesus was displayed on this altar until the French Revolution. Why in this small church you may ask? This church is in the Palais de Justice. It was the original castle when Paris was just on the ile de la cite, then became the conciergerie (where Marie Antoinette was imprisoned), and is now where the courts are held. This means that the king used to live here, making Sainte Chapelle his private church. So, it makes sense that an iconic relic was held here. The 1789 Revolution, in short, was in response to the peasants and lower class feeling taken advantage of and forgotten by the upper class. Sainte Chapelle was one of the targets for this because it was the king’s church and he was in charge of all these new taxes and food shortages. Thus, the clergy from Notre Dame grabbed the relic and kept it in a safe spot in Notre Dame. But, there was damage to the church—especially the upper chapel because the upper chapel was for the upper class. During the revolution, this space was used as a storehouse for grain, which damaged the ornamentation of the chapels. The church has been restored, but it is no longer a working church (no mass and no need for covered shoulders). The Crown of Thorns is still a relic of Notre Dame and usually is kept in the spire. The spire, unfortunately, fell during the recent fires, but the relic is safe.

I wanted to go to Place de laRépublique because I had heard about it in the news, but also when Dr. Kraus talked about it in reference to the 2015 acts of terrorism in Paris.

I think it’s important to know the history of this place before I dive into how it experienced now. The building of this place took place as a result of the Haussmanization of Paris in 1854 (the creation of the grand boulevards that characterize modern day Paris). The square was named after the 1st, 2nd, and 3rdRepublics. An important part of this place that was added is the Marianne monument towards the center of the square. The Morice brothers won a contest in 1879 to construct the monument. Leonard did the sculpture and Charles did the base. The statue of the republic was inaugurated on July 14, 1883 to commemorate great events in history. This place commemorates the first three Republics of France, each of which have a history of French national identity, so it would make sense that this place and it’s monument is named in remembrance of them.

Nowadays, Place de la République is used for remembrance as well. In contemporary Parisian culture, it has been known to be a place for the people. What do I mean by that? It is used for commonly used for protests, but also has been used as a lieu de memoire for terrorist attacks. The recent Yellow Vest protests and Algerian protests have taken place here, but after the Paris Terrorist Attacks of 2015, this is where the events were remembered. As we talked about in class and how Dr. Kraus lectured about the response to these attacks, it makes sense to me why the place is used is this context. This isn’t a super touristy location and it is more of a local’s neighborhood. We can’t forget the iconography of the Marianne here either. For those who don’t know, the Marianne is the woman represented with the monument. She is known from Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People and represents the French people. Thus, making this a people’s place—it’s a place for them to express their emotion.

I experienced this place on a Monday Afternoon. Not much was going on, but it was interesting to see it as a working area. There were people enjoying an afternoon walk or a snack on the benches, some skateboarders, and people just walking through. What I didn’t expect, was for the Metro to pop us out in the middle of the square. I was thinking we were gonna walk up and see the Marianne and it was going to be like the moment Dr. Kraus walked up to it after visiting the attack sites, but it wasn’t. The Marianne monument is definitely the big highlight of the place, it is in the center and taller than the parts of the place. I enjoyed walking around in an area that was exploding with tourists and seeing a place that I had heard about in class.

I studied the 20tharr. (and specifically, Pere Lachaise) for my FYS final presentation in Professor Janes’ class, and I thought I knew what to expect. Much to my surprise, actually being in the place felt much different than I thought it would be.

When we first got off the Metro and walked over to the cemetery, the entrance we went into wasn’t as well-marked or obvious as it seemed it would be, considering Pere Lachaise is such an important lieu de memoire.

The cemetery quite literally felt like its own little city: winding paths, roundabouts, and even the memorials looked like miniature houses. The history of how this place began as a small cemetery and what it has become now amazes me, and you can really see that with the layers upon layers of memorials and graves. I didn’t expect the old parts to be so mixed in with the newer graves--- we saw one for this year next to one some that were so old you couldn’t even read the year. I felt like I wasn’t in Paris anymore and had entered a whole different world because it felt so much like a real city when we stepped inside.

In my FYS, we talked about how Pere Lachaise was used as a place of memory (or lieu de memoire). This idea really came alive for me as we wandered up random staircases and down various wooded paths. It is a place for people to remember: both the famous people and the Parisian’s of the neighborhood. I think this is important to note as an idea of memory because it shows us how the people are remembered. Everyone is in the same windy streets, but represented differently with the architecture, size, or shape of their tombs. In FYS, Prof. Janes told us that people like to go on picnics there or walk through with friends. I don’t know why this is, but it is certainly true. We even saw a man eating McDonald’s in front of Delacroix’s memorial. It’s a place of memory, but also a public place. I really like that people honor the place by using it as a part of the city, not just using it as a place of grievance. It is different from the US in the fact that the cemetery is also a beautiful park. I wish that it was like this in the US because I think it is important to remember the people who are memorialized and (almost) interact with them as you go throughout your daily life. Pere Lachaise has a lot of diversity of the people buried there, and I think that it is very cool that they remember these people in such a beautiful place. The diversity of the tombs also shows the diversity of the people remembered in this “city.” Some are large and ornate, while others are smaller and simpler. I think this also portrays the idea of a city really well. Not everyone is the same in a city, but everyone functions together.

I thought it was really amazing to see Edith Piaf’s tomb because I researched it for class. I didn’t realize how surrounded her tomb was; it wasn’t that easy to find. Edith Piaf was a Parisian-raised singer, famous for La Vie en Rose. The grave isn’t even just for her, it’s for her family. I originally thought that since she was so well known, she would have her own special place, but I think this says a lot about how the people of Pere Lachaise are memorialized. It is interesting that they seem to value the person more than their accomplishments, and I really appreciate that. I experienced her place of memory by admiring the simplicity of her tomb, compared to those around her, and by looking at what people had left in memory of her.