In 1920s Paris, pained, fuzzy-headed morning afters must have been as defining a feature of life as the sparkling night befores that brought them on. On some of these grey mornings there were some unfortunates, still hours away from achieving verticality and spooling the evening’s events through their minds trying to fill in the blanks, [...]
Category Archives: Historical Places
Dolly Wilde, a Ghost in Paris
Also posted in 20th Century, Biography, French History, Paris 1 Comment
Marie Antoinette on Trial: Your Cut-Out-and-Keep Guide to Reading the Trial, Part 1
To coincide with the English account of Marie Antoinette’s trial I uploaded last time, today I begin a guide to reading what can be a confusing and obscure document, and understanding this fascinating event in context. The background to the trial To some extent ever since the Royal Family had been forcibly removed from Versailles [...]
Also posted in 18th Century, Biography, French History, History, Paris, Uncategorized Tagged Biography, french revolution, marie antoinette, Paris, parisian history, Royal History, trial 1 Comment
Marie Antoinette on Trial: A Contemporary English Account to Read Online
If there’s one thing everyone knows about Marie Antoinette, it’s that unfortunate cake remark (which, of course, there’s no reason at all to believe she ever said). If there’s a second thing, it’s that she got her head chopped off. A lie and an ending – the foundations of our conceptions of the entire life [...]
Also posted in 18th Century, French History, Paris, Uncategorized Tagged 18th century, French History, french revolution, marie antoinette, Royal History 2 Comments
Lost Paris: Destruction and Renewal on the Île de la Cité
This Lost Paris series has ended up being a tad melancholy, which isn’t really what I intended. More than anything what seems to have come through in the stories of these forgotten places and faded flashes of light in the city’s history is a sense that when you visit Paris today, you’re experiencing the grey [...]
Also posted in 19th Century, Lost Paris, Medieval, Paris, Uncategorized Tagged 19th century, ile de la cite, lost paris, medieval, Paris Leave a comment
Lost Paris: The Arènes de Lutèce, the Surprising Roman Arena in a Sleepy Parisian Square
This week’s Culture&Stuff post is a little different in that, well, it’s not on Culture&Stuff. Instead, you’ll find it over on Atlas Obscura, a wonderful site I’ve rhapsodised long and hard about before. It’s a compendium of the odd, the quirky and the lesser-known, a global encyclopedia of extraordinary places with extraordinary stories. I added [...]
Also posted in Lost Paris, Paris, Uncategorized Tagged lost paris, Paris, romans, ruins Leave a comment
