World's Most Important Medieval Museum and other Paris, France Things to Do Tips

The Cluny is two important museums in one. It contains the finest Roman ruin and local artefacts in Paris and it is THE MUSEUM of the Middle Ages (only the Cloisters in upper Manhattan, NYC, USA emulates it anywhere else).It contains medieval art,(except paintings) crafts and architecture (See subsequent Tips). It is housed in the Hotel de Cluny built in 1485 by the richest and powerful group of Benedictine Abbots who needed better accomodations than were usually provided to guest lecturers at the Sorbonne nearby. It was also a good place from which to recruit up and coming clerics. (The Cluniacs were the sharpest entrepreneurs of the Middle Ages).
First study the outside of the building because it is the only Gothic residence in Paris (except for recent attempts to restore the Hotel de Sens). You enter through a gateway in a crenellated security wall on the South into a trapezoidal courtyard with a rare large carved 15C stone well cover to your right. It has a wrought iron top and an unique gargoyle-like overflow. Note the Flamboyant carved stonework throughout: balustrades, mullioned windows, decorations, prominent among them are many scallop shells (the icon-logo of pilgrims who have been to Compostella) The Cluniacs were the hoteliers of the money-making tourist business (pilgrimages) and they were the employers of the builders of innumerable pilgrimage churches. Look at the turrets (one enclosing a staircase) and the fine arcade to the left. Now enter the museum through the "flame" doorway to the right.
This is the easiest and place in Paris to buy a museum pass. If you come on a Music Day (see Tip) get your free admission ticket too.
The grounds that the Cluniacs purchased included a big mound of stones from some "old buildings"; they incorporated a found east wall into their palace and some edges into their back garden facing the Blvd. St. Germain. These stones were later to be remembered as the Roman Baths.
The Chateau at Ecouen(the Musee National de la Renaissance) has Cluny holdings (from after 1500).

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Address: Pl. Paul-Painleve 6. (Metro Cluny-Sorbonne)
Directions: Where Boulevard Saint-Michel meets Boulevard Saint-Germain, walk S. 1 block, lt on rue Sommerard 1 block along the wall to the entrance.
Website: www.musee-moyenage.fr ( Eng. or Fr.)

We first became aware that the early music movement had invaded the Cluny when we visited there one Saturday afternoon in 1998. When we returned in 2001 we made sure to visit at the right time to obtain tickets (they are free, see below). This function continues to the present (see their website). The ensemble (organization?) presiding is called Ulteia. (The meaning escapes me, medieval music is anterior not ulterior). The 1 hour performance we heard in its entirety was partly vocal with various "accompaniments" and chants plus instrumental interludes, carefully sequenced. Many ancient instruments were employed. In one piece the portable organ positive was played (like the one in the Hearing scene of the Unicorn Tapestries upstairs). They were well-trained (professionals?) artists and to my untutored ear, versant in the technics of those times(there term is "precis"). I lost my program (was there one?) but I think there were "chansons" by Machaut and Landini and several others (Anon, etc). The instrumental work was monophonic unison and percussion. Although they appeared to follow scores , it must in part to have been "informed music-making",(there were no multi-instrument scores in those days) like the guitar ensembles (with voices) that my "blue-grass picking" sons perform together, unrehearsed, one or two times a year.(They too use appropriate conventions and embellishments on a common tune).
If you appreciate serious music, you should give this a try, but be aware that it is not hypnogogic like Gregorian chant. (Reading up on it helps). Early music is in ways nearer to Schonberg but easier to follow. The concerts are held in the Frigidarium (except when under repair). I will create travelogs to show more pictures of instruments

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Phone: 325.62.00
Address: Entrance: pl. Paul-Painleve, 6. 75005 Paris
Directions: Tickets obtained at desk when you enter the museum. Ask! Concerts Friday at 12:30 and Saturday at 16:00. (Weekly programs and other info on website)
Website: www.musee-moyenage.fr ( Eng. or Fr.)

