Paris's cemetery for pets ...

The following story made me smile. I hope in this dark time we are living in presently – thousands being killed in Syria for example – this will bring a smile to your face too.

In 1899 a cemetery opened north-west of Paris in the commune named Asnières-sur-Seine. Nothing extraordinary about a new burial place you may well say, but this cemetery was for the bodies of pets who have set off for the beyond – dogs, cats, monkeys, hamsters, rabbits, mice, birds, fish and even ponies and horses – but was called the Cimetière des Chien. The Cemetery of Dogs. Its creation was due to a 1898 law that prohibited pet owners to chuck out the bodies of their defunct pets with the domestic rubbish and obliged them to bury the bodies hygienically at last 100m from the nearest homestead.

If I tell you that a burial plot in a cemetery for humans cost from €10,000 ($13,160 / £8,300) and that the least expensive tomb stone costs approx €2,000 ($2,630 / £1,700) you will appreciate the sorrow of those who came and are still coming to bury their departed four-legged friends in this cemetery which is on an island – l’ile des Ravageurs on the River Seine.

The grave of a much-loved doggie

Today 18,000 much-loved and much-missed family pets lie buried in the cemetery. One of the departed is the canine Hollywood star, Rin Tin Tin. An American First World War soldier had rescued Rin Tin Tin from starvation and tear gas and when he was shipped back to the States with his regiment, he took the dog along. At the end of Rin Tin Tin’s life in Los Angeles in 1932, it was decided that his body should be returned to the land of his birth to be buried in the Cimetière des Chiens in Asnières-sur-Seine. He was 13 at the time of his death and according to legend he died in the arms of Jean Harlow. (Many men would have said: lucky dog!)

Rin Tin Tin's grave

The story I want to tell you now which I hope will make you smile, is that of late a rumor has been circling through the commune of Asnières-sur-Seine that a dog was recently buried in the cemetery and that the dog was buried still wearing its collar. The collar, according to the rumor, was one of diamonds.

The lure of a collar made of diamonds was too great for someone who dug up the dog’s grave to get to the little coffin. The cemetery has been closed for a few days so it is not known when the thief struck, but it was the cemetery’s supervisor who came across the opened grave and coffin yesterday (Sunday) morning. He summoned the police who are now investigating the theft. As I write this, the police are still to speak to the little dead dog’s owner. No doubt the first question they are going to ask her or him will be: Did you really bury your dog with his diamond collar?

There was a similar case in the 1970s when thieves broke into a grave in Paris’s Père Lachaise Cemetery with diamonds in mind, but of course then it was the grave of a human.

It was the grave of the French actress Martine Carol. At the time of her death in February 1967 gossip magazines had reported that her husband (he was her fourth) had buried her jewels with her and that she was wrapped in the white fox fur coat she’d been photographed in often. The thieves had indeed set off with the white fox fur coat and the jewels they had found in her coffin, but her husband told the police that all the jewels were fake. So was the coat. The actress had fallen on hard times and had some time previously sold the real jewels which she had then replaced with fakes. The coat was apparently never real.

The grave of a much-missed kitty

If you plan a trip to Paris – or you live here – and you wish to visit the Cemetery for Dogs, know that it is closed on Mondays. In the months of summer it is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and between March 16 and October 15 from 10 a.m. to 4.30 pm. It is also closed on Public Holidays. It is not free: It costs €3.50 ($4.60 / £3) for an adult to go in and half that for a child under 12 and it’s free for the under-12s.
To get there you take the Paris Metro (underground railroad) Line 13 to Gabriel Péri/Asnieres-Gennevilliers. It will take about 25/30 minutes. At Gabriel Péri you go to Rue des Bas and walk towards the river (Seine). A little way down the street you turn into Avenue Gabriel Péri and at the very next corner you turn into Boulevard Voltaire. You will then see the cemetery in the distance. It’s a pleasant walk on a warm and sunny day.

The address is Number 4 Pont de Clichy, Asnières-sur-Seine.

(I will be going there again when the spring or summer is here, so if you plan to go, check with me, and you could come with me.)

UPDATE:
Indeed, the doggie, Tipsy, a black poodle, was buried with his diamond collar worth €9,000 ($12,000 / £7,500) still around his neck.

Tipsy’s owner, the wife of a wealthy American industrialists (police did not name the couple) was on vacation in Switzerland when the robbery took place.

Police are now not only looking for someone who violated a tomb, but also for a thief.

Da Vinci's on the left, the Prado's on the right

Mona Lisa … It is a name which never fails to attract attention; to hit the headlines. It has done so again right now.

Madrid’s Prado Museum has announced that it has had a copy of Leonardo da Vinci Mona Lisa in its vaults for some years, and has now discovered after a restoration which removed several layers of paint and an x-ray analysis that it is the oldest original copy (or replica) of the early-16th century masterpiece.

Da Vinci started his Mona Lisa, which the French call La Joconde and the Italians La Gioconda, in 1503 and finished it around 1519. The painting belongs to France and is on display at Paris’s Louvre Museum.

Prado’s news comes just at a time when the Mona Lisa is in the news because the Louvre is preparing an exhibition entitled Leonardo’s Last Masterpiece: The Sainte Anne which will open on Thursday, March 29 and will run through to Monday, June 25, and London’s National Gallery’s Leonardo da Vinci exhibition which opened on November 9, 2011, is to close this Sunday, February 5.

The Prado’s Mona Lisa will be part of the Louvre’s exhibition – it will be hung beside the original – but it will be shown first at the Prado in about three week’s time.

Who painted the Prado’s painting?

