#In the late romanic or in gothic medieval times I think

[mask131]

Love in the French Middle Ages (1)

Here is a compilation of what I think is the most interesting or informative part of my French literatureXsocial science university class, centered around “Love, in all of its forms, in the French Middle Ages”. 

# At the beginning of the class we had of course a reminder about what period of the world’s history is the Middle Ages, but I will place it back here because too many people still believe the Middle Ages are clear cut. The most common date associated with the beginning of the Middle Ages is 446, the fall of the Western Roman Empire, which marks the end of Antiquity. Most people choose this date because it marks at the same time the fall of a political regime AND the end of an entire culture. But in the same logic, others point out that the Middle-Ages began in France with the baptism of Clovis, which marked the end of the Roman domination in France and started a new, Christian era. Of course, the problem with pin-pointing exact dates for “historical eras”, is that it is impossible, since historical changes always take a long time. But the common ground is that with the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and the destruction of the Roman culture, the Middle-Ages began. For when the Middle-Ages ended, we also have several different dates. For some, it is when the Americas were “discovered”, in 1492. For others it is when Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440, which modified forever humanity’s relationship to culture, literature and writing. For a third group yet, it is the fall of Constantinople, in 1453, and the end of the Eastern Roman Empire/Byzantine Empire. This date is notably chosen because with the fall of this Empire, all the Byzantine and Greek scholars fled to the West, which would cause the “rediscovery” of today’s “classics” of Antiquity, ushering forth the Renaissance. So the Middle-Ages is a VAST era. Roughly a thousand years old. For this class we didn’t focus on the Early Middle Ages (le Haut Moyen Âge in French), that went from 446 to the year 1000, the era of the Merovingians, Carolingians and Charlemagne. No we rather focused on the second half of the Middle Ages, “le Bas Moyen Âge”, the Late Middle Ages. 

A quick reminder of why the Middle Ages are called “Middle”. It is because the Middle Ages, as a historical era, was ceonceived when it was other, it was retrospectively defined as an intermediary, in-between era going from Antiquity to the Renaissance. People only realized the “Middle Ages” existed when Renaissance began. With the Renaissance, there was a supposed “return of literature” and an “end to the Gothic darkness”, the humanists claimed the times preceeding them were barbarism and savagery - gothic savagery! It were the humanists that created the “dark legend” of the Middle-Ages. [Note: Interestingly, while today “Gothic” is an adjective designating a specific type of architecture, in the 16th century, during the Renaissance, “Gothic” didn’t meant this at all - it rather was an adjective related to the Goths, the Germanic tribes that invaded the Roman Empire at the end of Antiquity. So when humanists qualified the Middle-Ages of “gothic”, they meant “of the same savagery as those barbaric Goths that destroyed the glorious Roman Empire”, it was supposed to be a heavy caricature.] Hopefully, against this strong denigration, there was an idealization of the Middle Ages during the 19th century, notably by the Romantic and Royalist movements... but this resulted in a new backlash making in people’s mind the Middle Ages even more “barbaric” and “repulsive”. Even today, in the French language, there is a confusion between “médiéval” (the “medieval” adjective that means “belonging to the Middle Ages”) and “moyen âgeux”, “Middle Ages-like”, which is a derogatory term to designate something outdated, uncivilized or backwards. So today, there is a true effort by modern researchers and experts, by dedicated medievalists, to restore the actual Middle Ages into the mind of the people. 

# Another fun fact: while today the “Renaissance” designates this historical era that starts roughly around the 16th century, there are actually other “Renaissances”... In the Middle-Ages! See, there is already a first Renaissance, called the “Carolingian Renaissance”, around the 800s. Charlemagne was ruling over a very vast empire, and under his rule there was a true boom of schools (not schools per se, but schools located in monasteries) - numerous schools were created, teachers and pupils were recruited left and right, lot of people learned how to read Latin and read the literature of the Antiquity (especially Cicero). This is why today in France you often hear “Charlemagne created school”. This educational movement was also tied to another intellectual movement focused on building up theology - and these two movements made the “Carolingian Renaissance”.

But there was another one, even more important! The Renaissance of the 12th century. People abandoned wooden castles for stone castles, for a better security. There was both a growth in population and in riches - and, of course, an intellectual growth too. It was the era of Chrétien de Troyes, and of Héloïse et Abélard, a couple part of the French literature history, well-known due to the letters they exchanged. Abélard was an intellectual, a scholar of the 12th century, who notably had numerous debates with another great name of the century, the monk Bernard de Clairvaux - and one of those debates was about the nature of love. Abélard was a truly typical Parisian clerc, and through his letters to Héloïse we discovered the history of their shared and passionate love (for example in one of Abélard’ letters, titled “Histoire de ma vie”, Story of my life, he explained to Héloïse where his passion for her was born, a passion so strong it caused troubles for him, since he is a clerc...). 

[Note: The term “clerc” I use here is the French term for... *quick Google Search* cleric. In the medieval society, there was a three-part divide: the clercs, the nobles, and the others. The others were those that worked ; the noblesse were not those that worked, but those that made war - they were the warriors and the military group of the society. And the clercs were the clerics - clerc was a general denomination for all men of the Chuch, they were “those that pray”. The clergy notably had the monopoly of the institutional culture. In the 12th century there was a development of the university, and a boom in students - but this development was done under the rule of the clerics, these early university were “cathedral-schools” (opposed to the monastery-schools I talked about before), and all these students... were actually clercs! Because, remember, the society is divided between “those that work” and “those that don’t work”. The students don’t work (as in physical, manual labor), and since they don’t go off to war and aren’t noble, they are by default joined with the clerics. This is notably this intertwining of the clerics with studies that made it very difficult for women at the time to access knowledge. 

Another point that explains why the 12th century was a “Renaissance”: it is noted that during this century, there was a renewed interest in the literature of the Antiquity. So the whole idea that “Antiquity was rediscovered by the 16th-century Renaissance” is false - people already knew and were interested by the literature of Antiquity during the Middle-Ages. What was rediscovered by the “proper” Renaissance was GREEK Antiquity, but already by the 12th century France had rediscovered the Latin Antiquity and its texts. Most notably, the poems and texts of Ovid, which all were heavily centered around love (his text “The Art of Love” was a best-seller in the 12th century). Most notably, Bernard de Chartres described this rediscovery of the literature of Antiquity is a very beautiful sentence: “Nous sommes comme des nains juchés sur les épaules de géants”. “We are but dwarfs on the shoulders of giants”. 

# What truly defined the Renaissance in France was many other things than this misplaced “rediscovery of Latin”. It was the era of the “Great Discoveries” and world-travels ; it was an era where the French language was praised, worked on and spread (against the “dead languages” that were the Greek and Latin) ; and it was also the time of the religious wars. This last point is very interesting: the Renaissance was a time where Christianity split itself in two and knew a nasty civil war, between Catholics and Protestants. But the medieval society was fully and completely united in its Christianity - in France, beyond Christianity, there were only the Jews, but they were a minority either oppressed, either forced into exile. Another reversal of ideas: there are a lot of things we think of as “Middle-Ages-like” that were actually still existing by the Renaissance. Saint-Eustache, one of the Gothic churches of France, was built in 1536. Henry II died in a medieval-like tournament, despite being a 16th century man. 

No, what truly defined the Renaissance was the humanism. In the Middle Ages we had the Petrarquism, following Petrarca, this time of sonnet-based poetry that marked Europe so much that the Pléiade herself (a famous group of poets of the French Renaissance) wanted to return to the Petrarquism. Petrarca’s greatest ork was “Canzioniere”, a work in “vulgar language”. One should remember that until quite recently, any language that wasn’t Latin or Greek was “vulgar language”, and Canzioniere was written in the Toscan dialect. And the Canzioniere was a series of poems all consecrated to Laura, a girl he knew in the town of Avignon, and who died - the Canzioniere is an attempt at maintaining this love even after the loved one’s death, and they gather what was called “erotic poems” (actually romance poetry) and “mystical poems” (religious poetry). Petrarca hoever had a role to play in the rise of humanism: Petrarca wanted to write in Latin to imitate Cicero, he had a great love for the literature of Antiquity and its authors. Petrarca was a leader in the desire to find back the lost or forgotten texts of Antiquity, and he was one of the first to put together the “method” of understanding these texts for what they were, for what they actually meant to say, with the consciousness that many things are separating the “present day” reader from the text of the past - he was one of the “founders” of the “historical consciousness” as we would put it today. This was a VERY important thing because in the Middle Ages the “consciousness of the Antiquity” was lost, or modified beyond anything recognizable. The medieval scholars never thought about the historical or social differences that separated them from the texts of Antiquity - and they judged these texts with the same criteria, concepts and principles they used to judge and criticize their contemporaries. Humanism brought forward the idea that Antiquity was over, was a “time of the past”, not just a continuation of “today”. 

# Random fact: At the time of Petrarca, university only taught three different subjects. Theology, the law, and medecine. That was it, there was nothing else at the university. 

# But let’s put aside all this context about the Middle Ages. Let’s start talking about the thing we are here for... love. Precisely “L’amour courtois” - Courtly love. And by extension, La littérature courtoise, Courtly literature. 

There is a common saying that claims “Love was invented in France in the 12th century”. This is false because there was a love literature long before the 12th century. Courtly love was quite similar to a “fashion” or a “fad”. There were rules, though they had never been written anywhere, nor clearly spelled out by anyone - and these rules were idealized through the medium of literature. And this courtly love was actually about the coexistence of two different loves. There was the “common” love shared by everyone and that was thought to be natural at the time: the love for God. But this love, in the courtly literature, had to co-exist with a new love: the love for the lady (never for the wife!), a type of love specifically created for the nobility. This is what we call courtly love, “amour courtois” in French, though “amour courtois” is a 19th century term created by Gaston Paris. To avoid anachronism, the correct term, proper for the Middle Ages, would be “fin’amor”. The adjective “courtly” was used for people (those that felt or worked for the courtly love), but also for concepts. For example, the concept of moderation - a person feeling a courtly love must contain themselves. It is also tied to the “joven”, the youth - but interestingly this “joven” isn’t tied so much to actual physical age, than to “the ability to give yourself to someone else, and to sacrifice yourself for someone else”. This courtly love could work in one of two ways (often complementary): either it was thought that this type of love was only aimed at or “deserved by” courtly people ; either it was thought that by feeling this type of love, people “became” courtly themselves. 

The term “courtois” in French doesn’t mean just “courtly” but also “courteous” or “mannerly”, and the associated name, “courtoisie”, would be translated in English by “courtesy”, though this medieval “courtesy” or “courtliness” was based on social codes VERY different from our modern social codes. Of course, you noted it, “courtesy”, “courtliness” comes from “court”, “la cour” in French: this social phenomenon was born, before all, inside courts. The courtly literature was tied to the princely courts, it was tied to the nobility and expressed the ideals of the nobility. But ideals which were also tied to the clergy - because upon seeing the huge popularity of this literature among the nobles, the clerics of course jumped in. And why were they worried about it? Because this courtly love, and this courtly literature, was invented at the court, shared by nobles and clerics... but it was a pure invention of the nobility, that is to say the secular part of the court, the “laïc” part as we call it in French, with no involvment whatsoever of the clergy. [Of course, the masses, the workers, were not at all concerned by the courtly literature, and had no dealing with it. The only type of literature that belonged to the masses was “les fabliaux”].

Courtly love is actually born in southern France, and then moved up to the north. One of the early heralds of courtly love was Guillaume d’Aquitaine, one of the first “poet-lords”. He welcomed in his courts numerous troubadours, including the now famous Jaufré Rudel. A troubadour was a professional singer and poet, always of the noble class (female troubadours, like Marie de Ventadour, were called trobairitz). This fashion of courtly love then spread to the north (if you do not know, during this era France was divided in North and South, not just by the politics and culture, but also by the very language - Southern France spoke the “langue d’oc”, the language of oc, while the North spoke the “langue d’oïl”, and modern French is a descendant of the northern dialect, which “won” against the southern one). An example of how this southern fashion went to the north: the duchess of Aquitaine, Aliénor d’Aquitaine, married her daughters to several lords of the north. Most notably, one of her daughters sent north was Marie de Champagne, who brought all sorts of clerics and scholars to her court, and it is for her that Chrétien de Troyes dedicated his novels. A second “travel” of the courtly love, and the last, was a travel from France to Sicily - which at the time was under the rule of the Anjou dynasty. So in the 13th century Sicily, a form of poetry very similar to the continental courtly love was adopted - and this Sicilian poetry (remember, Sicily was where Petrarca’s poetry was born) influenced and inspired numerous authors located north of Italy, especially Tuscany authors, including a certain... Dante. [What is also very interesting is that in Italy at the time there wasn’t the same system of princely courts as in France, and as a result, by reaching Italy, the courtly love actually managed to “break free” from the courts]

# Why is love so important in this era? Why did love became the subject of all philosophers, and the center of various ideologies? Because at the time, Christianity had decided to put love at the heart of its thoughts and discussions. In this era, the religious commandements were “re-organized” and given a new hierarchy, with the one coming at the top being “You shall love God and your neighbor”. This resulted, for the Middle Ages, into love becoming an ideal. Love was present in all four of the Gospels, “God is love”, “Love stays beyond death”, etc... But with this very strong idealization, there was a lack. All the speeches, all the discourses about love, were about the clerics. The monk was seen as the model-life, as the living example of love. Due to this religion-focused thinking, the secular world lacked any true “example” of love - this whole love discourse didn’t “plan” for the secular people to participate in this “divine love”. 

[stayecstatic]

WK 7 - WEREWOLF

You’re sitting in the deep forest. Your family took you on a camping trip, so you have the opportunity to look at the night sky. You notice it’s a full moon this time. You think to yourself, “that looks amazing.” Then you hear something in the distance. A howl coming from the deepest parts of the darkness. The noises get closer and closer. Rapid footsteps clashing against the leaves. Then there stood a werewolf, with the intention of eating you alive and dragging your body across the dense forest. In this blog, we will see how one full moon can change someone’s instinct for survival.

Werewolves, or “lycanthropy” dates back to thousands of years across various cultures. The earliest legends appear in ancient Greek and Roman mythology. In Greek myth, King Lycaon was transformed into a wolf by Zeus as punishment for serving human flesh to the gods, giving rise to the term “lycanthropy.” In medieval Europe, werewolf legends took hold with the belief that people could transform into wolves through witchcraft, curses, or by donning a wolf skin. Fear of werewolves led to hunts and trials, much like witch trials, especially during the 15th to 18th centuries. Modern werewolf stories, especially through literature and film, have evolved to depict werewolves as humans cursed to transform uncontrollably during a full moon, symbolizing the inner struggle between civilization and primal instincts.

Possible sightings of a monsterous werewolf do exist, let’s see a story about them…

“Not a local legend, but a family story. My grandmother swears up and down that one night decades ago she drove past a giant bipedal dog-creature. We all call it her werewolf story.

Apparently it was late at night, she was driving through a rural area from her nursing shift at the hospital, and she thought she saw a big black dog off the side of the road. She loves dogs, so she slowed down to see if she could call it over, but when she got close it stood up on two legs and was at least as tall as a person. Claims it stared her down as she sped off in absolute terror.

Personally, I’d put my money on a black bear. She’d recently moved from a state with no bears at all, so I can see how someone exhausted from a long night shift who’s never seen a bear in person might mistake one standing up for a terrifying man-dog creature in the dark. But childhood me definitely thought my nana saw a real werewolf. Not a local legend, but a family story. My grandmother swears up and down that one night decades ago she drove past a giant bipedal dog-creature. We all call it her werewolf story.”

Who knows? Was it a black bear? Or was it the night’s deadliest predator? You decide.

Bloodborne is a dark action RPG by FromSoftware, set in the haunting, Gothic city of Yharnam. Players assume the role of a Hunter, drawn to Yharnam in search of a mysterious remedy. They find the city plagued by a terrifying, bloodborne disease that transforms its citizens into monstrous beasts. As they delve deeper into the city’s twisted secrets, players face grotesque creatures, eerie landscapes, and powerful bosses inspired by cosmic horror and Lovecraftian themes.

In Bloodborne, werewolf-like creatures play a central role in both the game’s atmosphere and lore. Known as “beasts,” they are Yharnam’s inhabitants transformed by a mysterious plague that spreads through the city’s blood-based rituals. These beasts, twisted and feral, embody the terrifying results of humans succumbing to their primal instincts under the influence of tainted blood.

There are different types of werewolves in the game…

Scourge Beasts: These are Yharnamites in an early stage of transformation, retaining some human features but developing elongated limbs, fur, and snarling fangs. Scourge Beasts are fast, brutal, and roam the streets, often in packs.

Lycans: In more advanced stages, some citizens take on an even more monstrous, wolf-like form. These creatures are larger, with skeletal frames, claws, and complete loss of human characteristics.

leric Beasts: Larger boss-like enemies, such as the Cleric Beast, represent extreme transformations. These were likely former clergy members who used blood rituals in their practices, mutating them into massive, grotesque beasts as a result.

The werewolf-like beasts in Bloodborne symbolize humanity’s descent into monstrosity and the consequences of playing with forbidden blood. Their existence ties into the game’s themes of hubris, as Yharnam’s citizens, in their obsession with healing and immortality, rely on blood that ultimately corrupts them.

Twilight (2008) (I hate these movies) is a romantic fantasy film based on Stephenie Meyer’s novel of the same name. The story follows Bella Swan, a teenage girl who moves to the small town of Forks, Washington, and falls in love with Edward Cullen, a mysterious and brooding young man who she soon discovers is a vampire. Despite their intense attraction, their romance is complicated by Edward’s vampire nature and his struggle to control his bloodlust around Bella.

In Twilight, werewolves are introduced as shape-shifters from the Quileute tribe, a group of Native American protectors who can transform into wolves. Though they are not traditional werewolves, they embody the werewolf spirit, taking on the role of guardians and protectors against vampires. The werewolves’ abilities are triggered when vampires pose a threat to their tribe or territory, leading to their transformation. Unlike classic werewolves, these shape-shifters can transform at will rather than only under a full moon. Their transformations are tied to emotional control and are often triggered by anger or intense emotions. In wolf form, they are larger and stronger than natural wolves, with heightened senses and enhanced speed. Each werewolf has a distinct look, reflecting their personality and status within the pack. The pack, led by Sam Uley, includes Jacob Black, Bella’s close friend, who later plays a significant role in her life and the overall story. Werewolves have a deep connection with one another, communicating telepathically in wolf form and sharing a strong pack bond.

The werewolves have an ancient rivalry with vampires, fueled by past conflicts and their role as natural protectors of humanity. This rivalry complicates Bella’s relationship with Edward, especially as Jacob and the pack become more protective of Bella.

Here’s an example of Jacob’s transformation. I’d rather not going about this corny movie anymore

To close this blog off, I never really looked into werewolves. I always knew fictional people transformed into them when it’s a full moon. My first ever time seeing werewolves was from when I watched Twilight when I was younger. Even when I was younger, I hated that movie. I’m not sorry. It’s probably the only romance movie I won’t ever watch again. I’d rather watch The Titanic. Honestly, turning into a werewolf when it’s a full moon it’s a great concept. It also makes a lot of sense. I always thought werewolves and wolves were the same thing, but one is clearly much realer than the other. Wolves and other wild animals is probably the reason why I don’t like camping outside. Werewolves are a fun and interesting concept such I’d explore more.

The next time you go outside in the middle of the night, look up in the sky.. it might be a warning of what’s next to come for the rest of your life.

[darkdoverpseeker]

hello ! i’m a 21 year old (f) college student looking for a couple of long-term roleplay partners (19+), who are interested in exploring historical plots !!

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a little bit about me :

my writing style consists of adv.literate to novella prose through third-person POVs, and i would prefer for my partners to write similarly ! though that’s not to say that i’m averse to rapid fire, more literate-style writing either, as i’m a bit rusty and need to ease back into my old groove :,).

as for pairings, i’m generally very flexible in terms of the types of relationships & genders i like to portray & often vie for multiple characters when given the chance !! i would also prefer for my partners to be the same. however, if or when romance comes into play i am strictly F/F & F/M oriented.

with all of that in mind however, i’m a bit of a slow writer & i want to make that VERY clear ! i do work part-time & i’m about to get back to juggling a hefty course load — BUT i hope with some new inspiration/plots, i’ll be able to increase in frequency !! i’m also very patient in terms of ooc/posting for my partners (& ghost-friendly), so there’s never any real rush !! i just ask that we share the same sentiment :)).