Tapestry as an art form dates from the 14 C. The earliest ones on display were made in 1380 in Paris and are exhibited in a special museum in the Castle of Angers (they were of the Apocalypse and 70 remain) on the Loire. A few crude earlier ones may exist. The set of 6 about the Lady and the Unicorn are world famous (a different Unicorn set are in the Cloisters) . All are of the 1490 period. Another set of 6 of the same time but on a different subject are also in the Cluny; these are entitled “La vie seigneurale” . They all have in common a background style called “mille-fleur” (thousand flowers) suggesting that a large manufacture was at work in Flanders where they originated. There are several others of this period, including one of a grape (and wine) harvest with a presiding noble couple who are clearly “under the influence”. Besides the skills of planning and execution, the tapestries are interesting as insights into the customs and behavior of those times. The manor life set is clearly a story of proper courtship and agreement to marry. If you can give yourself enough time, you can enjoy several hours here. We have gone to the Cluny on every trip. we have made to Paris. It has broadened our appreciation for numerous other sites all over France. There are other tapestry museums in France that cover later periods (even the 20th century).

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Directions: In the museum, in the earliest rooms and later.
Website: www.musee-moyenage.fr ( Eng. or Fr.)

One enters the Roman Baths (built about 200AD) through a passage let through the wall of the Cluny Mansion into the Frigidarium, the only vaulted Roman building we have ever been in besides the Pantheon. It is not as tall, but at 14m high, it is still impressive, as are its dimensions (20x11 meters). Beyond it is the Tepidarium and underneath are hypocausts and to the south a caldarium which are only open for special visits. The whole structure was ignored until the Revolution when it found no buyers. Efforts to clear it by the government thereafter, failed from lack of funds. Du Sommerard bought the Cluny in 1832 and when he died in 1842, his son and Lenoir’s (the man who rescued the statuary of Paris) son , an architect, convinced the National Government to finance t combining the structures into a museum of Antiquities.These able men produced almost all that we now see. The stone carvings were contributed by the City and during his tenure Du Sommerard purchased all the fine tapestries.
The Paris boatman’s carving of 35 AD and another of 200AD are the most interesting but there are others of that time appropriately placed, and the stack of heads of the Kings of Judah , the originals from Notre Dame, and other such pieces add austerity to the room. This is also where the medieval music is performed (See Tip).
As can be seen in the pictures the walls are alternate levels of stones and flat clay bricks, a type of hallmark Rman construction.

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Address: Boulevard St-Michel
Directions: Where Boulevard Saint-Michel meets Boulevard Saint-Germain... couldn't be easier. Metro Cluny-Sorbonne (closer) or Saint-Michel (not far at all).

The meaning of the sixth sense in the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries has been much debated. There is another similar set with the same subject, somewhere else, so it is undoubtedly not an artefact (implying that there are no others to the set that are missing). The other five tapestries cover the base animal senses; she is instructing the lion and unicorn in the sophisticated human use of them. We think the sixth sense is animal passion (eroticism). She is about to enter the tent(“ To mine only desire”) and is saying farewell to them (they cannot go where she is going and she has no information as yet to impart to them about what humans do). Note that she is discarding her personal luxuries as well. The tapestries were probably a wedding present to grace and warm the walls of a nuptual bedroom. What do you think?

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Address: Place Paul-Panleve, 6. (in Room XIII Upstairs)
Directions: Where Boulevard Saint-Michel meets Boulevard Saint-Germain... couldn't be easier. Metro Cluny-Sorbonne (closer) or Saint-Michel (not far at all).

A special small room (VI) is devoted to very early stained glass. Although it is exciting to see this art form in situ in the buildings for which it is commisioned, it is difficult to see without binoculars(or a telephoto lens) and ideal light.. Here we see several of the oldest examples which arrived at Cluny because the churches (and their windows) no longer exist or when various ones had to be replaced in situ and the originals no longer fitted.
The earliest European stained glass windows are in Augsburg Cathedral (1170); the vogue for it was stimulated in France by Abbot Suger in the ambulatory of St. Denis (1144) a piece of it shown here(1). In the Romanesque Cathedral at Chartres stained glass was prominent (1170) and was retained and extensively added to when it was rebuilt as the Gothic marvel that it is, in the 13C. Several of the Cluny pieces are 12 and 13 C (2,3) from various churches including Ste. Chapelle.

