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Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Paris 16/4/2006 

We started the day with a visit to the Conciergerie. This was the place where the aristocrats were held prior to their execution by guillotine. I was alarmed to realise that all I know of this period of history has been gleaned from Carry On, Don’t Lose Your Head. Shameful. I bought an English biography on Marie Antoinette on the way out to compensate.

I can understand the proletariat’s hatred of the aristocracy at that time. They had everything while people lived and died in absolute poverty. How could that go on? Why should Kings and Dukes build grand palaces out of gold while the people starved? It was wrong and something had to change.

However, touring the Conciergerie, I was struck with how the prisoners must have suffered. How great their lives must have changed in those few short days before their deaths. Their lives of privilege were all they knew. They had their lives and the poor people had theirs. There was no connection between the two apparent to them and by the time that the poor rose up to claim some of the riches for themselves, it was too late. War had effectively been declared and the rich could do nothing except die.

Think about it, though. These people were used to grand palaces, fabulous clothing and servants to cater to their every whim. Then they were caught and slammed into tiny rooms with barely room to sit before having their heads chopped off. Little wonder it was called the Terror.

Marie Antoinette was, however, given larger rooms. Still nothing like her former home at Versailles, they were palatial compared to the rooms the lower ranks had to endure. Royalty still had its privileges even then.

The Conciergerie also contained a magnificent exhibition of photographs of Paris ranging from about 1830 to the present. Many were in black and white so you had to struggle to identify when the pictures had been taken. I loved them.

We moved on from there to the Institut du Monde Arabe via Notre Dame and its gardens with the trees that had been joined together now bursting into life. We nearly went up the tower but the prospect of the climb and the long Carte-immune queue prevented that.

We didn’t actually look around in the Institut. We looked at the fascinating metallic irised windows and then went directly to the roof to admire the view of Notre Dame. Then we took a short walk to the Pantheon where we briefly looked around before leaving for lunch and a rest.

After that we returned to the Musée D’Orsay for another look at the Impressionists and at anything else we had missed from our previous visit. I had a slightly more informed look at the Impressionists pictures than last time, having bought and read a book on them in the meantime.

At the bookshop on the way out I picked up a book on Van Gough and another book on one of my favourite paintings, Seurat’s “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte – 1884”. Just after Christmas, we saw Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park with George” which was loosely based on Georges Seurat and his creation of this painting.

I have walked seventeen and a half thousand steps so far and eaten most of an Easter Egg. We’re about to go out again for dinner. I doubt if we will walk too much further tonight as we are both tired. David keeps falling asleep.

We may even make it to the Bear’s Den, a bear bar a few streets away from here.

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