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now, onto the request !

i’m very keen on exploring any & all historical settings :). i’m a bit of a history nut and enjoy the research & fascination that comes with it !! world-building, historical-fantasy, mythology and plots inspired by those periods are also very much welcomed :)).

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some settings i’m interested in:

medieval europe

the english gothic era

the wild west

victorian america

imperial russia

revolutionary france

ancient civilizations (specifically greek, roman & egyptian)

edo era of japan

han dynasty china

1920’s-60’s america or europe

islamic golden age (think one thousand and one nights :))

…. and many more !!

p.s. i am also nsfw friendly :))

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as a final note — any and ALL roleplays will be taking place on discord as that’s where i’m most active ! i’d also like to shift the ooc there once we’ve established a plot, discussed limits and gotten to know each other a bit better ! finally, as much as i’m open for most things, please only interact if you’re willing to contribute with ideas and/or plotting - i‘ve become a bit strict with this as of late, because i don't want to have to do all the work alone, i find that it’s SUCH a muse killer ! only looking for people that can match my energy :,))).

please leave a like if you’re interested and i’ll try to reach out soon <3.

have a nice day 🏰💫🧝‍♀️

like if interested!

[queenfredegund]

Hi Justine !! Can I have your opinion on a longlasting debate ? When did late antiquity end and when did the middle ages start ? I know it's not happened in one day and it's more of a long process but I also know scholars don't agree on what century the change was really visible...

Hi Gabrielle, and thanks for that amazing question! Oh yes, this is a long, long debate because actually there is more than one answer to that question. Firstly, we do not forget that the purpose of periodisation is a european-centered question only, because it is a statment who was gradually made during the 19th century, during the first period of history construction.

Best example for that is the definition of what relieves from history and from prehistory. Answer to that is generally the using of writing, but we know that some people did not make a used of writing during a long time, like Gaulish peoples, leading to the creation of an “in between” period, aka the “protohistory”, for peoples who definitely lived during the history but without matching the original definition.

Long story short, I really think that periodisation is a doomed way, because it tends to categorise eras without real significance. I also heard by my master DR that for his own opinion as a specialist of the first Byzantine Empire’s period, antiquity lasted until the 6th century AD, at least! But take a look on it. I’m sorry in advance, but my answer will mostly speak about the Gauls, and so occidental Europe, because this is actually my major topic.

In the case of the early middle ages/late antiquity, question is what makes a period an antique subject rather than a medieval one. The point is often the beginning of christianism. But christianism became proeminent during the 4th century, meaning that a long period of the roman empire should be labelised as medieval? 

Other point could be the fall of Rome in 410 during the Gothic invasion. But to be honest, with the foundation and the transfert of the political capital city in Constantinople under the Constantinian dynasty, it was a long time since Rome did not appear as the political center of the Roman world (plus the Tetrarchy period was a time during which political leaders were in a constant move).

So if we can not denied the symbolism of the fall of Rome and its great impact in people during that time, when you look at society and economic situation, there is no significant change after Rome’s downfall. In France, we often make use of the year 476 for determining the end of Antiquity, with the deposition of last emperor Romulus Augustulus and so the end of the political domination of Rome in the West part.

So, if we respect the periodisation and its statment, Merovingian Gaul for example should be considered as the first Medieval period, and that is what it is usually done in history class. But if we take a look on it, the choice is truly debatable, as Merovingian regnum still used late-roman organisation, economic system, religious beliefs and hierarchy (i.e. the first christianism) and even enjoyed circus ludi in arenas. In fact, the whole cliches about Middle Ages, the fortified castle with the dungeon, the knight and his armor, jousting art did not exist still. So, does it make them “antiquity” or “medieval”?

On my own opinion, we should not separate Merovingian period of its immediate predecessors, i.e. the Tetrarchy period. If it could be a periodisation, I think it must be done by englobing this two periods side by side, but again, I’m not fond of periodisation at all and call for a resignation of all of it for the best. Now, I also think there is a great change between Merovingian and Carolingian times in the Gauls in particular, with the slow progress of what it would be called later the “feudal system”, so if we take the Gauls only as an example, then the beginning of Medieval period should be seen in it, and so the definitive end of Late Antiquity during the mid-8th to 9th century.

[rhysoca]

Typographical development up to and beyond Nicolas Jenson’s roman typeface

Introduction

While reading about the history and early development of typography, I grew interested in the point at which typographic design became, for the first time, abstract; moving away from letterforms that mimicked handwritten script towards new styles that were driven by a growing awareness and appreciation of the formal possibilities allowed by the nascent technique of letterform printing. This technical and conceptual shift is generally attributed to the French typographer, Nicolas Jenson, who designed one of the earliest and finest Roman style typefaces in 1470s Venice: a typeface now referred to as Jenson. 

Background/history of writing

Typography, of course, derives from writing, which can be traced back to the 3rd millennia BC, an era in which cultural interactions between the societies of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, saw the Sumerian cuneiform script of the latter influence the development of hieroglyphics in the former, both written forms establishing themselves as powerful communicative aids before developing into new forms which influenced the creation of subsequent abjadic and alphabetic stems of writing. 

Sumerian cuneiform

Egyptian hieroglyphics

The Phoenicians simplified the act of writing by drastically reducing the number of letterforms, creating what is now recognised as the first abjadic alphabet, consisting entirely of consonantal sounds. The Greek alphabet derived from the Phoenician, but included letters for vowel sounds, making it the first of a new form of alphabet. This, in turn, informed the development of written Latin - a system that, according to Eric Gill, ‘reached a permanent type about the first century AD.’

Development of the Phoenician, Greek and Latin alphabets

During the next fifteen-hundred years, a period in which the Latin alphabet itself remained for the most part fixed,  the forms of lettering written in the languages derived from Latin developed in manifold ways: from the square capitals that were a characteristic of Roman lapidary inscriptions, through later and less formal cursive, insular and uncial scripts that eventually found a level of standardisation from the ninth to the early thirteenth centuries in the form now referred to as Corolignian miniscule. In turn this form of script developed into blackletter, or Gothic script, that was used from the 1150s through to the invention of printing and beyond.

Roman lapidary inscription

An example of uncial script

Carolignan miniscule

Gothic blackletter 

At the time Johannes Gutenberg introduced printing with moveable type in 1439, the new technology was conceived as a means by which texts - specifically indulgences - that had previously been produced, painstakingly, by hand could be mass produced and the process of manufacture and dissemination made more efficient. The focus was on the speed and convenience that the mechanical process allowed, rather than clarification or any improvement in the aesthetic quality of handwritten script. This meant that the initial conceptual scope of mechanical printing was to produce scripts in the style in which they would, previously, have been handwritten. The standard method of writing in the germanic world used Gothic letterforms and, since printing was invented in Germany, the early typefaces mimicked Gothic script.

A page from Gutenberg’s bible of 1454

However, as Italy was the most culturally developed country in Europe at the time, German printers moved south to cities like Venice and began creating typefaces that took account of humanistic handwriting that was developing in Italy - a form that took as its inspiration the clarity of Roman lettering, marrying this with minuscule forms that had developed during later eras. 

In his Essay on Typography, Eric Gill explains that the process of using current technology to repeat received forms of lettering was not new and that, in an earlier era when lapidary inscriptions were the norm, texts written using a very different technology, the pen, mimicked the then culturally dominant form: 

Pen writing, even as late as the fourth century, shows very clearly that the scribe had no idea of inventing ‘pen’ forms of letters, but was simply making as well as he could with a pen what he conceived to be ordinary lettering. Whether he held the pen one way or the other (so that the thick strokes came vertically or horizontally) makes no difference to the primary intention of the scribe. He was not inventing letters; he was writing forms already invented.

…whatever tools or materials or economic circumstance (that is hurry & expense), the artist, the letter-maker, has always thought of him self as making existing forms, & not inventing new ones. Thus, the Lombards of the fourteenth century did not sit down and invent Lombardic lettering. The Siennese inscription in the Victoria and Albert Mu­seum, dated 1309, is simply a stone version of the pen letters with which the letter-cutter was familiar. The letter-cutters of the fifteenth century did not invent ‘gothic’. They had the job of cutting stone inscriptions, and they did it in the ordinary letters of their time. The forms of their letters were what we call ‘pen’ forms. But they cared nothing about that. To them they were simply letters. And just as we saw that in Roman times the Roman scribe imitated the stone inscription forms because, for him, nothing else was letters; so, in the fifteenth century, when the written was the most common and influential form of lettering, the posi­tion is reversed, & the letter-cutter copies the scribe — the stone inscription is imitation pen-writing (with such inevitable small modifications as, in stone, cannot be avoided), whereas in the fourth century the written book w as an imitation of the stone inscription (with such small modifications as the pen makes inevitable).

Gill goes on to say that,

…the first printers were no more the in­ventors of new letter forms than any other crafts­men had been. The first printed books were simply typographic imitations of pen writing, just as were fifteenth century inscriptions in stone.

So there was a sense in which the originators of typography, like the practitioners of earlier techniques, were tied by custom to past practice - in their case the organic, humanistic (in the sense of being physically formed by humans) physicality of scribal penmanship, which was deep rooted, and linked to a seemingly intrinsic need to make marks. 

However, while early typographical practitioners referred to earlier calligraphic forms, increased usage and improved technology had significant implications as the categorical difference between handwritten and printed letters became apparent: as Elaine Lupton says in her book Thinking With Type, ‘Words originated as gestures of the body. The first typefaces were directly modelled on the forms of calligraphy.Typefaces, however, are not bodily gestures — they are manufactured images designed for infinite repetition.’ As people worked with type, there was an emerging realisation of the new formal possibilities inherent within the new medium. 

The move away from traditional forms took place quickly, during the space of fifteen years, from Guttenberg’s Blackletter type in the mid-1450s, through Gothic Roman to the emergence of humanistic Roman types that emerged in 1470, and was inextricably linked with the movement of German practitioners to Italy and the influence Roman capitals combined with contemporary Italian handwritten forms on typographical development.

Characteristics and sample of Gutenberg’s Textura blackletter

Characteristics and sample of the Gothic Roman Subiaco Type

Characteristics and sample of Jenson’s roman type

Characteristics and sample of the Von Speyers’ roman type

Images above taken from Paul McNeils The Visual History of Type

The earliest instance of this is, what’s now known as the Subiaco Type, was created by two German monks, Sweyynheym and Pannartz, who established the first printing press in Italy and developed a hybrid, Gothic Roman type that combined elements of medieval lettering with renaissance forms, to appeal to local audiences. The typographer, Stanley Morison, thought that Sweyynheym and Pannartz’s invention is entitled to rank as the first humanistic or roman type’, because it established a principle, of movement away from Germanic towards humanistic letterforms, that influenced the emergence of new typographical forms and new ways of thinking about the possibilities of the medium. For this reason, Paul McNeil, in The Visual History of Type, says that, ‘The Subiaco typeface represents a milestone in the history of printing and typography.’

De divinis institutionibus by Lactantius; printed by Pannartz and Sweynheim in 1465

So the typographical style now known as Gotica Antiqua, invented by Sweyynheym and Pannartz and developed by practitioners such as Gunter Zainer, represents a significant movement away from a earlier purely germanic forms and a broadening of awareness of the formal possibilities of the still nascent technology. However, it was the development in 1470 of a purely Roman typeface that constituted a complete shift away from medieval lettering and Blackletter type towards printed lettering that seems familiar to us today. There is some dispute as to who should be given credit for this - the Von Speyer brothers (also known as da Spira brothers) or Nicolas Jenson, who seem to have made similar breakthroughs simultaneously. Of the Von Speyers’ roman type, printer and historian of typography D.B. Updike wrote in the 1930s, ‘Many roman types of varying degrees of purity and attractiveness were used by Italian printers of this period. It was reserved for John and Wendelin de Spire to show a roman type which today appears roman to us.’ 

An example of the Von Speyers’ roman type

However, it is Jenson’s roman that is the more famous today, considered the progenitor or all subsequent roman typefaces. Paul McNeil states that, Jenson’s type, ‘marks a turning point in the history of printing. A blueprint for all that followed, it continues to influence type design today.’ He goes on to say that, ‘Nicolas Jenson’s work elevated the nascent craft of printing to a fine art. The balanced proportions of the letters, the evenness of their spacing and the restrained overall tone of his pages demonstrate why he was acclaimed above other printers working in fifteenth-century Italy and why his work has remained a cornerstone in the history of typography.’

Jenson’s roman type

In his, An Essay on Typography, Eric Gill in summarising the impact of Jenson’s roman, says that it represents, ‘the emancipation achieved from the gothic of northern Europe and from handwriting generally. Henceforth, the designing of type was primarily the work of punch-cutters, that is of engravers. Letters were still reminiscent but no longer an imitation of handwriting.’ So while Italian printers, advanced the art of typography by moving from a type that was an imitation of Germanic handwritten forms to one that took Roman capitals and contemporary Italian minuscule for inspiration, the revolutionary insight was that mechanical typography - a new technology that allowed standardisation of letterform, technical refinement and reproducibility - made possible a formal abstraction, away from handwritten letterforms to a distinct system of lettering, occupying a different conceptual space to handwriting, that could improve efficiency and readability, while constituting an artform in its own right. 

This relationship between the written and the printed letterform is one of the defining characteristics of typography. As Ellen Lupton says, in her book Thinking With Type, ‘The history of typography reflects a continual tension between the hand and the machine, the organic and the geometric, the human body and the abstract system.’

This excerpt from an article on Jenson’s roman by Paul Finn of Fitzroy & Finn studio, goes someway towards explaining what makes Jenson’s roman typeface special:

Gutenburg's invention was realised by Jensons first True Roman typeface. A convergence of all that had gone before. The alphabet now became in focus, sharpened through sacred geometry, asymmetric logic and the golden section. A monastic devotion of meditation brought forth a revelation. Jenson's inspired amalgamation of Roman capitals with the humanistic handwritten miniscule of the day imposed a structural unity upon the miniscule through remodelling the serif structures bringing form and clarity, unifying an essence of perfectly proportioned form.

The Renaissance. Rebirth. The revival of Ancient Rome. Classical antiquity; mathematics, geometry, architecture, art and science infuse Jenson's typeface. Jenson sought a suitable vehicle to disseminate the knowledge of humanities new epoch. He created the typeface which became the foundation stone of all future typographical endeavours. Constructed with architectural precision he attained a unified cohesive whole. Practising the Renaissance ideal of balance between Form and Space, when white space is as important as the blackness of form. Presence v's Absence. This is illustrated in his 1470 edition of Eusebius, De Evangelics Praeparatione the counters, wordspacing, linespacing are suspended in perfect equilibrium with the letterform, whose relationship with the extender lengths add elegance to the balanced body of type. These decompressed forms are reaction to the dense blocks of Blackletter type of Gutenburgs printed matter. Instead spacious circular rhythmic forms grace the paper enticing the reader.

Jenson’s roman has has a fundamental impact on subsequent typographical development. The principles behind his work formed the basis for later well-known roman faces, such as Griffo’s Roman (or Bembo), which was cut for the Venetian printer Albert Manutius by the punch cutter Francesco Griffo. In his book The Visual History of Type, Paul McNeil states that Griffo’s roman, ‘became the progenitor of all old-style typefaces, setting a new standard for typographic excellence.’

Griffo’s Roman or Bembo

In turn Griffo’s roman influenced later generations of type cutters, such as Claude Garamond, whose roman type has become one of the most popular Old  Style typefaces in the world

A sample of Garamond’s roman typeface

More recently, from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day, direct revivals of Jenson’s roman have been either cut or - in the digital era - computer designed.

These include William Morris’ 1890 Gold Type on Jenson' type in 1890. 

Cobden-Sanderson modelled his typeface for Doves Press on Jenson's alphabets in 1900.

Bruce Rogers’ Centaur of 1914

Morris Fuller Benton’s Cloister Old Style from 1926

Robert Slimbach's digital  Adobe Jenson from 1996

[bax16]

Hey, @bax16, I was wondering if you had any suggestions for hermetic art sources or other esoteric works with unique art? I'm pondering getting some ink. Your wide range of topics makes me think you'd have some good suggestions.

Screenshotted because tungle cuts off asks when you answer em :T

@momentspause I suppose that depends on what you mean by hermeticism! Capital H Hermeticism proper has a long history, just slightly longer than Christianity. It started off as a syncretic mystery cult in Hellenistic Egypt, as the worship of the wisdom deity Hermes Trismegistus (Thrice Great Hermes), who came about as a merger of Hermes and Thoth. Aesthetically, its art would've been very visually similar to others of its time and place, the only distinguishin features bein its symbolism and iconography, which is true for the other cults and religions as well.

It then proceeded to evolve with the times throughout western history. Consequently it went through many, many, many philosophical, theological, and aesthetic changes.

It died out towards late antiquity with the strong Christianization of all major centers of the Roman empire (Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria (Egypt), Syria, etc), but had a big revival startin in the late middle ages and into the renaissance when neoclassicism was all the rage. This is when we get folks like John Dee and Roger Bacon, with their explicitly magical runes and circles and magical angelic languages and sigils and spirit conjurations (albeit couched very much in terms of Christian piety, faith, ritual purity, and predetermination. Not all of it was Hermeticism either. A big part of it was just the continued natural evolution of a long tradition of Aristotelian and Neo-Platonic natural philosophy, which contained a lot of stuff we consider magical hocus pocus like astrology and necromancy and economics).

As the renaissance gave way to the reformation and the age of enlightenment, philosophy started developin a rift between the theological, the scientific, and the metaphysical, and what had previously been seen as the interaction between the theological and scientific parts of philosophy (that is, magics, charms, curses and cures, etc) came to be seen as uncouth superstition no enlightened man would entertain. Hermeticism faded with this trend again until 19th century romanticism and the concurrent western European preoccupation with all things gothic and grotesque brought it back into the limelight. This is where we get folks like Aleister Crowley, the Rosicrucians, and the Golden Dawn, with their seances and demon sigils and revealed grimoires and magick-with-a-ks. From then on, it never really faded away completely even to the modern day. Wicca, neopagan movements, and chaos magic are all direct developments of the 19th century incarnation of an antique Ptolemaic mystery religion.

Phew. That was a long journey. But that was for Hermeticism proper. If you're just talkin about general mysticism, well lots of major religions have those, rangin from the revered and the feared (Kabbalah from medieval Sephardic Judaism), to the slightly heterodox (Sufi Islam, which gets treated differently dependin on the sect and the people in power), to the downright heretical (Tantra in the context of most major Hinduisms. Unlike the western conception of it as Sexy Ritual Magic Hehe ;) , it's actually a set of transgressive magical practices that heavily violates Indian social orthopraxy, and involves deliberately becomin ritually impure by partakin in things like meat, sex, and, supposedly, cannibalism). You also have syncretic religions like Yazidism, which probably came about as an Islamified Zurvanism (a heretical branch of Zoroastrianism from when it was the Persian religion); Manichaeism, a syncretism of Zoroastrianism in Christian and Buddhist guise; and many, many others.

That was a long ass diatribe, but the point is that religions and religious movements rarely make art truly unique to themselves. There's always an underlyin cultural backdrop from which they get their themes and icons and assumptions, which they then adapt to suit their needs. It's why we can have depictions of Jesus on the cross, while ancient chinese Christians had their shinin "Buddha" seated in lotus position in front of a cross.

That bein said, I'd always been a fan of Arabic calligraphy, Irish illuminated manuscripts, and Aztec calendar glyphs. I'm not great with sources, but that might be worth lookin into, if only to craft your own personal symbolism with a unified aesthetic to your likin 😊

[absolvtely-barbaric]

What about slavs tho?

Hello! Sorry it took me so long to answer this question, because I was trying to answer it in-depth as possible and realized that… I can’t really do that. 

Answering this for every Slav tribe or even every major Slav group would just take me forever, especially since I haven’t yet delved into them in-depth (like I have with some of the Germanic tribes). The Slavs (like the Germanics and the Celts) were a very big group of different tribes! I think because of how you asked this, you probably already know… Anyhow, like I showed in my previous ask about Germania, you can’t simply combine groups like the Slavs or Germanics into one person. When the Slavs first came into the historical record, Eastern Europe looked like this:

The Slavs were first documented in the 6th century by the Eastern Romans, which is good because it gives us some information as to their origins, but is also bad because Eastern Romans didn’t really… care all that much to be specific. The early Slavs, though undoubtedly various people groups, were dealt with in Roman history as a conglomerate because it wasn’t extremely important to Roman policy to make a distinction between them. This was the same thing that happened to the Germanics and Goths until their differences became too important to be ignored. 

