“You should not confuse your career with your life.”
Dave Barry
Sites/Topics covered in this post:
- Parc des Buttes-Chaumont
- The Pantheon
Go-Date: Day 141, Wednesday, June 12
Lesson Learned: Uber works fine in Paris and it’s a lot cheaper than hiring a cab. We stopped a cab outside the Moulin Rouge and he wanted 30 Euros ($33.66) for a 1 mile ride. We didn’t do that, and if we would have called an Uber it would have only been 11.46 Euros ($12.86). We use the metro, and don’t do cabs or Uber, but we’ll use them on the 17th to get from our apartment to the RER station (Gare du Norde). You can also use Uber to rent the electric scooters or have food delivered. We’ll have to check that out. No, I’m not getting any money to write this, so I’m just telling you what I’ve observed.
Parc des Buttes-Chaumont
The Buttes-Chaumont Park, in the north-east of Paris, is one of the biggest and original green spaces in Paris, measuring 25 hectares (or about 62 acres). This is the area that John Robinson lives (see our earlier post) and he told us about this fabulous park. Its built on the site of an old limestone quarry so its full of hills, deep gorges, steep changes in grade and heights. Visitors are presented with stunning views of the city from this hilly oasis, especially of the Montmartre district. The Sacré-Cœur basilica is fabulous up close, but seeing it on the horizon really displays its splendor. The park layout is loaded with tranquil charm with its caves and waterfalls, a suspended bridge, and hilltop viewpoint. It’s lush with exotic, indigenous trees and numerous birds and peaceful lake hidden behind the trees.
Opened in 1867, late in the regime of Napoleon III, it was built according to plans by Jean-Charles Alphand, who was the architect of all the major parks demanded by the Emperor (its good to be king emperor). The park has 5.5 kilometers (3.4 miles) of roads and 2.2 kilometers (1.4 miles) of paths. The most famous feature of the park is the Temple de la Sibylle, inspired by the Temple of Vesta in Tivoli, Italy, and perched at the top of a cliff fifty meters above the waters of the lake.
The park took its name from the bleak hill which occupied the site, which, because of the chemical composition of its soil, was almost bare of vegetation – it was called Chauve-mont, or “bare hill”. The area, which was outside the city limits of Paris until the mid-19th century, had a sinister reputation; it was close to the site of the Gibbet of Montfaucon, the notorious place where from the 13th century until 1760, the bodies of hanged criminals were displayed after their executions. Oh, the French….what a Sunday it would be, to load up the family in the carriage, go see the rotting corpses of executed criminals, and then have a lovely picnic with wine, cheese, and rare beef. After the 1789 Revolution, it became a garbage dump for the city, and then a rendering plant for horse carcasses and a sewage dump. Now it’s a lovely park for all to visit, just don’t dig in the dirt, you never know what you might find.
Dead and Buried
It was raining the day we visited the Pantheon, hard. But, what are you going to do in Paris, sit in your apartment and watch Wheel of Fortune, in French? The Panthéon is a building in the Latin Quarter and just another reason to visit this neighborhood. It was originally built as a church dedicated to St. Genevieve, but now functions as a secular mausoleum containing the remains of distinguished French citizens.
Located in the 5th arrondissement on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, the Panthéon looks out over all of Paris. By burying its great people in the Panthéon, the nation acknowledges the honor it received from them. As such, interment here is severely restricted and is allowed only by a parliamentary act for “National Heroes”. Its also amazing to me how many people have been disinterred here. I guess your accomplishments need to stand the test of time, or you need to put it in your will that your grandkids can’t dig you up to re-bury you in the pet cemetery in the back yard after your inheritance runs out.
There’s a rumor that the remains of Voltaire were stolen by religious fanatics in 1814 and thrown into a garbage heap. This story resulted in the coffin being opened in 1897, which confirmed that his remains were still present. Or so they claim. Would the French really admit they’d lost the remains of one of the most famous Parisian patriots of all time? I don’t think so.
The overall design was that of a Greek cross with a massive portico of Corinthian columns. Its ambitious lines called for a vast building 110 meters long by 84 meters wide, and 83 meters high. This place is huge, but surprisingly, its pretty spacious and empty except for a few statues and a lot of columns. No less vast was its crypt. I will tell you though that only a few of the sarcophagi are visible (Voltaire). Most are hidden away behind closed (and Ellen found out, locked) doors.
Upon the death of the popular French orator and statesman Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau on 2 April 1791, the National Constituent Assembly, whose president had been Mirabeau, ordered that the building be changed from a church to a mausoleum for the interment of great Frenchmen. Mirabeau was the first person interred there, on 4 April 1791.
Foucault Pendulum
One of the interesting features of the Pantheon is the curious pendulum in the center of the rotunda. In 1851, physicist Léon Foucault demonstrated the rotation of the Earth by constructing a 67-metre (220 ft) Foucault pendulum beneath the central dome. This pendulum shows that the Earth does actually rotate on its axis. The original pendulum is now housed at the Musée des Arts et Métiers (which we saw last week), a working copy is displayed at the Panthéon and has been swinging there since 1995.
Here’s a list of a few of the famous dead people housed in this space:
- Voltaire – Writer, philosopher
- Victor Hugo – Writer
- Jean Perrin – Nobel Prize Winner
- Louis Braille – Reading system for the blind
- René Cassin – Nobel Prize Winner
- Pierre Curie – Nobel Prize Winner
- Marie Curie – Nobel Prize Winner (radioactive studies)
- Alexandre Dumas, père – Writer (Three Muskateers)