Art experts are saying that it was probably painted by one of Leonardo da Vinci’s apprentices/students, and that it was being painted while Da Vinci was painting his; that the two men stood painting alongside each other. The name of Francesco Melzi is mentioned and it is being said that he might well have been present when Lisa Gherardini, the wife of the wealthy Florentine silk merchant, Francesco del Giocondo, sat for Da Vinci.

We do not however know that Lisa Gherardini was indeed the woman of the painting. Another theory is that it is not even a woman on the painting, but a man, and he was the cross-dresser Salai who was Da Vinci’s lover. Salai (Little Devil) was the affectionate nickname Da Vinci gave Giacomo Caprotti da Orena.

I wrote about Salai and Da Vinci and you can read it here.

Despite that there are dozens of Mona Lisa replicas which date from the 16th and 17th centuries the Louvre is now assured that its forthcoming exhibition will draw a great crowd of people. There is anyway always a mass of people in front of the Mona Lisa. I therefore recommend that you make a reservation on-line. You can do it on the Louvre’s own website or you can do it here and you would either be able to download the ticket/s or have it mailed to you.

This is what it looks like in the Louvre in front of the Mona Lisa every day

I wrote another article about how the Mona Lisa was stolen on August 22, 1911 by the Italian Vincenzo Peruggia. You can read it here.

Know that the Louvre does not loan out the Mona Lisa, so if you want to see it, you will have to come to Paris.

The 20 arrondissements (districts) of Paris

I am often asked how many people live in Paris.

In a nutshell the answer is: within the city itself (intra muros) live 2,257,981 million people, whereas approx 13 million people live in greater or extra muros Paris.

Intra muros Paris of 105.4 sq km ( 10,539 hectares) is divided into 20 arrondissements – districts or boroughs – each with its own municipality. The districts’ postal codes all start with the number 75, and the city is enclosed by a ‘ring road’, the Boulevard Périphérique.

The Hotel de Ville - Paris's city hall

But where in intra muros Paris is it best to live?

This is something, I suppose, which depends on whether you like your neighborhood to be busy or quiet, but the most populous district is the 15th where there are very many new apartment blocks, and the one with the least inhabitants is the 1st which is right in the heart of Paris.

The Luxembourg Gardens in winter

Here is the list from most populous down:

Inhabitants:
15th – 238,914
18th – 201,975 (Montmartre area)
20th – 198,678
19th – 186,507
13th – 184,034 (Chinatown area)
16th – 171,880 (very smart)
17th – 170,218 (very smart)
11th – 154,411
12th – 144,595
14th – 138,465
10th – 96,744
5th – 62,236 (Latin Quarter)
9th – 61,046
7th – 58,309 (Eiffel Tower – smart and quiet)
6th – 43,976 (Montparnasse and Luxembourg Gardens area)
8th – 40,840 (Champs-Élysées area)
3rd – 36,358
4th – 28,459
2nd – 22,571
1st – 17,767

Know that the most sought-after arrondissement is the 6th which is because of the 42-acre Luxembourg Gardens. It is therefore also the arrondissement with the most expensive real estate and rents.

If you are moving to Paris and you want to know where to look for a place to stay, I will tell you to look in the 6th or in Montmartre in the 18th.

A street of houses in Paris's Montsouris Park area

Baron Empain at the time of his kidnapping

There is a law in all civilized countries that a convicted criminal can not benefit financially from his crime. This is a law which does not exist in France. Therefore, yesterday (Thursday, January 19, 2012) the French publishing company Le Cherche Midi published the memoir of a man not only convicted for kidnapping but also for drug dealing.

The convicted criminal’s name is Alain Caillol.

His book is titled Lumière (Light) and it comes to 216 pages and as I’ve seen on amazon.fr it is a best-seller here.

Let me say right away that I will not buy this criminal’s book and neither will I read it. The book costs €15($20 / £12). I would rather burn that money than give it to this criminal.

Caillol masterminded the kidnapping in 1978 of the Belgian industrialist and head of Schneider, Baron Édouard-Jean Empain. The Baron, then 40 years old, was grabbed at 10.30 a.m. as his chauffeur-driven automobile emerged from the basement parking area of his apartment building on Paris’s Avenue Foch in the 16th arrondissement (district). The armed kidnappers handcuffed the Baron and told him to do as they tell him or they will knock him down. The chauffeur, also handcuffed, was violently thrown into the back of a small van which raced off. He was later thrown from the van. The kidnappers had driven off with the Baron in his own car (a Peugeot 604). A few hours later the car was found abandoned outside Paris; there were no fingerprints in and on the vehicle. Neither the chauffeur, in a state of shock, nor the passersby who witnessed the kidnapping could give the police a trustworthy description of the kidnappers. It was a time of kidnapping and that of the Italian politician and former Prime Minister Aldo Moro in January of 1978 was still very much one everyone’s mind. (Moro was kidnapped and then killed by the Marxist-Leninist Red Brigades of Italy.) That the Baron’s chauffeur reported to the police that he had heard one of the kidnappers speak in German made the cops believe that the German faction of the Red Brigades had kidnapped the Baron.

For the following 63 days the police sought the Baron’s kidnappers. Going into not only the Baron’s professional life but also his private life, the media did not fail to report that the handsome and very wealthy 40-year-old married man and father, loved to play poker but loved even more the company of pretty women. It was also revealed that he was in debt: therefore, might he have arranged the kidnapping to get money from his family so that he could pay off his debt?

The kidnappers meanwhile left a note in a baggage hold at one of Paris’s railroad stations demanding FF80 million (€12 million / $15.5 million / £10.5 million) against their captive’s release. They called themselves the Noyaux armés pour l’autonomie populaire – the Armed Circle (or Cell) for a People’s Government (or something like that.)