I can’t talk about each of these early Slavic groups individually, there’s just so much information to go through. Not only that but a lot of it is vague. Because contemporary historians didn’t care to be very detailed, it’s hard to say who was where and… who was even who. The clear distinctions between each group became cemented as time went on and historiography became simultaneously more helpful. (If you want something more specific about one of the groups, the Serbs, check out the great answer to an ask I sent to @elija-oc-art here!)

Historians have some theories as to the origins of the Slavs. Some posit that they originated much earlier than they came into the historical record, somewhere around 1500 BCE (which is, coincidentally, about when the Germanic peoples first appeared). Some argue that they didn’t emerge until after the Germanic migrations, and I’ve read one that goes so far as to say that the Slavs were actually the Germanic peasant caste that was left behind when the Germanic/Gothic kings and their retainers/armies migrated westward! 

All three scenarios are probably simultaneously true. Just like how most of the Germanic tribes that we know (like the Franks, Burgundians, etc.) were actually more recent in the historical record, and didn’t all originate so early as 1500 BCE, the same is probably the case for the Slavs. The first Slavic people which archaeologists can identify as such might have originated around 1500 BCE, but the Slavic groups which went on to become a lot of the modern peoples in Eastern Europe probably originated much later as a result of the shifting demographics and cultural infusions that occurred in late Antiquity and the early medieval period. 

Thanks for the ask! And thanks for your patience!

[shredsandpatches]

One of the things Alfred Thomas is good about is pointing out that the general tendency for anglophone scholars to ignore Bohemian/imperial culture as an influence in England (though they are quick to point out English influence in Bohemia re: the Hussites) has a lot to do with western stereotypes about Eastern Europe—he says this in I think the new Blackwell Companion to Chaucer. I think he even explicitly mentions the Cold War (John Bowers, author of the Falsely Pious Coverup of Icky Queerness article, also talks about this in his extremely negative review of the book* in which he feels he’s not cited enough). Gervase Mathew, in 1968, gives a very telling description of Anne and her entourage as influential while suggesting we should not think of her as German or Bohemian but just International Gothic, like International Gothic was completely sui generis and does not contain any trace of its constituent cultures. Like, yes, Charles IV was a Francophile and hung out with major literary figures like Petrarch and Machaut; he also emphasized his Slavic ancestry and identified strongly with the Bohemian side of his lineage (which came through his mother; John the Blind was able to claim the throne of Bohemia because of his marriage rather than his bloodlines). 

Thomas’s work does pay a lot of attention to this stuff. He is not without redeeming qualities as a scholar, and when he’s talking about Czech literature and its interactions with English literature he’s often quite good. When he talks about specific historical figures, though, the wheels kind of fall off the whole thing. Indeed, his treatment of Richard and Anne in the most recent book is extremely focused on Richard’s interest in imperial culture, to the extent that it gives the impression that that’s the main reason Richard had so much affection for her. It’s sort of the flip side of what Gervase Mathew does:

“...Richard not only loved Anne in a manner untypical of late medieval royal marriages but he regarded her as the embodiment of imperial power and prestige. Richard’s personal affection for Anne was inseparable from his political ambitions; and Anne loomed large in his dynastic vision as a future Holy Roman Emperor, just as her female ancestors had played an important role in Charles IV’s quest for the imperial crown.”

There’s a sort of weird trajectory in Thomas’s work where Anne herself becomes more and more of a cipher—like, in Anne’s Bohemia (1998) he talks about her as a learned and intelligent person and 20 years later he’s like “well we don’t know about her personal qualities but we definitely know what Richard valued about her and it was totally her culture and bloodlines.” The quote above, by the way, is immediately after a passage in which Thomas critiques Kristen Geaman for arguing that Anne’s surviving letter about her sorrow about not having a baby, but also her optimism about having one in the future, proves that she and Richard didn’t have a celibate marriage, since, after all, all royal letters are diplomatic by their nature and thus can’t be trusted (unlike depictions of chastity by male poets, who definitely are more reliable sources than Anne herself) and hey, maybe Anne was also an idiot who didn’t know how is babby formed. After all, he also doesn’t mention that Anne expresses optimism as well as grief, and does not explain why she would be grieving about her lack of children if she were actively not taking steps to have them. Or, for that matter, why people so clearly invested in their own lineage would not try to continue that lineage!

And, like, I get that what Thomas is trying to suggest is that Richard supposedly objectified his wife/saw her as a vehicle for his own ambitions, but it ends up just being a very objectifying treatment in its own right—after all, Anne and Richard were a married couple, were together all the time, had an actual human relationship as well as being representatives of two dynasties; it’s just that history doesn’t really record that kind of thing in a way that lasts for 600 years, just as we don’t have much that shows us what Anne, specifically, was like as a person. But she was a person—even if we don’t know exactly how she exercised agency as queen, I don’t think we need to assume she didn’t. And if we can speculate about Richard’s motivations, why not hers? Why wouldn’t she encourage the promulgation of her native culture in England and share it with her husband? If her own involvement in the dissemination of Bohemian influence is something that’s too opaque to really address much, why is it that we supposedly know exactly how Richard saw his relationship to the imperial family? Oh, right, he’s a man.

Anyway, I would love to read that study of Richard. Also! I looked it up and the Thomas book in question came out last summer. So it was before I made the OP but I wasn’t really aware of the contents of the book at the time.

*Bowers’ review is basically one paragraph about how Anne and Bohemian culture wasn’t actually influential at all except for making pearls trendy, and two really quite passive-aggressive pages about how Thomas doesn’t cite his work on Pearl nearly enough, but at least it’s good that his work is universally accepted 20 years after being controversial. But given his own work I feel like they deserve each other.  

This is from Andrew Taylor’s “Anne of Bohemia and the Making of Chaucer,” one of the early forays into scholarship that takes Anne seriously as a person with influence instead of effectively accepting the judgment of the Westminster chronicler – I opened it while looking for a different article in my novelthing research folder – and I gotta say I have a lot of respect for Taylor for not softpedaling how nasty the chronicler actually was about her. The key word, of course, is carnis, which you have to stretch pretty far to translate as “humanity.” A.K. McHardy’s sourcebook (The Reign of Richard II: Minority to Tyranny, Manchester UP, 2012) leans even harder into the misogyny by translating tantilla carnis porcione as “such a tiny portion of meat,” a phrase that always makes me want to wash my eyeballs.

[lethaderr-blog]

The top things to do in on a day trip.

It was the final day of my Athos barge cruise on the Canal du Midi in the South of . We slowly sailed between tiny medieval towns, exploring each one along the way. These included Marseillan, Pézenas, Narbonne, Minerve, Capestang, and . Even if you only have a day, I’m going to outline all of the best things to do in during your stay.

Out of all the villages we visited, was the most famous, arguably the most noteworthy, and it was the busiest with tourists. After all, it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its preserved and restored fortifications. My sister also let me know that is the name of a fun and popular board game that she’s played.

Visiting La Cite de

is actually quite large, consisting of the medieval village, the rest of the city down below the hill, some outlying areas, and even its own airport. I only visited La Cité de for the day, which is the old, medieval town up on the hill. If you’re going to visit for more than a day, I am sure you will have time to see the town down below, too. This travel guide will only go into detail about visiting La Cite de .

Even though La Cité de isn’t very big, there’s a surprising amount of things to do in . If you’re looking for precisely what to see in , you’ve come to the right place. I have five fantastic ideas of must see spots around the medieval old town. is one of the most special medieval towns in . Even though it’s going to be busier and more crowded than other lesser known spots, it’s definitely worth the trip. This is one of the South of destinations you’ll surely want to add to your bucket list.

Things to Do in : The Fortified Walls

If you’re looking for what to do in , you really can’t miss checking out its fortifications. After all, you must walk through the fortified walls to enter the old town center. However, I suggest that before you venture right into town, you take some time to walk along the fortified walls themselves.

A Brief History

Since the days of the Roman Empire, a fortified settlement has existed up on the hill where you’ll find present day . There’s 2500 years of history here. Over time, the city was occupied by Romans, Visigoths, Crusaders and Saracens, and it was once the largest fortress in . The citadel is encircled by double fortified walls about 3 kilometers in length. During the Crusade against the Albigenses in the 13th century, was captured by Simon de Montfort. He decided to construct the outer wall to strengthen its position.

After the town lost its military significance in the 1600s, ’s fortifications were abandoned. In 1849, the French government wanted to demolish the fortified walls, but there was a great opposition to this decision by the locals. Thankfully, the government changed their minds and decided to restore the walls.

Restorations of ’s Fortifications

The architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc started to renovate the ramparts around La Cite de . His work was met with some criticism as the restorations might not be that similar to the original structures. The pointed caps of the towers evoke architecture from northern and not those from the south of . Viollet-le-Duc wanted to completely restore each building for a feeling of completeness, although some believe that looks a little too “Disney-fied”.

Defenders of Viollet-le-Duc believe that he was only working with the knowledge he had at the time, and otherwise the buildings could have been lost completely. All in all, Viollet-le-Duc’s restorations only affect less than 20% of the monument. What do you think? I can personally see how the restorations look a little too “new” or not original, but I am certainly glad that we didn’t lose one of the most important medieval towns in .

Wandering the Walls

My first suggestion for what to see in ? Naturally, take a stroll between the ramparts. Don’t rush right into the old town. Take the time to admire the walls themselves. When you visit , enter through the Narbonne Gate and take a turn to your left rather than walking straight into town. There’s a large space where you can walk between the double fortifications. It’s different from other fortified walls that I’ve checked out in the past.

For example, Quebec City’s fortifications surround the old town and you can walk on top of the walls themselves. While the walls of aren’t designed for tourists to walk on, you can wander right between the walls, admiring the towers and stone walls themselves on either side of you. Wandering the walls is one of the top things to do in and shouldn’t be missed.

Explore Château Comtal, ’s Castle

If you’re wondering what to do in , don’t miss Chateau Comtal, the castle of . A trip to the castle is one of the top things to do in . There’s so much fascinating history to explore at the count’s castle. As a symbol of feudal and then royal power, the castle dominated the city and its surroundings.

The castle was constructed in the 1100s and improvements continued through to the 14th century. Additional buildings were added, stories were added to existing buildings, and the castle gained multiple functions. It was defensive (with its fortified walls), residential, housed the military, and was also a political center.

At the entrance of the castle, there’s a wide stone bridge, ending with a wooden drawbridge. There are also several towers lining the front entrance where guards could easily attack any foreign soldiers with bows and arrows or crossbows.

As you walk through the castle, you’ll notice courtyards, walkways, and incredible views of ’s lower town. There’s also an archaeological museum in the west wing of the castle for historic and beautiful objects from and the area.

No matter when you visit , the castle is going to be one of the busiest spots in town. A trip to the magnificent castle of the Counts of is one of the most important things to do in . I highly recommend that you buy a skip the line ticket in advance. It is not very expensive and it will save you lots of time. That way, you’ll be able to make the most of your day trips even if you have a limited amount of time in the village.

Visit the Basilica of Saints Nazarius and Celsus

Another main attraction is the St. Nazaire Basilica. The Basilica of Saints Nazarius and Celsus is a national monument, constructed in the Gothic-Romanesque architectural styles. The original Visigothic church at the same site most likely dates to the 6th century, but no traces of it remain. Back in 1096, Pope Urban II visited the site and blessed the building materials for the construction of a new church. This cathedral was built between the 12th century and the late 13th century.

Don’t stop at the outside of the church without going inside. The most impressive features of the basilica are the glorious stained glass windows and the intricate carved decorations. The central stained glass window of the choir is one of the oldest in , from 1280.

Aside from several brilliant stained glass windows and sculptures, you can view the Siege Stone inside the church. It’s a 13th century relief that most likely illustrates a scene from the Albigensian Crusade. There are a couple of other artifacts in this same area: a large bell and an etched image of Simon de Montfort from his tomb.

Admire the Scenery from Various Vantage Points

As you take in the wondrous scenery from , you might feel like you’ve stepped back in time. Though some of the best views are from the castle, you can catch glimpses of lower town and beyond from various spot around town. You’ll see some great views as you wander around the ramparts at the edge of town. The cobblestone streets of are also rather postcard perfect, if you can manage to see them without too many crowds. Viewing the scenery of the medieval village and its surroundings was one of my favorite things to do in .

Stroll through Cobblestone Streets

As you wander through town, you might feel a little bit like Belle in Beauty and the Beast. The buildings are primarily from medieval times with Renaissance ornamentation. The best preserved building from the 13th and 14th centuries is the Inquisiton House at the corner of Rue du Four-Saint-Nazaire and Rue de la Porte-d’Aude.

Walking through town, you’ll also see houses with corbelled facades from the 16th and 17th centuries. These stand alongside facades from the late 19th and early 20th century. The restoration of the town impacted some of its inhabitants, as they wished to take part in the town’s revival. If you’d like to know more about the history, I recommend taking a walking tour with a knowledgeable guide.

Naturally, there are lots of little shops and cafes dotted through the old town of . You can find lots of interesting gifts and goodies to bring home with you. I even managed to find a candy shop in town that had a whole shelf of vegan candies!

Where to Stay

Inside the Cite de , there are only a few hotels where you can spend the night. There are hotels that vary in price according to their amenities and overall fanciness. Here are a couple to check out:

Hotel de la Cité : This is a very luxurious hotel with spectacular views. It’s an upscale, five star hotel right in the heart of old town. There’s even an outdoor pool, a spa with a hot tub, and sophisticated rooms. This is my top choice for best hotel in , budget allowing, of course! Book your stay at the Hotel de la Cite or view additional reviews by fellow travelers.

Best Western Hotel Le Donjon: This is a middle of the road, three star hotel in the middle of Old Town. The hotel is located within three medieval buildings inside the old town walls. Book your stay at the Best Western or view more reviews by travelers who have spent the night.

La Demeure De La Cite: For a bed and breakfast experience inside the fortifications of , check out La Demeure De La Cite. It’s a cozy and welcoming place to spend the night. Plus, you’ll have the town to yourself when all the tourists leave from their day trips. Book your stay at La Demeure or read more reviews by fellow travelers.

Most other hotels are outside of the city walls, near the airport, or you can find them in lower town. Here is a full listing of hotels so you can compare. You can also find Airbnb rental listings in (sign up with my link if you haven’t used Airbnb before and you can receive $60 off your stay!)

Getting There

It’s easy to reach , even if you’re not sailing aboard a barge cruise. There are direct trains from to from many French towns, including Arles, Beziers, Bordeaux, Montpellier, Marseille, Narbonne, Toulouse, and others. Book your high speed train trip to quickly and easily online.

You can also fly to from many cities in . Once you reach , you can rent a car to get around the South of or compare car rental prices online. There are parking lots outside the wall city (no cars are allowed inside the old town).

.kt-blocks-info-box-link-wrap {background:rgba(206, 249, 248, 1);padding:20px 20px 20px 20px;border-width:0px 0px 0px 0px;} .kt-blocks-info-box-link-wrap:hover {border-color:rgba(238, 238, 238, 1);background:rgba(206, 249, 248, 1);} .kt-blocks-info-box-media {color: 0px 0px 0px;padding:10px 10px 10px 10px;} .kt-blocks-info-box-media-container {margin:0px 15px 0px 15px;} .kt-blocks-info-box-link-wrap:hover .kt-blocks-info-box-media {color:#444;background:transparent;border-color:#444444;} .kt-blocks-info-box-title {color: 0px 0px 0px;margin:5px 0px 10px 0px;} .kt-blocks-info-box-link-wrap:hover .kt-blocks-info-box-title {color:#444;} .kt-blocks-info-box-text {color:#444;} .kt-blocks-info-box-link-wrap:hover .kt-blocks-info-box-text {color:#444;} .kt-blocks-info-box-learnmore {color: 0px 0px 0px;padding:4px 8px 4px 8px;margin:10px 0px 10px 0px;} .kt-blocks-info-box-link-wrap:hover .kt-blocks-info-box-learnmore {color: <div id="" class="wp-block-kadence-infobox"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-link-wrap kt-blocks-info-box-media-align-top kt-info-halign-center"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-media-container"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-media kt-info-media-animate-none"><div class="kadence-info-box-icon-container kt-info-icon-animate-none"><div class="kadence-info-box-icon-inner-container"><span style="display:block;justify-content:center;align-items:center" class="kt-info-svg-icon kt-info-svg-icon-fas_camera"><svg style="display:inline-block;vertical-align:middle" viewbox="0 0 512 512" height="80" width="80" fill="currentColor" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><path d="M512 144v288c0 26.5-21.5 48-48 48H48c-26.5 0-48-21.5-48-48V144c0-26.5 21.5-48 48-48h88l12.3-32.9c7-18.7 24.9-31.1 44.9-31.1h125.5c20 0 37.9 12.4 44.9 31.1L376 96h88c26.5 0 48 21.5 48 48zM376 288c0-66.2-53.8-120-120-120s-120 53.8-120 120 53.8 120 120 120 120-53.8 120-120zm-32 0c0 48.5-39.5 88-88 88s-88-39.5-88-88 39.5-88 88-88 88 39.5 88 88z"><div class="kt-infobox-textcontent"><h4 class="kt-blocks-info-box-title"> Want to see more photos of ? <p class="kt-blocks-info-box-text"> Check out my whole collection of pictures from . You can buy prints, canvas art, housewares, and more of my photos. Click the “buy” button by any pic! <div class="kt-blocks-info-box-learnmore-wrap"><a class="kt-blocks-info-box-learnmore" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://go.redirectingat.com/?id=125747X1586856&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftravelphotos.justinpluslauren.com%2F%2F-2019%2F&sref=rss">Learn More <div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><a href="http://go.redirectingat.com/?id=125747X1586856&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftravelphotos.justinpluslauren.com%2F%2F-2019%2Fi-2pDFSFT%2Fbuy&sref=rss" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><img src="https://photos.smugmug.com//-2019/i-2pDFSFT/0/0364b959/XL/P1380658-XL.jpg" alt="Things to do in - Day trips to "/> <p>Even though it can get a little crowded during shoulder and peak seasons, you definitely need to visit . Whether you’re booking day trips, spending the night, or visiting from a Canal du Midi barge cruise like I did, it’s worth the trip. There are so many things to do in , including the five activities that I listed above. Expand your trip to La Cite de by venturing to the lower town, the Canal du Midi, and beyond. <ul class="wp-block-gallery columns-3"><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><figure><img src="https://justinpluslauren.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/-Pinterest3-683x1024.jpg" alt="5 Perfect Things to Do in : Explore the Spectacular La Cite de in a Day data-id="18607" data-link="https://justinpluslauren.com/?attachment_id=18607" class="wp-image-18607" srcset="https://justinpluslauren.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/-Pinterest3-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://justinpluslauren.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/-Pinterest3-200x300.jpg 200w, https://justinpluslauren.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/-Pinterest3.jpg 735w" sizes="(max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px" /><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><figure><img src="https://justinpluslauren.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/-Pinterest2-683x1024.jpg" alt="5 Perfect Things to Do in : Explore the Spectacular La Cite de in a Day data-id="18606" data-link="https://justinpluslauren.com/?attachment_id=18606" class="wp-image-18606" srcset="https://justinpluslauren.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/-Pinterest2-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://justinpluslauren.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/-Pinterest2-200x300.jpg 200w, https://justinpluslauren.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/-Pinterest2.jpg 735w" sizes="(max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px" /><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><figure><img src="https://justinpluslauren.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/-Pinterest1-683x1024.jpg" alt="5 Perfect Things to Do in : Explore the Spectacular La Cite de in a Day data-id="18605" data-link="https://justinpluslauren.com/?attachment_id=18605" class="wp-image-18605" srcset="https://justinpluslauren.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/-Pinterest1-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://justinpluslauren.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/-Pinterest1-200x300.jpg 200w, https://justinpluslauren.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/-Pinterest1.jpg 735w" sizes="(max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px" /> <p style="text-align:center"> PIN one of the above images to Pinterest for future reference. Click the top left corner. <div class="kt-simple-box" style="background-color:rgba(232, 232, 232, 1); min-height:1px; padding-top:15px; padding-bottom:15px; padding-left:15px; padding-right:15px; "><div class="kt-simple-box-inner"> <center><strong>Did you find this post useful? Show your appreciation with a small tip! <div id="JPL01" class="quid-slider" align="center" quid-currency="CAD" quid-product-id="JPL01" quid-product-url="https://justinpluslauren.com/things-to-do-in-carcassonne-france/" quid-product-name="Justin Plus Lauren" quid-product-description="A Tip for Justin & Lauren" quid-text="Tip Us!" quid-text-paid="Thanks!" quid-amount="1"> <p><em>This post contains affiliate links. If you click one of them, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. <h4>Have you heard of or traveled there before? <p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://justinpluslauren.com/things-to-do-in-carcassonne-france/">5 Perfect Things to Do in : Explore the Spectacular La Cite de in a Day appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://justinpluslauren.com">Justin Plus Lauren.

