Meet Marianne and the Many Faces of the French Republic

If you’ve stepped foot in France you have probably seen her, the beautiful woman wearing the odd hat who is adorned on French euro coins, stamps, wine bottles, and many other places. This woman was one of many country personifications that used to be prominent figures for their countries, but have sadly faded into obscurity. That is…

Our Zoom Date with a Paris Catacombs Explorer

Welcome to our Q&A with the fabulously entertaining Alexander J.E. Bradley – an artist and urban explorer whose mastery of the Paris catacombs has led us down many a rabbit hole (you may recall our trip to his underground catacombs cinema to watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show one Halloween). If you missed the live…

The Art of the 1960s Paris Riots

Over half a century ago, change was brewing in Paris. Right outside my window in the Latin Quarter, from where I write this post to you, violent street battles were turning the city upside down and bringing the country to a standstill. They joke about how the French love to protest and go on strike as if it were…

How Humans Have Toyed with Time

Who dictates Time? Depends on who you ask, and in what century. Like us, you probably rely on a Western, 365 day calendar to tell you that today, it’s such and such date in 2020 AD. But if you asked a French Revolutionary, “Year 1” began in 1789. And if you asked an American Kodak…

How Does a 10 Day Week Sound? The French Tried It For 13 Years

It’s the Year 232, cccording to the French Republican Calendar. If a wine’s vintage is decided by the year the grapes were harvested, wouldn’t it be fitting for France to celebrate the New Year at harvest time? At the turn of the 19th century, that’s just what France did. With the rise of the First…

There’s Even a Club for Impoverished French Aristocrats

As the story goes, in 1932, a family of wealthy French aristocrats were waiting to board a train in Paris when they realised that the porter carrying their luggage was one of their own – a fellow aristocrat, that is – who had fallen on hard times. Faced with the reality that such an unthinkable…

A Brief History of the Mom & Pop Business of Public Execution

In Paris, when his father died in 1644, Louis Desmorest inherited his family’s execution business at the age of 10. His mother had been part of an established execution family that had been in business for the past 100 years. Desmorest’s mother’s clan also hatched the most notable of all the execution families, the Sansons,…

The Vault

George Washington’s Dinner Table Is Still Set in This Manhattan Tavern

Fraunces Tavern is a whisky-soaked lesson in some of the weirdest, most wonderful moments of American history . It was the go-to spot for all Revolutionary festivities, from the farewell dinner that a certain George Washington held for his officers in 1783, to the “Evacuation Day” party thrown by the governor once the British split. Whether it was…

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She Was Marie-Antoinette’s Favorite Painter

What if we told you that just about every painting you’ve seen of Marie-Antoinette was created by a woman? Overlooked for two hundred years, Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun was one of the most celebrated portraitists of the late 1700s. She painted all of the most glamorous women of the Versailles court and some of the most…

Before the Internet, there was the 1960s Dial-a-Poem Hotline

On any given night in 1970, a teen somewhere in rural America could dial a number and hear the radical wisdom of Patti Smith, John Cage, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Bourroughs – the list of poets was long, and painfully hip. One needed only the ten sacred digits of “Dial-a-Poem,” a revolutionary hotline that connected…