To show that they meant business, the kidnappers, by then being identified in the media by the initials NAPAP, slipped the pinkie of the Baron’s left hand into the envelope. There was a threat (or promise) that another part of the Baron’s anatomy would be cut off next unless the ransom was paid. It would later be revealed that they had cut the finger off without having administered anesthesia.

Over the weeks that followed the kidnappers would several times set up meetings with the Baron’s family and his company for the ransom to be handed over, but each time, the kidnappers got cold feet and made a dash for it. Finally, another meeting was set up close to a highway south of Paris, but the police were staking out the place and there was a shoot out between them and the kidnappers. One of the kidnappers was killed, another wounded, so too two police inspectors. Through the wounded kidnapper, a man who had already served time for bank robbery, the police learned the name of the man who masterminded the kidnapping. It was Alain Caillol.

Caillol, in police custody, and the police having promised him that his accomplishes won’t be arrested, then phoned them and told them to let the Baron go. This they did. They drove the Baron, always so dashing, but then bearded, dishevelled and 20 kilos lighter after 63 days of imprisonment, to a wasteland outside Paris. From there he walked to a Metro (underground railroad) station, bought a ticket with the FF10 note the kidnappers had given him, and descending in central Paris, he telephoned his wife from a public phone booth to say that he’d been freed. He broke down crying in the police car sent to pick him up.

The kidnappers were arrested; police technicians had identified the number Caillol had called through the dialling tone.

The Baron had been kept in the dark the entire 63 days of his kidnapping, sometimes in a tent set up in a basement. He had a chain around his neck. His little finger was cut off on the day of his kidnapping. He never saw the faces of his kidnappers because they were always masked.

In 1982, four years after the kidnapping, the trial of the 8 kidnappers – 6 men and 2 women – opened in Paris. (There had been 10 kidnappers but apart from the one who had died during the shoot-out with the police, another had died during a later bank robbery.) The trial lasted 16 days. Caillol was sentenced to 20 years, the others from between two to five years.

Caillol was released after 11 years, but went back into prison in 2001 for 8 years for drug dealing. He now says that writing his book is his mea culpa. “We owe him the truth,” he says in media interviews. The ‘him’ is the Baron.

They owe the Baron much more than that!

His marriage did not survive the kidnapping; having learned of her husband’s nocturnal activities his wife did not want to remain married to him. He also lost his position as head of Schneider after which he set off for the States only with a backpack. He was a broken man. Today, he is back living in Belgian and he is married to another French woman, and he remains out of the public eye. This book will undoubtedly earn him some unwanted publicity again.

So what I say to you now is: If you have €15 ($20/£12) burning a hole in your pocket, give it to charity, but do not give it to this criminal. Or drop it into the paper cup of a beggar sitting in the street.

Joan of Arc on the stake for heresy

Today, Friday, January 6, France commemorates the birth of Joan of Arc – Jeanne d’Arc – born 600 years ago, in 1412.

It is said that the reason the French and the English nations do not like one another is because of Joan of Arc. And Napoleon thrown in too to make matters worse. Oddly, there is not such great love and admiration here in France for the latter as there is for Joan. The extreme right-wing political party – Front Nationale has even adopted her as their very own.

The image I have of Joan of Arc dates from my school days: a girl with close-cropped hair and dressed in a suit of armor. And she’s sitting on a horse and holding a lance. Then, when I came to live in Paris, I learned that she might not have been a girl, but a boy. And this story has surfaced regularly, and right now, on the eve of the commemoration of her birth, it is more virulent than ever before.

Briefly, Joan was born of Isabelle Romée and Jacques d’Arc, wealthy peasants in Domrémy, today named Domrémy-la-Pucelle, a village in north-east France, in the region of what is now Lorraine, but was then the Duchy of Bar. (Only 155 people live in the village today.) The Hundred Years’ War (a series of wars between different French and English royal houses for the thrones of France and England) was raging at the time of her birth, with Charles VI, monarch of France and Henry V that of England.

As Joan would claim later, she began having visions when she was 12 years old. The visions were of saints who she recognized from holy pictures as Saint Michael (Michel), Saint Catherine of Alexandria (Catherine d’Alexandrie) and Saint Margaret (Marguerite d’Antioche). They told her to drive the English out of France and to tell the Dauphin of France (heir to the throne) to come to Rheims to be crowned King. She eventually gained an audience with a duke at the Dauphin’s court where she made a prediction about a future victory for his army which then came true. It was this prediction which then won her an audience with the Dauphin himself, and, as she had to pass through battle fields to get to him, she donned men’s clothing. It was more convenient she claimed if she were to wear men’s clothing: She was to get there on horseback. However, from then on she no longer wore skirts or dresses.

At that meeting Joan asked the Dauphin to be allowed to lead his army against the English, which, low and behold, he agreed to. At first she succeeded in driving the English back, but eventually, with the complicity of a French dukedom, she was captured and sold to the victorious English. Put on trial for heresy, because she claimed that God himself was talking to her, she was burned on the stake on May 30, 1431. She donned a dress for the execution and legend has it that after the burning, the English exposed her charred body to the crowds and then burnt the remains yet again until only ashes were left. The ashes were thrown into the River Seine. She was 19 years old. According to the Church she had made a vow of virginity to God; it was a vow that she kept and therefore she died as a Maid of Heaven. Here in France, she’s referred to as Jeanne la Pucelle – Joan the Maid or Joan the Virgin.

In full battle gear

She died knowing that she had succeeded in her quest for a French monarch to rule France because the Dauphin was crowned as Charles VII on July 17, 1429. (He ruled until 1461.)