[jonathanbogart]

Electroshock: Anarchic Mediterranean Pop and New Wave

Part three. Twenty-one songs, 1981-1987, from Italy and Greece. Here's the YouTube playlist. Tracklisting below, “liner notes” below the cut.

Jo Squillo Electrix, “Africa”

Diaframma, “Tre volte lacrime”

Diana Est, “Tenax”

Litis + Trik, “Fáka”

Matia Bazar, “Elettrochoc”

Alberto Camerini, “Bip Bip Rock”

Roberta D’Angelo, “Noce di cocco”

Lena Platanos, “Ti Néa Psipsína?”

Denovo, “Niente insetti su Wilma”

Nada, “Amore disperato”

Tullio De Piscopo, “Stop Bajon”

Dreamer and the Full Moon, “Sandrina”

Marcella Bella, “Nell’aria”

Garbo, “Quanti anni hai?”

Ivan Cattaneo, “Quando tramonta il sol”

Aphrodite Manou, “Nykteriní Ekpompí”

Litfiba, “Elettrica danza”

Skiantos, “Ti spalmo la crema”

Giuni Russo, “Alghero”

Metro Decay, “Mavros Kyknos”

Melodrama, “Kyrie Eleison”

Electroshock: anarchic mediterranean pop and new wave

If I thought mainstream French pop was relatively unaffected by the radical shifts in Anglophone rock and pop fashion, Italian pop is even more so: many of the popular Italian ballads of the 1980s were virtually indistinguishable (save for details of production) from what lyrical Italian composers were turning out a hundred years previously. As (arguably) the birthplace of the post-medieval Western European music culture, Italy generally takes an if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it attitude toward its cultural heritage, an attitude wholly at odds with American notions of generational revolt or ripping it up and starting again: operatic singing remains a populist form, and mainstream Italian rockers tend to sing in a theatrical Billy Joel vein rather than with a fuck-yr-conventions sneer.

But this mix isn’t just Italian: there’s a thread of Greek running throughout. Although combining the two Iberian nations makes geographic and linguistic sense, and expanding Francophonie beyond France is obvious, throwing Italy and Greece together is extremely unintuitive, unless you’re a dyed-in-the-wool classicist. Inheritors of the two oldest unbroken (though hardly unchanged) cultures on the European continent, the descendants of the ancient Roman and Hellenic empires had, by the penultimate decade of the twentieth century, been through a lot. Specifically, they had both slid precipitously from their midcentury postwar peaks of economic expansion and cultural export: Italy thanks to the Anni di piombo, or years of lead, in which both far-left and far-right terrorism, assassination, and thuggery cratered popular support for politics of any kind (enabling the rise of Berlusconi’s entertainment-empire kleptocracy), and Greece thanks to a far-right military junta that overthrew a center-right government and gave fascism a home on the otherwise Communist Balkan Peninsula. By the early 80s, both the Anni di piombo and the junta were spent and democracy was returning, but everything was still disorderly, even anarchic, politically and culturally.

Which is where this music comes in. The avant-garde in both Italy and Greece identified deeply with the European project, which means that much of their most modern music was sung in English, both in imitation of UK and US innovations, and because everyone else in Western Europe (save for France and Spain, where ancient conflicts with the British Isles led to a sort of linguistic protectionism) was doing the same. Between the endless fountains of italo-disco aimed at the general Euro dancefloor market and the austere post-punk acts on tiny labels reissued by “minimal wave” enthusiasts today, it can sometimes feel that almost nobody was singing in Italian in the 80s except for sensitive singer-songwriters, leftover prog burnouts, and cracked-voice divas with massive power ballads. The same was true in Greece, except more so: the midcentury art-folk forms éntekhno and laïkó were still so dominant that almost anyone who wanted to engage with modern international sounds did so in an international language.

But beyond the glossy outer wall of Italian pop, as celebrated by such events as the annual Sanremo Song Festival, there were multiple anarchic rock and pop scenes competing for attention, gigs, and recording time. The Italian rock scene was hugely fragmented: although Milan remained the center of the culture industry, as it has been for centuries, each city had its thriving underground scene, with Florence, Naples, Sicily, Bologna, and even Rome represented below. Below a certain level of hitmaking status, the differences between shiny italo-disco and weirdo pop melted away: although some synth experimentalists encountered a hardline anti-synth stance among post-punk scenesters, just as many punks ended up making goofy hairspray records as ever remained true to the imagined spirit of ’77. Italy was perhaps the place where the distinction between disco and punk was collapsed most often: both let unlikely performers queer their image and ignore the mainstream, and both were animated by throwing whatever was at hand against the wall to see what stuck.

Enough generalizing, though. Here are twenty-one songs, fourteen in standard Italian, one in the Neapolitan dialect, one in Church Latin and Greek, four in modern Greek, and, sigh, one in English because the hell with it, my mix my rules.

1. Jo Squillo Eletrix Africa 20th Secret | Milan, 1982

One of the few female voices to emerge from the original punk boom in late-70s Italy, Giovanna Coletti had fronted the all-girl band Kandeggina Gang before recording an essential post-punk record, Girl Senza Paura, in 1981 as the leader of a band named after her punk moniker Jo Squillo. “Africa” was the follow-up single: identifying and foregrounding the latent colonialism in acts like Bow Wow Wow and the Slits, it was apparently dedicated to Nelson Mandela, but Squillo’s cartoonish yelps and the “tribal” rhythms are still patently offensive as representations of Africanness. The lyric, however, is as righteous a left-wing post-colonial solidarity message as anything Europe produced in the 80s, which made it even weirder when Squillo went solo, dove into synthpop, and the “Africa” single was repurposed as a B-side called “Voo-Doo.” Colonialism always wins.

2. Diaframma Tre volte lacrime IRA | Florence, 1986

This song, with its brightly strummed guitars, is about as upbeat as the long-running Diaframma, who brought Joy Division levels of somber bleakness to the Florentine post-punk scene, ever got: and its title translates as “Three Times the Tears.” Singer Miro Sassolini’s stentorian croon defined this gothic era of the band; when guitarist Federico Fiumani, the band’s songwriter, took over in 1989, they became a more traditionally punk act, and are still active today.

3. Diana Est Tenax Ricordi | Milan, 1982

Although she sometimes turns up in italo-disco compilations these days, Diana Est was neither an anonymous vocalist nor a dance-pop starlet. Her small, rather unsteady voice, her androgynous, semiclassical fashion, and punk-turned-balladeer Enrico Ruggeri’s overtly intellectual lyrics — the chorus to “Tenax” is in Latin, a paraphrase of Terence — made her slender discography (three singles in as many years before she quit the music business in disgust) a cult favorite among Italian pop fans. She is now a professional antiquarian, and by all accounts much happier.

4. Litis & Trik Listeía Columbia | Athens, 1982

The mononymic Litis had been kicking around the Greek rock underground since the late 60s, hopping from folky ballads to vaguely progressive bands and back again. When he hooked up with muso combo Trik in the early 80s, the result was a loopy, weird art-punk record that is both compulsively listenable and one of the high points of the Athens new wave. “Ληστεία” (Robbery), a bop-along jam about petty crime and the hypocrisy of the petite bourgeoisie who demand it be prosecuted, was their biggest hit, if the handful of local television appearances that have been uploaded YouTube qualify.

5. Matia Bazar Elettrochoc Ariston | Milan, 1983

Both the most forward-thinking band in Italy in the early 80s and one of the all-time European pop acts, Matia Bazar started in the mid-70s as a Eurovision-friendly soft-rock group in the ABBA mold, with Antonella Ruggiero there to look pretty and sing sweet choruses. But after keyboardist Mauro Sabbione joined in 1980, they gave themselves a new-wave makeover, experimenting with rhythm and texture, and Ruggiero’s elastic, four-octave voice commanded center stage. There were a solid half-dozen Matia Bazar songs recorded between 1981 and 1985 that I considered for this mix: “Elettrochoc,” with rhythmic patterning not a million miles from what drum ’n’ bass would be doing with the “Amen” break a decade later, and Ruggiero using her whistle register as casually as Mariah Carey, is only the most futuristic of their songs by a small margin. After Sabbione left in 1985 to pursue more experimental work, they dumbed it down slightly and had the biggest hit of their career. Ruggiero would quit the band in 1989, going on to explore classical and world music forms, but Matia Bazar has continued their pop chancery, not unsuccessfully, with a revolving door of singers; the drummer is the only original member left.

6. Alberto Camerini Bip Bip Rock CBS | Milan, 1981

Born in Brazil to Italian parents, Camerini’s first musical efforts were pop-Brazilian melodies for the Italian market. But during the new-wave craze of the early 80s, when anything with a broad enough hook seemed like it might have a chance, he had his biggest success with novelty singles like “Rock & Roll Robot” and “Tanz Bambolina.” Very much in that vein, the unabashedly silly “Bip Bip Rock” is a love song between a harlequin and a computer set to a Buddy Holly shuffle: its gender-playing parent album, Rudy e Rita, is a minor masterpiece of bubblegum pop kitsch.

7. Roberta D’Angelo Noce di cocco Suono | Rome, 1983

When she burst onto the scene in the mid-70s with caustic, unconventionally melodic story-songs about prostitution and feminism, the 20-year-old conservatory-trained D’Angelo seemed poised to be an Italian Joni Mitchell, or maybe even Kate Bush. But label shenanigans, her restless, exploratory bent, and lack of commercial success meant that this, in 1983, would be her last single: a B-52s-y song about a coconut co-written and performed with skittery Roman art-funk collective Bu Bu Sex. When she performed it on television, she also proudly plugged the serialist piece for piano and clarinet she had composed for the B-side: perhaps it’s no wonder that for the last thirty years her nerdy enthusiasm and musical rigor has been expressed in music teaching, where she is beloved (and active in YouTube comments).

8. Lena Platonos Ti Néa Psipsína? Lyra | Athens, 1985

Kate Bush is also a predictable comparison for Greek composer Lena Platonos, the daughter of a concert pianist who studied composition, then started to make her own art music, got sidetracked by synthesizers, and ended up closer to Laurie Anderson (only more popular), murmuring her fractured, elusive poetry over her own experimental synth programming. “Τι νέα ψιψίνα,” from her 1985 album Galop, is about as close to pop as she ever got: the title literally translates “What’s New, Pussycat?” but it’s no Tom Jones cover: abstract, political, metaphysical, and Greek to the bones, it’s a gorgeous highbrow punctuation to the sillier elements of this mix.

9. Denovo Niente insette su Wilma Suono | Catania, 1984

Speaking of which: Sicilian band Denovo, with their XTC-inspired hydraulic sock-hop rhythms, sliding pitches, and “way-hey”s, have one of the goofiest sounds in this mix. The title song from their debut EP, this song is a comic piece of macabre: the title translates to “No Flies on Wilma,” and it turns out to be, of course, about Wilma’s funeral. However, the saxophone-led middle eight adds a McCartneyesque lyricism to the herky-jerk, foreshadowing the more varied melodic career Denovo would go on to have.

10. Nada Amore disperato EMI | Milan, 1983

The capacious mainstream Italian music industry loves few things more than a comeback, and when singer Nada Malanima, who had had her first success as a teenager in 1969 but had not been in the public eye for years, had a smash hit with the subtly pulsating “Amore disperato” (Desperate Love) in 1983, it was a song the whole country could get behind, even new-wave sourpusses. Nada’s low, assured voice, with its calm ah-has and careful reaches for high notes, is an undemonstrative rarity in Italian pop, and her portrait of kids falling for each other in a nightclub then losing each other is all the more effective for never sounding desperate itself.

11. Tullio De Piscopo Stop Bajon Bagaria | Naples, 1984

A jazz drummer and session man who had played with everyone from Perez Prado and Astor Piazzolla to Gerry Mulligan and Richie Havens, Tullio de Piscopo was perhaps the only middle-aged Italian hip enough to pull off a rap-inflected single in 1984. That the groove is such a monster doesn’t hurt — acid jazz as a concept more or less starts with this record, and it was massively influential in the Chicago house scene as well — and the half-rapped, half-scatted lyrics in his native Neapolitan celebrating the arrival of spring gave it a timeless, otherworldly quality that a more dominant literary language like Italian might have missed entirely. I would be surprised if I was introducing this record to many people for the first time, but it startled me with its beauty, all seven minutes of it, and I knew I had to include it.

12. Dreamer and the Full Moon Sandrina EMI | Athens, 1984

My general rule with these European mixes has been not to include music in English, partly because the sensual qualities of the different languages are much of the point for me, and partly because I’m intentionally stepping off the familiar Anglophone paths: I began these mixes cross about Spanish and Portuguese pop being neglected, and I’ve continued it cross about all local languages being neglected. That said, the minute I heard “Sandrina” I was charmed to within an inch of my life: Dreamer and the Full Moon were probably the most successful new-wave band in Greece, and their entire catalog was conducted in English: this, their biggest hit, takes traditional Greek rhythms and instrumentation and makes a lovely lovelorn rock song out of them.

13. Marcella Bella Nell’aria CBS | Milan, 1983

Like Nada, Marcella Bella had been a regular performer on summer festival stages since the 1960s: unlike her, she had never really spent time in the wilderness. The product of a musical Sicilian family (her older brother Gianni was also a pop singer and producer, and co-wrote “Nell’aria”), she had been a solidly popular singer for a decade when the billowing, helium-light “Nell’aria” (In the Air) became not just one of the big hits of the year, but perhaps the Italian hit of the 1980s. It had legs: I remember hearing it in Guatemala in the early 90s, where it sounded perfectly contemporary alongside blissed-out records from Madonna, Cathy Dennis, and P.M. Dawn. Bella’s featherweight voice, replicated endlessly, and the throbbing heartbeat rhythm make it eternal.

14. Garbo Quanti anni hai? EMI | Milan, 1983

Easily the most successful “new wave” artist in Italy, in the sense of being frankly imitative of British sources, the singer born Renato Abate took the same approach to the Bowie of the Berlin Trilogy as Gary Numan did (i.e. making it the foundation of an entire career in music), but where Numan absorbed Bowie’s cold remove and sci-fi premises, Garbo absorbed the political concerns and cabaret longueurs. His first single, “A Berlino… va bene” (In Berlin… It’s Okay), was a sensation, but my fondness for this later hit (tr. How Old Are You?) cannot just be attributed to the fact that Antonella Ruggiero sings unmistakable backup: it’s a small masterpiece of mood, as Garbo’s prematurely mature voice (he was twenty-five!) wrings every drop of reserved pathos out of a lyric about aging out of sexual desire.

15. Ivan Cattaneo Quando tramonta il sol CGD | Milan, 1984

I’m not sure any one- or two-sentence biographical sketch can do justice to Ivan Cattaneo, one of the most essential Italian musical performers of the late 70s and early 80s. He embraced the schlockier elements of both disco and punk early on, creating a flamboyant, polymorphous persona who sang about Batman, homosexual love, and zebras with outrageous zeal. Starting in 1982 he embraced ’50s and ’60s pop, recording cover albums of classic hits with modern pop sheen, but when the market didn’t respond, he quit pop music to explore painting, multimedia projects, and digital art. This (tr. When the Sun Sets) was his last single for a long time, a hiccuping electro-Beach Boys gem that still makes time for carnality.

16. Aphrodite Manou Nykteriní Ekpompí Lyra | Athens, 1984

One of the most popular exponents of éntekhno, or Greek poetry set to traditional music, Aphrodite Manou (born Aglaia Dimitriadis; her sister Maria was even more popular) had been singing others’ compositions for over a decade when she released a 1984 album of her own songwriting. ��Νυχτερινή εκπομπή,” the title track, which Google wants to translate “nocturnal emission” but means “Nighttime Broadcast,” is a lovely fusion of modern soft-rock reverie and classic Greek music, as the violin swirls around her modern lyric about driving around in a Volkswagen listening to rock music, and falling in love with someone in the next car over who drives away forever. Perhaps the Greek equivalent of a country singer using contemporary production techniques, her melodies are timeless but stick in the head.

17. Litfiba Elettrica danza Contempo | Florence, 1984

The other great Florentine rock band of the era (along with Diaframma), Litfiba has gone from strict post-punk dourness in the early 80s to stadium-filling political anthems (rather like U2; and indeed charismatic frontman Piero Pelù is rather reminiscent of Bono). “Elettrica danza,” a retelling of Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris in violin-scraping funk-rock form (replacing the tango with the cha-cha), originally appeared on an EP named for their cover of David Bowie’s “Yassassin,” in case their art-rock cred was in any doubt.

18. Skiantos Ti spalmo la crema CGD | Bologna, 1984

One of the most controversial Italian acts of the late 70s, Skiantos were as much anarchic comedy troupe as ska-punk band, with singer “Freak” Antoni’s unnecessarily aggressive vocals, dadaist lyrics, and live performances that sometimes included no music at all. By the mid-80s they had mellowed considerably, and “Ti spalmo la crema” (I Rub the Cream on You, a double entendre about applying sunscreen at the beach) is almost a Madness song — except hornier, as befits Italian stereotypes.

19. Giuni Russo Alghero Bubble | Milan, 1986

Sicilian singer Giuni Russo was never an entirely comfortable fit with the summery, beachy songs she kept having hits with throughout the 80s: her untrained but powerful voice sometimes overwhelmed lightweight pop songs like “Un’estate al mare” or “Mediterranea,” and it wasn’t until she changed labels in 1986 and took more control over the sound of her music that she found the perfect combination with “Alghero.” Still a summery, beachy song — it’s about a vacation romance on the Sardinian coast, don’t tell mama — the inventive throwback production finally catches up with her voice. She would get artier and more experimental in the late 80s and 90s, but I love her summertime blues.

20. Metro Decay Mavros Kýknos Creep | Athens, 1984

Probably the most high-profile Athenian new wave band to stick to Greek in their lyrics, Metro Decay was still very much a cult act: one single and one LP in an austere early-Cure mold, and that was it. But they’ve had a long afterlife, as every generation of Greek rock fans rediscovers them. The opener from their LP, “Μαύρος κύκνος” (Black Swan) is a typically melodic dirge, as Antonis Maniatis croons about trauma, entropy, and poetry.

21. Melodrama Kyrie Eleison D.E.A. | Florence, 1987

After leaving Matia Bazar, synth wizard Mauro Sabbione formed the more industrial Melodrama with avant-garde contralto and choreographer Cinzia Bauci, with whom he has worked on and off under various names for the last thirty years. Melodrama only produced a handful of records as a  coherent act in the late 80s, as Sabbione found himself in demand as a session musician and Bauci’s theater career took precedence, but this forgotten twelve-inch ZTT-ish setting of traditional liturgical prayers. punctuated ominously by assorted ecclesiastical vocabulary, precedes similar experiments by the likes of Enigma by years.

I swear I have not been trying to make these mixes happen once a week; it’s just that they really have been coming together that quickly. (And sure, I’ve been spending a lot of my free time since April swimming around in the raw materials for them.) Anyway, the next one, whenever it happens, will be heading in a more northerly direction, and finally leave the Romance languages (and my linguistic comfort zone) behind for good.

[ohnohetaliasues]

My London OC

 (Hey guys. This one is mine. I just thought I’d share her with you. I’ve been working on her for ages. If I’ve made any mistakes, please correct me. I’m always open to feedback. Also, It’s really long.)

Personification of: The City of London

Name: Audrey Kirkland (Audrey is an Old English name meaning strong and noble.)

Age: 21

Height: 5’3

Weight: 122 lbs

Birthday: October 13th (The first mayor of London was elected.)

Appearance:

Audrey is a girl in her early twenties who stands at about 5’3. She has blonde hair which reaches her shoulders with shaggy bangs, and mirky green eyes. The murkiness of her eyes represent the pollution of the Rives Thames' water. She has slightly bushy eyebrows, as she is a member of the Kirkland family. She wears a primarily dark blue ribbon which is bordered by brown, which represents the River Thames itself. She wears a diamond necklace representing the high society of London and the fact that Buckingham Palace is located there. She wears a tarnished silver ring that represents the Tower of London, and does not usually take it off. The tarnished appearance represents the tower’s dark history. As well as this, she carries a pocket watch to represent Big Ben. As for clothes, she wears a burgundy jacket which is unbuttoned, revealing a cream colored top that has brown ruffles stitched to the top and bottom of it. For bottoms, she wears a red and burgundy plaid skirt with cream lace sewn to the bottom that reaches her mid thigh. This is partnered with brown boots and a pair of black stockings.

