The metric system

In full revolution, the French National Assembly accepted during the 1790’s the proposal by the French Academy of Sciences that the definition of a metre should be one ten-millionth length of the Earth’s meridian, the distance from the equator to the North Pole. The metre as a universal measurement was internationally agreed by the end of the 19th century and as a “compensation” the French agreed to abandon “Prime Meridian”, which passed through Paris, to the benefit of Greenwich. (See my post Sept. 10th.)

I visited the Luxembourg Gardens yesterday and when I left, just across the street, I happened to see the above “metre” in an arcade of a building occupied by the French Agency for Weights and Measurements (l’Agence des Poids et Mesures). (The address is 36 rue Vaugirard, 6th arrdt.) I learnt that this is the only remaining “metre” still in place out of the 16 that were placed around Paris in 1796-97 in order to make the population acquainted with this new way of measuring.

The metre is still basically the same, but is today defined as equal to the distance traveled by light in vacuum during 1/299792458 of a second!!

One issue is still whether I shall write metre (UK) or meter (US)?

Another more important issue is obviously that the metric system is not yet generally applied! Imagine that in all my posts about e.g. altitudes and distances, I feel obliged to translate all measures to yards, feet, miles…!!

In 1960, at last, the metric system was officially recognized by almost all countries and this decimal based agreement covers not only length measurements, but also mass, temperature… When will it ever be really implemented, not only by scientists? I imagine that some of you feel “guilty”!

… and if I now proposed a specific "international agreement" between bloggers to communicate in metres, kilograms, centigrades… ? As not only the metre, but also the kilogram are French inventions and the centigrade (Celsius) a Swedish invention, I feel of course particularly concerned!

Rue Fortuny

I don’t know how well Nespresso is spread over the world. At least it’s a great success in France and I must admit that I’m a fervent Nespresso drinker since a few years, I believe even before George Clooney.

It’s doubtful if, ecologically speaking, this is the best coffee preparation method, but anyhow… So I went to the closest Nespresso shop to get my monthly dose. This shop is in an old former one-family private house (“hôtel particulier”) some ten minutes walk from where I live.

Leaving the place, I could turn to the left and find the Swedish Church of Paris or to the right and find the Parc Monceau…, but I went straight on via a small street called rue Fortuny (17th arrdt), which you can see on the top picture.

This part of Paris was scarcely inhabited until the middle of the 19th century, but Paris grew and it then became fashionable for fortuned people to own a “hôtel particulier” in this area. Only in this small street, maybe 200 meters (220 yards) long, there are a number of them, some really nice. Today they are mostly used as offices, but some quite well-known people used to live here.

Edmond Rostand lived and wrote Cyrano de Bergerac at no. 2. At no. 13 (a street number mostly avoided) lived Marcel Pagnol - very popular French author and film director; "Topaze" is perhaps the internationally most well-known of his works, starring John Barrymore and later Peter Sellers in different Anglo-American film versions. Some actors and actresses also lived here, the most famous being Sarah Bernhardt at no. 35, and also e.g. the dancer, actress and courtesan Caroline Otero (“La Belle Otero”), at no. 27. Less “official” is perhaps that Nicolas Sarkozy was born and spent his first 18 years at no. 46, together with grandparents, a later divorced mother and two brothers.
Some autumn leaves from the way home to taste my coffee.

I put a few of these photos on my photo blog.

The oldest house in Paris

This is the oldest still existing building in Paris, from 1407. More ore less impossible to take a “decent” photo, the street is narrow. The address is 51, rue de Montmorency, 3rd arrdt. There is a restaurant on the ground floor.

It was built for Nicolas Flamel (1330? – 1417), an interesting personality. He was a very successful scrivener, manuscript maker and seller. (This was before Gutenberg.)