In 1456 – 25 years after her death and 5 years after that of Charles VII – after a hearing that lasted many months and which was conducted by a papal commission appointed by Pope Calixtus III, she was pronounced innocent of heresy and declared a martyr of the Catholic Church. Then, in 1909 – 478 years after her death – Pope Pius X beatified her in a ceremony in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, and in 1920 – 498 years after her death – Pope Benedict XV, again in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, canonized her. Today, she is one of the patron saints of France. (The others are: Saint Denis, Saint Martin of Tours, Saint Louis IX and Saint Theresa of Lisieux.

The current debate about Joan’s gender has been stirred by a book – Jeanne d’Arc, le stratagème – written by François Ruggieri, the French historian and movie producer. Due to a lively media debate about Joan’s gender, there is a rush for the book which was published in April 2011 and its sales has increased so that it has gone from a 44,379 ranking on Amazon.fr a week ago, to a 11,295 presently which makes it a best seller.

Ruggieri, who admits to a particular love for the 15th century, has told interviewers that, over time, he’s been asking himself how come, in that time of famine, theft and rape, could a young virgin girl have been left to guard a flock of sheep all on her own. He therefore began to research the issue and came to the conclusion that the official story of Joan Arc had no solid foundation.

“But,” he says, “one does not of course touch Joan of Arc!”

He did so all the same.

In his book he writes that Jacques d’Arc, Joan’s father rented a château – the castle of Bourlemont – near to Domrémy. Describing Jacques d’Arc as a simple peasant, he wonders how he could have afforded to have rented a castle. He also wonders where and how Joan had learned to ride a horse. And how she had been able to speak French as it was spoken at the Royal Court, and how she could have known how to use arms.

As he also writes in his book, there exists no record of the registration of the birth of someone named Jeanne d’Arc in the Domrémy region. There is even no historically-proven date for her birth. He points out that in 1909 when Pope Pius X beatified her, he cited her birth as at the end of 1407. But at her canonization in 1920, Pope Benedict XV gave the year of her birth as 1412 – the beginning of 1412.

Therefore, claims Ruggieri, there was no girl named Jeanne born in Domrémy to the couple Isabelle and Jacques d’Arc either at the end of 1407 or at the beginning of 1412 – or around those years.

But, if Joan never existed, who was it who was pretending to be her? Who was it who was leading the King’s army?

A story which has been told for a couple of centuries is this:

On November 10, 1407 (note this falls in with the time Pope Pius X had given) Queen Isabeau of Bavaria, spouse of King Charles VI (1368-1422), gave birth to a love child named Philippe, fathered by her brother-in-law Duke Louis d’Orléans. The child however died within a few hours of his birth and was buried as Philippe d’Orléans in the Basilica of Saint Denis, north of Paris. (The basilica has been the burial place of French kings since the 10th century.) Louis d’Orléans died three weeks after his son: he was assassinated by a member of a rival Royal House. I am not going to go deeper into this because it is complicated, but on Charles VI’s death, his Dauphin (heir) Charles ascended to the thrown as Charles VII, which was possible because of Joan.

The story continues that baby Philippe did not die, but Queen Isabeau, fearing that her ‘bastard’ son would be assassinated, as indeed he father was three weeks later, had him whisked off by coach in the middle of the night to a village which was the property of the Royal household, and there, the child was handed over into the care of a couple to be brought up as their offspring. The village was Domrémy. The surrogate parents were related to one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting. The latter’s name was Jeanne from the village of Arc (Joan from Arc) and the surrogate parents in Domrémy were her relatives. They were Isabelle and Jacques d’Arc. The story continues that the grateful Queen Isabeau handsomely compensated Isabelle and Jacques for bringing up her son, and even gave them the Castle of Bourlemont so that the boy would not grow up in a peasant’s hut.

Whether this is fact or fable we do not of course know, but the story continues that in 1793, during the French Revolution, when the royal tombs in the Basilica of Saint Denis were pillaged, the tomb of Philippe d’Orléans was empty. (You will not find him listed on any Royal family tree.)

Here I must point out that in 1819 a police chief (préfet), one Pierre Caze, wrote the book La Vérité sur Jeanne d’Arc, ou Éclaircissemens sur son Origine, in which he claimed that Isabeau of Bavaria and Louis d’Orléans did have a love child – a girl – born on November 10, 1407, who was brought up in Domrémy by Isabelle and Jacques d’Arc as their own child. And that that girl was Jeanne d’Arc.

So, what was the gender of the child Queen Isabeau had given birth to and who Isabelle and Jacques d’Arc had brought up? Was it a girl named Jeanne or a boy named Philippe? Whichever one it was, there are historians who believe that King Charles VII had listened to him or her because he knew that he was speaking to his half-brother – or his half-sister.

Will we ever know? Yes, it is not impossible. There are a few charred bones in the museum in the town of Chinon, which are said to be those of Joan. A DNA reading of the bones may not tell us who they belonged to, but it would be able to tell us whether they were those of a male or female.

There was a witness to Joan’s femininity. The witness though did not himself view her naked body, but knew that the Dauphin had asked his grandmother and several other women from the Royal Court to examine her intimately, and that they had no doubt that she was female because she had female sex organs.

This witness was Jean d’Aulon. The Dauphin had appointed the latter to see that no harm befell Joan, and he was therefore her bodyguard, but also chief squire of her household. He supplied a written testimony for Pope Calixtus’s ordered examination of Joan’s authenticity and rehabilitation – the Rehabilitation Trial, which is also known as the Nullification Trial, which opened on November 7, 1455. In his very long handwritten Déposition which opens with a statement as to his role in Joan’s life – “… I was a knight in the service of the Dauphin who assigned me to the Maid’s household as chief-squire. In this capacity I was in charge of her stables and the procurement of supplied. I also served as secretary and head of the Maid’s household …” He then not only stated that she was female, but also that she did hear the voices of saints and of God and was accomplishing his mission. He also stated that he had overheard some women say that they never say Joan menstruate. His claims were though not substantiated by anyone else at the trial.