Personality and Interests:

Audrey Kirkland is a well educated girl, representing the fact that many esteemed universities are located in London. She has wonderful manners in public situations, following the English stereotype. She enjoys her tea very much as well, and drinks it nearly every day.  She likes to read, and enjoys reading authors such as George Orwell, Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and William Shakespeare. She has a rich, slapstick at times sense of humor, representing British comedies which have originated in London. She enjoys fashion and designing clothes, which represents London fashion week and the high fashion of the city. She also enjoys old fashioned and gothic architecture, as much of the architecture that dominates much of the city is built in this style.

When unbothered, She has a razor sharp wit, is blunt and hurts people’s feelings without realizing many times, and very pessimistic. She speaks her mind, and is fiercely loyal to her friends, even if it involves fist fights. She likes to go to pubs, and has a relatively high alcohol tolerance, and can hold more drink than Britain. Audrey swears like a sailor if she is not in high class settings, especially when she is around her friends. She is very proud, and comes off as pompous, but softens as you get to know her. She is also very stubborn. She enjoys sports very much, as she hosted the Olympics three times. Her favorites are Cricket, archery, fencing, and horse riding. She is very fond of Sherlock Holmes, and loves murder mysteries. She is not the best cook, and blames Britain for that, but she is still considerably better than him, which makes her feel a bit better. She speaks in a strong middle class London accent (Think Rose Tyler, sort of) which is laced with an upperclass twinge.

Fears: She has a great fear of fire and explosions caused by the Great Fire of London and the London Blitz. She has a slightly weak immune system caused by the bombardment of plagues in London’s history, and this includes the fear of rats, which were the very creatures that spread the diseases during these times. She refuses to go near them calling them “disease ridden beasts” and often stands on a chair or table if met with one in her kitchen or basement, and runs away when she sees on in the streets. Another fear she has is a fear of very loud and very sudden noises. They bring back bad flashbacks of the London Blitz, and she often has to sleep with the lights on during thunderstorms. She also turns to her stuffed Lion, Leon, during thunderstorms as well. (Lions are the national animal of Britain, and were kept in a menagerie in the Tower of London in the middle ages.)  

History:

Roman London (43-410 AD)

As a child, London was called “Londinium” after she was established in 43 AD, seven years after Britain was invaded by the Romans. Audrey was taken from Britain and lived with Rome during this time, and found him very hard to cooperate with. She was around four or five at the time.  Londinium was established as a civilian town.  London, like Rome, was founded on the point of the river where it was narrow enough to bridge and the strategic location of the city provided easy access to much of Europe. Early Roman London occupied a relatively small area, roughly equivalent to the size of Hyde Park. In around AD 60, it was destroyed by the Iceni led by their queen Boducia. (Audrey has a scar on her lower back from the destruction caused by the attack.) Audrey’s city was quickly rebuilt as a planned Roman town and recovered after perhaps 10 years, the city growing rapidly over the following decades.

During the 2nd century Londinium was at its height and replaced Colchester as the capital of Britannia. The population was now 60,000 residents. Audrey was around eight then.

At some time between 180 and 225 AD the Romans built the defensive London Wall around the landward side of the city. The wall would survive for another 1,600 years and define the City of London's perimeters for centuries to come. The perimeters of the present City are roughly defined by the line of the ancient wall. Audrey has a jagged birthmark about three centimeters long on her right hip representing the wall.

By the 5th century, Rome was losing control of the land that he was occupying, and in around 410 AD, the Roman Occupation of Britain came to an end, and Audrey was returned to her brothers. But her happiness of the reunion was short lived, as by the end of the 5th century, the city was nearly abandoned.

Anglo-Saxon London (5th Century - 1066 AD)

(Audrey was around 9 at this time.)

By the early 7th century the London area had been incorporated into the kingdom of the East Saxons.

The permanent establishment of Christianity in the East Saxon kingdom took place in the reign of King Sigeberht in the 650s. During the 8th century the kingdom of Mercia extended its dominance over south-eastern England, initially through overlordship which at times developed into outright annexation. London seems to have come under direct Mercian control in the 730s.

Viking attacks dominated most of the 9th century, becoming increasingly common from around 830 onwards. London was sacked in 842 and again in 851. The Danish “Great Heathen Army” which had rampaged across England since 865, wintered in London in 871. The city remained in Danish hands until 886, when it was captured by the forces of King Alfred the Great of Wessex and reincorporated into Mercia. Audrey has a scar just below her belly button from the destruction and casualties caused by the attacks.

From this point, the City of London began to develop its own unique local government. Following Ethelred's death in 911 it was transferred to Wessex, preceding the absorption of the rest of Mercia in 918. Although it faced competition for political pre-eminence in the united Kingdom of England from the traditional West Saxon centre of Winchester, London's size and commercial wealth brought it a steadily increasing importance as a focus of governmental activity. King Athelstan held many meetings of the witan in London and issued laws from there, while King Æthelred the Unready issued the Laws of London there in 978.

Following the resumption of Viking attacks in the reign of Ethelred, London was unsuccessfully attacked in 994 by an army under King Sweyen Forkbeard of Denmark. As English resistance to the sustained and escalating Danish onslaught finally collapsed in 1013, London repulsed an attack by the Danes and was the last place to hold out while the rest of the country submitted to Sweyn, but by the end of the year it too capitulated and Æthelred fled abroad. Sweyn died just five weeks after having been proclaimed king and Æthelred was restored to the throne, but Sweyn's son Cnut returned to the attack in 1015. Needless to say, Audrey and the personification of Denmark don’t have the best relationship.

Soon enough though, London was invaded by the Normans. The Normans advanced to the south bank of the Thames opposite London, where they defeated an English attack and burned Southwark but were unable to storm the bridge. They moved upstream and crossed the river at Wallingford before advancing on London from the north-west. The resolve of the English leadership to resist collapsed and the chief citizens of London, including Audrey, went out together with the leading members of the Church and aristocracy to submit to William at Birkhamstead although according to some accounts there was a subsequent violent clash when the Normans reached the city. Having occupied London, William was crowned king in Westminster Abbey.

Norman and Medieval Times (1066- Late 15th Century)

(AKA The Middle Ages)

The new Norman regime established new fortresses within the city to dominate the native population. By far the most important of these was the Tower of London at the eastern end of the city, where the initial wooden fortification was rapidly replaced by the construction of the first stone castle in England. In 1097 William Rufus, the son of William the Conqueror began the construction of 'Westminster Hall', which became the focus of the Palace of Westminster.

In 1176, Audrey oversaw the construction of the most famous incarnation of London Bridge (completed in 1209) which was built on the site of several earlier wooden bridges. This bridge would last for 600 years, and remained the only bridge across the River thames until 1739.

In 1216 during the First Barons war London was occupied by Prince Louis of France, who had been called in by the baronial rebels against King John and was acclaimed as King of England in St. Paul’s Cathedral. At this time, Audrey had to live with France, and all in all, wasn’t overly fond of it. He wasn’t rude to her, and didn’t make unwanted advances, but Audrey was overcome with missing her brothers. She was heavily influenced by Francis, and he ended up teaching her French and about French culture. This greatly effected some English words. Over the following centuries, Audrey shook off the heavy French cultural and linguistic influence which had been there since the times of the Norman conquest. This change affected heavily in the development of Early Modern English. But following John's death in 1217, Louis's supporters reverted to their Plantagenet allegiance, rallying round John's son Henry III, and Louis was forced to withdraw from England. Audrey happily returned to Britain, and enjoyed returning to her beloved city.

During the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 London was invaded by rebels led by Wat Taylor. A group of peasants stormed the Tower of London and executed the Lord Chancellor,  Archbishop Simon Sudbury  and the Lord Treasurer. The peasants looted the city and set fire to numerous buildings. Tayler was stabbed to death by the Lord Mayor William Wallworth in a confrontation at Smithfield and the revolt collapsed.

Trade increased steadily during the Middle Ages, and London grew rapidly as a result. In 1100, and around the time that Audrey had just turned 12, London's population was somewhat more than 15,000. By 1300 it had grown to roughly 80,000. London lost at least half of its population during the Black Death in the mid-14th century, (Audrey herself got very sick and barley survived) but its economic and political importance stimulated a rapid recovery despite further epidemics. Trade in London was organised into various guilds, which effectively controlled the city, and elected the Lord Mayor of the City of London. During this time, the streets of London were narrow and twisting, and the buildings were made of highly combustable material, and fire was a constant threat. Sanitation was also very poor.

Tudor London:

The period saw London rapidly rising in importance amongst Europe's commercial centres. Trade expanded beyond Western Europe to Russia, the Levant, and the Americas. This was the period of mercantilism and monopoly trading companies such as the Muscovy Company (1555) and the British East India Company (1600) were established in London by Royal Charter. The latter, which ultimately came to rule India, was one of the key institutions in London, and in Britain as a whole, for two and a half centuries. Audrey was quite proud of the advancements her city was making. Immigrants arrived in London not just from all over England and Wales, but from abroad as well, for example Huguenots from France; the population rose from an estimated 50,000 in 1530 to about 225,000 in 1605. The growth of the population and wealth of London was fuelled by a vast expansion in the use of coastal shipping. This happened around the time that Audrey turned 14.

The late 16th and early 17th century saw the great flourishing of drama in London whose preeminent figure was William Shakespeare. Audrey never missed a production. During the mostly calm later years of Elizabeth's reign, some of her courtiers and some of the wealthier citizens of London built themselves country residences in Middlesex, Essex and Surrey. Audrey herself dressed in the extravagant gowns and jewelry of the era, and enjoyed an equally extravagant home in Middlesex. This was an early stirring of the villa movement, the taste for residences which were neither of the city nor on an agricultural estate, but at the time of Elizabeth's death in 1603, London was still very

compact.

Stuart London:

The 1700’s were Audrey’s aristocratic years. She was around 15 at the time, and the city was growing rapidly. London's expansion beyond the boundaries of the City was decisively established in the 17th century. In the opening years of that century the immediate environs of the City, with the principal exception of the aristocratic residences in the direction of Westminster, were still considered not conducive to health. Immediately to the north was Moorfields which had recently been drained and laid out in walks, but it was frequented by beggars and travellers, who crossed it in order to get into London. Adjoining Moorfields were Finsbury Fields, a favorite practicing ground for the archers, Mile end, then a common on the Great Eastern Road and famous as a rendezvous for the troops.

The preparations for King James I becoming king were interrupted by a severe plague epidemic, which may have killed over thirty thousand people. Audrey herself was affected, and was battered to near death by the sickness. The Lord Mayor’s Show, which had been discontinued for some years, was revived by order of the king in 1609. The dissolved monastery of the Charter House, which had been bought and sold by the courtiers several times, was purchased by Thomas Sutton for £13,000. The new hospital, chapel, and schoolhouse were opened in 1611.

During the winter of 1664, a bright comet was to be seen in the sky and the people of London, Audrey included, were fearful, wondering what evil event it portended. At the time, hygiene in London was very poor, and in poorer parts of the city, hygiene was nearly impossible to maintain. The bad hygiene caused an epidemic to break out known as the great plague. Audrey herself was so sick she was unable to do much by herself, and stayed in bed most of the time. She recovered abruptly, as the the Fire of London was one of the main factors that wiped out the epidemic.

The Great Fire of London

The Great Plague was immediately followed by another catastrophe, albeit one which helped to put an end to the plague. On the Sunday, 2 September 1666 the Great Fire of London broke out at one o'clock in the morning at a bakery in Pudding Lane in the southern part of the City. Fanned by an eastern wind, the fire spread, and efforts to arrest it by pulling down houses to make firebreaks were disorganized to begin with. On Tuesday night the wind fell somewhat, and on Wednesday the fire slackened. On Thursday it was extinguished, but on the evening of that day the flames again burst forth at the Temple. Some houses were at once blown up by gunpowder, and thus the fire was finally mastered. The fire had destroyed 60% of the city. Audrey now has a great fear of fire. It has lessened over the years, and when she was younger, just after the great fire, she would not even go near a candle. As of now, she isn’t as a afraid, but she still keeps her distance. The city was rebuilt slowly, with some bumps in the road planning-wise, but it got done. During this time, Audrey was quite weak, and places on her body were splotched with burns. They faded as the damage was repaired, and her strength was regained.

18th Century

(AKA Victorian Era)

The 18th century was a period of rapid growth for London, reflecting an increasing national population, the early stirrings of the Industrial Revolution, and London's role at the centre of the evolving British Empire.

Many tradesmen from different countries came to London to trade goods and merchandise. Also, more immigrants moved to London making the population greater. More people also moved to London for work and for business making London an altogether bigger and busier city. British’s victory in the 7 years war increased the country's international standing and opened large new markets to British trade, further boosting London's prosperity, much to her happiness.

During the Georgian period London spread beyond its traditional limits at an accelerating pace. This is shown in a series of detailed maps, particularly John Rocque's 1741–45 map (see below) and his 1746 Map of London. New districts such as Mayfair were built for the rich in the West End, new bridges over the Thames encouraged an acceleration of development in South London and in the East End, the Port of London expanded downstream from the City. During this period was also the uprising of the American colonies. In 1780, the Tower of London held its only American prisoner, former President of the Continental Congress, Henry Laurens, In 1779 he was the Congress's representative of Holland, and got the country's support for the Revolution. On his return voyage back to America, the Royal Navy captured him and charged him with treason after finding evidence of a reason of war between Great Britain and the Netherlands. He was released from the Tower on 21 December 1781 in exchange for General Lord Cornwallis.

In 1762 George III acquired Buckingham Palace  (then called Buckingham House) from the Duke of Buckingham. It was enlarged over the next 75 years by architects such as John Nash.

A phenomenon of the area was the coffeehouse, which became a popular place to debate ideas. Growing literacy and the development of the Printing Press meant that news became widely available. Fleet Street became the centre of the embryonic national press during the century.

18th-century London was dogged by crime, the Bow Street Runners were established in 1750 as a professional police force. Penalties for crime were harsh, with the death penalty being applied for fairly minor crimes. Public Hangings were common in London, and were popular public events.

In 1780 London was rocked by the Gordon Riots, an uprising by Protestants against Roman Catholic emancipation led by Lord George Gordon Severe damage was caused to Catholic churches and homes, and 285 rioters were killed.

In the year 1787, freed slaves from London, America, and many of Britain's colonies founded Freetown in modern-day Sierra Leone.

The 18th century saw the breakaway of the American colonies and many other unfortunate events in London, but also great change and Enlightenment. This all led into the beginning of modern times, the 19th century.

During the 19th century, London was transformed into the world's largest city and capital of the British Empire. Its population expanded from 1 million in 1800 to 6.7 million a century later. During this period, London became a global political, financial, and trading capital. In this position, it was largely unrivalled until the latter part of the century, when Paris and New York began to threaten its dominance.

While the city grew wealthy as Britain's holdings expanded, 19th-century London was also a city of poverty, where millions lived in overcrowded and unsanitary slums. Life for the poor was immortalised by Charles Dickens in such novels as Oliver Twist In 1810, after the death of Sir Francis Baring and Abraham Goldsmid, Rothschild emerges as the major banker in London.

In 1829 the then Home Secretary (and future prime minister) Robert Peel established the Metropolitan Police as a police force covering the entire urban area. The force gained the nickname of "bobbies" or "peelers" named after Robert Peel.

19th-century London was transformed by the coming of the railways. A new network of metropolitan railways allowed for the development of suburbs in neighbouring counties from which middle-class and wealthy people could commute to the centre. While this spurred the massive outward growth of the city, the growth of greater London also exacerbated the class divide, as the wealthier classes emigrated to the suburbs, leaving the poor to inhabit the inner city areas.

The first railway to be built in London was a line from London Bridge to Greenwich, which opened in 1836. This was soon followed by the opening of great rail termini which linked London to every corner of Britain. These included Euston station (1837), Paddington station (1838), Fenchurch Street station (1841), Waterloo station (1848), King's Cross station (1850), and St Pancras station (1863). From 1863, the first lines of the London Underground were constructed.

The urbanised area continued to grow rapidly, spreading into Islington, Paddington, Belgravia, Holborn, Finsbury, Shoreditch, Southwark and Lambeth. Towards the middle of the century, London's antiquated local government system, consisting of ancient parishes and vestries, struggled to cope with the rapid growth in population. In 1855 the Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW) was created to provide London with adequate infrastructure to cope with its growth. One of its first tasks was addressing London's sanitation problems. At the time, raw sewage was pumped straight into the River Thames. This culminated in The Great Stink of 1858. Parliament finally gave consent for the MBW to construct a large system of sewers. The engineer put in charge of building the new system was Joseph Bazalgette. In what was one of the largest civil engineering projects of the 19th century, he oversaw construction of over 2100 km of tunnels and pipes under London to take away sewage and provide clean drinking water. When the London sewerage system was completed, the death toll in London dropped dramatically, and epidemics of cholera and other diseases were curtailed. Bazalgette's system is still in use today.

One of the most famous events of 19th-century London was the Great Exhibition of 1851. Held at The Crystal Palace, the fair attracted 6 million visitors from across the world and displayed Britain at the height of her Imperial dominance.

As the capital of a massive empire, London became a magnet for immigrants from the colonies and poorer parts of Europe. A large Irish population settled in the city during the Victorian period, with many of the newcomers refugees from the Great Famine (1845–1849). At one point, Catholic Irish made up about 20% of London's population; they typically lived in overcrowded slums. London also became home to a sizable Jewish community, which was notable for its entrepreneurship in the clothing trade and merchandising.

In 1888, the new County of London was established, administered by the London County Council. This was the first elected London-wide administrative body, replacing the earlier Metropolitan Board of Works, which had been made up of appointees. The County of London covered broadly what was then the full extent of the London conurbation, although the conurbation later outgrew the boundaries of the county. In 1900, the county was sub-divided into 28 metropolitan boroughs, which formed a more local tier of administration than the county council.

London entered the 20th century at the height of her influence as the capital of one of the largest empires in history, but the new century was to bring many challenges.

London's population continued to grow rapidly in the early decades of the century, and public transport was greatly expanded..

During World War I, Audrey experienced her first bombing raids carried out by German zeppelin airships; these killed around 700 people and caused great terror, but were merely a foretaste of what was to come. Audrey lived in terror, her body covered in tender bruises and scrapes representing the destruction caused by the bombs. Little did she know, she would experience many more terrors as a result of both World Wars. The largest explosion in London occurred during World War I: the Silvertown explosion, when a munitions factory containing 50 tons of TNT exploded, killing 73 and injuring 400. It put Audrey into a coma for three and a half weeks, representing the time it took to rebuild.

Like the rest of the country, London suffered severe unemployment during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Audrey struggled to deal with the tipping economy, and was forced to steal for food. In the East End during the 1930s, politically extreme parties of both right and left flourished. The Communist Party of Great Britain and the British Union of Fascists both gained serious support, and Audrey was seriously divided over the issue.  Clashes between right and left culminated in the Battle of Cable Street in 1936. The population of London reached an all-time peak of 8.6 million in 1939.

Large numbers of Jewish immigrants fleeing from Nazi Germany settled in London during the 1930s, mostly in the East End, and Audrey did her best to open her doors to accommodate them.

WWII

During World War II, London, as many other British cities, suffered severe damage, being bombed extensively by the Luftwaffe as a part of The Blitz. Prior to the bombing, hundreds of thousands of children in London were evacuated to the countryside to avoid the bombing. Civilians took shelter from the air raids in underground stations.

The heaviest bombing took place during The Blitz between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941. During this period, London was subjected to 71 separate raids receiving over 18,000 tonnes of high explosive. One raid in December 1940, which became known as the Second Great Fire of London, saw a firestorm engulf much of the City of London and destroy many historic buildings. 

Audrey lived in fear, constantly hiding, and living in a fragile state. She dislikes loud noises, and her fear of fire intensified.

Having failed to defeat Britain, Germany turned his attention to the Eastern front and regular bombing raids ceased. They began again, but on a smaller scale with the "Little Blitz" in early 1944. Towards the end of the war, during 1944-45 London again came under heavy attack by pilotless V-1 flying bombs and V-2 rockets, which were fired from Nazi occupied Europe. These attacks only came to an end when their launch sites were captured by advancing Allied forces.

London suffered severe damage and heavy casualties, the worst hit part being the Docklands area. By the war's end, just under 30,000 Londoners had been killed by the bombing, and over 50,000 seriously injured,tens of thousands of buildings were destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of people were made homeless.

Audrey emerged heavily injured, but alive.

