Monday: June 21
Sorbonne /
Musée de Cluny
Four very interesting places. The Sorbonne is a University, and when you read about it, you will discover the name is much misused. Never-the-less, we go by there often; it is a nice area and the restaurants in the area are especially good. You can look and admire the school from the outside, but you cannot go in - guards let only badged people inside. This makes sense as it is an active school and they don't want tourists distracting or disrupting the classes. While there once, we met a retired professor who offerred to get us in and give us a tour. What a treat. We sait in two different classes and toured the facility. You'll see pictures from the inner court. What a treat...for those of us not in school anymore.
The Musee de Cluny is a nice old museum covering the Moyen age. The building is interesting; the collection is something you have to like. Sema likes it, so I guess it was worth it. You look at the picture - I'm not so sure what is so special about the Lady and the Unicorn; but it is very very special. Two block from the Sorbonne.
The
Musée de la Vie
Romantique
Sorbonne
The name Sorbonne (La Sorbonne) is commonly used to refer to the historic
University of Paris in Paris, France or one of its successor institutions (see
below), but this is a recent usage, and "Sorbonne" has actually been used with
different meanings over the centuries.
For information on the historic University of Paris and the present
universities, which are its successor institutions or the Collège de Sorbonne,
please refer to the relevant articles.
The name is derived from the Collège de Sorbonne, founded in 1253 by Robert de
Sorbon as one of the first significant colleges of the medieval University of
Paris; the university as such predates the college by about a century, and minor
colleges had been founded already in the late 12th century. The Collège de
Sorbonne was suppressed during the French revolution, reopened by Napoleon in
1808 and finally closed in 1882. This was only one of the many colleges of the
University of Paris that existed until the French revolution. Hastings Rashdall,
in The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages (1895), which is still a
standard reference on the topic, lists some 70 colleges of the university from
the Middle Ages alone; some of these were short-lived and disappeared already
before the end of the medieval period, but others were founded in the Early
modern period, like the Collège des Quatre-Nations.
With time, the college came to be the centre of theological studies and
"Sorbonne" was frequently used as a synonym for the Paris Faculty of Theology
despite being only one of many colleges of the university.
In 1970, the University of Paris was divided into thirteen different
universities. These universities still stand under the management of a common
rectorate – the Rectorate of Paris - with offices in the Sorbonne. Four of these
universities currently include the name "Sorbonne" in their names or are
affiliated with the Sorbonne:
·
Panthéon-Sorbonne University (Paris I), which also houses the observatory of the
Sorbonne and the Sorbonne Law School.
·
Sorbonne Nouvelle University (Paris III)
·
Paris-Sorbonne University (Paris IV)
·
Paris Descartes University: Faculté des Sciences Humaines et Sociales - Sorbonne
(Paris V)
These four public universities maintain facilities in the historical building of
the Sorbonne. The building also houses the Rectorate of Paris, the École
Nationale des Chartes, the École pratique des hautes études, the Cours de
Civilisation Française de la Sorbonne and the Library of the Sorbonne.
Click here to see other pictures....
Click here to see other pictures....
Musée de Cluny
The Musée de Cluny, officially known as Musée National du Moyen Âge (National
Museum of the Middle Ages), is a museum in Paris, France. It is located in the
5th arrondissement at 6 Place Paul Painlevé, south of the Boulevard Saint-Germain,
between the Boulevard Saint-Michel and the Rue Saint-Jacques.
Among the principal holdings of the museum are the six La Dame à la Licorne (The
Lady and the Unicorn) tapestries, from the late fifteenth century, often
considered one of the greatest works of art of the Middle Ages in Europe.
The structure is perhaps the most outstanding example still extant of civic
architecture in medieval Paris. It was formerly the town house (hôtel) of the
abbots of Cluny, started in 1334. The structure was rebuilt by Jacques
d'Amboise, abbot in commendam of Cluny 1485-1510; it combines Gothic and
Renaissance elements. In 1843 it was made into a public museum, to contain
relics of France's Gothic past preserved in the building by Alexandre du
Sommerard.
