Musee Des Arts Et Metiers

While Vicki rested that evening, I walked over to the Musee des Arts et Metiers for its free Friday evening hours. This is a museum of the history of science and technology, housed in a huge former abbey (became available after 1789) that is just a block away. It brings you up to date science-wise, sort of, although I suspect the most recent stuff is up in the Parc Villette. Anyhow, I'd been wanting to see the nearby Musee for some time, mostly out of appreciation for France's role in the Enlightenment and in the growth of science and technology. Also because I read Umberto Eco's creepy Foucault's Pendulum some years ago, and the Musee des Arts et Metiers is where the pendulum was, and is. The displays are mostly old-fashioned, as one would expect in a building complex that is centuries old (so is the Musee itself), and my visit was hampered by the fact I don't know much science and technology*, and that the Musee's descriptions and explanations are mostly in French.  I have brutally reduced the number of pix to fit into one long post. The items rejected are nearly as important or interesting, historically, as those retained.

Just a couple of the principal buildings; someone else's photo:
it was a dark and stormy night when I was there

Big abbey, now big museum

Can't do much science or technology without measuring or 
counting things; the first big hall in the museum is about developing
the instruments for this and the standardization necessary; here,
astrolabes

Weights

Volumes

Temperature

Time

A whole huge hall of these and other measuring-type things...

Pascal's computing machines

Lavoisier's laboratory...father of chemistry

Device for determining and measuring the outputs of combustion 

Moving right along...a 1937 cyclotron

Cray computer (remember them?)

Electron microscope

From about this point the museum is organized into various topics...

machines, manufacturing, communication, energy, transportation...here 

an early loom among the machines

A large display on the history, development, and manufacturing
of cardboard boxes

Construction models aplenty, showing design and technique

The earliest magic lanterns

Stereo!

The Marly machine, 1684, which lifted water from the Seine and
sent it on its way to the lakes, ponds, and fountains of Versailles

Halls and halls of these things

In a theatre of automata...among others, Marie Antoinette's 1784
dulcimer-playing puppet

Clement Ader's Avion III, a canvas, twin (steam) engined, bat-
shaped heavier-than-air craft, later 1890s; crashed, taxiing; 
if nothing else, established the word avion as the French term
for airplane

Model of an early Stephenson locomotive

Velocipides...developed not much earlier than cars and planes;

but not trains

Peugeot Quadricycle; gasoline engine powered; 1893; gee, why didn't
the term "quadricycle" stick?

Wind-tunnel version and model of the TGV ("train of great
velocity")

Now into the final big hall, that is, the former church of the former
abbey...with planes, cars, statues, and a pendulum

Model for the Statue of Liberty

Renault Formula I of note

Bleriot and other early aircraft

And Foucault's Pendulum

It was after regular hours when I finished up, and the gift shop
was already closed; but I exited anyway

*My last (and first) scientific endeavor was in 1963 or so, after 10th grade, when I held a Heart Association summer fellowship at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Miami, under Dr. Nancy Noble, who also taught at the U of M. For the better part of the summer, I subjected radiated chicken embryo bits to the centrifuge and then analyzed whatever came out...resulting in a paper entitled "Mucopolysaccharide Synthesis at the Cell Particle Level," which she mostly wrote but put my name on. I also learned the meaning of the term "stipend" and got $300 for my efforts, which was a lot of money for a kid in those days. Nonetheless, from this experience, I think I began to see I was not cut out for the tedium and teamwork of science. Reading history, literature, philosophy, and religion seemed a lot more fun, plus you didn't have to get your hands dirty. Or have your results replicated.

Saint-Eustache Church

One day we walked down the Rue de Petit Carreaux all the way to the Seine (and then back on the Rue Saint-Denis), stopping at the huge, mostly underground Les Halles Forum shopping center, but also at the Saint-Eustache church. We'd briefly visited this church twice before, in 2014 and then in 2019. It's the largest church around, actually larger than Notre Dame, if interior height counts. Although a parish church had been on the site from the middle ages, St. Eustache as we now know it is from the 16th century--one almost wants to call it neo-Gothic--and "blends" the Gothic with Renaissance and classical elements. Most people don't like this church, because of its apparent confusion of styles. I can't say I like it, but I have always found it intriguing, and worth a stop. Since Notre Dame de Paris burned two years ago, many of the larger ecclesiastical activities have moved to Saint-Eustache. Oh yes, Saint Eustache is the one about the guy on a hunting trip who saw a cross between a deer's antlers and thus converted to Christianity. Perhaps he was pre-disposed. Strangely, this reminds me of the adage that, once you see Cookie Monster, you can't unsee Cookie Monster. Perhaps I had too many digestive cookies in Britland.

One of the initial attractions for me was the prospect

of seeing this Emmaus painting, now merely

"attributed" to Rubens

In the ambulatory, great height

Among the windows, the education of Saint Louis

Sybils still very much in fashion, though not the twisty ones

Perhaps another reason people don't like this

church: it's not cruciform; also, it's not a Mary

church (that name had already been taken...)

Polychrome Pieta

Knave view: great height

Altar and choir

The great organ

Rose window

Up closer

Color coded...

One of the larger, higher sun dials we've seen

Fountainebleau, 2: Chateau And Grounds

Fountainebleau goes back pretty deep into the middle ages (Thomas Becket consecrated the initial Trinitaire chapel; he was passing through on his way to see the Pope), initially as a royal hunting lodge, then a royal chateau on which seemingly every French monarch has left his mark. Eight hundred years of additions, demolitions, renovations, redecorations...seemingly every room with a bit of history. All the furniture was taken and auctioned off during the Revolution, but refurnished by Napoleon III and then the public custodians of the place. Just as every room has its history, or histories, every room's furniture and decor is a bit of a melange...some Renaissance, some Louis XIV, some 19th century. (Didn't see any art nouveau). Anyhow, there's no continuous narrative thread for all this, unless you know a lot more French history than I do. 

You'll see paintings of the School of Fountainebleau in many of
the great museums of Europe; this of the 16th century duchessses
of Villars and Beaufort (and the wet nurse) 

Napoleon graciously invited the pope to attend
his coronation as emperor; then held him hostage
some months at Fountainbleau until he was willing
to sign a concordat; this was his bed chamber

Anne of Austria's bed chamber; Louis XIV's mom

Gallery of Francis I; Francois Premier brought the Renaissance
to France, with works like this, and in bringing Leonardo to France
as well

Some details of wood work, painting, etc., in the
Francis I Gallery; it was, at the time, early 16th,
France's greatest hall

Francis I

Somehow, we missed the the great ballroom, an addition by Henry II;
either it was closed or we missed a turn; anyhow, thanks, Wikipedia,
for a great article on Fountainebleau 

Louis XIII salon

Interior courtyard moving from one wing to another

I have a similar photo from 1979; love the "N"
on the grill work

The Diana Gallery; originally Henry IV, then Napoleon, then 
Louis XVIII--now a library, closed off from the tour

The Empress' Great Salon; formerly Marie Antoinette's...

The Empress' Chamber; from Marie de Medici to Empress Eugenie,
all the queens of France occupied this room

Napoleon's throne at Fountainebleau

Napoleonic council table

Napoleonic bed chamber

The abdication room and table--not a copy--where Napoleon
abdicated in 1814

Looking into the (closed) Trinitaire chapel

Exiting via the gift shop

Now venturing out onto the immense grounds

In the English garden

Until a humongous thunderstorm came along and ended our visit