Peter_S_Aus

We made it to only one museum in Paris, the Musee d’Orsay, and it was really special. Consider the possibility of taking a railway station, built around 1900, having it more or less abandoned for some sixty years, avoiding it being demolished in the ‘60s for replacement by a hotel, and finally having it emerge, chrysalis-like as a superb gallery. The feeling of light and space down the main hall is spectacular, the side galleries intimate, and the way the whole story of art from the 1850’s through to the 1930’s is told is great. Explanations in English helped me, as my schoolboy French comprises some thirty or forty words in German.

It was like meeting old friends, Manet’s fifer boy looking uncertain, almost pleading for some adult to take him in hand, Olympia, by the same artist, confronting, “I’m naked. So what! Get over it.”, with black cat to prove a point.

Burn Jones, ‘The Wheel of Fortune”, pre-Raphaelite, interesting as we have the same painting in our gallery in Melbourne. Jones must have painted at least two versions, maybe more, as the iconography is a bit boringly obvious, but very marketable.

I liked the story of Art Nouveau, spread over three small floors, and as you descend, you can see how that form spread through Europe. I’d never realised that there was a Finnish form of that style.

There are, after all, the odd shockers. “Cain”, by Cormon is one such. An enormous work, seven metres long, four high, depicting Cain and his retinue wandering the world, an object lesson in the wisdom of not slaying your brother. It looks like a scene from the Apocalyptic book, “The Road”. I’d love to know who commissioned the work, and where it was hung.

Millet’s work is a delight, quiet pastoral scenes, far from the madding crowd. Some Gauguin’s which don’t really grab me, lovely sculptures by Degas that really do grab me.

Something that interested me – there are a few works depicting political events, dead soldiers from the 1871 Commune, piled up in the Rue Montorgueil, works like that. That is a vernacular that is pretty well unknown (well, unknown to me, anyway) in Australian art. Maybe picturesque political events have been lacking in Australian history.

Last time I saw most of these works was in Paris, 1975, in the Jeu de Paume. So, yes, coming across old friends.

A stroll through the Jardin des Tuileries, which are truly enormous. Once the private gardens of the Palais de Louvre, and one can understand how the hoi polloi might have been a bit envious, thinking that a guillotine in the Place de la Concord might square the ledger a bit, a bit more cake, a bit less bread.

Paris in August is still pretty busy, although a lot of the smaller shops, places with a single proprietor, are closed. Many fewer mopeds than in 1975 – I only saw one – and fewer dogs than I had expected. The rudeness of Parisians clearly is the stuff of legend; we encountered none of it. All in all, a very happy time.

annhig

That's where we first saw them too, Peter - in about 1980 - when DH was working in Paris for a few months. We spent one weekend in Paris, the next at home - it was a great time, though I'm not sure that I appreciated it enough at the time.

nice to hear that Paris hasn't lost its charm, even in August. [I've only ever been in winter or Spring, apart from one night on a wedding anniversary on a very hot June weekend]. My abiding memory is of being really really cold!

Peter_S_Aus

So, Paris to Avignon. Stroll to Gare Lyon, and watch the speedo on the train just make it to 300 km/hr. It really rips along – a contrast to Australian locos that achieve about 120 km/hr, on a good day, following wind, slight downgrade and minimum load. I’m trying to remember the line from the song, something like “The telephone poles looked like a picket fence”.

I sort of knew that I liked Avignon, from a previous visit, and now I know why. The whole concept of a walled city, the Papal palace, the Pont, etc, makes it a really easy, comfortable place to visit. We stayed in a hotel right in the Place de l’Horloge, the very centre of town, the Hotel Kyriad. Fun to be just above the street activity, cafes, the odd noisy scooter, and the town coming to life in the morning.

So, first day, Sur le Pont d’ Avignon. There’s not a whole lot of Pont left – just three spans, but in the good old days, the bridge comprised some 22 spans, clear across the Rhone. This was a massive undertaking, and it’s likely that said Pont was never ever completed in stone all the way. The Rhone is subject to huge floods, draining as it does about half of Europe, and in a flood, loads of rubbish, trees, houses, hay-ricks, farm animals, the lot, are going to be washed down stream and fetch up on the piers supporting the Pont. Which will inevitably fail. I’d advise not dancing on the bridge in times of flood.

