Another red-letter day in our travel history. There are some things we've seen which have been astounding, such as Ronchamp Chapel, FLW's Tokyo Imperial Hotel, Plensa's and Mueck's sculptures, natural wonders such as the Dolomites, the Japanese gardens and teahouses, and a number of our walks. Todays brush with the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier would be right up there.
We had quite a full day planned today starting with an architectural walk, then a possible visit to the Musee d'Orsay, and finally a wine and cheese tasting in the old centre of Paris. We set off on metro to the start of our walk, paused for a coffee before it really got underway, then started following the route in earnest. After a few interesting streets and some lovely old buildings, we wandered past the Paris St-Germain football stadium and headquarters, interesting for the buildings as well as the club's status.
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| Art Nouveau metro station stairway entrance |
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| There are a number of gated residential alleyways like this |
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| Training arena (right) and stadium (left) of the professional Paris Saint-Germain rugby club |
Just past them was Le Corbusier's studio-apartment. The building was designed by Le Corbusier and built by a developer between 1931 and 1934, with Le Corbusier taking over floors 7 and 8 and setting them up to his own design as his working studio and the home for himself, his new wife, a servant and occasionally his mother in a guestroom. He lived there until 1965.
I knew about it from some fishing on the internet for Le Corbusier-based walks, and it was paired with a visit to a dual-occupancy house Le Corbusier had designed for his brother and a long-term friend, M. La Roche.
We initially walked straight past it, such is the quality of French signage. Having rechecked the address, we realised the facade was under scaffold. There was a planning department sign on the scaffold describing works to the Corbusier building, and our hearts sank. Everything looked so closed up. However I noticed a set of occupant intercom pushbuttons, and one of them said Le Corbusier. On pressing it, I asked the intercom if the place was still open, and lo and behold it was. So upstairs we went, all 7 narrow spiral flights, as the lift was posted as being erratic and to be avoided. We could so easily have been discouraged and missed out. Strange that a World Heritage site can be so difficult to find and visit.
At the top we arrived into a lobby and then Le Corbusier's studio, complete with some original fittings and fixtures and photos showing how it had been set up. Only a dozen or so people were there, half of them in a French-speaking tour group.
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| Main architectural studio |
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His office desk
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From there it was into the other rooms. Such very eclectic design, so very personal to his requirements, and brought to life by having original built-in furniture, chairs, rugs and contents, plus photos from his occupancy.
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Living room, dining room beyond. All furniture by Le Corbusier.
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His wife's part of the bedroom. Bed on stilts just about hidden on the right.
 | | The bedroom as it was |
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| Kitchen - being built-in was a first. |
It was fascinating seeing the unusual details, such as the bed propped a good metre in the air to allow views over the balcony, and the wardrobe being on hinges and wheels so it formed the door to the bedroom, and became a wall when closed. The architecture was light, bright, simple, modest, quirky, and hugely advanced for the time. For its time it was very progressive, in fact likely to be the first fully-glazed facade on an apartment building.
We totally enjoyed our visit, and came out thinking what a privilege it had been to be able to see something so important to the world of architecture.
The rest of the walk, while interesting, wasn't up to the studio-apartment. The second Le Corbusier building, a dual dwelling designed for his brother and a close friend, was also interesting, but didn't quite have the charisma and immediacy of the first.
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| Gallery room, Maison La Roche |
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| Maison La Roche |
We'd intended to have a good French menu du jour, but found ourselves running out of time to complete the walk and get ourselves to the 4pm wine and cheese tour start, so bought a sandwich, a filled baguette.
The tour took us through some lovely areas, and ended up at the Trocadero which gives a fantastic view back over Paris and the Eiffel Tower which we had been very close to earlier in the walk as well. From there it was couple of metro legs to get us to our tasting only 15 minutes early after a day we'd thought would leave us an hour or two to read our books under a tree somewhere! The Musee d'Orsay never had a chance, and probably won't be seen by us on this visit. We did manage to make it to the vicinity of the Eiffel Tower though.
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| Market stall with masses of silverware for sale |
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| From the Trocadero |
We arrived at the designated contact point for the guided wine and cheese tour. Others gradually turned up and in the end there were 19 people in all. A local restaurant owner turned out to be the guide. It soon became clear that he was passionate about the history of the neighbourhood, which started off as a small market town 1km outside the city of Paris. Over the centuries it was absorbed into the city, but it remains distinctive for its smaller scale and less grandiose buildings than the Haussman-designed architecture of the core of Paris. After recounting the history of the area, and collecting a bag of fresh baguettes, we were soon seated in his restaurant where he proceeded to regale us with the differences between young and old cheeses, how to drink wine correctly to understand its characteristics, what accompaniments you can add to cheese to alter its taste and so on. In all we sampled a variety of wines and cheeses and learned some really interesting things. It was a most enjoyable few hours. Being one of the very few guided tours we have ever booked, we're thinking we should really try more when the opportunity arises.
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The restauranter who took our tour is in the red checked shirt
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| 18th century mural depicting produce available in the market onsite. |
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| Wine and cheeses ready for tasting |
We didn't emerge from the restaurant until 6pm, which was quite late in the day since we'd kicked off at 9am and had walked about 18km. However, one of our aims when in Paris was to track down the Gare Saint Lazare, which is the scene of a painting we bought in Ceret last year. We love the painting, which depicts the year 1937. We wanted to see what the same scene looked like today. We managed to hop on one Metro train toward it, but the second Metro connection was not available - the line was being renovated. Instead of trying to negotiate a different combination of Metro trains we decided, at 7pm, that we were just too stuffed. A quick train-stop home and we settled for just an ice-cream for dinner. The cheese, bread and wine a little earlier had been substantial enough. In all, it was a very full day, with the overwhelming highlight being seeing through Le Corbusier's studio and apartment.
