Provins

I had read in the guidebooks about the "medieval town" of Provins, its Medieval Faire every summer, its shows of jousting, siege engines, and falconry, its restaurants providing medieval costumes and strolling minstrels... all in all it sounded like a RenFaire-style tourist trap, so I had some misgivings. But it also seemed that all this medievaloid tourism was built atop a good supply of actual medieval survivals, so we got on a train to Provins yesterday morning.

Provins is classed as "Paris suburbs" (l'Île de France), analogous to taking a commuter train like the LIRR, Metro North, or NJ Transit rather than Amtrak. And the governing body for l'Île de France has evidently decided to treat the whole area as a single transit zone, so we didn't need to buy tickets at all, just wave our Paris Metro passes in front of a reader and walk through a gate. That said, there were a bunch of stops, one of which was a spur where the train had to reverse direction, so it took about 1:20 each way. A pleasant and restful train ride through the countryside.

Half a dozen of the Provins medieval attractions are all covered by a "Pass Provins", which one is supposed to buy at the Office de Tourisme, so that seemed like a logical first stop. Unfortunately, somebody in the Provins town government thought it a good idea to put the Office de Tourisme and the train station at exactly opposite ends of town. Fortunately, there's a city bus that runs between the two. Unfortunately, the attractions nearest the Office de Tourisme and farthest from the train station were the ones I thought best to visit last. Fortunately, Google maps showed an Office de Tourisme annexe just outside the train station. Unfortunately, it was fermé. Fortunately, there were clear signs pointing past it to Office de Tourisme, so we (and a dozen other tourists) followed those signs, hoping there was another on the near side of town. (Spoiler: there wasn't.)

The town really is wonderfully picturesque, with lots of charming half-timbered houses, and the weather was perfect. We stopped at the 12th-century church of St. Ayoul, a young monk who, on an expedition to transport some precious relics from another abbey to his own, was set upon by brigands (or monks from a rival sect? I wasn't sure of the translation), his tongue cut out, his eyes pierced, and his head cut off. He's now a patron saint of eye problems, as well as of the town of Provins. The facade of his church is decorated in the same style as Chartres, with large figures wearing bliauts backed up by a chorus of angels, some of them playing psalteries or vielles. But it's much smaller than Chartres, so these figures are only a few feet over the visitor's head, easier to see. The interior is largely 17th-18th-century, but had some interesting pictures and historical plaques.

A block away was the 14th-century (I guess) Tour de Notre Dame and its clock, forming an arch over a narrow street; the clock wasn't quite that old, but it and its street were pretty.

We continued following signs to Office de Tourisme and Cité medievale, along the main commercial street of town. We walked around the outside of another 12th/13th-century church (on the Rue des Oignons), closed for extensive repairs, then we stopped at one shop for chocolates and another for a delicious sit-down lunch. Then passed the Hôtel-Dieu founded by Count Thibaut the Great in the 11th century and headed up a steep hill towards the Lycée Saint-Thibaut, the Eglise Collegiale de Saint-Quiriace, and the remains of the castle of the Counts of Champaign.


In the 11th-14th centuries, the nearly-autonomous Counts of Champaign gave their protection to six annual merchant fairs: two in Provins, two in Troyes, one in Lagny-sur-Marne, and one in Bar-sur-Aube, spaced throughout the year and each lasting six weeks, so a majority of the year there was a fair in one town or another. These were wholesale, to-the-trade fairs, with apparently legal limits on what could be sold in smaller quantities. The fairs provided a lot of revenue and wordfame, while the Counts reciprocated with legal protection and safe passage for the merchants coming from all over Europe and beyond.

The Eglise Collegiale is a large, imposing structure near the highest point of town, started in the 12th century, but with the decline of the Fairs in the 14th century, it ran out of money, so the "nave" end (towards the right in the first three photos below) is actually shorter than the "altar" end. The fourth photo below is taken from what should have been part of the nave. We walked around inside the church for a while, then went on with the walk.
Musée de Provins et du Provinois, which allegedly has a bunch of interesting archaeological finds, was a block or two farther along the road. Unfortunately, it had no public bathroom, and indeed had a sign at the desk saying the nearest public toilettes were at the Place du Châtel, another two or three blocks down the road, so we went on, promising to come back to the museum.

The Place du Châtel appears to be Ground Zero for RenFaire-style tourism (especially restaurants), and we saw a troop of elementary-school children parading around the square in their newly-borrowed costumes. After visiting les toilettes, we saw a sign advertising a biscuiterie medieval and walked another block down the road to see what it was about. It did indeed sell a variety of cookies and cakes based on medieval recipes (including Hildegarde's "cakes of joy", presumably adapted to modern tastes by adding sweetening), as well as a hot-chocolate mix "d'une recette du XIVeme siecle" (I pointed out to shalmestere that, in fairness, it didn't say a European recipe from the 14th century, which would be startling). And indeed, the chalkboard behind the counter described it as Chocolat chaud Azteque, so shalmestere ordered a cup. It was thick, dark, dairy-free, and unsweetened (albeit served with a couple of packets of sugar); no chili peppers, as the Aztecs would have included. Not particularly flavorful, perhaps because the dark chocolate was diluted by the corn starch thickening.


