Too much...?

This “hôtel particulier”, a former private mansion house – now a school – is very rich on decorations, maybe a little bit “too much”?

Well, it has not always looked like this, the building has been transformed during the centuries. The original building dates from the 16^th century and has changed owners – and shape and decorations… - a number of times. It is today known as “Hôtel Fieubet”, but has also been known as “Hôtel Combourg”, “Hôtel Lavalette”… Below we can see some illustrations of the building I have found (stolen) on the net. It should perhaps be mentioned that in the early 19^th century it was during a few decades used as a sugar refinery. The present look dates mostly from around 1857, when it was bought by a Count Lavalette who had it rebuilt and decorated in the present showy neo-baroque style. 20 years later the building became the school it still is. The interior was for long known to have been splendid, but today…?

We can see the names of some of the occupants on the walls of the building.

The place where you find the building gives me a reason to talk about the area where you find it. The area you can see inside the red dotted lines was once referred to as “Hôtel Saint-Pol” (Saint Paul) and was occupied by royal residences – several and separate buildings for the King, the Queen, the Princes… - during the reigns of Charles V and Charles VI, meaning during the late 14^th and early 15^th centuries. We were then just outside the "Philippe-Auguste Wall" (see different posts here) and a new "Charles V Wall" was being built.

The name “Saint-Pol” has its origin in the Saint-Paul church which already stood there and was destroyed only after the 1789 French Revolution. (I talked about it in a previous post, see here.) 

   

The area then fell into ruins and was during the 16^th century sold in parcels… and this is where, in one corner, we can find the “Hôtel Fieubet”.

The Anne-Frank Garden ... again.

In November 2010 I already wrote about the little Anne-Frank Garden (see here), so well hidden behind some buildings that very few people manage to find their way to it, although so close to a place which receives a lot of visitors, the Centre Pompidou (see my previous posts).  

In my previous post I wrote about the chestnut tree that Anne had been looking at “nearly every morning” and which was blown down by a storm in 2010, but of which a graft had been planted here, when the Anne-Frank Garden opened in 2007. I took photos of the little tree, thus in November 2010 … and now we can see how the tree has grown.

Something which is new in the garden since my 2010-visit is a double sculpture by the German artist Aleander Polzin, to honour the memory of the Jewish-German-Romanian poet Paul Celan, who had been in camps, lost his parents during WWII, and who later lived and died in Paris. One can see a seriously tortured man and an immobile woman, with her hair covering her face, unable to see and  to act.

In the garden (from where you can see a little corner of the Centre Pompidou) very few people were around last Saturday morning – two kids with their dad…

… but one could admire all the trees in blossom!       

An ecological little garden

I already posted about the “White Coats” – “Blancs Manteaux” in French. I’m not going to repeat what I already wrote here and here, just say that this refers to some monks, dressed in white. They also gave the name to a street, rue des Blanc-Manteaux. We are in the Marais area - at one end of the street you can see the covered market building which also bears the “Blanc-Manteaux”-name and, at the other end, the “Centre Pompidou” (see posts here) is more or less visible.

We can see the open space, the little garden and playground, where once the monastery used to stand. The 17^th century church is still there.

There are a number of shops, galleries and even a quite well-known little theatre along the street.

The street crosses another street, rue des Archives, and you can see an example of the “LGBT” coloured pedestrian crossings which are quite common in the Marais area.

There is an old school building – you can read 1842 on the front. During the weekends the doors are open and you can get through to the other side…

… and find a garden. It’s a very special garden – it’s taken care of by an association, “Les Acteurs du Paris Durable”, in a very ecological way.

We can see a good ecological example with a lady, living in the area, bringing in what is left when she has peeled her potatoes and carrots. One day it will be fertile earth.   

Green space

I was a bit early for a meeting… and I discovered two charming green spaces - along the Avenue du Général Leclerc. The first one is surrounding an old (1780) hospital building, Hôpital Rochefoucauld, outside Paris borders when it was built. Today the hospital is specialising in gerontology. The surrounding park is of course rather there for the (old) patients, but you can walk around discretely (especially as I have the age). 

On the other side of the building (see "map" below), you can find one of the “regards” (no. 25) of the Medici aqueduct. I wrote about it here.

The other green space I found, very close to the first one, is named “Villa Adrienne”. It’s actually a private area, but with hundreds of inhabitants, so it’s quite easy to get in (staying discrete of course). It has been there since 1895 and got its name from the then owner, a Mrs Adrienne Desmont. On two sides you can find apartment buildings and on the third side some very nice villas (see also top picture). One specific thing is that there is no numbering of the different entrances – instead you find names of well-known artists, scientists…  

Even the villas have such names.

Just round the corner is a little nice alley, “Villa Hallé” which I already visited, see here.

JR and the Louvre Pyramid

30 years ago, March 29, 1989, the Louvre Pyramid, imagined by the Chinese-American architect I.M.Pei (still alive, 101 years old) was inaugurated by François Mitterrand.  The pyramid, has since, especially in the beginning, been criticized by many, loved by others (like me).

So, 30 years later, it was time for a celebration and JR got the job. JR does not only stand for Larry Hagman. It goes also for Jean René, a French photographer and graffiti artist, who works all over the globe. At the bottom of this post I have put together some of his works – ”stolen” on the net, as several other pictures in this post. 

JR already made a Pyramid installation in 2016, when he made it “disappear” – I wrote about it here. He has made several other installations in Paris. I wrote about what he did at the Paris Pantheon in 2014 here.

This time JR wanted the Pyramid to be more than visible, to somehow show what could be underground, under the top that we all normally can see. (In reality, we know that there is a commercial centre, entrances to the museum…)

During two days a some 400 volunteers, working in shifts, helped JR - cutting, spreading out sheets...

Rather late, March 29, 2019, we could see the result – on a large screen – filmed from above.

The following day, we could all walk on the decorations that had been so carefully designed and spread out all over the place. In a few days, nothing will be left - except some photos… You may actually have a doubt: Is this enormous installation, which finally could be seen only by a camera and lasted, untouched, only a few hours, the best 30th anniversary solution? One thing that I really liked though was the nice atmosphere and the smiling volunteering helpers!

JR was a good friend of the film director Agnès Varda – they made a movie together and he joined her when she received an honorary Oscar last autumn. She died at the age of 90, on this very same date – March 29, 2019.  

... and, as promised, here are some other examples of JR installations.