This brings us to the question whether Joan had suffered from “testicular feminization syndrome” also known as “complete androgen insensitivity syndrome” which I admit I’ve never heard of but which is described on medical sites on the Web as follows: The complete androgen insensitivity syndrome is usually detected at puberty when a girl should but does not begin to menstruate. Many of the girls with the syndrome have no pubic or axillary (armpit) hair. They have luxuriant scalp hair without temporal (male-pattern) balding. They are sterile and cannot bear children.

I will allow the 20th century English writer, Vita Sackville-West, a lesbian, to have the last word. In her book Saint Joan of Arc she states that Joan was a lesbian. She came to that conclusion from the testimony of another witness at the trial, one Simon Beaucroix, who had known Joan. Beaucroix wrote in his testimony: “Joan slept always with young girls, she did not like to sleep with old women.”

On the Champs looking towards Place de la Concorde

A Paris-based communications agency – Agence Présence – has undertaken a survey of the world’s major avenues, and found that Avenue des Champs-Élysées with the reputation as the most beautiful avenue in the world, is not the one tourists like most.

The agency sent ‘customers’ to the shops and restaurants of 30 avenues and the Champs as the avenue is affectionately called by Parisians ranked 16th on the most-liked list.

The most liked was Singapore’s Orchard Road. London’s Bond Street came in on the 10th spot. A street I love – Geneva’s Rue du Rhone – came in as the 30th; in other words of the least liked of the 30. (I will give the list below.)

Early Fall (autumn) and no tourists

The Champs, which is 1.91 km (1.18 miles) long dates from the beginning of the 18th century. It runs from Place de la Concorde in the east to Place Charles de Gaulle (also still known by its previous name Place de l’Étoile) with its Arc de Triomphe built by Napoleon Bonaparte to honor his victories.

Once the avenue was lined with the showrooms of luxury automobiles, cinemas, restaurants, bistros and high-class souvenir shops, but as rents increased (they are sky-high these days) these began to disappear. Today, apart from one or two classy restaurants (Fouguette’s is one) the avenue is home to large fashion stores like C&A and Marks and Spencer which opened at the end of November (2011).

The ‘customers’ Agence Présence sent to see how they would be received on the Champs found the shop assistants, cashiers and waiters unfriendly and unhelpful. As has been reported in the Paris media, in 40% of cases, the shop assistant or waiter was irritable, was unsmiling and showed no interest in the shopper.

Here is the list: (The last figure is the score out of 100.)

• 1 Orchard Road – Singapore (89)
• 2 Avenue de la Liberté – Luxembourg (85)
• 3 PC Hoofstraat – Amsterdam (83)
• 4 Bagdat Avenue – Istanbul (83)
• 5 Oscar Freire – Sao Paulo (82)
• 6 George Street – Sydney (82)
• 7 Mariahilferstrasse – Vienne (80)
• 8 Avenue Louise – Brussels (78)
• 9 Ginza Line – Tokyo (78)
• 10 Bond Street – London (77)
• 11 Aleksanterinkatu – Helsinki (77)
• 12 Passage Victor Emmanuel – Milan (76)
• 13 Strøget – Copenhagen (75)
• 14 Wangfujing Avenue – Beijing (75)
• 15 Alvear – Buenos Aires (71)
• 16 Champs-Élysées – Paris (71)
• 17 Drottninggatan – Stockholm (71)
• 18 Apgujeong-dong – Seoul (71)
• 19 Karl Johan – Oslo (70)
• 20 Calle Serrano – Madrid (69)
• 21 Friedrischstrasse – Berlin (68)
• 22 Ulica Florianska – Cracow (67)
• 23 Nevsky Prospekt – Saint Petersburg (67)
• 24 Ermou Street – Athens (65)
• 25 Rue Sainte Catherine – Montreal (64)
• 26 5th Avenue – New York (64)
• 27 Avenida de la Libertad – Lisbon (61)
• 28 Rue du Rhône – Genève (59)
• 29 Des Voeux Road Central – Hong Kong (57)
• 30 Linking Road, Bandra – Mumbai (56)

For years now the French tourist ministry has, before each major vacation period (Easter, Christmas) asked Parisians to be friendly towards tourists. It looks as if their pleas have fallen on deaf ears.

Anyway, the Champs is beautiful – and you can always be unfriendly too …

One of the Louvre's treasures ...

In 2011 Paris was again the city with the highest number of visitors.

15 million came here.

And now I can say with certainty: the world loves Paris.

D'Orsay Museum

The visitors also loved Paris’s museums, so that these also had a bumper year.

Here are the official statistics:
Louvre – 8.8 million visitors which is 5% more than in 2010.
Château (Palace) of Versailles – 6.7 million visitors which is 10% more than in 2010.
Pompidou Center – 3.6 million which is an increase of 29% in a year which is attributed to the Munch Exhibition.
D’Orsay Museum – 3.1 million which is a 4% increase from 2010.
Quay Branly Museum – 1.4 million which is a 9% increase from 2010.

That is a total of 23.6 million people which means that the French themselves visited Paris’s museums.

Crowds in the Louvre

The most visited exhibitions were:

The Steins at the Grand Palais – 520,000 (This one started in October 2011 and ends at the end of this month.)

Munch at the Pompidou Center – 480,000 (This one started in September 2011 and also ends at the end of this month.)

Manet at D’Orsay – 470,000 (From April-July 2011).

Beauty in the time of Oscar Wilde at D’Orsay – 400,000. (This one started in September 2011 and also ends at the end of this month.)

Anish Kapoor at the Grand Palais – 277,000 (Was on from May-June 2011).