Next stop: the Tithe Barn, a large 12th-century building originally used for storing either merchants' wares or merchants themselves. We still hadn't acquired a Pass Provins, so we paid for this a la carte -- 5 euros apiece. The ground and basement floors are filled with life-sized dioramas of various kinds of merchants and craftsmen, in sometimes-dubious costumes, with an audio guide in your favorite language interviewing each one in turn about his or her business. It was a little hokey, but they managed to get across a fair amount of information. The upper floor is apparently open only to group tours: we saw the troop of elementary-school children heading up there.

Turned around and headed back towards the museum and the adjacent castle keep (the "Caesar Tower"). We randomly chose to visit the keep first, for another 5 euros apiece. This was impressive, and provided panoramic views of the town and countryside from the top. Also, for the engineering geeks in my audience, pictures of the roof infrastructure and support system for bronze bells. And we got a lot of stair-climbing exercise.


The next stop was to be the museum, but it was now 5:30, the museum's closing time, which we decided was OK -- we'd gotten our money's worth from the town. In fact, the paid attractions we'd actually visited had cost less a la carte than the Pass Provins would have cost. Sat on a bench for a few minutes enjoying the breeze (and resting our legs after all the stairs in the keep), then headed down the hill,

through a tower in the city walls, towards the Office de Tourisme (which we were finally somewhat near) to catch a bus back to the train station. That went smoothly, we caught the next train back to Paris, grabbed some take-out to reheat in the room, and collapsed.

Today, mercredi: the Louvre.

Tomorrow, jeudi: we take a couple of trains to Tournai, just over the Belgian border. One night in Tournai.

Vendredi: from Tournai to Bruxelles, where we check into a hotel for a few more nights.

Samedi: day-trip to Leuven for an exhibition that includes the Leuven Chansonnier, discovered only fifteen or twenty years ago (we got an early glimpse at its contents through our Early Notation teacher, and we have a facsimile of the whole book at home).

Dimanche, lundi: day-trips to Mechelen and/or Ghent.

Mercredi: train from Brussels to the Amsterdam airport, then fly to New York. Assuming there are air traffic controllers in the US to guide our plane in. No idea what customs will be like: they've dropped the de minimis exemption, so we may be asked the value of every item we've bought, in which country, so they can calculate how much import tariff to charge on it. All of which will happen at 2 AM Paris time, so we presumably won't be at a peak of cognitive efficiency.

Louvre

For our last full day in Paris, we had scheduled tickets to the Louvre. They’re all timed-entry, and the earliest I could get were 13:30, so we had a light lunch of croques before taking the subway to the Louvre, asking somebody in uniform which line we needed to be in, and standing in line outside the pyramid for 45 minutes or so. Entry went smoothly.

The last time we were in Paris, we found the Louvre enormously frustrating, and we were not disappointed this time: it’s still enormously frustrating. It’s organized by artistic modality, then nationality, and then chronology, so if you want to see medieval stuff you have to go to eight different parts of the museum, of which at least one or two will probably be closed on any given day. And there are long lines for all the women’s bathrooms, and non-trivial lines even for the men’s bathrooms. Every bathroom either of us visited had at least one stall out of commission.

I asked at an information desk (in English) which parts of the museum were closed today, and the lady behind the desk very helpfully pulled out her phone, looked up today’s list of closures, and crossed off a bunch of rooms on my map. Which was great, but… why did I even have to ask that? Wouldn’t that be one of the most common FAQ’s, worth posting the answer on a sign?

Anyway, since the map didn’t indicate what centuries any given room covered, we went to “Objets d’Art, Europe” and quickly concluded that the only open rooms in that section were 19th century. So we moved on to “Paintings, France” and walked through half a dozen rooms full of 17th-19th century stuff before turning a corner and seeing a 14th-century portrait, with a roomful of other 14th and 15th century stuff behind it. The actual “medieval” rooms were closed, of course.

Mary teaching Jesus to write (Austrian, early 15c)



St. Andrew (?) supervising as his disciple tries to put out a house fire with a small flagon of water



Sculpture of a couple snuggling (she has shoes, he's barefoot). Etruscan.



St. Francis of Assisi



Lectern with cord to hold the book open (Stefano di Giovanni, dit Sassetta, Siena, 1426-1450)



Alabaster (?) carving of 14c soldiers, falcons, and dog



We continued wandering through rooms full of 18th-19th century portraits of rich people in neo-classical costumes blowing in the wind, occasionally finding something more distinctive. We saw three or four Leonardo paintings, not including the Mona Lisa (which as always had an enormous crowd in front of it).

By this time we were quite tired — did I mention that the Louvre had remarkably few places to sit, relative to the number of visitors? — so we decided to take the elevator to the -1 floor and leave the building (since there are no non-emergency exits on the ground/0 floor). But when we stepped out of the elevator, we were in a room of 15th-century sculpture, so we saw a bunch of that before running out of our second wind and trying to leave again.

We followed signs to the Metro and/or “sortie”, around in circles for a while before finally finding an actual metro station. Took the subway home, stopping to pick up some take-out quiche that we could reheat in our room.

Tried to make reservations on my laptop for tomorrow’s train, but the WiFi wasn’t working. Come to think of it, the lights in the stairway were out. I managed to make the reservation on my phone, using a cell connection, and am doing the same for this post. So no photo uploads tonight. It turns out we’re fortunate: we have power in the room, which some rooms don’t. Hope it’s fixed by morning.

UPDATE an hour later: power and WiFi are restored.