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Address: Boulevard St-Michel
Directions: Where Boulevard Saint-Michel meets Boulevard Saint-Germain... couldn't be easier. Metro Cluny-Sorbonne (closer) or Saint-Michel (not far at all).

Even in Medieval times, there was a flourishing export (trading) market for works of art and expensive crafts. Artists were members of the goldsmith’s guild. In the Cluny there are many types of such work. Since alabaster is a soft stone, it is easily carved and overpainted A large number of religious plaques are exhibited in the room next to the glass.(3,4) These were from England. Alabaster is still worked in Volterra and Mexico and tufa in Matera. As tourists we have been tempted by everything from coasters to table lamps. In medieval times the tourists (pilgrims) to Compostella rushed to buy scallop shell-pins and other badges of metal to “prove” their visit (some of which are on display). (5) But the finest (and most valuable) is the Golden Rose of Basel (1330;Rm XVI) shown with other goldwork.( 1,2).

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Address: Boulevard St-Michel
Directions: Where Boulevard Saint-Michel meets Boulevard Saint-Germain... couldn't be easier. Metro Cluny-Sorbonne (closer) or Saint-Michel (not far at all).

This fine Flamboyant Gothic Chapel has vaulting that fans out from the central support pillar to form 12 statuary niches ( their statues were destroyed in the Revolution). The remaining stonework is worth studying. In the corner a spiral staircase and screen leads down. If you visit the garden outside , you can see where it comes out. Also there is a fine bronze eagle lectern and baptismal font plus some carved choir stall seats with good end- pieces and misericords. A whole fine church in one small room!. The tapestries are part of a set that begins and ends in adjacent rooms.

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Address: Boulevard St-Michel
Directions: Where Boulevard Saint-Michel meets Boulevard Saint-Germain... couldn't be easier. Metro Cluny-Sorbonne (closer) or Saint-Michel (not far at all).

Although a “Quartier” (quarter) refers to a neighborhood, its boundaries appear to be in the eyes of the sightseer. Guidebooks seem to never define the Latin Quarter but they should. VT is confusing too. (In New Orleans where I live, we have similar difficulties. It is called “Uptown”, “Carrollton” , “University area” and “Riverbend”--nobody will clarify this). The best working definition I can find relates the LQ to that part of the Left Bank where first the Romans and then the religious school students lived, around the Sorbonne. It is all in the 5th Arrondissement .The area starts in the NE at the Place Maubert (Metro) runs along Blvd St. Germain to “the Boul Mich’ (Metro), South along the Boul to r. Gay-Lussac, then East to where r. Thouin meets r. Descartes at the edge of the Pl. Contrescarpe and then back North. By this definition the Churches St. Julien and St, Severin are in the St. Severin Quarter which at its Northwest looks out on the Fontaine St.-Michel., behind which the street leads directly to St. Germain des Pres (this is another Quartier).
The pl. de la Sorbonne is the “second campus”of the University and is lined by bars, cafes and shops with lots of outdoor tables and the Church at the East end. A monument to August Comte(1798-1857) sits near the middle. He was a positivist philosopher and mathematician, the father sociology, fired from his post at the Sorbonne for his ideas but now very obviously reinstated. A jazz group usually appears in the early evening.
The area includes these sites: Pantheon, the Churches Sorbonne and St.-Etienne-du-Mont, lots of schools and the Cluny. Each of these has its own tip category.

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The Chapel of the Sorbonne was designed by Lemercier (1635-42) on commission of Cardinal Richelieu (who is buried inside). The main entrance faces the Place and is 2 order-level Jesuit in style. A more magnificent entrance is on the north and faces a large enclosed courtyard which is the “main campus” of the University. The dome (1641-5) was the fifth one erected in Paris. A pair of fine statues stand at each end of the top of the facade but I cannot find out who they are (protectors?). Entrance into the Chapel is restricted to special exhibition times and for a Mass on the anniversary of Richelieu’s death.

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Directions: Metro Line 10 : Cluny-La Sorbonne