Three years after the war, the 1948 Summer Olympics were held at the original Wembley Stadium, at a time when the city had barely recovered from the war. Audrey was uncomfortable with having this large amount of people in her home so soon after such a traumatic experience. But the experience had positive effects, as it helped her become less timid. London's rebuilding was slow to begin. However, in 1951 the Festival or Britain was held, which marked an increasing mood of optimism and forward looking.

See more on The London Blitz:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blitz

http://www.history.co.uk/study-topics/history-of-london/ww2-the-blitz-hits-london

Adulthood:

Around the start of the 21st century, London hosted the much derided Millennium Dome at Greenwich, to mark the new century. Other Millennium projects were more successful. One was the largest observation wheel in the world, the "Millennium Wheel", or the London Eye, which was erected as a temporary structure, but soon became a fixture, and draws four million visitors a year.

The London Plan, published by the Mayor of London in 2004, estimated that the population would reach 8.1 million by 2016, and continue to rise thereafter. This was reflected in a move towards denser, more urban styles of building, including a greatly increased number of Tall Buildings, and proposals for major enhancements to the public transport network. However, funding for projects such as Crossrail remained a struggle.

On 6 July 2005 London won The right to hold the Olympics, and again in 2012, making her the first city to host the modern games three times. However, celebrations were cut short the following day when the city was rocked by a series of terrorist attacks. More than 50 were killed and 750 injured in three bombings on London Underground trains and a fourth on a double decker bus near King's Cross.

In the public there was ambivalence leading-up to the Olympics, though public sentiment changed strongly in their favor following a successful opening ceremony and when the anticipated organizational and transport problems never occurred.

Relationships:

England: England is Audrey’s older brother, though the two of them have differing political opinions. England is conservative while London and London is Labour, but they both care about each other deeply. They can be seen watching Doctor Who or Sherlock with a cup of tea. London refuses to drink with Britain, and views him as easily drunken, and when she does reluctantly drink with him, she is the one who has to drag him home and put him to bed. They are also often seen arguing about politics. (Brexit)

Rome: Audrey hates Rome, needless to say. She finds him hard to get along with and his flirtatious nature repulses her. She has no idea where he is now, but refuses to believe him to be dead. Despite the fact that the occupation he held on the Nation of Britain, he was still the one who founded her city, and can’t help wondering where he is. She resents him for abandoning her.

The Nordics (Mostly Denmark):  Audrey is not openly fond of Denmark (or the rest if the Nordics), though her brother has little problem with him. She finds Matthias loud and obnoxious, and does not remember the Danish occupation of London with much fondness.

Paris:  London has a slight rivalry with Paris, as they compete against terms of fashion. They do respect each other a great deal, though.

Tokyo: Tokyo and London are good friends, and can often be seen speaking about the differing terms of music in their cities.

America: London cares deeply about America, and views him as a little brother. Her opinion overtime has worsened, as American politicians have made some questionable comments about her city.

Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast, and Dublin: The other capitols in the British isles, (especially the Irish capitols) do not get along well with London. They view her as a spoiled brat who doesn’t respect how well she has it. Their relations ate shifting constantly, affected by recent politics.

Lisbon: Lisbon is London’s closest friend, and they have been good friends since the Anglo-Portugal treaty of 1373. She trusts him more than almost anyone she knows. She has developed a crush on him n recent years, but has kept it hidden to lot ruin their long friendship.

Germany and Berlin: London holds resentment for the London Blitz during World War II, and slightly fears Germany. The relationship of both the Nation and his capitol with London have improved during recent years.

Madrid: London and Madrid share a mutual hatred of one another. Madrid and London share a kind of “Anything you can do I can do better, I can do anything better than you” relationship, and are jealous of each other’s achievements. Madrid is jealous of London’s friendship with Lisbon, and London is jealous of Madrid being neighbors with Lisbon and being able to see him more often.

(Please correct me if any of this information is wrong!)

~Kat

[travelguy4444]

How to Spend 5 Days in Paris

Updated: 8/9/2018 | August 9th, 2018

Paris: the city that takes too many lifetimes to see. I’ve spent weeks and weeks in Paris, and I’ve barely scratched its surface. Just when you think you’ve seen everything, you find new attractions, new cafés, or new markets to explore. It’s impossible to try to see it all or even begin to think you can. Many travelers come for about three days and try to see the highlights of this beautiful city. You need more time than that. I think you should plan on spending at least five days in Paris in order to see the bare minimum of what the City of Lights has to offer.

There’s just too much to do. Paris is a city I love to death. It is a city I contemplate spending my life in. If I could live anywhere, I think it would be Paris. I’ve been going for over a decade and have spent more time than I can count in the city. I’ve even run tours there!

If you’re planning a trip to Paris, here’s my suggested Paris itinerary for a 5-day visit (and some other suggestions in case you decide to spend longer there!)

What to See in Paris: Day 1

Spend your first day walking around Paris. There’s a lot to see here and you can cover spend a good half day (or whole day) wandering the cobblestone streets, parks, and areas of the city. If you want to orientate yourself to the city with a free walking tour, these are really good:

Discover Walks

City Free Tour

New Europe Tour

However, if you want to follow my walking tour, here’s my suggestion on an “orientation walk” around Paris:

Start at the Champs-Élysées and see the Arc de Triomphe. There isn’t usually line and you’ll get sweeping views of the city to start your day. Stroll down Champs-Élysées and through Place de la Concorde where you will see the Luxor Obelisk, an obelisk the French stole from the Egyptians. This square was also where they guillotined people during the French Revolution.

Walk down the Champs-Élysées through the Jardin des Tuileries, a beautiful garden that was once home . to a palace that burnt down in the 1800s. Stop and admire the Louvre before continuing down Rue Rivoli and crossing into the original part of the city on the Île de la Cité. This is where the Romans built their settlement. Enjoy the Pont Neuf and the statue of Henry IV. This bridge was built in 1578 and was the first stone bridge in the city. Stroll to my favorite church of all time, Saint Chapelle, with its incredible 12th century stained glass. There’s usually a line so book tickets in advance.

After that, head to the underground Roman ruins and then visit Notre Dame, the world’s most famous Gothic church. It’s free to enter but if you want to go up the Bell Tower, get there early to avoid the lines.

Head south toward the Latin Quarter. This area is pretty touristy, but if you get off the main drag you’ll find yourself in a labyrinth of alleys and café-lined squares that are far away from the local tourist hangouts.

Visit the Pantheon and honor France’s most famous dead citizens before heading west toward the Jardin du Luxembourg, where you can relax and watch life go by. There’s great people-watching here and it’s one of the best parks in the city.

After that, head north to see Saint Sulpice. If you’re into The Da Vinci Code, you’ll be looking for symbols and hidden meanings throughout this church. If symbols don’t interest you, just marvel at how grandiose this place is.

By this time, it should be late in the afternoon and a perfect time to stop in a café, order some wine, and relax the Parisian way.

With the rest of your time, continue walking around or see some museums.

What to See in Paris: Day 2

Use one day to see Paris’s three most popular museums. They will take hours to visit and it’s a good way to spend a day.

The Louvre With over a million pieces of art, you could spend a whole month in the Louvre and still not see everything! I don’t particularly enjoy medieval art; it’s too religious for me, and I can only see so many pictures of Mary and Jesus before I get bored. Nevertheless, the museum is worth seeing and I spent about five hours exploring all the masterpieces and marveling at the old royal palace.

Musée du Louvre, 1st arrondissement, +33 1 40 20 53 17, louvre.fr. Opening hours: M, Th, Sa–Su (9am–6pm), W, F (9am–9:45pm), Tu (closed). Price: €15. Free days: first Sunday of each month (Oct–March), Fridays after 6pm for those under 26.

LEARN MORE: How to Visit the Louvre

Musée d’Orsay The Musée d’Orsay, located in close proximity to the Louvre, houses the best impressionist and post-impressionist work in Paris. This is my favorite museum, and I always go when I’m in Paris. You’ll find masterpieces by all the great artists of the world, including Degas, Monet, Manet, and Van Gogh, to name a few. I could spend hours there.

1 Rue de la Légion d’Honneur, 7th arrondissement, +33 1 40 49 48 14, musee-orsay.fr. Opening hours: Tu–W, F–Su (9:30am–6pm), Th (9:30am–9:45pm), M (closed). Price: €12, €9 after 4:30pm every day but Thursday, free first Sunday of the month.

Musée de l’Orangerie Finish off a wild museum day with this Monet showcase. The museum displays eight tapestry-sized Nymphéas (water lilies) paintings housed in two plain oval rooms. Monet painted these images later in his life, and each one represents a different time of day and season. There’s a bottom floor that shows other works too.

Jardin des Tuileries, Place de la Concorde, 1st arrondissement, +33 1 44 50 43 00, musee-orangerie.fr. Opening hours: W–M (9am–5:45pm), last entry at 5:15pm, Tu (closed). Price: €9, free first Sunday of the month.

Budget Travel Tip: Get the Paris Museum Pass. This four-day pass costs €62 and covers over 50 museums and attractions in the city. It covers all the museums above so getting this pass and using it to see all the attractions listed in this article will save you around €50! You can also get a two-day pass for €48 and a seven-day pass for €74.

What to See in Paris: Day 3

The Palace of Versailles A trip to the Palace of Versailles takes a full day to really enjoy the site. Spend the day exploring the château, get lost in the surrounding gardens, and make sure you see Marie Antoinette’s estate, which includes a fake peasant village. Versailles is beautiful, so don’t rush it. Most people see the Palace first, then the gardens, and then Marie-Antoinette’s estate. If you do everything in reverse, you’ll be able to avoid the crowds. Go on weekdays to avoid paying for the gardens since they charge for them on weekends.

Place d’Armes, Versailles, +33 1 30 83 78 00, en.chateauversailles.fr. Opening hours: Tu–Su (9am–6:30pm), last entry at 5:45pm, M (closed). Price: “The Passport” ticket gives you admission to all the palace tours (grounds, Trianon Palaces, and Marie Antoinette’s estate), the Musical Fountain Show, the Musical Gardens, and the exhibitions: €27 (one day, with passport), €30 (two days).

What’s the inside of the palace like? Here’s a video tour of the Palace of Versailles to wet your taste buds:

Wander Rue Cler Located near the Eiffel Tower, this street is filled with good Parisian eateries. You’ll find cheese, meat, bread, vegetable, and chocolate stores to explore. I never walk away from this street without a pile of food and wine. I eat my way through this street and then buy more for later. It’s one of my favorite streets in the city.

Eiffel Tower The Eiffel Tower is beautiful and best seen in the early morning to avoid the crowds. Get there right as it opens, and you’ll be able to avoid most of the lines to the top. If you get there around midday, you’ll find yourself waiting in line for hours. I like coming here after going to Rue Cler and having a picnic on the grass and people-watching.

Champ de Mars, 7th arrondissement, +33 8 92 70 12 39, toureiffel.paris. Opening hours: Daily (9am–midnight) during the summer, with slightly shorter hours during the rest of the year. Price: €16–25, depending on how high you go.

Paris Sewer Tour This tour is definitely an off-the-beaten-path attraction and isn’t too far away from the Eiffel Tower. You’ll learn about the interesting history of Paris’s sewer system. You may be put off by the idea of a “sewer tour,” but don’t be. It doesn’t smell down here and you’ll learn how modern Paris came to be (because it was tied to the successful creation of a sewer system).

Les Invalides (The Tomb of Napoleon) Also known as Hôtel National des Invalides, this enormous complex was built in 1670 by Louis XIV as a hospital for wounded soldiers. Nowadays it’s home to several museums and monuments, including the Musée de l’Armée (the Military Museum of the Army of France) and Napoleon’s tomb. It is one of the most comprehensive history museums I’ve ever visited, and you’ll need at least three hours to see it properly. While military history may seem boring, this museum is really a history of France, the Revolution, and Napoleon. It is fascinating and incredible in its depth. I cannot recommend it enough.

Place des Invalides, Musée de l’Armée, 129 Rue de Grenelle, 7th arrondissement, +33 810 11 33 99. Opening hours: daily from April through October (10am–6pm), and daily from November through March (10am–5pm). Price: €12.

The Museum of the Shoah (the Holocaust Museum) Despite having an excellent exhibit on France, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust, the Museum of the Shoah never draws a lot of people. It’s a real shame, as the information and collection here is really great and in depth. I’ve been to many Holocaust museums, and this is one of the best and most detailed in the world. I highly recommend it.

17 Rue Geoffroy l’Asnier, 4th arrondissement, +33 1 42 77 44 72, memorialdelashoah.org. Opening hours: Su–F (10am–6pm), Th (10am–10pm), Sa (closed). A free guided tour is given at 3pm (in English) on the second Sunday of every month.

What to See in Paris: Day 5

Paris Catacombs The Catacombs of Paris are a fascinating but grim tourist attraction. They go on for miles (no one really knows how far) and the endless winding tunnels house thousands of bones. Only a small section of the tunnels are open and there’s a ton of history and information here about the growth of Paris. The Catacombs themselves are actually old stone quarries that were located far outside the edge of the city during Medieval times. There’s always a long line so book your ticket online beforehand and don’t wait outside!

1 Avenue du Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy, 14th arrondissement, +33 1 43 22 47 63, catacombes.paris.fr. Opening hours: Tu–Su (10am–8:30pm), last admission at 4pm, M (closed). Check the website before you go — the Catacombs are sometimes closed without warning or explanation. Price: €13.

LEARN MORE: How to Visit the Catacombs of Paris

Rue Mouffetard This street is filled with cafés and shops and has an outdoor market. It’s a great street to just wander down or to sit in front of a café and watch life go by. Make sure to stop by the nearby Place de la Contrescarpe, where artists for decades spent their time. There are good, inexpensive restaurants in the area too.

Père Lachaise Cemetery Finish off the day with a train ride east of the city center to visit Paris’s most famous graveyard, where you’ll see the graves of celebrities like Antonio de La Gandara, Honoré de Balzac, Sarah Bernhardt, Frédéric Chopin, Jim Morrison, Édith Piaf, Camille Pissarro, Gertrude Stein, and Oscar Wilde. It’s beautiful (can we call a place of death beautiful?).

LEARN MORE: Visiting Père Lachaise Cemetery

Montmartre Another artistic center of Paris, this is where artists and writers like Hemingway spent their time. There’s still a lot of art, and you’ll find galleries and artists on the streets throughout the area. The streets are quiet and beautiful to wander around. The church offers a great view of the city and is a great place to have lunch.

Moulin Rouge After wandering Montmartre, head into the “seedy” district of Paris. This is where you can take in a show at the Moulin Rouge or just wander around and witness the interesting mix of tourists and locals awkwardly gazing into sex shops.

Three other recommended places to see in Paris

Musée de Cluny The building is the finest surviving example of medieval architecture in Paris and was the former home of the abbots of Cluny. It now houses Roman and medieval art, including many architectural fragments found during excavations around town. The museum also contains the adjoining rooms of a Roman bath, which the abbey was built over. It is by far one of the most interesting history museums in the city and worth every euro of the admission fee!

6 Place Paul Painlevé, 5th arrondissement, +33 1 53 73 78 16, musee-moyenage.fr. Opening hours: W–M (9:15am–5:45pm), Tu (closed). Price: €8 (€1 extra during certain exhibitions).

Bibliothèque Nationale de France One of the grandest libraries in the world, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France was founded in 1368 by Charles V. Be sure to take a peek at the old rotunda of the art library and the 20-foot globes in the permanent collection.

Quai François Mauriac, 13th arrondissement, +33 1 53 79 59 59, bnf.fr. Opening hours: M (2pm-8pm), Tu-Sa (9am-8pm), Sun (1pm-7pm).

Ô Chateau This is one of the best places in Paris to attend a wine tasting class or have a wine and cheese luncheon. The food is plentiful, and the wines are very generously poured and refilled. I highly recommend the lunch wine class as it’s cheaper and you’ll get really full for the day; it also goes into great detail about the history of wine in France.

68 Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1st arrondissement, +33 1 44 73 97 80, o-chateau.com. Check the website for last-minute deals, but it’s usually around €55.

Where to stay in Paris

3 Ducks Hotel – A 10-minute walk from the Eiffel Tower, 3 Ducks has one of the best locations in town. The staff is friendly, the rooms are small but comfortable, the showers are clean, and it has one of the cheapest bars in Paris (which slightly offsets the expensive dorm prices).

Les Piaules – This brand-new hostel has a fantastic chimney lounge and a rooftop space. The bar and restaurant on the ground floor is popular with locals and groups so it’s always a fun time. The rooms are super modern and the beds comfy. Avoid this places during peak summer months when Paris is the hottest as there’s no A/C and a limited number of fans.

Generator – In this emerging district, the Generator Hostel has a chic array of stylish rooms with comfortable beds, high-speed Wi-Fi, and friendly staff. Its private rooms even have terraces! There is also a lively bar and common area. This is one of my favorite chains in Europe.

St. Christopher’s – This backpacker base opened in 2013 and is close to the Gare du Nord train station, making it easy to get in and out of the city. It has Wi-Fi, comfy beds, clean showers, breakfast, and a bar that features live music most nights. Be sure to get a room facing the street, as the interior courtyard rooms are loud from the downstairs bar.

Airbnb – If you’re looking for private accommodation, Airbnb is your best choice. It will be much cheaper than traditional hotels, allowing you to spend more money on wine and cheese and activities! If you’ve never used it before, sign up today to get $35 off your first stay!

Where to Eat in Paris

Café Père & Fils (86 Rue Montmartre, 2nd arrondissement, +33 1 45 08 41 13) — Café Père & Fils is a Parisian brasserie and coffee shop with outdoor seating for lunch and drinks. It gets busy on warm, sunny days when all the nearby office workers take over the patio for lunch. There are daily happy hours and brunch on Sunday.

Florence Kahn (24 Rue des Écouffes, 4th arrondissement, +33 1 48 87 92 85) — This perfect little shop has a blue mosaic shopfront, and is located in the Le Marais district. You can pick up baked goods here, or grab lunch and sit out on the terrace. They make really delicious sandwiches — try the pastrami.

ISTR (41 Rue Notre Dame de Nazareth, 3rd arrondissement, +33 1 43 56 81 25) — ISTR is extremely trendy and usually busy for dinner, but I highly recommend its happy hour, when the wine is cheap and there are €1 oysters from 6-8pm.

Jeanne A (42 Rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, 11th arrondissement, +33 1 43 55 09 49) — This eat-in épicerie (grocery) and wine shop offers some of the best food (especially meats and cheeses) in town and is my favorite dining spot in Paris. The prix-fixe menu offers the best value: €30 for dinner with an appetizer and main dish. The menu changes a lot based on the availability of ingredients. I love the duck, lamb, and the wine menu.

King Falafel Place (26 Rue des Rosiers, 4th arrondissement, +33 1 42 77 93 13) — Some of the best falafel in Paris. A filling pita of meat, hummus, red cabbage, and veggies start at €6.50. There’s usually a line but it moves quickly.

La Crêperie des Pêcheurs (27 Rue Saint-André des Arts, 6th arrondissement, +33 1 43 54 00 320) — Located near on the Left Bank near the Saint-Michel–Notre-Dame train station, this tiny to-go crêperie is the best one in all of Paris (in my opinion); the banana Nutella crêpe is my favorite. Cheap, delicious, and large portions — you can’t go wrong here.

L’ Ardoise Gourmande (12 Rue de Belzunce, 10th arrondissement, +33 1 48 78 40 03) — This out-of-the-way restaurant a few blocks from Gare du Nord serves traditional French food with generous pours of wine. Its tasting menu gives you the best value. I particularly like the fish and duck.

Le Dit Vin (68 Rue Blanche, 9th arrondissement, +33 1 45 26 27 37) — I stumbled across this restaurant while looking for somewhere to eat near my Airbnb. The prices are reasonable (under €15 for a meal), there is a large wine selection (it’s Paris, of course!), and the food is rich, savory, and delicious. The menu changes daily depending on what’s fresh, so all I can really recommend as a constant is the cheese plate.

***Even with five days, you’ll barely scratch the surface of Paris. It’s a huge city that takes a lifetime to really see. But you’ll see some of the on- and off-the-beaten-path attractions as well as get a chance to experience some of the great food and nightlife the city has to offer. I could have squeezed more stuff into this itinerary, but why rush things? This way you have some free time to wander, shop, have a picnic and just relax. After all, Paris is best explored calmly and slowly.

NEXT STEP —- > Get my complete insider’s guide to Paris and learn to get away from the crowds, see authentic Paris, and save tons of money on your trip!