So, how to persuade the citizens to contribute to construction – it’s going to need a miracle to raise the money and fund the thing. So, let’s have a miracle. Enter in 1177, stage left, one Benezet,a shepherd, later to be elevated to Saint Benezet. Benezet claims to have been visited by God or the Virgin Mary, said visitation including an exhortation to build a bridge, spanning the Rhone. Ben throws a rock (some say a boulder of incredible mass) into the Rhone, and construction is deemed under way. (The toll revenue would have been massive, but, hey, let’s not get all venal about this.) So Benezet took on the role of Project Financier, raising funds from the faithful and the venal, and never lifted another stone to help construction. He is now Patron Saint of barge men, and I don’t get it. The notorious Pont would have put heaps of barge men out of business, I would have thought, so why make him a Saint?

But maybe the Pont is just an early example of crowd funding. I’m going to try that for my next project, and I can just see the prospectus document; “The Angel Gabriel came to me and told me to build a sewage treatment plant”. The funds will roll in. Maybe.

OK, serious now. If you do visit Avignon and the Pont, take the time to view the animated movie, at the visitor centre. For the last several years, a team of historians, archeologists, surveyors, laser technicians and computer freaks have been building a 3-D electronic model of the bridge, as it would have existed way back when. You can fly over the bridge, which in plan is a big “S” shape, see how it has been constructed, see how the river has moved around, erosion here, spoil deposited there. Yes, the bridge has mostly fallen down, but this computer model will last forever. I so admire the techos, and the people who fund this research. They are creating a legacy of enormous worth.

The Papal Palace – accommodating the Papacy for about one hundred years, before the travelling road show moved to permanent quarters in Rome. I’d always thought that the Papal establishment in Avignon was just an excursion from Rome, but in fact, the Papacy had established itself all over the place, depending on ability to raise taxes and revenue, military alliances, religious affiliations of a sort, all kinds of rather base reasons. Bit like awarding the Olympics or World Cup, I suppose.

But surely, when the papacy picked Avignon, they were of a mind to stay there. About one quarter of all Church resources went into construction of the Papal Palaces in Avignon, and that’s a serious commitment. The palace (or actually the palaces plural) are pretty special. Gothic architecture, and mostly I’ve only seen Gothic in relation to churches, and the first Palace constructed in only four years. It bucketed rain when we visited, and all the gargoyles were spouting, water everywhere.

There are heaps of engravings, sketches and the like, to show how a Gothic building, or Norman castle, for that matter, is built. Engineers and builders have been recording how they did things, documenting the lessons learned, passing on the know-how. But what is really hard to find is how the Works were managed. A four year job, some hundreds of masons, chippies, painters, drainers, tilers, plumbers on the job. Textiles to be provided, furniture, kitchen equipment, spits, saucepans, you name it.

You don’t just conjure all that out of thin air (or call on a miracle, “God told me to build a Palace”). Nope, there was an army of support staff, bullock drivers hauling stone, wheel wrights making bullock cart wheels, farmers providing hay for bullocks, saddlers making harness. Stone masons, needing chisels. So there are a bunch of blacksmiths forging chisels, charcoal burners supplying to the forges, someone making leather bellows. A huge industrial endeavour, and this engineer would love to know more about it.

We were hearing some pretty bad brass band music in the streets. Poor renditions of American Patrol, Colonel Bogey, a little Glen Miller thrown in for good affect, and this brought us to wonder a little.

August 25th 1944, Avignon was liberated, so we were there for the 71st anniversary. Some Jeeps, Stars and Stripes, some marching up and down the main drag. It seemed a bit corny, but caused me to think a bit too. We Aussies have never been invaded, so never liberated, and I can understand how the citizens of any country that has been fought over will never forget the day their town was liberated. I remember seeing, in 1975, buildings in Austria that had taken small arms fire, bullet holes stitched across the façade. We Aussies were not in Avignon in ’44, but they still sing “Waltzing Matilda” in Villers-Bretonneux, a legacy of 25th April, 1918. So I can happily allow Glen Miller, and the fireworks that night were great, explosions across the Rhone.