He incidentally got hold of a book which he then thought to be the Codex, the “Book of Abraham”, and he spent some 20 years to together with his wife to decode the contents, according to what was thought, sufficiently well to recreate the recipe for the Philosopher’s Stone, producing gold and the elixir for eternal life. Anyhow, he became very rich… and when his grave was later opened it was empty…

He was certainly a great alchemist and his works in this area were taken seriously, studied by scientists during centuries, including by Isaac Newton, whose main “hobby” seems to have been alchemy. Flamel is also mentioned as one of the Grand Masters of the obviously imaginary “Priory of Sion” and as such is of course referred to in the Da Vinci Code. He was also pretended to be a friend of Albus Dumbledore and to be the inventor of the Philosophers’ (or Sorcerer’s) Stone in the first Harry Potter book. He has been forgotten neither by Victor Hugo, nor by Umberto Eco.

It is believed that if he got rich, it’s rather thanks to labour and good, possibly more or less morally correct, investments. He was a generous person – spent most of his money on building hospices, repairing churches and helping the poor. The house we can see was opened to needing persons.

The inscription (“Nous homes et femes laboureurs…”) which still can be seen on the front of the house says more or less in a free and abbreviated translation: “The men and women who live in this house will have the right to a daily Paternoster and Ave Maria….”

"India Town"

We have at least two “China Towns” in Paris and some 400 Chinese restaurants (+ Vietnamese, etc…). There are fewer restaurants serving Indian or Pakistanis food, but anyhow some 150-200 – suburbs excluded. It should of course be taken into consideration that the Indian population in France is far less important than e.g. in UK.

I was not aware of this, but the other day I discovered what you may call an “India Town” in the 10th arrondissement (see map). Here you can find a great concentration of Indian and Pakistanis restaurants, but also of bars, food shops, barber shops, CD/DVD (“Bollywood”) shops, call centres…

You may be surprised by the comparatively low prices, not only for eating, but a haircut would e.g. cost you five times less here than in a “normal” salon. I will certainly go back for eating – hoping that some bloggers will recommend what would be the best dishes to order. I’m not sure about the haircut; I’m so faithful to my present hairdresser.

An old cemetery

In July I made a post about the small church behind Sacré Cœur, Saint-Pierre-de-Montmartre, and mentioned the small graveyard connected to the church, the oldest in Paris and called Cimitière du Calvaire. I also mentioned that it’s open for visitors only once a year, November 1st, and I more or less promised to visit it then. I kept my promise. The gate was open.



This small cemetery is on the very top of Montmartre and was once a place where you could find pagan and Roman temples. The few remaining graves are mostly from the beginning of the 19th century and basically you find only local Montmartre people buried here, hardly anybody really widely known. One exception is perhaps L-A de Bougainville (1729-1811), who started the first settlement on the Falkland Islands, led a voyage around the world, fought in the American war of Independence, was a great mathematician… and has got islands, mountains and plants named after him*.

There is another grave that is worth some attention, that of the Debray family: I talked also about this in a previous post, but it may be good to repeat a few details:









The family owned a windmill on top of Montmartre, later to be known as the “Moulin de la Galette” - the only real mill still remaining on Montmartre (difficult to see as on private ground and hidden by trees).

The four Debray sons got killed during a fight with Russians which took place on Montmartre in 1814. (One was cut in pieces, with which the mill wings were “decorated”). They were all buried here and the mother put a small red painted miniature windmill on the top of the grave. The miniature is still there, has lost its colour, but it was the origin of the name “Moulin Rouge”.

Most of the graves are today of course abandoned, are covered with moss (see top picture) and - due to the season - a lot of leaves… In some cases you find a small symbolic flower. The surrounding walls are covered by wild vine.

On the way back home, I passed by the Montmartre vineyard, which I also have posted about, and could not avoid taking some photos of the vine plants (the grapes are gone) and also some other wild vine I found on my way.

*/Actually he got a state funeral and his ashes are now at the Pantheon together with those of many other French heroes, but his heart is still in the cave.

I wish you a nice weekend! Back on Monday!

La Bastille

I was yesterday invited to an art exhibition, which at present takes place in tents around...
...Place de la Bastille
... and the small adjacent port.

