| Paris, May 2007, visit to Père-Lachaise Cemetery and the roof of the Panthéon |
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| It was a fine spring Sunday and the famous cemetery was
full of strollers - although it's a graveyard it's also a very
beautiful public park. Wijjie and Jean-Claude helping August take
his first steps. |
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| Jean-Claude got a map at the gate so that we could find
our way to the most famous graves - Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, Marcel
Proust and so on. |
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| When graves are this elaborate and neglected they almost look funny! |
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"What becomes of the dream, when the dream is over".
The cemetery was built at the
height of the Romantic Movement when people had an inordinate
fascination with the fragility of life, and dreams...
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| But you can take so much of death, so we went for a
walk in the Ile Saint-Louis, always so lively... Here is
Wijjie with Valentino, on the foot-bridge that joins the two islands. |
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| On the quais of the Seine (Right Bank) I bought some old
school-room posters from a "bouquiniste". This ones shows the
first aviators, in France of course. I thought it would help
August in his future studies. |
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| I always wanted to climb up to the roof of the Pantheon,
and a few days later I got everyone together for a visit. The
view from the foot of the colonnade (under the dome) is not well known,
but offers a unique perspective. |
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| Wijjie and August are in the nave of the
Pantheon (which was originally a church) with Foucault's pendulum in
the background. It was first put on display there for a World
Exposition in the 19th century. |
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| The view from the top was truly stupendous. Here, looking northeast towards the church of Saint Etienne du Mont. |
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North to the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris.
The Pantheon began life as the Church of Saint Genevieve, patron saint
of Paris, and just after it was completed, the Revolution came along.
Then it became a pantheon, or burial place, for France's
revolutionary heroes. When the Bourbons came back, after
Waterloo, it was changed back to a church, and briefly went back to
being a pagan temple again in the Second Republic. Finally, in
1885, Victor Hugo was buried there and it became Le Panthéon des
Grands Hommes forever. |
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| West to the Eiffel Tower and, to the right, the
black-and-gold dome of the Palais Mazarin, on the left bank of the
Seine. The trees at the end of the Rue Soufflot belong to
the Jardin du Luxembourg. |
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| Afterwards, Jean-Claude got a bottle of wine for dinner, but Valentino didn't want to leave us. |
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| Le café crème, just like my student days. |
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