Though it no longer possesses anything originally connected with the abbey of
Cluny, originally the hôtel, was part of a larger Cluniac complex that also
included a building (no longer standing) for a religious college in the Place de
la Sorbonne (just south of the present day Hôtel de Cluny along Boulevard
Saint-Michel). Although originally intended for the use of the Cluny abbots, the
residence was taken over by Jacques d'Amboise, Bishop of Clermont and Abbot of
Jumièges, and rebuilt to its present form in the period of 1485-1500. Occupants
of the house over the years have included Mary Tudor, who was installed here
after the death of her husband Louis XII by his successor Francis I of France in
1515 so he could watch her more closely, particularly to see if she was
pregnant. Seventeenth-century occupants included several papal nuncios including
Mazarin.
In 1793 it was confiscated by the state, and for the next three decades served
several functions. At one point it was owned by a physician who used the
magnificent Flamboyant chapel on the first floor as a dissection room.
In 1833 Alexandre du Sommerard moved here and installed
here his large collection of medieval and Renaissance objects.
Upon his death in 1842 the collection was purchased
by the state and opened in 1843, with his son as the museum's first curator. The
present gardens, opened in 1971, include a "Forêt de la Licorne" inspired by the
tapestries.
The Hôtel de Cluny is partially constructed on the remains of Gallo-Roman baths
dating from the third century (known as the Thermes de Cluny ), which are famous
in their own right and which may still be visited. In fact, the museum itself
actually consists of two buildings: the frigidarium ("cooling room"), where the
remains of the Thermes de Cluny are, and the Hôtel de Cluny itself, which houses
its impressive collections.
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Musée de la Vie Romantique
The Musée de la Vie Romantique (Museum of Romantic Life) stands at the foot of
Montmartre hill in the IXe arrondissement at 16 rue Chaptal, Paris, France in an
1830 hôtel particulier facing two twin-studios, a winter-garden and a charming
courtyard. The museum is open daily except Monday; an admission fee is charged
for temporary exhibitions.
The museum building was once the Paris base of the painter Ary Scheffer
(1795-1858) and was also used by Ary Renan, his grand nephew. For decades
Scheffer and his daughter hosted Friday-evening salons, among the most famous in
La Nouvelle Athènes. George Sand (1804-1876) used to come as a neighbour with
Frédéric Chopin, meeting Eugène Delacroix, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres,
Alphonse de Lamartine, Pauline Viardot. Later in the century, Charles Dickens,
Ivan Turgueniev and Charles Gounod attended regularly.
Today the museum displays numerous mementos of George Sand, including portraits,
household possessions, jewelry with famous plaster casts of Sand's sensuous arm
and Chopin's elegant right hand. It also has material linked to Ary Renan's
father, the scholar Ernest Renan. It is now one of the City of Paris's three
literary museums, along with the Maison de Balzac and the Maison de Victor Hugo.
Of particular interest are some 170 documents related to Sand's life.
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Musée Jacquemart-André
The Musée Jacquemart-André is a public museum located at 158 Boulevard Haussmann
in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. The museum was created from the private home
of Édouard André (1833 - 1894) and Nélie Jacquemart to display the art they
collected during their lives.
Edouard André, the scion of a Protestant banking family, devoted his
considerable fortune to buying works of art. He then exhibited them in his new
mansion built in 1869 by the architect Henri Parent, and completed in 1875.
He married a well-known society painter, Nélie Jacquemart, who had painted his
portrait 10 years earlier. Every year, the couple would travel in Italy,
amassing one of the finest collections of Italian art in France. When Edouard
André died, Nélie Jacquemart completed the decoration of the Italian Museum and
travelled in the Orient to add more precious works to the collection. Faithful
to the plan agreed with her husband, she bequeathed the mansion and its
collections to the Institut de France as a museum, and it opened to the public
in 1913.
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