On to Lyon for a couple of nights, barely enough time to get a handle on the place. Lyon is pretty special, a really old town, and we saw the foundations of a church that was built around 200 AD, one of the oldest churches in Europe outside of Rome. We visited a couple of silk workshops, one with three Jacquard looms in working order. Those looms area amazing. We mostly think that IBM invented the punched card as a way of processing digital info, but Jacquard beat IBM to the punch by about 150 years. A jacquard loom is controlled by a string of punched cards, a truly digital system. We saw sets of cards stored, along with a sample of the fabric that that set would produce, just thread the cards and press “Play”. After threading the loom, that is. Witnessing 200 year old technology, that still functions, is a lot of fun.

We did not do Lyon anything like justice, seeing only the old part of town. There is some stunning architecture happening there, buildings that really work, social housing being provided in proper places, and I think a real attempt to somehow avoid social issues by building decent infrastructure.

Next, Italy.

annhig

lovely description of Avignon, Peter, thanks - and Lyon too - a place that I have yet to visit.

Peter_S_Aus

A small thing I noticed in the Papal Palace. Many of the stones have the initials or mark of the carver on them. The mark is always composed of straight cuts, no curves. I believe that each mason would mark his work, maybe because they were on piece rates. At the end of the day, the Quantity Surveyor could record that XXWW sent up seven pieces, and that one had to be sent down for him to re-cut it.

Marks from a tradesman, chiselled with pride some seven hundred years ago. Pretty special

Treesa

Peter, I so enjoy your traveling style. Thank you.

Adelaidean

A pleasure to read, Peter.

Peter_S_Aus

Lyon to Turin by train, and this one is not going at 300 km/hr. It winds its way through the Alps, and it delightfully scenic. You can feel how the train is climbing, passing through a few small towns, and the largest at Chambery, half a dozen stops between Lyon and Turin. The countryside looks for all the world like a model railroad scene, at least on the French side, and it’s hard to tell if French farmers are into farming or landscape gardening, as everything looks so neat and well tended. The Alps are pure limestone, and it’s been quarried for centuries, millennia. I don’t see it running out any time soon, and the rivers are cloudy with lime.

It all looks a bit more gritty on the Italian side.

We came to Turin to see the museum of Egyptian antiquities, and it did not disappoint. We bought two-day museum passes, which cost about 30 euro per pass, and are really good value, as they give admission to some twenty museums and sights in Turin, which would otherwise cost about ten euro a hit.

The Egyptian Antiquities museum has been reorganised and completely renovated, re-opening just a few months ago. It is excellent, and has a lot to say about not only antiquities, but also how a collection is curated, organised, displayed and also how “gaps” in the collection have been filled. The stories of the leaders of the excavation “campaigns” are told, along with photographs of the digs in progress, perhaps in 1903. I was very taken by a particular stone sarcophagus, and there was a photo of a team of workers dragging it out of the excavation, a photo of the leader of the excavation, and a copy of his diary notes. The complete story, provenance clearly displayed.

Mostly the display is about the content of graves. Given that people were buried with all the tools, furniture, food and amulets that they would need in the Afterlife, grave contents can be seen as a fair representation of Egyptian life way back when.

The museum has some great systems in place. You automatically get an audio guide, or rather an audio plus visual guide, so the audio might say “The pattern on the screen right now means etc.”, so it makes it easy to interpret the displays. We spent about four hours there, leaving mainly on account of tiredness.

One recuperates. The Palazzo Madama is the Civic museum of Turin, right in the middle of town. Built (or at least part of it was built) as a city gate, but as the city extended, the gate function was no longer needed. It incorporates Medieval, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque periods, and again, is great. The Medieval garden has been recreated, and it is a gardener’s delight. Plantings of medicinal herbs (apparently the shape of the leaf corresponds to the organ it will treat. Flat leaves for hepatitis, more circular stems and leaves for varicose veins), plus espaliered pear trees, culinary herbs, compost heaps and a pig sty (sans pigs).

Stroll along the Po, draining to the Venetian lagoon, where we will be in a week. There was some sort of ferry service once from Turin to Venice, 30 hours outbound, but 60 hours return, against the flow.