The autumn colours are here.

I have of course visited and been driving across or around this place a number of times and I have also made some posts (1, 2, 3) about it and its surroundings. I often asked myself, where more exactly was the famous Bastille - somehow the symbol of the French revolution - and is there anything left? I decided to at last try to find out.

If you look carefully on the ground, which I hadn’t done before, the form of the central building and its towers has been partly traced in the pavement of the place.

With the help of some old drawings…

... I then tried to put the Bastille, hopefully more or less in scale, on the Google map. (Despite some desperate research, I could not find anything already done in this respect, but of course there must be something; I’m certainly not the first one to try…)

After the total destruction, most of the Bastille stones were used for other constructions in and around Paris, some were kept as souvenirs… but I learnt that there is something left:

The wall which goes along what today is a small port for yachts still partly contains the original stones from the Bastille.

The lower part of an outer wall was discovered when they built the tunnel for metro line 5 and can now be seen.

Some stones were carried to a small square in the neighbourhood, Square Henri Galli.

So now I (and maybe you) know a bit more!

Something very small

Returning to Paris with my posts, I will start in a very modest way: One single and small photo of what is the smallest building in Paris - with its own street number. The address is 39, rue de Château-d’Eau, 10th arrdt. The building is about 1,2 m wide and 5 m high (3,3 x 16 ft).

It seems that this was originally a narrow opening leading to another street, but after some heritage quarrel, someone decided to obstruct the passage. There used to be a tiny shop, obviously closed, but someone seems to live behind the only window.

The “narrow” sign in front of the building was there for some road works, but I feel that it was at its right place!

The street name (the Water Tower Street) could possibly interest especially one blogger who has a passion for nice and decorated water towers. I’m sorry hpy, there is no water tower around. It seems that there used to be some kind of fountain.

Lima

My last report from my South American trip will be about Lima, Peru’s capital.

Lima is on sea level, in front of the Pacific Ocean. (The beaches look fairly nice, but the water is quite cold and the city’s sewage is dumped, as such, into the ocean; for nice beaches, go south or north of Lima).

Contrary to the higher Peruvian areas, where the sky is blue most of the year, Lima is covered by a low layer of clouds some eight months, but it hardly ever rains. The temperature is moderate with small variations between the seasons.

The urban population approaches the ten millions – about a third of the country’s total - with a very rapid evolution the last decades. In some of the outskirts, including close to the airport, there are a lot of shantytowns (pueblos jovenes), mostly inhabited by Amerindians. As many of the world’s urban concentrations, Lima has been and is growing too rapidly to allow the infrastructures to follow.

Francisco Pizarro and his conquistadors defeated the Inca population and Lima was officially founded in 1535, became capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru in 1543 and later – in 1821 – of the independent Peru.

The city has suffered from different earthquakes, the most violent in the 18th century, but the old city centre is full of beautiful buildings in colonial style, especially around the central place, Plaza Mayor, including the Presidential Palace, the Cathedral and The Palazio del Arzibispo with some fantastic balconies and, close to this place, some other churches and official buildings.

Close to Plaza Mayor you find the wonderful Church and Monastery of San Francisco, with some impressive catacombs where all Lima citizens were buried until the beginning of the 19th century.

One interesting “detail” in the Monastery is an early 17th century painting of the Cena (The Last Supper), where you can clearly find Maria Magdalena leaning her head on Jesus’ shoulder.

When you go to the areas of Miraflores (and its neighbour San Isidro), closer to the Ocean, the city looks almost European; wide streets and avenues, parks, modern office buildings, residential housing, hotels, restaurants, casinos…and on the Ocean cliffs a fantastic shopping and amusement centre, Larcomar.

Lima has also some remarkable museums, including the Museo del Oro (Gold Museum).

All nice things come unfortunately to an end; time to go back to Paris – of course also quite nice!

As usual, I would suggest that you go to my photo blog, if you wish to see the photos in large!