January 15 is the patronal feast of my favorite parish in Paris: St. Sulpice in the Latin Quarter. It has a terrific organ - the second largest in Paris.
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Carles-Marie Widor played it for 63 years. They always have a recital before and after the principal mass, with organist, Daniel Roth. And today they have a concert in the afternoon, too:
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Like the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna, it has a meridian line on the floor. For convenience, many large churches installed these in the Renaissance, as an aid to scientific calculations about the size and motion of the earth. St. Sulpice posts the following disclaimer, in response to the fantasies of Dan Brown:
The "meridien" line materialized by a brass inlay in the pavement of this church is part of a scientific instrument built here during the 18th century. This was done in full agreement with Church authorities by the astronomers in charge of the newly-built Paris Observatory. They used it for defining various parameters of the earth's orbit. Similar arrangements have been made, for the sake of convenience, in other large churches like the Bologna cathedral, where Pope Gregory XIII had preparatory studies made for the enactment of the present, "Gregorian" calendar.
Contrary to fanciful allegations in a recent bestselling novel, this is not the vestige of a pagan temple. No such temple ever existed in this place. It was never called a "Rose Line." It does not coincide with the meridian traced through the middle of the Paris Observatory which serves as a reference for maps where longitudes are measured in degrees East or West of Paris. No mystical notion can be derived from this instrument of astronomy except to acknowledge that God the Creator is the master of time.
Please also note that the letters "P" and "S" in the small round windows at both ends of the transept refer to Peter and Sulpice, the patron saints of the church, not an imaginary "Priory of Sion."
The baroque building was erected during the reign of Louis XIV. the distinguished Abbé whose project it was used to accept lots of dinner invitations from wealthy people, who always found silver missing after his visits. It is said that helped build the church!
After Mass, I walked over to the little square just down the hill from the Odeon theater in the Luxembourg Garden to find that the Horse Tavern was closed for remodeling. It is an Irish bar, but it has a fine choucroute alsacienne.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: pork belly (fat bacon) frankfurter, smoked porkchop, rindwurst
So, I settled for Les Éditeurs across the street, which had a nice brunch (nothing special).
This is the book-shop part of town, near the University, hence the library theme. It is also the neighborhood of the famous Shakespeare & Co., which was associated with Hemmingway and others in the '20s - not to be confused with its equally-venerable namesake founded by the recently-deceased George Whitman.
Old shop then
| and now |
I figured out how to take the bus from Suresnes, avoiding the metro (too many stairs). And you see allot more, of course. My route takes me through the Bois de Boulogne
To Porte Maillot
| Convention center on the left, Avenue de la Grande Armee and the Arc d'Triomphe at the top, my bus can be seen at the lower-right-hand corner |
On through the fashionable 16th to the Place Victor Hugo
and Trocadero
Then across the Pont d'Iena
past the Tour Eiffel
and the Hotel des Invalides (Louis XIV's old soldiers' home, to which Napoleon III added the tomb of his uncle)
and up to the Gare Montparnasse
and finally to the Jardin de Luxembourg, named for the palace built for a queen, which now houses the Senate.
(This is not how it looks this time of the year!)
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