We got a bit side tracked, walking past the Mole Antonelliana, the building with the big spire, the symbol of Turin. Originally commissioned as a synagogue, but as the costs escalated, and the architect had continually changing ideas, the clients, the Jewish residents of Turin, terminated the contract. I think they got grumpy about having a synagogue with a temporary roof, and architects can be a bit difficult like that. Negotiate with the Civic authorities, find a new plot for the synagogue, and Turin gets to decide what to do with the half completed Works. A museum maybe, maybe a Risorgimento museum, and now a cinema museum.

The cinema museum is enlightening and fun. (Also it has a good café in the basement, and you don’t need a museum ticket to access the café.) There is a display that demonstrates the archeology of the moving picture, from the first Indonesian shadow puppets, through the whole business of optics, shadow lantern displays, stereo postcards (including some very risqué samples from Paris, 1855, right through to the first movies, invented by Lumiere. There’s a fun quote from Lumiere senior;”You’re wasting your time with this, son. Cinema will never amount to anything.” Hey said the same about email, I suppose.

The story of Italian Realism cinema is shown, walking up a long circular ramp, like walking up a strip of film. Realism, with its genesis in the late 30’s, some films shot in Berlin in 1946 or 47 (you’d be hiring your extras with nylons and Luckies then), moving on to “The Bicycle Thieves”. That’s a whole genre of cinema that I know precious little about, and it’s never featured in the Australian film vernacular. The closest English language films that I can think of approaching it would be “The loneliness of the long distance runner” or “Kes”, both films based on Alan Sillitoe books.

Again, a well curated exhibition.No audio guide here, but take a fully charged iPhone with you. There is free wi-fi in the museum, and each display has a QR code. Shoot the code and listen or read about what you are seeing.

For five euro, you can ride the elevator to the top of the dome. The panorama is great, surrounded by Alps (on a clear day), and Turin laid out like a carpet. The cinema museum was never on our “to do” list here, and we really got very lucky.

We skipped through the Royal Palace and Armoury fairly quickly. I have to confess that Baroque and Rococo just don’t do it for me, and the residence of a bunch of Royals is, for me, hard to approach. I think it is my ignorance of Italian history in the eighteenth and nineteenth century that makes it opaque for me. Italians, steeped in the history of the Risorgimento, would see it very differently.

Turin is great, even though we have only three nights here. Off to Genoa / Genova in the morning.



And it’s nice to be in Italy. Feels sort of like home.

annhig

Thanks for describing Turin so well, Peter. it's been on my radar for a while and is definitely moving up the 'to see" list after this.

sandralist

>>"Stroll along the Po, draining to the Venetian lagoon...<"

Unless I am mistaken, the Po would today drain to the Venetian lagoon had it not been actively stopped from doing so more than a century or two ago by the Venetians, who worried that sediment from the Po -- which historically flows further south to drain into the Adriatic -- was beginning to fill up the lagoon as the Po's traditional river course gradually began shifting and expanding northwards. Channels, embankments and other diversions were constructed to keep the Po out of the Venetian lagoon, resulting in the build-up of an increasingly substantial delta -- now a national park -- which had never existed before south of Chioggia until this manmade intervention. At least that has been my understanding, but I am not an expert on that by any means.

Glad you went to the movie museum. Probably the greatest movie museum in the entire world. It's really Italian Neo-realism that is the glory of Italian cinema and which the museum glorifies and celebrates for movie devotees in a temple-like setting

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_neorealism

But probably the most popular "iconic" movie of Turin itself is The Italian Job (the original with Michael Caine), which is full of inside jokes about the city and its hilarious cliff-hanger ending (literally) in the Alpine pass you crossed, which you might now appreciate checking out if you never have before.

Adelaidean

Another lovely update Peter, thank you.

Peter_S_Aus

Genoa, Genova for the purists, and it’s a lovely town, driven by topography. Small streets, running up and down hill, larger streets across the traverses. Our hotel is just off Via Roma (every town in Italy has a Via Roma, “all roads lead to Rome”, etc) and is near Via Garibaldi (almost every town in Italy has a Via Garibaldi, the exceptions being villages with only one road, in which case it has to be Via Roma). Our Hotel is the Best Western City Hotel, and it feels a bit American. So the aircon works well, there is a gym, the minibar is really cold, and the breakfast spread is most extensive. All for 95 euro a night, which we rather like.

