April 26, 2012
Nimes
The Palace of the Popes
The Musee du Petit Palais

Faced with the choice of travelling to Nimes in the morning via train sans bicycle or with, I opt to leave the bicycle at the hotel. The choice was the right one: Nimes is a city to savor.

First off, it is remarkably clean. Its facades, made of the same ivory stone as the amphitheater in Arles, sparkle. It is also laid out on an axis leading to the Jardins de la Fontaine, past the enormous Roman theatre, L'Arene, past La Maison Carree, a Roman temple whose dimensions are square, past Les Quais de la Fontaine, the canals leading to the gardens which are plush with green.

The gardens are terraced, and lead to a summit where in 15 B.C. the Romans built Le Tour Magne, one of a chain of towers along the city's seven kilometers of ramparts. Climbing up the 140 steps is not too difficult, and the view over all of Nimes is well worth it. The gardens themselves are reminiscent of Paris' Luxembourg Gardens: beautifully laid out, with gravel walk ways, large gates with gilded decoration, they are of a piece with the rest of the city. The spirit is ancien regime, rather than medieval, as in Avignon.

Yet Rome lives on in Nimes as more than a relic, as it does in Arles. There is a statue of Augustus Caesar one of the largest squares, as well as a gate named after him; one of the streets off the Quais is called rue Agrippa, and Roman ornamentation faces of mythological beings above doorways, are common. Nimes was, along with much of Provence, one of Rome's happier conquests.

I buy two fougasses from a patisserie on the Avenue Victor Hugo, leading to the Maison Carree, but it is nothing like the one I had in Besancon: it is baked nut brown, flaky as a millefeuille, and peppered with tiny bits of ham, slightly salty. In a word: lunch. if I had to do it again, I would make Nimes my base, rather than Avignon, which despite the fascination of its history, is rough at the edges of the old town and only more so beyond.

I enjoy walking around Nimes, whose streets are straightly laid out. Walking along rue du Mareschal, the iron balconies, each one elaborately forged in lacy patterns, some with figures as well --one featuring a winged angel with breasts like Brigitte Bardot's-- is no small pleasure. In contrast with the sinuous, winding streets of Arles and Avignon, so often silent and forbidding.

***

I come back to Avignon from Nimes in the early evening. I decide to relax and visit Michel Peyaud, where I ate so well the previous night.

Dinner there turns out to be more like the Mad Hatter's tea party than a restaurant meal. I planned to spend the meal reading Le Figaro, a center-right newspaper, but it is not to be. A corpulent elderly woman from the neighborhood, braless, loose top over trousers with a broken zipper (--she shows me), comes in and is seated across the way from me, which becomes an occasion for us to spend the evening chatting. She tells me (among many other things) that she didn't vote in the first round, but may vote for Sarkozy in the second, because she thinks him very smart.

An African woman from Gabon, statuesque and dressed in stone-washed jeans and a parti-colored top, long hair, bangs, and showy jewelry, arrives and sits in the back. Some time later a tall man enters. The elderly woman, stops him dead in his tracks by saying,

"Are you looking for someone to marry?"

He says "no", politely and is seated between her and the woman from Gabon. Later I look up and see that the woman from Gabon (whom I saw eating a steak at her table) is sitting across from him at his table. Meanwhile, the elderly woman is having another glass of champagne.

"I could sit home and drink a glass of champagne, but what for? To look at myself in the mirror? One has to make the effort to go out." She is eighty-three years old and lived in Quebec with her husband, an engineer who died twenty years ago in a car crash.

She keeps saying out loud "How handsome he is!" in reference to Michel, which is very funny, because Michel is a lovely human being of great good will, but only a mother could call him handsome. It seems clear from the way the she goes on, and the way Michel goes in and out of the kitchen, nonplussed, that this scene is replayed whenever the woman comes by, which is at least once a week.

He has great patience with her, but my meal over and paid for, as I leave, he admits quietly that when she has a glass or two more, she can be tiresome. He walks me to the door of the restaurant and the street and shakes my hand before I turn to walk to my hotel. In Old France (la vielle France) --a phrase that evokes a gentler time in the country-- it was customary to do so.

***

I pack the next morning and have a few hours before the 2:16 p.m. train, which I planned so as to save the best for last: the visit to the Palace of the Popes and the Musee du Petit Palais, both on the Place Palais, great plaza in Avignon.

There were five Popes and five "anti-Popes" during the sixty-seven years (1309-1376) that the Papacy was established in Avignon. The details of the Great Schism are matters for scholars, but the legacy of the Avignon popes is a gift to the world. The Palace was expanded during the century to its present size, which is one of the most beautiful of Gothic buildings and the largest Gothic palace in Europe (15,000 square meters). The Grand Chapel alone, which is 52 metres long, 15 metres wide and 20 metres high, with enormous windows to let in the sun, is a poem of exaltation in stone.
April 26, 2012
Nimes, the Palace of the Popes, and the Musee du Petit Palais

Faced with the choice of travelling to Nimes in the morning via train sans bicycle or with, I opt to leave the bicycle at the hotel. The choice was the right one: Nimes is a city to savor.