In those museums where the exhibitions end at the end of this month (January), new exhibitions will start in March. These will be:

Beaubourg Center – Matisse and Dali
D’Orsay – Degas
Grand Palais – Edward Hopper
And wait for it … Raphaël and Leonard de Vinci at the LOUVRE.

I will soon be giving more information (specific dates, ticket prices etc) in the near future, so do keep on checking on my site.

Another of Louvre's treasures

An extraordinary exhibition in Paris

Warning: The devout, disregarding of which religious doctrine you follow, may find this article disturbing.

You probably have a sprig of holly in your home this Holiday Season. But do you know that holly has nothing to do with stealing a kiss from the guy/girl you fancy but have not had the courage to declare your flame to? That holly is about witchcraft? That it has the same powers as the lowly thistle in that both will keep the devil and his disciples – demons, wizards and witches – away from you and your home?

What is more, do you know that an ancient belief is that it was the Devil who made the holly, whereas God made the laurel?

Thistle

Strangely, I’ve never liked holly. I can even say that I dislike it – those little spiked leaves and those little red berries. However, I thought it was because I always managed to cut myself on those little spikes and to stain my clothes with the berries. Yet, now I wonder why I’ve never gone for holly. (I won’t though say anything about the kissing under the holly …

Interesting isn’t it about holly, but if you want to know more about witchcraft – wizards and witches etc – then Paris is the place to be.

Paris is the place to be anyway, but since November 23 there has been a fascinating exhibition here, and it runs through until March 31, 2012. Therefore, if you live in Paris, or France, or will be visiting Paris, do put it on your list.

The exhibition Sorcière : Mythes et Réalités – Sorcery : Myths and Realities – is at the Musée de la Poste at 34, Boulevard de Vaugirard in the 15th Arrondissement (district).

You will be taken back in time, to centuries ago, when the wizard or the witch was as much part of daily life as the physician or pharmacist is today. However, we do not burn physicians and pharmacists on the stake now do we?

But … wizards and witches certainly were burned on the stake.

I’ll hold your hand as I take you through the exhibition…

The Sabbath:

On walking in you will see several extraordinary paintings dating from the 16th to the 20th century depicting scenes of witchcraft and exorcism, and scenes of the Sabbath.
When I say ‘sabbath’, I mean not the Sabbath of today when the devout put on their best clothes and go to a special building (church etc) to worship their God.

No! I mean the Witches’ Sabbath.

If you believe that the origin of the Sabbath is given to us in the Torah - תּוֹרָה‎‎ - in Genesis (2:1-3) I have no problem with that. In other words, God, while creating the world, rested on the 7th day of his period of creativity, blessed the day and declared it holy. Then, a little further into the Torah, in Exodus 20:8-11, God gives his 10 Commandments and the 4th is that the 7th day of the week must be a day of no activity. The Hebrews to whom God was speaking, called that 7th day, the day of Shavat – שַׁבָּת – which in Hebrew means ‘to cease’. Note: not to rest, but to cease – cease all activity. To the Hebrews (Jews) that day of no activity was and still is Saturday.
There was no mention of evil in the Torah until Genesis 3. The evil appears in the form of a serpent and as you will know he tempts Eve to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge (we were made to understand that this was an apple) which results in the fall of Man. This evil entity is not named until 1 Chronicles 21:1 when it is called Satan. (King James Bible: And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.) In other words to hold a census as the New Living Translation of the Christian Bible (2007) tells us: Satan rose up against Israel and caused David to take a census of Israel. The sin was that David was going to either make the people of Israel pay tax or it would allow him to know how many men he would have for his army. (Politicians: Take Note!)

Thus, Satan was introduced to Man as his enemy.

Not wanting to go too deeply into this (and tying myself up in knots), I will say that Christian tradition has it that Satan was the angel Lucifer, who was the largest and brightest angel of all – the Morning Star – but was cast from Heaven for disobedience. The name Lucifer is mentioned for the first time in Isaiah 14:12 – How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! The word comes from the Latin lucem ferre – light-bearer. Thus, the meaning of the word is bringer of light.

And so, in the Middle Ages (from the 5th to the 15th century A.D.), there were people who came to believe that as the Morning Star brought light to earth after the dark night, there was good in Lucifer after all, and they became his followers – Satan worshipers.

And, as it was a belief among Christians too during the Middle Ages that Jews worshipped Satan when they gathered on a Saturday – their day of savhat – the followers of Lucifer – wizards and witches – also began to gather on Saturdays. Thus, the Witches’ Sabbath came into being. The gatherings were also called Synagogues after the places where the Jews gathered. (Synagogue is from the Greek word συναγωγή which means assembly.)

The Witches’ Sabbath was a great day for which sorcerers made themselves beautiful and you will see at the exhibition the beautiful yet frightening painting Se repulen of the Spanish painter Eugenio Lucas y Valaami (1858-1918) of two witches preparing for the Sabbath. The painting is based on the 14 ‘black paintings’ of Goya (1746-1828).

Goya's Se repulen

At the crow of the cock, the Witches’ Sabbath ended. (If you are a Christian you will know the significance of the crow of the cock. Matthew 26:34 – Jesus said unto him (Peter) Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crows, thou shalt deny me thrice. Or the New Living Translation (2007) : Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, Peter – this very night, before the rooster crows, you will deny three times that you even know me.”
Witch hunts and witch trials:

In the exhibition’s next section you will learn of France’s four major witch trials. (I must just point out that the exhibition covers French sorcery only, but believe me you would need look no further!)

