One of the most delightful towns in France for tourism, is the capital of the Aube department, Troyes. It is today a community of 60,000, the history of which dates back to Celtic settlements circa 600 BC. Well-developed during the Roman era, it benefitted from being at the intersection of Roman roads that […]
Author Archives: marina.woodson
‘Town of a hundred steeples,’ Victor Hugo once wrote about Rouen. Today there are still no less than 30 active Rouennais churches, of which four stand out: Notre Dame de Rouen Cathedral, the St. Ouen Abbey Church, the Saint Maclou Church and the Ste. Jeanne Church—each remarkable for different reasons. The most renowned, […]
September 15th 2017 to April 8th 2018 Between drawing and painting, pastel works are a form of art which are less known to most audiences. They are faster to make than paintings but extremely fragile to both light and vibrations, harder to conserve, hence the reason why we see much less of them in exhibitions. Because they […]
Between 1916 and 1918, an astute Danish businessman indulged a personal passion for French art and amassed a collection of exceptional works of French artists ranging from Camille Corot to Paul Gauguin. Part of the collection, about 40 works, is on loan and can be seen until January 22 at the Jacquemart Andre Museum […]
If your love of Claude Monet’s art is sufficiently intense, you might wonder what sort of art the master collected for himself. Answers are available in an unusual exposition at the Marmottan Monet Museum in Paris, until January 14: “Monet Collectionneur.” Comprised of over 100 paintings, several sculptures, drawings and prints (including an assortment of […]
If you are interested in porcelain, you will recognize the name Sèvres, a virtual synonym for exquisite porcelain ever since its factory was created in 1740. You might not know that in the same suburb of the same name, Sèvres, there is an amazing museum devoted to many of the different forms of ceramics known […]
Many visitors to Paris ask if its nickname is the City of Light, or if it is the City of Lights. The short answer is that both terms are correct, for different reasons. Visitors also ask how the city acquired its monikers, and there are several explanations. In 1670, the lieutenant general of police of […]
Almost everyone who visits Paris has heard of Montmartre, but few know that the butte is such a storied place. So many fantastic events, many gruesome, have taken place on it for so long, since the dawn of time, that most tourists have no clue of its amazing history. Not many visitors even know that its […]
Paris is experiencing another flood, reminding us of a fact that we tend to suppress: the City of Light historically has experienced a super flood more or less every century, and the last one was in 1910, which now puts us in overdue territory. Could this be the start of the next big one? It […]
In Paris we don’t talk about the weather unless something really unusual happens. Unusual by Parisian standards, of course. In the summer if the temperatures rise above 27° C (80° F), which does not happen often, everyone laments their lot, with constant bleats of “il fait chaud” (It’s hot !). This week we got 10 […]