First off, it is remarkably clean. Its facades, made of the same ivory stone as the amphitheater in Arles, sparkle. It is also laid out on an axis leading to the Jardins de la Fontaine, past the enormous Roman theatre, L'Arene, past La Maison Carree, a Roman temple whose dimensions are square, past Les Quais de la Fontaine, the canals leading to the gardens which are plush with green.

The gardens are terraced, and lead to a summit where in 15 B.C. the Romans built Le Tour Magne, one of a chain of towers along the city's seven kilometers of ramparts. Climbing up the 140 steps is not too difficult, and the view over all of Nimes is well worth it. The gardens themselves are reminiscent of Paris' Luxembourg Gardens: beautifully laid out, with gravel walk ways, large gates with gilded decoration, they are of a piece with the rest of the city. The spirit is ancien regime, rather than medieval, as in Avignon.

Yet Rome lives on in Nimes as more than a relic, as it does in Arles. There is a statue of Augustus Caesar one of the largest squares, as well as a gate named after him; one of the streets off the Quais is called rue Agrippa, and Roman ornamentation faces of mythological beings above doorways, are common. Nimes was, along with much of Provence, one of Rome's happier conquests.

I buy two fougasses from a patisserie on the Avenue Victor Hugo, leading to the Maison Carree, but it is nothing like the one I had in Besancon: it is baked nut brown, flaky as a millefeuille, and peppered with tiny bits of ham, slightly salty. In a word: lunch. if I had to do it again, I would make Nimes my base, rather than Avignon, which despite the fascination of its history, is rough at the edges of the old town and only more so beyond.

I enjoy walking around Nimes, whose streets are straightly laid out. Walking along rue du Mareschal, the iron balconies, each one elaborately forged in lacy patterns, some with figures as well --one featuring a winged angel with breasts like Brigitte Bardot's-- is no small pleasure. In contrast with the sinuous, winding streets of Arles and Avignon, so often silent and forbidding.

***

I come back to Avignon from Nimes in the early evening. I decide to relax and visit Michel Peyaud, where I ate so well the previous night.

Dinner there turns out to be more like the Mad Hatter's tea party than a restaurant meal. I planned to spend the meal reading Le Figaro, a center-right newspaper, but it is not to be. A corpulent elderly woman from the neighborhood, braless, loose top over trousers with a broken zipper (--she shows me), comes in and is seated across the way from me, which becomes an occasion for us to spend the evening chatting. She tells me (among many other things) that she didn't vote in the first round, but may vote for Sarkozy in the second, because she thinks him very smart.

An African woman from Gabon, statuesque and dressed in stone-washed jeans and a parti-colored top, long hair, bangs, and showy jewelry, arrives and sits in the back. Some time later a tall man enters. The elderly woman, stops him dead in his tracks by saying,

"Are you looking for someone to marry?"

He says "no", politely and is seated between her and the woman from Gabon. Later I look up and see that the woman from Gabon (whom I saw eating a steak at her table) is sitting across from him at his table. Meanwhile, the elderly woman is having another glass of champagne.

"I could sit home and drink a glass of champagne, but what for? To look at myself in the mirror? One has to make the effort to go out." She is eighty-three years old and lived in Quebec with her husband, an engineer who died twenty years ago in a car crash.

She keeps saying out loud "How handsome he is!" in reference to Michel, which is very funny, because Michel is a lovely human being of great good will, but only a mother could call him handsome. It seems clear from the way the she goes on, and the way Michel goes in and out of the kitchen, nonplussed, that this scene is replayed whenever the woman comes by, which is at least once a week.

He has great patience with her, but my meal over and paid for, as I leave, he admits quietly that when she has a glass or two more, she can be tiresome. He walks me to the door of the restaurant and the street and shakes my hand before I turn to walk to my hotel. In Old France (la vielle France) --a phrase that evokes a gentler time in the country-- it was customary to do so.

***

I pack the next morning and have a few hours before the 2:16 p.m. train, which I planned so as to save the best for last: the visit to the Palace of the Popes and the Musee du Petit Palais, both on the Place Palais, great plaza in Avignon.

There were five Popes and five "anti-Popes" during the sixty-seven years (1309-1376) that the Papacy was established in Avignon. The details of the Great Schism are matters for scholars, but the legacy of the Avignon popes is a gift to the world. The Palace was expanded during the century to its present size, which is one of the most beautiful of Gothic buildings and the largest Gothic palace in Europe (15,000 square meters). The Grand Chapel alone, which is 52 metres long, 15 metres wide and 20 metres high, with enormous windows to let in the sun, is a poem of exaltation in stone.

Complementing the Palace of the Popes is the Musee du Petit Palais, also on the Place du Palais. This is a collection of paintings in the International Gothic, Italian "primitive" and Avignon Renaissance styles. There are sixteen rooms of paintings and a separate space for special exhibitions. I have never seen so many small paintings on wood or panel for private devotion.

A Boticelli Mother and Child has pride of place in one of the rooms. The painter's Mary is a delicate-featured blond girl, about to give her milk to the robust infant she holds. Boticelli depicts a Mary utterly innocent of the circumstances of the conception of her son, a child-bride. The painter suggests perhaps, that at one time Mary was barely a woman, with an infant to feed. Boticelli captures Mary looking a bit awkward as she is about to offer her milk, perhaps again hinting that as with the infant, the transformation was yet to come.