Montparnasse

The courtyard of Reid Hall

I am really lucky that my program center is located in the the center of Paris -- at the bottom of the 5th arrondissement in a neighborhood called Montparnasse. Montparnasse is perhaps most well known for being the home of most (if not all) of the artists who lived in Paris during the 1920s. In French, these years all called "Les Annees Folles" -- the crazy years -- our equivalent of the term "Roaring 20s." Anyways, my program center is located in a building called Reid Hall (yep also my dad's name - Hi dad!) which is on the rue de Chevreuse right off the boulevard de Montparnasse. Reid Hall used to be a French duke's hunting home, because back in the day it sat right on the outskirts of Paris next to the Bois de Boulogrne, a big forest. Now, of course, it's pretty much the center of the Rive Gauche (left bank) lifestyle, but it's heyday was most certainly the 1920s. Pretty much everyone from Picasso to Man Ray to Hemingway to Gertrude Stein lived in this neighborhood, and just walking around you can look up at walls and see plaques saying things like "This was the home of Andre Breton" (founder of Surrealism) or "Here lived Pablo Picasso." Pretty neat. Near the beginning of the semester, I read Hemingway's A Movable Feast and although I love Hemingway, I found the book even more interesting because he would talk about street names I knew and walked down every day! He talked about the four famous cafes - Le Dome, La Coupole, Le Rotund, and Le Select that surround the Vavin metro station and were where all those famous artists went to discuss their work, and the Closerie des Lilas which was his favorite cafe -- one I walk by every day! It was so neat to be able to read this book and understand all of the references he was making and all of the places he was naming.

The grave of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre in the Montparnasse Cemetary

Picasso's first studio in Paris

My French class here has been loosely structured around the history and culture of Montparnasse during the 20s and each person had to do a 30 minute oral presentation about one of the artists of that time who lived in the neighborhood. Mine was on Man Ray, the famous American photographer who did "The Ingres Violin" and who's muse was Kiki de Montparnasse, the famous singer/dancer/artist's model who ruled the area during that time. Some other ones were Alberto Giacometti, Guillaume Apollinaire, Jean Cocteau, and Josephine Baker. Our teacher (this hilarious, tiny Parisienne) is really passionate and knowledgeable about the subject and took us on a walk of the neighborhood today to point out some of the interesting/historical sights. We started at La Coupole -- one of the famous cafes where these artistic greats came to talk, write, and eat great food. We got coffee and took a tour around the art-deco interior, with original paintings done by the famous artists still on the pillars. We continued on to the Montparnasse Cemetary where Man Ray, Samuel Beckett, Charles Baudelaire, Marguerite Duras and many others a buried, and then walked around and looked at artist's studios (including Picasso's first one!) and the buildings where Man Ray, Tristan Tsara, and Rainer Maria Rilke lived. It was so cool to be taken around by someone who knows the area and all of its secrets! Mme Ricci (our teacher) was also really good about casually waiting outside these famous buildings until someone with the code to get in or out would pass through, and then we would pounce on the open door and walk in to the courtyard to get a better look! Apparently one day she waited outside Picasso's studio for four hours until someone with the code walked in -- she looked over his shoulder and got the code and now, voila! access to Picasso's studio. Love it.

The Tour de Montparnasse - half covered by fog on a cloudy day.

Anyway, Montparnasse is such a fascinating neighborhood, and I'm so lucky that I get to go there practically every day. It's a surreal feeling to be walking around knowing that famous artists and writers and thinkers walked these same streets and saw these same buildings every day. Granted, the neighborhood has definitely cahnged since the 20s - there's a train station now and Western Europe's largest skyscraper -- the Tour de Montparnasse. It's an ugly thing, alright, but you can go up to the top of it (it's something like 200m tall) and get an amazing view of Paris. Well worth the 8 euros it cost to go up!

The amazing view of Paris from the top of the Tour de Montparnasse!