We are not far from the Via Nova, part of which has been renamed the Via Garibaldi. I think the street was “nova” some time around 1600, when a bunch of dwellings were demolished to make way for a bunch of palaces, and they are pretty grand, housing several museums. It says something about the wealth flowing through Genoa at that time, Genoese ships, or at least ships financed by Genoese merchants, sailing to the Americas, cargoes of exotic spices, foods (potato, tomato, capsicum, all the Nightshade family of plants), plus gold and silver plundered by semi-official privateering. Add to that the protection money earned by the masters of mercenary galley fleets, and the Genoa bourse would have been thumping.

Hence a row of palaces on the Via Nova and Via Garibaldi. I can see the competition that would have been taking place between owners, each wanting to outdo the next in décor and luxury. Via Nova was once fairly working class, but is now very up-market. The working class roots have not been entirely lost, though. We passed a few working girls as we walked town to the harbour.

We took one of those narrated bus tours, which is a quick way to get an understanding of the topography and geography of a town. Genoa is very steep, many tunnels, bridges and so on, and then you run out into quite flat areas, like the Piazza della Vittoria, complete with a small triumphal arch, a micro-Arc de Triomph The Piazza is surrounded by a set of buildings that typify Fascist architecture, which I must say I find hard to love. You look at these buildings, and expect Leni Riefenstahl to be setting up for a shoot.

The Museo del Mare, the maritime museum, is good. It focuses on maritime rather than naval issues, and there is a separate naval (as in fighting ship) museum which we won’t get to. The museum shows really well how the harbour of Genoa expanded, and how it was left behind in the 1860’s with the advent of steam, and just about stagnating by 1900. There is a good display about Christopher Columbus, who came from half a dozen places, including Genoa. The jury is still out on Kit’s home town, although Genoa has a better claim than most. A full scale Genoese galley has been built in the museum (shortened a bit, but lifelike enough), complete with oars and leg chains for slaves. Different to Venetian galleys, as the Genoese pulled on the oars, while the Venetians pushed the oars – as they still do to this day. Being a rower on a galley would have been tough work.

I was very taken by a section of the museum that dealt with emigration. About five million Italians emigrated between the end of the Risorgimento around 1860 and 1905. That’s a huge number of people to just pack up and go, whole villages de-populated, families separated, younger folk emigrating, old folk staying behind. Not unlike the potato famine, depopulating huge swathes of Ireland in the 1850’s. Families taking horribly tough decisions.

“If we sell two of the donkeys and half the farm, that will buy Giacomo’s passage to Buenos Aires. It’ll be tough for us, but he’ll get a good job, and then we can all go and join him.” Maybe, with luck, with a huge serve of heartbreak.

We have an Immigration Museum in Melbourne, where we celebrate the arrival and contribution of people who have taken the decision to come to Australia and call Australia home. But behind that celebration is the fact that every person who has migrated to Australia has left their home behind them. Those ships carrying migrants have seen a lot of tears.

So the emigration section of the Museo del Mare quite got to me. The display there includes a recreation of a steerage compartment on a steamer (double bunks, no space between them, no heating or forced draught). The women’s section similar, because women and men were segregated on the voyage. Shipboard rules – no alcohol, no knives, no gambling. What are a group of bored men going to do, other than drink their smuggled alcohol, gamble and fight, hopefully without drawing a knife.

There is a mock-up of Ellis Island, a synthesised immigration officer asking questions in English. Hard to even comprehend how an illiterate peasant from Calabria would even know how to answer.

There is another side to the migration story. Every emigrant – outbound – is an immigrant – inbound, and the display speaks to that as well. We see the stories in Genoa of immigrants, people who have come and made a place for themselves in Italy. Italy is struggling with the arrivals in Lampedusa right now, and yet somehow a spirit of generosity is still found.

annhig

interesting thoughts about emigration and immigration, Peter. it's easy to forget that behind those statistics that governments love to bandy around, there are desperate people just wanting a better life, or in many cases, any life at all.

on a slightly different tack, one of my favourite places in Rome, the Galleria Doria Pamphilij has a Palace in Genoa which I have wanted to visit for some time:

http://www.doriapamphilj.it/genova/en/

Might be worth a look if you have time.

maryarnoult

Hi Peter:
I just wanted to say Thank You for this TR and for your dialog about some of the sights in Paris, Avignon and Lyon. I have been there but DH has not and he is very interested in history and everything that goes with it. You discussed some of my most favorite places in Paris (even if they are "trite" or not loved by everyone.