  Photo Credits: 6, 8, 9, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22

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How to Spend 5 Days in Paris

Updated: 8/9/2018 | August 9th, 2018

Paris: the city that takes too many lifetimes to see. I’ve spent weeks and weeks in Paris, and I’ve barely scratched its surface. Just when you think you’ve seen everything, you find new attractions, new cafés, or new markets to explore. It’s impossible to try to see it all or even begin to think you can. Many travelers come for about three days and try to see the highlights of this beautiful city. You need more time than that. I think you should plan on spending at least five days in Paris in order to see the bare minimum of what the City of Lights has to offer.

There’s just too much to do. Paris is a city I love to death. It is a city I contemplate spending my life in. If I could live anywhere, I think it would be Paris. I’ve been going for over a decade and have spent more time than I can count in the city. I’ve even run tours there!

If you’re planning a trip to Paris, here’s my suggested Paris itinerary for a 5-day visit (and some other suggestions in case you decide to spend longer there!)

What to See in Paris: Day 1

Spend your first day walking around Paris. There’s a lot to see here and you can cover spend a good half day (or whole day) wandering the cobblestone streets, parks, and areas of the city. If you want to orientate yourself to the city with a free walking tour, these are really good:

Discover Walks

City Free Tour

New Europe Tour

However, if you want to follow my walking tour, here’s my suggestion on an “orientation walk” around Paris:

Start at the Champs-Élysées and see the Arc de Triomphe. There isn’t usually line and you’ll get sweeping views of the city to start your day. Stroll down Champs-Élysées and through Place de la Concorde where you will see the Luxor Obelisk, an obelisk the French stole from the Egyptians. This square was also where they guillotined people during the French Revolution.

Walk down the Champs-Élysées through the Jardin des Tuileries, a beautiful garden that was once home . to a palace that burnt down in the 1800s. Stop and admire the Louvre before continuing down Rue Rivoli and crossing into the original part of the city on the Île de la Cité. This is where the Romans built their settlement. Enjoy the Pont Neuf and the statue of Henry IV. This bridge was built in 1578 and was the first stone bridge in the city. Stroll to my favorite church of all time, Saint Chapelle, with its incredible 12th century stained glass. There’s usually a line so book tickets in advance.

After that, head to the underground Roman ruins and then visit Notre Dame, the world’s most famous Gothic church. It’s free to enter but if you want to go up the Bell Tower, get there early to avoid the lines.

Head south toward the Latin Quarter. This area is pretty touristy, but if you get off the main drag you’ll find yourself in a labyrinth of alleys and café-lined squares that are far away from the local tourist hangouts.

Visit the Pantheon and honor France’s most famous dead citizens before heading west toward the Jardin du Luxembourg, where you can relax and watch life go by. There’s great people-watching here and it’s one of the best parks in the city.

After that, head north to see Saint Sulpice. If you’re into The Da Vinci Code, you’ll be looking for symbols and hidden meanings throughout this church. If symbols don’t interest you, just marvel at how grandiose this place is.

By this time, it should be late in the afternoon and a perfect time to stop in a café, order some wine, and relax the Parisian way.

With the rest of your time, continue walking around or see some museums.

What to See in Paris: Day 2

Use one day to see Paris’s three most popular museums. They will take hours to visit and it’s a good way to spend a day.

The Louvre With over a million pieces of art, you could spend a whole month in the Louvre and still not see everything! I don’t particularly enjoy medieval art; it’s too religious for me, and I can only see so many pictures of Mary and Jesus before I get bored. Nevertheless, the museum is worth seeing and I spent about five hours exploring all the masterpieces and marveling at the old royal palace.

Musée du Louvre, 1st arrondissement, +33 1 40 20 53 17, louvre.fr. Opening hours: M, Th, Sa–Su (9am–6pm), W, F (9am–9:45pm), Tu (closed). Price: €15. Free days: first Sunday of each month (Oct–March), Fridays after 6pm for those under 26.

LEARN MORE: How to Visit the Louvre

Musée d’Orsay The Musée d’Orsay, located in close proximity to the Louvre, houses the best impressionist and post-impressionist work in Paris. This is my favorite museum, and I always go when I’m in Paris. You’ll find masterpieces by all the great artists of the world, including Degas, Monet, Manet, and Van Gogh, to name a few. I could spend hours there.

1 Rue de la Légion d’Honneur, 7th arrondissement, +33 1 40 49 48 14, musee-orsay.fr. Opening hours: Tu–W, F–Su (9:30am–6pm), Th (9:30am–9:45pm), M (closed). Price: €12, €9 after 4:30pm every day but Thursday, free first Sunday of the month.

Musée de l’Orangerie Finish off a wild museum day with this Monet showcase. The museum displays eight tapestry-sized Nymphéas (water lilies) paintings housed in two plain oval rooms. Monet painted these images later in his life, and each one represents a different time of day and season. There’s a bottom floor that shows other works too.

Jardin des Tuileries, Place de la Concorde, 1st arrondissement, +33 1 44 50 43 00, musee-orangerie.fr. Opening hours: W–M (9am–5:45pm), last entry at 5:15pm, Tu (closed). Price: €9, free first Sunday of the month.

Budget Travel Tip: Get the Paris Museum Pass. This four-day pass costs €62 and covers over 50 museums and attractions in the city. It covers all the museums above so getting this pass and using it to see all the attractions listed in this article will save you around €50! You can also get a two-day pass for €48 and a seven-day pass for €74.

What to See in Paris: Day 3

The Palace of Versailles A trip to the Palace of Versailles takes a full day to really enjoy the site. Spend the day exploring the château, get lost in the surrounding gardens, and make sure you see Marie Antoinette’s estate, which includes a fake peasant village. Versailles is beautiful, so don’t rush it. Most people see the Palace first, then the gardens, and then Marie-Antoinette’s estate. If you do everything in reverse, you’ll be able to avoid the crowds. Go on weekdays to avoid paying for the gardens since they charge for them on weekends.

Place d’Armes, Versailles, +33 1 30 83 78 00, en.chateauversailles.fr. Opening hours: Tu–Su (9am–6:30pm), last entry at 5:45pm, M (closed). Price: “The Passport” ticket gives you admission to all the palace tours (grounds, Trianon Palaces, and Marie Antoinette’s estate), the Musical Fountain Show, the Musical Gardens, and the exhibitions: €27 (one day, with passport), €30 (two days).

What’s the inside of the palace like? Here’s a video tour of the Palace of Versailles to wet your taste buds:

Wander Rue Cler Located near the Eiffel Tower, this street is filled with good Parisian eateries. You’ll find cheese, meat, bread, vegetable, and chocolate stores to explore. I never walk away from this street without a pile of food and wine. I eat my way through this street and then buy more for later. It’s one of my favorite streets in the city.

Eiffel Tower The Eiffel Tower is beautiful and best seen in the early morning to avoid the crowds. Get there right as it opens, and you’ll be able to avoid most of the lines to the top. If you get there around midday, you’ll find yourself waiting in line for hours. I like coming here after going to Rue Cler and having a picnic on the grass and people-watching.

Champ de Mars, 7th arrondissement, +33 8 92 70 12 39, toureiffel.paris. Opening hours: Daily (9am–midnight) during the summer, with slightly shorter hours during the rest of the year. Price: €16–25, depending on how high you go.

Paris Sewer Tour This tour is definitely an off-the-beaten-path attraction and isn’t too far away from the Eiffel Tower. You’ll learn about the interesting history of Paris’s sewer system. You may be put off by the idea of a “sewer tour,” but don’t be. It doesn’t smell down here and you’ll learn how modern Paris came to be (because it was tied to the successful creation of a sewer system).

Les Invalides (The Tomb of Napoleon) Also known as Hôtel National des Invalides, this enormous complex was built in 1670 by Louis XIV as a hospital for wounded soldiers. Nowadays it’s home to several museums and monuments, including the Musée de l’Armée (the Military Museum of the Army of France) and Napoleon’s tomb. It is one of the most comprehensive history museums I’ve ever visited, and you’ll need at least three hours to see it properly. While military history may seem boring, this museum is really a history of France, the Revolution, and Napoleon. It is fascinating and incredible in its depth. I cannot recommend it enough.

Place des Invalides, Musée de l’Armée, 129 Rue de Grenelle, 7th arrondissement, +33 810 11 33 99. Opening hours: daily from April through October (10am–6pm), and daily from November through March (10am–5pm). Price: €12.

The Museum of the Shoah (the Holocaust Museum) Despite having an excellent exhibit on France, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust, the Museum of the Shoah never draws a lot of people. It’s a real shame, as the information and collection here is really great and in depth. I’ve been to many Holocaust museums, and this is one of the best and most detailed in the world. I highly recommend it.

17 Rue Geoffroy l’Asnier, 4th arrondissement, +33 1 42 77 44 72, memorialdelashoah.org. Opening hours: Su–F (10am–6pm), Th (10am–10pm), Sa (closed). A free guided tour is given at 3pm (in English) on the second Sunday of every month.

What to See in Paris: Day 5

Paris Catacombs The Catacombs of Paris are a fascinating but grim tourist attraction. They go on for miles (no one really knows how far) and the endless winding tunnels house thousands of bones. Only a small section of the tunnels are open and there’s a ton of history and information here about the growth of Paris. The Catacombs themselves are actually old stone quarries that were located far outside the edge of the city during Medieval times. There’s always a long line so book your ticket online beforehand and don’t wait outside!

1 Avenue du Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy, 14th arrondissement, +33 1 43 22 47 63, catacombes.paris.fr. Opening hours: Tu–Su (10am–8:30pm), last admission at 4pm, M (closed). Check the website before you go — the Catacombs are sometimes closed without warning or explanation. Price: €13.

LEARN MORE: How to Visit the Catacombs of Paris

Rue Mouffetard This street is filled with cafés and shops and has an outdoor market. It’s a great street to just wander down or to sit in front of a café and watch life go by. Make sure to stop by the nearby Place de la Contrescarpe, where artists for decades spent their time. There are good, inexpensive restaurants in the area too.

Père Lachaise Cemetery Finish off the day with a train ride east of the city center to visit Paris’s most famous graveyard, where you’ll see the graves of celebrities like Antonio de La Gandara, Honoré de Balzac, Sarah Bernhardt, Frédéric Chopin, Jim Morrison, Édith Piaf, Camille Pissarro, Gertrude Stein, and Oscar Wilde. It’s beautiful (can we call a place of death beautiful?).

LEARN MORE: Visiting Père Lachaise Cemetery

Montmartre Another artistic center of Paris, this is where artists and writers like Hemingway spent their time. There’s still a lot of art, and you’ll find galleries and artists on the streets throughout the area. The streets are quiet and beautiful to wander around. The church offers a great view of the city and is a great place to have lunch.

Moulin Rouge After wandering Montmartre, head into the “seedy” district of Paris. This is where you can take in a show at the Moulin Rouge or just wander around and witness the interesting mix of tourists and locals awkwardly gazing into sex shops.

Three other recommended places to see in Paris

Musée de Cluny The building is the finest surviving example of medieval architecture in Paris and was the former home of the abbots of Cluny. It now houses Roman and medieval art, including many architectural fragments found during excavations around town. The museum also contains the adjoining rooms of a Roman bath, which the abbey was built over. It is by far one of the most interesting history museums in the city and worth every euro of the admission fee!

6 Place Paul Painlevé, 5th arrondissement, +33 1 53 73 78 16, musee-moyenage.fr. Opening hours: W–M (9:15am–5:45pm), Tu (closed). Price: €8 (€1 extra during certain exhibitions).

Bibliothèque Nationale de France One of the grandest libraries in the world, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France was founded in 1368 by Charles V. Be sure to take a peek at the old rotunda of the art library and the 20-foot globes in the permanent collection.

Quai François Mauriac, 13th arrondissement, +33 1 53 79 59 59, bnf.fr. Opening hours: M (2pm-8pm), Tu-Sa (9am-8pm), Sun (1pm-7pm).

Ô Chateau This is one of the best places in Paris to attend a wine tasting class or have a wine and cheese luncheon. The food is plentiful, and the wines are very generously poured and refilled. I highly recommend the lunch wine class as it’s cheaper and you’ll get really full for the day; it also goes into great detail about the history of wine in France.

68 Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1st arrondissement, +33 1 44 73 97 80, o-chateau.com. Check the website for last-minute deals, but it’s usually around €55.

Where to stay in Paris

3 Ducks Hotel – A 10-minute walk from the Eiffel Tower, 3 Ducks has one of the best locations in town. The staff is friendly, the rooms are small but comfortable, the showers are clean, and it has one of the cheapest bars in Paris (which slightly offsets the expensive dorm prices).

Les Piaules – This brand-new hostel has a fantastic chimney lounge and a rooftop space. The bar and restaurant on the ground floor is popular with locals and groups so it’s always a fun time. The rooms are super modern and the beds comfy. Avoid this places during peak summer months when Paris is the hottest as there’s no A/C and a limited number of fans.

Generator – In this emerging district, the Generator Hostel has a chic array of stylish rooms with comfortable beds, high-speed Wi-Fi, and friendly staff. Its private rooms even have terraces! There is also a lively bar and common area. This is one of my favorite chains in Europe.

St. Christopher’s – This backpacker base opened in 2013 and is close to the Gare du Nord train station, making it easy to get in and out of the city. It has Wi-Fi, comfy beds, clean showers, breakfast, and a bar that features live music most nights. Be sure to get a room facing the street, as the interior courtyard rooms are loud from the downstairs bar.

Airbnb – If you’re looking for private accommodation, Airbnb is your best choice. It will be much cheaper than traditional hotels, allowing you to spend more money on wine and cheese and activities! If you’ve never used it before, sign up today to get $35 off your first stay!

Where to Eat in Paris

Café Père & Fils (86 Rue Montmartre, 2nd arrondissement, +33 1 45 08 41 13) — Café Père & Fils is a Parisian brasserie and coffee shop with outdoor seating for lunch and drinks. It gets busy on warm, sunny days when all the nearby office workers take over the patio for lunch. There are daily happy hours and brunch on Sunday.

Florence Kahn (24 Rue des Écouffes, 4th arrondissement, +33 1 48 87 92 85) — This perfect little shop has a blue mosaic shopfront, and is located in the Le Marais district. You can pick up baked goods here, or grab lunch and sit out on the terrace. They make really delicious sandwiches — try the pastrami.

ISTR (41 Rue Notre Dame de Nazareth, 3rd arrondissement, +33 1 43 56 81 25) — ISTR is extremely trendy and usually busy for dinner, but I highly recommend its happy hour, when the wine is cheap and there are €1 oysters from 6-8pm.

Jeanne A (42 Rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, 11th arrondissement, +33 1 43 55 09 49) — This eat-in épicerie (grocery) and wine shop offers some of the best food (especially meats and cheeses) in town and is my favorite dining spot in Paris. The prix-fixe menu offers the best value: €30 for dinner with an appetizer and main dish. The menu changes a lot based on the availability of ingredients. I love the duck, lamb, and the wine menu.

King Falafel Place (26 Rue des Rosiers, 4th arrondissement, +33 1 42 77 93 13) — Some of the best falafel in Paris. A filling pita of meat, hummus, red cabbage, and veggies start at €6.50. There’s usually a line but it moves quickly.

La Crêperie des Pêcheurs (27 Rue Saint-André des Arts, 6th arrondissement, +33 1 43 54 00 320) — Located near on the Left Bank near the Saint-Michel–Notre-Dame train station, this tiny to-go crêperie is the best one in all of Paris (in my opinion); the banana Nutella crêpe is my favorite. Cheap, delicious, and large portions — you can’t go wrong here.

L’ Ardoise Gourmande (12 Rue de Belzunce, 10th arrondissement, +33 1 48 78 40 03) — This out-of-the-way restaurant a few blocks from Gare du Nord serves traditional French food with generous pours of wine. Its tasting menu gives you the best value. I particularly like the fish and duck.

Le Dit Vin (68 Rue Blanche, 9th arrondissement, +33 1 45 26 27 37) — I stumbled across this restaurant while looking for somewhere to eat near my Airbnb. The prices are reasonable (under €15 for a meal), there is a large wine selection (it’s Paris, of course!), and the food is rich, savory, and delicious. The menu changes daily depending on what’s fresh, so all I can really recommend as a constant is the cheese plate.

***Even with five days, you’ll barely scratch the surface of Paris. It’s a huge city that takes a lifetime to really see. But you’ll see some of the on- and off-the-beaten-path attractions as well as get a chance to experience some of the great food and nightlife the city has to offer. I could have squeezed more stuff into this itinerary, but why rush things? This way you have some free time to wander, shop, have a picnic and just relax. After all, Paris is best explored calmly and slowly.

NEXT STEP —- > Get my complete insider’s guide to Paris and learn to get away from the crowds, see authentic Paris, and save tons of money on your trip!

  Photo Credits: 6, 8, 9, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22

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from Traveling News https://www.nomadicmatt.com/travel-blogs/how-to-spend-5-days-in-paris/

[blues-sevenfold]

World Building: Human Population

Awhile back, when I was figuring out the global human population of Daemon Universe - I came up with four billion, which is about half of what our current global human population is. Other sapient animal populations include bears of all species (so there was never bear hunting) and parrots (which are actually passerine in design and are capable of human speech) - as well as, of course, daemon. Some daemon types only do appear as daemons in that universe - such as house cats, dragons, and fairy frogs. Daemons are also usually more vibrant in colour than their non-daemon counterparts.

So I’m trying to figure out global human populations for the other universes. It can be a bit tricky, since we need to figure out what exactly counts as “human”. Vampires, mages, psionics, supers, and Atlanteans count as human beings - but non-corporeal ghosts don’t. Fairies and gnomes do not actually count as human - and werewolves and mermaids can be considered half-human. There are no humans at all in Troll Universe, which isn’t even Earth.

So here’s what I figured out so far.

In both of the retro universe (Fifties and Eighties), there are about four billion people by the present day - as with Daemon Universe. There are no non-human sapient beings in those universes... but Jimmy Reed Mark II can recall his prior life as Jimmy Reed with relative clarity upon reaching twenty years of age.

In Mermaid Universe, there are: three billion mermaids, two billion fish people, and point five billion human beings. We gotta keep in mind the difference of geography in that universe.

As for Medieval Fantasy, I'm thinking about two billion people. Maybe about a billion more if you count elementals, nymphs, cherubim, and guardian angels. Brownies are a type of fairy that can morph into a fully human-sized spirit to clean.

In Gothic Fantasy... about four billion physical humans, one billion werewolves, one billion warm-spirit human ghosts, and five billion cool-spirit human ghosts.

In CBS Universe, about four billion physical humans. The digital humans and ghosts (which can take on digital human form) might be in the tens of billions. There is a lot more room in cyberspace than in the physical realm.

With Lunarpunk, the point-of-divergence there is quite recent - the year 1960, to be exact. There might be about two billion less human beings by the present day (2007), than in “our” world.