I won’t go into all four trials here, but the most fascinating was that of Father Urbain Grandier, a Catholic priest of the town of Loudun, western France. You’ve probably heard of the Loudun Demonic Possessions; if you’ve not read Aldous Huxley’s 1952 book titled The Devils of Loudun, you might have seen the Ken Russell movie The Devils and both are about the possessions. What happened was that the priest Grandier, apparently a very handsome and virile man, was accused of sorcery having seduced an entire convent of nuns. He was put on trial in 1634 for sorcery and, judged guilty, he was burned on the stake. As was the custom though he was strangled to death and then only was he fastened to the stake and set alight; death by strangling was thought more compassionate than being burned alive. His ashes are on display at the exhibition and as I’ve just written about him I found it absolutely amazing to actually see his ashes.

Father Urbain Grandier's ashes: he was burned on the stake for sorcery

How, however, was a wizard or witch identified?

By denunciation.

If illness befell someone, or a loved one died, the sick one or the bereaved one believed that it was because of a sorcerer’s curse. So too, if a farmer’s crop was swept away in heavy rain or torn apart by hail or dried out in a drought, or if his cattle died, or his horse went lame, or his hens did not lay eggs, he believed that those were inflicted upon him by the Devil through a sorcerer.
The accused had to, however, undergo several tests before a final judgement was passed.
To begin with there was a physical examination. The accused had to strip and the Devil’s mark was looked for on the body. The mark was black and it was either in the form of a toad, a spider or frog’s feet. (If you feel playful at the exhibition, you can put such a mark on you as the necessary equipment is supplied, but know that you will be using indelible ink so you are going to walk around with the Devil’s mark on you for quite a time as even the hardest scrub won’t wipe it out.) If such a black mark was indeed found on the body of the accused it was pricked with needles and if it did not bleed or the person felt no pain, then it meant that that person was a sorcerer.

Next, there was the accused’s physical appearance. If the accused had a crooked nose and blood-shot eyes, that person was probably a sorcerer. Also, any of the following five physical characteristics signalled a sorcerer. The five all began with the letter B; they were in French of course, so I will give them to you in French with a translation. They were: boiteux, bossus, bègnes, bigles and borgnes. The accused was lame (walked with a limp); was a hunchback; spoke with a stutter; was cross-eyed, was blind in one eye or had two pupils in the left eye.

There were also professions which signalled sorcery. The accused was a farmer, shepherd, blacksmith, rope maker, hawker, barber, embalmer or a defrocked priest. And in 80% of cases it was a woman because it was believed that a female was an imperfect male just a little superior to a beast. An old woman who lived alone in an isolated place was also certainly a witch. Thus, during the Middle Ages for each wizard there were 10,000 witches, and between 1576-1606, all of 900 witches were burned at the stake in the French region of Lorraine (bordering Germany), while in 1577 , in just one French town – Toulouse in the south-west of the country – 400 witches were burned.

The reason for a woman’s weakness to follow the Devil was believed to be because a female was physically weaker and intellectually inferior to a male as was proved when the serpent failed to persuade Adam to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, but succeeded with Eve. It was this same belief, by the way, which in the Middle Ages resulted in women not allowed to ascend to a throne and which is still the case today in several countries.

Yet, the accused still had to undergo one of the following two tests.

A witches' scale

One was the ‘water’ or ‘dunking’ test. The hands and the feet of the accused were bound and that person was strapped into a chair and lowered into a river or a barrel filled with water. If he or she sunk and therefore drowned it was a proof of innocence; naturally, when one’s hands and feet are bound one will sink and drown, so the accused, even though found innocent, died.

The second test was at the trial itself. This was the ‘scale test’. Sometimes the accused were weighed against the weight of a metal-bound Bible and if lighter than the Bible they were judged guilty. Or an accused would be weighed on an ordinary scale set up outside the courtroom and then again on the special scale set up in the courtroom and if he or she were lighter on the courtroom scale it was proof of guilt. You will be able to see such a scale at the exhibition and you will be able to find out whether you are a wizard or witch yourself by stepping on to it.

Punishment was death; either on the stake or on the gallows.

The death sentence was always carried out in public because it was believed that watching the execution would be a deterrent for anyone inclined to begin to worship the Devil. As for burning at the stake, it was believed that the destruction of the body of the sorcerer was a cleansing rite that freed the community from any evil spell he or she might have set on the people.
Protection & Removing a Curse or Spell:

In the next section of the exhibition you will learn how people protected themselves against sorcery and how they reversed disasters – bad weather, illness etc.

There was the holly, of course, and the thistle, but also the carline – the carlina acanthifolia plant. Those were hung over the threshold. Hanging a horseshoe outside one’s house; burning salt or spraying salt around the threshold, and hanging the head-yokes of cattle over the front door, also diverted disaster.

A stone or a ball chiselled from rock and placed on the roof of one’s house diverted thunder. Thunder, by the way, was looked on as the Devil’s voice, whereas lightning was from God and was His way of assuring us not to have fear because all was alright. Salt was yet again a remedy because spraying salt was a way to stop hail. Turning one’s three-legged iron cooking pot upside down, so that the three legs pointed towards heaven, also diverted thunder from a house. Carrying a whale’s tooth in your pocket also protected against thunder – the question is surely where would someone living inland in France have found a whale’s tooth?

And hanging a sprig of thyme or rosemary in the house also protected against the elements.

A priest too could protect against thunder: it was believed that a priest could kick thunder away.

The three-legged pot had a role in witchcraft

Horse chestnuts were used against hemorrhoids and swollen feet and legs. All that was needed was to carry one in your pocket.

Walnuts cured madness, restored memory and stopped depression. Look at a walnut and you will see that it resembles the human brain: the shell is the skull, the envelope around the fruit is the hair around the skull, and the lobed fruit itself is the brain. St. John’s Wort, known as the ‘blood of Saint John’, did so too.

