Photo by Tim Street

During some free time this morning, groups of students spent time exploring Paris on their own. The groups visited places including Sacre Couer, Notre Dame and the Louvre. The Louvre’s famous glass pyramid, designed by I.M. Pei (who also designed the IU Art Museum) is shown here.

Our last day in Paris and what a lovely day it was.

Professor Johnson gave us the morning to visit sites in small groups, so I and another grad student, Nicole Roales, headed up to Sacre Coeur in Montmartre. The area is the section of the city where artists like Vincent van Gogh and Toulouse Lautrec once spent hours debating perspective and art itself. It’s a part of Paris I’ve always wanted to visit.

One major bit of advice to pass along first – don’t take the stairs. Nicole and I decided that after the elevator in the Eiffel Tower, we were done with elevators that seem to go sideways–which the funicular that takes you up to Sacre Coeur does. So, we walked up the stairs. It seemed doable until we were halfway up and I suddenly realized my legs do not like stairs that much. Not endless stairs anyway. But, once I was up there I told my legs to stop complaining.

The view from Sacre Coeur might actually have been more enjoyable for me than that from the Eiffel Tower. You’re closer to the city, but still far enough away to get a good idea of its size and beauty. The basilica itself is one of the prettiest churches I’ve ever seen. The white stone against the green grass and blue sky is almost ethereal. Inside, rainbows danced on the church walls as the sun shining through the stained glass windows moved across the morning sky.  

Later on Nicole and I met up with the rest of the group back at the hotel and it was time for our walking tour of WWII Paris. Our guide was an American named Mike who studied psychology and seems to have an endless knowledge of the city. We saw a lot of the big sites in the city, including the Louvre, the Hotel de Ville and the Champs Elysee. My favorite part of the tour came at the beginning. 

Photo by Tim Street

Brannon Smith near Paris’ Police Headquarters, which was an important site for the French Resistance movement in WWII.

We met Mike at a bridge joining the Ile de la Cite, where Notre Dame lives, with Paris itself. Then he took us over to the memorial to French citizens deported by the Nazis during WWII. He told us it was "avant-garde" and similar to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C.

"I like it because it’s abstract," he said. "You make of it what you will."

Like the Vietnam Memorial, a hush falls over you as soon as you walk into the thing. Unlike the Wall, though, this memorial is white. Clean, clean white. In one area there are what appear to be large black abstract knives or bayonets sticking out of the wall. In a few other spots empty rooms are closed off by iron bars. What got me were the rows and rows of white stones in one section of the memorial. You don’t get close to them, you simply look through more bars, but the effect is the same. You are overwhelmed by their beauty and by how many stones there are. Thousands of them, representing all the people the Nazis deported to work camps from Paris.

In fact, I’ve found all of Paris overwhelming in a way that I never found London to be. This city is beyond beautiful. But there is another side of it I can’t quite get my head around. Not necessarily a sadness, but there are centuries of history here. Awful things happened. Beheadings. The Nazi occupation. The tug-of-war of history and beauty makes my head spin. The what-ifs and what-might-have-beens seem to hang heavy over the Seine.


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