Also thanks for contributing to my own question about shuttle to Rouen from CDG. You mentioned that it cost you 46 (?) euros by taxi to get from CDG to Marais. That's what we will do but going to Gare St. Lazar to catch the train the Rouen.

We leave this Sunday Sept 6 from LAX to CDG for our month in France and Germany. I have been taking note of all the tips and information that I have gathered on this forum site.

Hope your trip continues to be wonderful Peter.

sandralist

The street in Genova is the "Strada NUOVA" -- like the one in Venice. It means "New Street". It's original name was the Strada Maggiore. Yes, it was rechristened to honor Garibaldi.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_Garibaldi_(Genoa)

Emigration still remains the great trauma of the Ligurian people and region, which lost huge numbers of young men -- mostly to the west coast of the US (where they continued fishing for anchovies, building cable cars and wearing their "genes blu" worker-trousers, which were refashioned into the "blue jeans" and sold back to Italians! Many more Ligurians went to south America, including the family of the present pope, whose mother was born up the hill from the sea.

The port of Genoa was also one of the most important escape routes for European Jews fleeing Nazism in the 1930s, boarding ships in the harbor bound for Latin America and Shanghai.

sandralist

Also, calling the town Genova is not for the "purists" any more than saying Venezia is something purists do. It is what Italians do. Genova is Italian.

The name actually comes from the Greek "xeno" -- as in "xenophobia."

Xeno
Zeno
Geno-(va)

sandralist

(The Greek-born name of "xeno" is because the Greeks colonized Genoa and found the locals quite strange -- the meaning of "xeno") since those people had migrated from the UK originally. It is the Greeks who brought the olive trees to Liguria, and also planted basil, having grown fond of it during their conquest of Persia.)

Adelaidean

Sounds like an interesting visit.

northie

annhig - I loved Galleria Doria pamphilij in Rome . I enjoy the family story told by the son as you do the tour. - roller skating through the palace .
Peter - Dubai- I have had no desire to visit and the airport transits and your comments confirm this . It's also the artificial nature of the place and its contribution to global warming that concerns me too.
Great trip report

Peter_S_Aus

We took a walk along the harbour at Genoa, also a harbour trip. The Costa Concordia is berthed in Genoa (although “berthed” implies a live ship, not a dead vessel being broken up). It all looks pretty sad, serious damage to the starboard side, the balconies and superstructure smashed, as the Costa came to rest on that side. The superstructure is being demolished progressively, so there are mobile cranes and workers huts on board. Once the superstructure is demolished, then the hull will be dry docked for final breaking up. The cranes at her present berth are not heavy lift cranes, and the final lifts, engines and the like are 100 tonne plus. Heavy stuff.

The salvage operation, once completed, will have cost some 150 million euro. There was 2500 tonnes of fuel oil on the ship that had to be removed, along with lube oil from a dozen engines. That alone was an enormous task, with the risk of the wreck moving.

Breaking the ship up in Italy is complex, if for no other reason than the variety of materials used. Plastics, rubber, steel, paint, cables, carpet. A fairly toxic mix, and you can’t just hack into it with an oxy-acetylene torch, at least not in Italy. In the ship breaking yards in India, they don’t observe such niceties.

Off to Reggio Emilia, and we have chosen the long route, via La Spezia (put on the map by the Costa Concordia), Parma and then a short hop to Reggio. The trip from Genoa to La Spezia is fun, with the train line running close to the beach. We noticed several hotels that looked like they have been closed for decades, had me thinking of the Hotel California. “We haven’t seen that spirit here since nineteen sixty nine.” Eagles.

La Spezia to Parma is hilly, great views, interspersed with tunnels, the sides of hills carved out, the limestone used for cement or fill. Remnant foundations of bridges, the superstructure washed away in floods, the Ponte Nuove right beside the old foundations, the ponte being nuove in 1750 or thereabouts.