Walnuts were also used to stop hair thinning or falling out. The walnut was heated, crushed and mixed with wine and oil and rubbed on to the scalp.

Leeches were applied to the body to cure skin diseases and cure tuberculosis, pleurisy and any other lung ailment.

Drinking infusions made by boiling various creatures was also considered medication. Thus, a toad infusion was believed to draw out cancer and stop a headache. One made from a mole’s foot took toothache away and also healed skin diseases; the mole, as it lived in the earth was thought to have made a pact with the Devil as he, too, lived deep down inside the earth. An infusion made from a viper’s skin and entails stopped fever. An infusion made from boiling a rat was used against incontinence.

Father Urbain Grandier being tortured in order to confess

If a woman had a problem conceiving, all she had to do was dance around a megalith (like the stones of Stonehenge in England), but if she wanted to stop her menstruation she had to tie a cat’s spleen around her waist and she would stop menstruating immediately.

And wait for this – if a woman wanted to attract a man she had to dry a bat, kneed him into a powder and throw the powder over the guy’s shoulder and he would have fallen in love with her instantly. Bats were called hell’s flies.

And if all failed, there was exorcism …

But how did a sorcerer cast a spell?

A sorcerer would boil a black cat to begin with.

Then, he or she would use any or several of a large variety of plants, objects and dead creatures. Among the creatures were: black cats, white rats, bats, toads, snakes, turtles, moles, owls and magpies. Among the objects were: corks, sea shells, conkers, skulls, bones, rope which had been used in a hanging, and nails which had been removed from a coffin in a cemetery.

Sticking those nails into the dung pat of a cow would for example ensure that that cow never gave milk again: a sure way to get at a farmer.

Those nails could also be banged into a figurine made by the sorcerer and which represented the intended victim. But do not think of Barbie Dolls here because the figurines were really horrible!

Cursing someone - nails in his likeness

A sorcerer might also tie a few strands of hair from the head of the person who had to be bewitched or cursed around a dead toad, then to spit on the toad and then to bury it under the threshold of the intended victim’s house.

A head-yoke of cattle hanging over a threshold for protection

Anyone with a weak stomach may find this section of the exhibition somewhat horrific because specimens of the creatures which at one time or another had been used by a sorcerer are on display. Taxidermy not being my thing, I certainly found this section scary yet fascinating. The staring yellow eyes of a stuffed black cat in particular gave me the creeps.

One of Madame P's devils

The final section of the exhibition is about divination, which, as I can read the tarot myself, I did not find scary. Or wait – I have to correct myself here. I did find it scary because of a collection of sculptures of the Devil which belonged to a ‘modern-day’ witch, a Madame P. from the central French region of Berry. Madame P. died in 1950.

Another of Madame P's devils

The least interesting section of the exhibition is on movies about the Devil. However, one interesting aspect is that visitors can watch an extract from the 1921 Danish film about witchcraft – Heksen. I watched a few minutes of it and it is also not for the weak of heart and of stomach.

Demons – The Devil’s Companions:

It was believed that Lucifer, when cast from Heaven for disobedience, was joined by other angels who had, like him, been cast from Heaven for disobedience. These ‘fallen angels’ had therefore become demons and as such they became the companions of Lucifer – of Satan or the Devil whichever name you prefer.

How many such demons are there?

 

Jan or Jean Wier

In the 16th century the Dutch-born occultist, demonologist and physician, Jan Wier (also known as Johann Weyer, Ioannes Wierus and Jean Wier) said in his study of sorcery Pseudomonarchia daemonum that there were 7,409,127 demons. He began the study with the words ‘an inventarie of the names, shapes, powers, government and effects of divels and spirits, of their severall segniories and dgrees: a strange discourse worth the reading’ (sic).

As a medical man Jan Wier dismissed the belief that the Devil or demons had possessed sorcerers, but said that such so-called sorcerers were mentally ill. He accordingly pled against the execution of sorcerers in another of his studies the De Praestigiis Daemonum et Incantationibus ac Venificiis (On the Illusions of the Demons and on Spells and Poisons) published in 1563. He said that witches were merely poor old women mentally distressed or of a melancholy temperament and subject to hallucinations. He did not however deny the existence of the Devil and of demons.
However, in the final book of the New Testament of the Christian Bible, Saint John the Divine gives the ‘number of the beast’ as 666 which has led to some making their own calculations as to how many demons there are. Revelations 13:18: Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six – King James Bible. Or, as in the New Living Translation (2007) : Wisdom is needed here. Let the one with understanding solve the meaning of the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. His number is 666.

Since Wier’s calculation of the number of demons, others have calculated the number as 1,758,064,176 – very many more than Wier. This sum was reached as follows: According to the Christian Bible there are 6 legions of demons, each of 66 cohorts (units) which consist of 666 regiments of 6666 individuals each. Therefore, 6 x 66 x 666 x 6666 = 1, 758,064,176.

These demons smell of sulphur according to ancient belief, and one will come across them on crossroads, but they live in Hell which is a burning chamber in the depth of the earth. And furthermore according to ancient belief in the northern French region of Brittany, that Hell is 1250 feet down. The depth was given in non-metric. In meters it comes to 380. The Eiffel Tower stands at a height of 324 meters (1063 ft), and if you think that that is about the height of an 80-story building, then Hell’s not all that far away.

The exposition is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and closed on Sundays. It costs €6.50 ($8.50 / £5.40) to go in, and it is free for the under 13-year-olds. Frankly, this is not for children.

The nearest Metro (underground railway) station is Montparnasse-Bienvenüe. Take the Rue de l’Arrivée exit, walk towards the Montparnasse Railroad Station and turn right when you reach the station. That street will be Boulevard de Vaugirard.

Enjoy!

Three witches - one of the paintings you can see at the exhibition

 

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