Barbara Cooley's Paris Journal

Paris Journal 2013 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com

Find me on Facebook 2012 Paris Journal ← Previous Next → Back to the Beginning

Often, the best parts of our walks are unplanned. We start with a plan, such as, “Let’s go see the Hôtel Donon/Musée Cognacq-Jay in the 3^rd arrondissement!”

We hop on the metro, and off we go to 8 rue Elzévir. We spend an hour or two in the wonderful museum of 18^th Century art. If we tire before we see quite everything in the museum, it doesn’t matter. Admission is free in the municipal museums, like this one. We can come back on any day, except Mondays and national holidays like the Assumption.

After the museum part comes the unplanned part. Well, there is a vague plan of walking back more or less in the direction of “our” apartment, which is way over in the 15^th arrondissement.

First, however, Tom needs refreshments. We checked out the hôtel particulier right next door to the museum. Something was happening there, and the garden of this stately home appeared to be open to the public.

When we entered the garden, we found that it is the home of the Swedish Institute. The institute has decided to offer light refreshments for sale at reasonable prices in its garden. The fare consists of bottled water; piping hot, big (for France) cups of coffee; homemade meringue cookies; and very reasonably priced homemade sorbets and ice creams.

After purchasing refreshments at a window on the garden, there are plenty of benches, tables and chairs scattered about where one can sit and partake of the sun, greenery, peace, and refreshments.

The entrepreneurial Swedes even had a card table and umbrella set up near the garden gate; they sold books and postcards there.

When we’d finished enjoying the Swedish hospitality, we walked back around to the rue Payenne side of the Hôtel Donon to admire its garden again.

The Hôtel Donon was in a derelict state in 1974 (the year after I graduated from high school and the year before Tom visited Paris for the first time). The City of Paris acquired it and began the long process of restoration.

In 1974, the Samaritaine department store closed, and the question was what to do about the Cognacq-Jay collection of 18^th Century art that Ernest Cognacq had bequeathed to the City in 1928. Ever since 1929, the museum had been housed in one of the Samaritaine buildings, which was probably way too small for the collection.

The Hôtel Donon, which dates back to the late 1500s, seemed like a good solution. Although the original home is older than the collection, much of what we see today in the building dates back only to the 1700s. So it is an ideal home for this collection. Finally, in 1990, the work was completed and the collection moved to its current location in the stately home part of the Marais.

It had been years since we’d visited this museum. We hardly remembered it, but as we went through the rooms, one by one, some of them came back to me. I remembered this gallery of Canaletto paintings, or that collection of Sevres porcelain, or this row of exquisite little tables with intricately inlaid wood designs.

Much has changed about the management of City of Paris museums over the years we’ve been coming to Paris, so we decided that it is time for us to revisit them all – or at least, most of them. The change in management structure for the City of Paris museums was just finished in January of this year.

The rules are now the same in all of them, I think. For example, when we went into the Musée Cognacq Jay, I went to the ticket desk and said, “Bonjour. S’il vous plait, deux, pour les collections permanentes,” just like I do at the Petit Palais. (Even though admission is free for the permanent collections, you still must go to the desk and get a ticket. That’s the rule.)

When we were saturated and finished with museums for the day (one is our daily limit), we wandered down to the rue des Rosiers, and walked through its thick crowd of tourists from beginning to end. We took the rue Vieille du Temple past the mairie (town hall) for the 4^th arrondissement, and then we found that we were in front of the church of Saint-Gervais-et-Saint-Protais, usually just called “Saint Gervais.”

Several years ago was the last time we’d seen this church. So we entered, and were amazed once again and the grand beauty of this place of worship.

The church has a grand Clicquot organ (as well as a smaller Daublaine-Callinet organ in the choir area), and was home to the Couperin family of organists/harpsicordists/composers for a long time. It is well known for its music program.

There has been some sort of church on this site ever since the 4^th century. Construction of the current ediface started in 1494, and finished some 150 years later. The many stained glass windows range in age from the early years of the 16^th century all the way through the 20^th century. Statues, carvings, and paintings in the church are phenomenal.

I hope you enjoy these photos of this beautiful place. As regular readers of this journal know, I do not ever use a flash in a church, so this is all I can do with my Nikon Coolpix S8100, which is now at least three years old, I think. (Time for a new camera next summer.)

While the French Wikipedia contains a more thorough overview of this church, there was one interesting nugget in the English Wikipedia entry. It states that this church has an ecumenical tradition in its liturgy, with Lutheran hymns, and Orthodox troparia (Byzantine hymns with one stanza). And of course, Judaism is still very present in this neighborhood of the Marais, even though, as one historical plaque told us, the majority of the Jewish residents living there at the time of World War II perished in concentration camps.

The Saint Gervais church is the headquarters of the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem, Wikipedia tells us. It is an order of monks who live life in an urban context, and who generally work part-time in jobs outside of the church.

We eventually left the church and started in the direction of “home” again, stopping in along the way at a large bookstore on the boulevard Saint Germain which sells only graphic novels (formerly called “comic books,” but many of these have hard covers, unlike the comic books of my childhood). The store had two big levels, chock full of graphic novels, all in French. Is there an equivalent store in New York selling graphic novels in English, I wonder?

Once again, at Mabillon, we decided to take the metro home because of the time. After resting and refreshing at the apartment, I made a reservation via lafourchette.com at Tandoori Nights on the rue Letelier. We needed to find a new, favorite place for Indian food. Restaurant Banani, while beautiful, is not quite what it used to be. Tandoori Nights is new; we had to check it out.

Even though we’d made the reservation last-minute, the waiter knew about it when we arrived at 8PM. Only one other couple was in the dining room when we arrived, and one table was occupied on the sidewalk outside.

But more people came, filling up the sidewalk tables. Then a very dark-skinned Indian family of six entered the dining room, and as they settled down at their seats, I thought, “We’ve come to the right place.”

Indeed, we had. The korma and biryani were excellent, and seemed to be very authentic. The naan was piping hot, right out of the oven, and wonderful. Because of the lafourchette.com deal of 40 percent off when ordering two courses each, we had to order dessert. So I experienced the best raspberry sorbet I’ve ever had. Tom had his second dish of ice cream for the day (the first was at the Swedish Institute), and he loved it.

We felt wonderful as we walked home through the neighborhood, with skies darkening, days shortening.

Parisian days, Tandoori Nights. Amen.