I still need to flesh out Superhero Universe. Because some Supers (might be Mages or Psionics, actually) have the ability of teleportation, contact has been made with other societies at a relatively early era - which were generally quite peaceful. One thing to consider is that Supers were relatively uncommon back in the Greco-Roman Era - but, somewhere around the Middle Ages, Supers began to spread more rapidly in growth. So, by 2007, about 25% of all human beings are Supers of some sort. Atlanteans have existed in the present since about the year 1500. At some point by the late 1700s, Coloured Lanterns began to appear. Keep in mind that Atlanteans age at a slower rate than modern humans - and even those with one Atlantean great-grandparents still age at 50% the rate slower than full-blooded modern humans. Although, even full-blooded non-super modern human beings can live up to a little over two hundred years.

~~~~~

A few tidbits here:

Werewolves exist only in Gothic Fantasy, as well as possibly some cyber realms in CBS. All wolves are also sapient in Gothic Fantasy - and werewolves are able to pro-create with humans (in human form), wolves (in wolf form), or other werewolves (both need to be in same form at time of conception).

There seems to be some disagreement over whether Atlanteans were longer lived than modern humans - but, since the Bible also supports the idea that people used to live longer, I decided to go along with Atlanteans lived longer.

Candy Land is probably the hardest to figure out, since it can be hard to figure out where to draw the line between heavily-modified humans and not-at-all humans. Gummy humans, toon humans, and dolls are not-at-all humans - but can the horned greys and the horned pastels be considered humans, despite not being compatible in reproduction with other humans?

Lemme know your thoughts.

[italianartsociety]

By Jean Marie Carey

The combined rites practiced by the cult of the Hirpi Sorani ("wolves of Soranus") in the pagan peninsular countryside and those to honor Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome who were nursed by a wolf, partly explain the name of the Lupercalia, a festival celebrated each February. Though “high Lupercal” is on 15 February, the festival originally began on the Ides, which, in February, is on the 13th. In contemporary times Lupercalia begins today, on 12 February.

Remnants of a Lupercal temple discovered in 2007 15 metres below the Augustan palace were dated to 44 BCE, attesting to the continuity of the festival. But Lupercalia’s best-known attribute is the wolf herself, embodied by the famous Lupa Capitolina. 

“Rugged and uncouth though it is, this statue moved my spirit more than all the images that surround it,” wrote German historian Theodor Mommsen when he saw the monument during his first visit to Rome in 1844. In his 1925 treatise on the bronze sculpture French historian Jérôme Carcopino calls the wolf “the most venerable work of Roman archaeology.” Today at her home at the Capitoline Museum in Rome the wolf has many more admirers, visitors whose fingers itch to twirl the regular, S-shaped curls of her mane and to caress her sinewy legs, her elegant tufted paws, and her smooth, distended udders.

The infinitely abundant images of the wolf on Rome-affiliated merchandise seem to increase rather than dilute the potent aura of the statue herself. So what is it about the she-wolf that continues to make her so compelling to those who see her and such an inspiration for writers and artists through the centuries, even to this day? The Lupa Capitolina wields an undeniable appeal through her form alone; yet her formal qualities cannot be disentangled from the defining attributes that have been attached to the statue in the course of history.

Until the past decade (and no matter her actual date of creation, still), Lupa, first of all, reminded us of the rarity of her kind. Few ancient bronzes from Etruria have lasted to the present day because unlike stone, bronze (an alloy of copper and tin) could be fused and reused, and it often was. From statue to cannonball: This was the sad fate of numerous ancient works of art. Therefore we hold ancient bronze statues especially dear because there are so few of them, and these few tell a story of survival against greed and strife.

One of the values associated with the wolf sculpture is her ostensibly Etruscan pedigree; her startling archaic appearance does not need the lost language of her makers to convey the well-known narrative of her role in Rome’s founding. But has Lupa Capitolina been exaggerating her claims of antiquarianism by nearly a millennium? In 2006, archaeological conservator Anna Maria Carruba, who had been a member of the team of researchers restoring the statue in the late 1990s, announced that the symbol of Rome was created in the 7th or 8th Century or even later.

Carruba’s findings, initially published through the Capitoline Museum itself, have since been questioned by her associates at the same institution. The question about the provenance of the statue is interesting in and of itself, and it does not seem like science will soon provide a definitive answer to them. Statiography and radiography cannot at present be used to exactly date bronze, and Carruba’s finding are based on carbon dating of organic elements associated with the statue (human handling and tiny specks of protein and flora in other words) and on conjecture about the statue’s means of fabrication.

Looking at Lupa

Whenever she was made, Lupa would have been fashioned with the technique called the lost wax (cire-perdu) method. The sculpture began as a detailed, full-size model made out of clay that was then covered with a half-inch thick layer of wax. Some of the details were worked on the wax rather than on the clay; this is true of Lupa’s ears and the crown of curls framing the border between the head and the mane. The model was covered with a thicker layer of clay. The entire piece was then heated so that the wax melted and drained through the holes pierced through the bottom (the holes were later covered with more clay once all the wax was gone). At this point there was a thin hollow space between the clay model and the rough layer of clay that once covered the now “lost” wax. Molten bronze was poured through the small holes into the hollow space. After the bronze hardened the top layer of clay was chiseled away, revealing the bronze statue. Much of the inner clay model was then removed by scraping it out through the bottom openings. With the removal of this inner clay, the bronze statue became hollow and relatively light, rendering it much easier to transport than a marble statue of the same size. Finally finishing touches were applied by working with the hardened metal, and the resulting artwork was an ostensibly unique and unrepeatable product – theoretically, no other replicas could be made from the original model.

The expressiveness of Lupa’s body is extraordinary. The wolf looks ferocious: Her eyebrows raised in bronze imitation of the lighter coloring visible in live wolves, are contracted and expressive; her ears are pricked; her gaze intent, penetrating – individualized, even, through the precision of its expression. Her facial muscles are tense, and the vein running from her nose to just under her right eye is visibly swollen. On her surface, the Lupa Capitolina blends a precise attention to the reality of live wolves with a certain respect for representational convention regarding sculpted animals. This wolf is rigid and expressive, at once static and poised to pounce. The flexed muscles of the wolf, her attentive gaze, her wrinkled brow, all elicit a connection between human and animal, between artwork and viewer. The wolf’s gaze makes the statue’s visible emotions something with which viewers can immediately identify: She looks attentive and ready, protective and fierce. The “unusually complex expression in the face of the wolf,” as artist Stanley Horner described his own aesthetic reaction to the Lupa Capitolina “is more devastating than the Mona Lisa; it can smile and snarl in the same countenance, whichever I wish to project upon it.”

The Renaissance Addition of the Twins

The manufacture of the free-standing bronze twins set a higher technical challenge than the production of low relief scenes like those of the reliquary doors designed by the Pollaiuolo brothers Antonio and Giuliano, and there is good reason to think that whoever was directly responsible for the commission – whether Giuliano or another member of the Sistine court – looked to Florence (where the Pollaiuolos were from) for someone with the commensurate skills in bronze casting. Stylistically the treatment of the children’s bodies is generically Donatelloesque; the rounding out of male musculature in the torso, the soft peaks of the nipples and the comically pendant buttocks are like those of Donatello’s bronze David. Vassari related the plump forms of the bronzes to the infants Cain and Abel in Antonio Pollaiuolo’s drawing of Eve in the Uffizi while Charity’s child on the reverse of the Uffizi panel offers a precedent for a slightly stockier, suckling baby, with chubby bent legs. The rather awkward (in terms of the comfort of posture for the babies) setting of the heads on the necks also brings to mind the foreshortening of the left-hand angels of the Staggia Elevation. But the problem remains that the unusual nature of the Roman task – to produce free-standing sculptures that would complement a revered ancient bronze – limits the usefulness of such comparisons.

The addition of the twins helped if not to fix, then to control, the ancient work’s meaning. From a fearful symbol of judicial authority, the wolf was reinvented as an appropriately beneficent source of miraculous succor to Rome ancient and modern.

Jérôme Carpocino, who was so moved by the statue of the wolf, insisted that the myth of the Capitoline Wolf did not yet exist when the bronze wolf was produced: The story of Romulus and Remus dates back to the second half of the fourth century BCE whereas the bronze was cast in the course of the fifth. In any case the Lupa is not a comfortable object for those in search of authenticity. It is physically available to us today as a material bridge to a lost world, a bygone era. A large part of Lupa’s impact on her viewer is due precisely to her vivid aura of authenticity, undiminished and perhaps even increased by her frequent reproduction. The legendary she wolf may be historically distant but she is physically even immediately present. The symbolic values of the Capitoline Wolf remain untouched by the progress of knowledge. They live on and in fact are nourished by ideals belonging to a metahistorical perspective.

Reference: Anna Maria Carruba and Lorenzo De Masi. La Lupa capitolina: un bronzo medievale. Rome: De Luca editori d'arte, 2006.

Capitoline Wolf: c.500-480 BCE or c. 1300 CE? Etruscan or Medieval?

Gothic She-Wolf with the Symbols of the Allied Cities inlaid floor work from the Duomo of Siena. The twins-facing posture of the wolf also mirrors the encircling concentric frames.

A side view of the sculpture at the Capitoline Museum in Rome shows how the wolf is best experienced by moving around the bronze.

Capitoline Wolf with figures of Romulus and Remus (possibly created by Antonio del Pollaiuolo) added c. 1472.

She-Wolf, Romulus and Remus. Silver didrachm, 269-266 BCE, shows an active trio of figures.

Detail of hair on the head of Lupa.

Further Reading: Jérôme Carcopino. La louve du Capitole. Paris: Société d'ed. “Les belles lettres,” 1925.

Francis D.Klingender,  Animals In Art And Thought To The End Of The Middle Ages. Cambridge, Mass., M.I.T.: Press, 1971.

Carol C. Mattusch  “In Search of the Greek Bronze Original.” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome. Supplementary Volumes, Vol. 1, The Ancient Art of Emulation: Studies in Artistic Originality and Tradition from the Present to Classical Antiquity (2002), pp. 99-115.

Dietmar Popp. “Lupa Senese. Zur Inszenierung Einer Mythischen Vergangenheit in Siena (1260-1560).” Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft, Kunst als Ästhetisches Ereignis (1997): pp. 41-58.

Emeline Hill Richardson, “The Etruscan Origins of Early Roman Sculpture.” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome. Supplementary Volumes, Vol. 21, The Ancient Art of Emulation: Studies in Artistic Originality and Tradition from the Present to Classical Antiquity (2002), pp. 75-124.

[juniorformulamotorsport]

May 2020 – Towcester to Hulcote, Northamptonshire

Sunday mornings since the lockdown began have taken on a pattern of their own, with breakfast at around 10, usually a poached or boiled egg, with toast while we listed to the radio, followed by grabbing a camera, and a raincoat and heading out for a walk. There are several suitable destinations within a short distance including Hulcote. I’ve been running up the road which used to be the main road to Northampton before the now-busy A43 dual carriageway was built, and is thus known as Northampton Road, now a quiet road into the old town centre. At the top of a long steady hill, the road forks, with one fork going right towards the tiny hamlet of Hulcote. In the early spring the verges are thick with snowdrops along there, and in the summer it’s shaded by mature trees which makes it a very pleasant route for a runner keen to avoid pedestrians and cars alike without roasting in the sun.

The road to the hamlet basically ends there in a large loop so there are very few cars to contend with, though there is a grain store which does attract the odd lorry, and the occasional delivery driver. The grain silo, glimpsed in the background, associated with Home Farm is a modern intrusion that negatively impacts the setting of the conservation area. Further research has told me that the houses there are in a style referred to as “Bricklayer’s Gothic”, all bar the old school and the Manor House. There seems to have been a settement on the site for a very long time, but he “Chapel Village” as it’s sometimes known, in its current form is rather more recent.  There is a massive village green, with some splendidly mature oak trees, and around it sit eight cottages in two groups of four. They were built as an estate village for Easton Neston, which I have written about before.

It was the 3rd Earl of Pomfret who had them built, probably between 1800 and 1822, removing some farmhouses to do so, and although I can’t prove it, I have a suspicion that the new buildings may have been divided in two originally. They are pretty spacious if not, and it wasn’t a time when the working classes would have had a lot of space. In 1816 the trustees of the Hulcote Charity Estate set up and supported a school for the poor children of Easton Neston Parish and provided a schoolmaster. The school ran for around 100 years before it closed due to lack of funds and attendance, but the building still stands, alongside a small lodge, and next to what might be the last remaining phone box in Northamptonshire! It’s apparently an early example of a model village, and it owes its cohesion to the fact that it belonged to the Easton Neston estate until very, very recently. It means that the original designs have not been diluted or demolished. Certainly according to the papers I was able to find, almost all of the properties within the conservation area are listed including all the cottages, and the earlier Manor House.

The history of the village prior to this is more than a little obscure, though the Old Ehglish name elements suggest a Saxon settlement. Sadly there is no firm archaeological evidence, though there are some iron age finds, and a quern stone, perhaps prehistoric or Roman, was found but no one thought to write down the location where they had found it so it may or may not be from Hulcote. There is an Iron Age and Roman settlement to the north east of the parish and all srts of small finds gave come to light. Additionally there are some medieval settlement remains on the north side of the village green. Ploughing has brought to light lots of stone-rubble and brick, associated with post-medieval pottery, tiles, glass and bone that match to a map from 1806. There are also two rectangular fishponds, both now dry, which were linked by a shallow ditch. There is another ditch in the woodland on the right the lane coming into the village, and this is thought to be a Saxon ditch, possibly a boundary marker,  though it should be noted that the first actual recorded mention of Hulcote is from 1086.

The council report that sets out the details of the listing of the village has this to say about the architecture as a whole: “The western side of the green comprises four, largely identical distinctive detached cottages all in brick. Along the southern edge lie four pairs of cottages broadly similar in appearance to the detached properties but with single storey flanking wings. Pevsner describes these houses as: ‘A group of eight very loveable and little funny houses along two sides of the green.’ These buildings are two storeys in height and are built directly onto the road facing the green. Notably these houses are largely unaltered and retain their original plan form, symmetry and original features which are important to their character and appearance individually and as a group.”

Across the way from them is one of the former main entrances to Easton Neston Estate, with two matching listed lodges either side of the road. There were five entrances which doesn’t surprise me because the lodges on Northampton Road include one that is named “Third Lodge”. I think it’s fair to say that the family that built Easton Neston had both delusions of grandeur and cash to splash! The access from Hulcote is now private, with signs to prove it, but does demonstrate Hulcote’s former links with the House and is an important feature of the history and design of the village. Also “a number of footpaths still exist that link Hulcote to the surrounding countryside and settlements. To the north a footpath runs to the site of the former nunnery at Showsley, to the south a footpath connects the village to Easton Neston House, and finally a footpath runs east-west connecting the village to the former railway and Shutlanger respectively”. So maybe another day for those.

Oh, and there are alpacas in the fields by the entrance to Hulcote now, along with two small shaggy ponies of a type that anyone who ever read a Norman Thelwell book will easily recognise. The alapacas even have their names on the gate – the ponies do not appear to!

Just for good measure, I’d like to leave you with a shortened version of the timeline of the town of Towcester, starting in AD 45:

45—Romans build the fortified garrison town of Lactodorum on the junction of Watling Street.

917—‘Tofeceastre’ attacked by an invading Viking Army. Watling Street becomes the border between Saxon Wessex and the Danelaw. The “burh of Towcester” was thought to have been previously fortified by King Alfred of Wessex’s son, King Edward the Elder of Wessex.

1066 or later—Motte and bailey castle constructed on eastern side of Towcester.

1130��Building of Bury Mount.

1170-1200—Late Norman “Transitional” church is built and is the basis of the plan of the present St. Lawrence’s church.

c.1280—Benedict Caetani (also known as Gaetano) was Rector of St. Lawrence’s. Later elected Pope Boniface VIII at Naples on 23rd January 1295.

1470—Edward IV gave 40 square feet of stone from his quarry at Hanley in the forest of Whittelwood for building and repairing the steeple, church and churchyard at Towcester.

1483—Richard III confirmed grant by Edward IV for stone for church. (Baker p.328)

1544—Henry VIII granted bailiffs and inhabitants of Towcester two fairs – October and March.

1551—Church mill recorded (Baker)

1573 June 6th—Storm of rain and hail of 1.5 inches resulted in flooding which brought down six houses. One child drowned. (Baker p.322)

1574—Former Knight Templar’s Mill at dissolution of Hospital of St John of Jerusalem granted to Robert Dudley. Site of Mill not traced.

1575—Plague at Towcester.

1604—Thomas Shephard born in Towcester. He was a puritan preacher who emigrated to America and became the first chaplain of Harvard University.

1608—Plague in Towcester. Thomas Shephard was sent to Foscote to escape it.

1643, February—Prince Rupert plundered Towcester and neighbourhood, then proceeded to Warwickshire.

1643, August—A section of the Royalist Army was quartered at Towcester. The parliamentarian Newport Horse surprised Towcester one night, slew the sentinels and about 30 men, took two colours and twenty prisoners to Newport.

1643, November—Prince Rupert, based at Easton Neston, sent out a proclamation to all the local villages demanding labourers with shovels to fortify the town.

1643, December—Prince Rupert, having made Towcester very strong by constructing water filled ditches, moved to Oxford but left a strong force at Towcester.

1644 Jan 18—Royalists slighted the works at Towcester and abandoned the town to join the army at Oxford.

1646 January—Towcester was head quarters for Colonel Whalley’s Brigade of Horse.

1665—Plague hits Towcester.

1675—The Bell Inn (182 Watling Street) built with stabling at the rear.

1684—Charles II granted Sir William Farmer a weekly Tuesday market and 3 fairs to be held on the Feast of St Lawrence, Shrove Tuesday and the 22nd March.

1695—Thomas Bickerstaff of London, a native of Towcester, gave the 3 almshouses he had erected to the Sponne Charity. The almshouses stood beside the Silverstone Brook, and were demolished in 1970.

1707/8—Fire causes £1057 of damage.

1749 March 25th—Fire at the George Inn – boy with candle accidentally ignited straw and kicked the burning straw into a stable which within a few hours had spread to 36 houses. (Baker p.324)

1781—Jenkinson’s bank started on a site which was still a bank until around three years ago. Jenkinson was a silk merchant, linen draper and woolstapler.

1798—Here are annual horse races,. Easton Neston has very bad roads about it, particularly a considerable one from Northampton, through Towcester and Oxford to Bath.

1799—Authentic data stone on the Post Office building.

1800—Towcester had a theatre with a pit.

1837—Rough stone tramways were laid up the hills to north of Towcester to aid coach travel.

1838—The Towcester Gas Company was formed in 1837 and the town streets were lit by 35 gas lamps.

1851—National School built for £1100, average attendance 150.

1852—A Police Station was built with accommodation for an inspector and two constables. A Magistrates Court was also built.

1854—Cholera epidemic. Occupants of the dilapidated houses around the churchyard suffered greatly.

c.1855—Thomas Ridgway, thought to be the tea magnate, offered to build houses for the poor if Lord Pomfret would provide the land. The first houses were built in Brackley Road. Later another 12 houses were built forming Queens terrace, followed by 14 houses forming Albert Terrace. Ridgway erected about 50 houses at a cost of £6-7000. Rents were 5% of outlay. Improved health, comfort and social conditions for the poor.

c.1856—A sewer was built at cost of £400 at the south end of town to improve sanitary conditions after the cholera outbreak.

1864—Lady Palmerston cuts the first turf of the East and West Junction Railway at Towcester in August 1864.

1865 The Town Hall & Corn exchange was built at a cost of £3600.

1866—The Blisworth to Towcester railway line was opened and Towcester Station built. A large number of Roman coins were found during the construction.

1873—Towcester to Stratford on Avon railway line was opened.

1876—First horse race at Towcester, established by Her Imperial Majesty, The Empress of Austria, who was staying at Easton Neston.

1878—Maria Sophie of Bavaria, the last Queen of Naples (and Sisi’s sister) stayed at Park View.

1887—Ceremony of Cutting the First Sod of the Stratford-on-Avon, Towcester and Midland Junction Railway by Sir Thomas Fermor Hesketh, Bart.

1890—Towcester Grammar School reopened on the Brackley Road with 33 boys under headmaster Mr John Wetherell M.A..

1898—The town was supplied with water from Dockwell Mill reservoir. The Churchyard was enlarged by half an acre by Earl of Pomfret.

1901—Fire destroys Phipps and Co brewery at Towcester.

1921—The Hesketh Boot and Shoe Factory in Vernon Road was destroyed by fire.

1923—Towcester Grammar School destroyed by fire.

1925—Mains electricity laid in Towcester in about 1925.

1931—The Workhouse, built in 1836, was closed and taken into the ownership of Northamptonshire County Council.

1937—The Police Station was rebuilt.

1939—Towcester Cinema First Night on the 5th December 1939.

1948—Silverstone Aerodrome opened for motor racing.

1952—Mr Law was making sports shoes for Roger Bannister, Cheshire, All Blacks and Springboks.

1958—Passenger services from Towcester Railway Station ceased.

1965—Freight services from Towcester Railway Station ceased.

1984—Towcester Cinema was demolished after standing empty since 1974.

1987—The Towcester bypass (A43) opens.

2001—Grandstand at Towcester Racecourse (built in 1929) demolished.

2005—Contents of Easton Neston house auctioned by Sotheby’s.

2005—Lord Hesketh sold Easton Neston house and estate for £15 million to Russian fashion millionaire Leon Max.

2009—The 30 acre water meadow between Bury Mount and the River Tove was acquired by South Northamptonshire Council and the West Northamptonshire Development Corporation. It contains an important Iron Age ritual burial site of the Catuvellauni Tribe.

2009—Work starts on the restoration of Bury Mount (Towcester Castle) as part of the Moat Lane Regeneration Project.

2014, June 2014—Towcester Mill Brewery and Tap Room established at Towcester water mill.

  Travel 2020 – Towcester to Hulcote May 2020 - Towcester to Hulcote, Northamptonshire Sunday mornings since the lockdown began have taken on a pattern of their own, with breakfast at around 10, usually a poached or boiled egg, with toast while we listed to the radio, followed by grabbing a camera, and a raincoat and heading out for a walk.