City Breaks

Five more inspiring city break ideas from our listeners.  Find out which cities they recommended and why.  Perhaps there is something on the list to tempt you to book your next city break! https://citybreakspodcast.co.uk

Enjoy a virtual visit to St Petersburg, a tour which refers to websites, YouTube videos and books to tell you about the cultural and historical aspects of the city. Fly by drone over St Petersburg, both in winter splendour and during the White Nights, pay virtual visits to the Hermitage and the Memorial to the defenders of Leningrad 'meet' Catherine the Great and Pushkin, find out how to make Russ...

This is our 100th episode, and after a small celebration of that and some bits and pieces of City Breaks news, we offer you more city break inspiration, via listener suggestions and the fruits of our research.  Prepare to feel like booking a trip! https://www.citybreakspodcast.co.uk

If an actual trip to Munich isn't possible just now, you can always enjoy this virtual visit instead. Go on a tour of websites, YouTube videos, books and films which will whet your appetite for the cultural and historical aspects of the city.  Pay virtual visits to the Residenz and the main art galleries, 'meet' Ludwig II and his best friend Wagner, then spend the evening relaxing at the Hofbrauha...

What kind of city break do you enjoy most? Which city would you like to visit next? Here are five tempting possibilities to consider. https://www.citybreakspodcast.co.uk

You can't go to Florence right now.  But there's nothing to stop you going on a virtual visit and this episode will tell you all about the best resources to help you do just that.  Hear about the websites, videos and books through which you can imagine yourself in Florence, and maybe  reminisce a little, or start planning your next actual visit. https://www.citybreakspodcast.co.uk

A last look at Paris, this time through the eyes of authors who have set their work there. Four different novelists take us from the observation of murder and its aftermath in dingy 19th century back-street Paris, to an insider’s view of an elegant 21st century apartment block and its inhabitants. We look too at some short story collections, further extending the range of writing styles, eras and...

News on what the plans are for the continuation of City Breaks during the coronavirus pandemic. https://www.citybreakspodcast.co.uk  

A look at Paris through history books and historical novels, offering plenty of reading ideas to inspire your next visit!  Biographies of Queen Marie Antoinette or of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir can provide plenty of background material.  So too can fiction set in the past, such as Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, or Robert Harris’ treatment of the Dreyfus Affair, An Officer and...

This episode sets out to enjoy the work of a number of writers who loved Paris and wrote their memoirs about living or working there. Hear some gossip from 17th century high society via the pen of Mme de Sévigny, enjoy the reminiscences of past writers like Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell and find out about life in more contemporary Paris as experienced by the writer Adam Gopnik or the chef and...

We visit the two best-known literary museums in Paris, the Maison de Balzac in the 16th district and the Maison de Victor Hugo in the Place des Vosges and give an idea of what there is to see in each. In addition, brief biographical notes for each author are coupled with extracts to give a flavour of their work, from Eugène de Balzac's novels Père Goriot and Eugénie Grandet and from Victor Hugo's...

Visits to the Panthéon, where Paris pays homage to France's most respected citizens, and to the city's cemeteries are always fascinating. The world's most-visited cemetery, the Père Lachaise, contains the graves of, for example, Oscar Wilde and Edith Piaf, those in Montparnasse and Montmartre are also the last resting place of many famous writers, musicians and artists. We also take in Passy, the...

'The last time I saw Paris, her heart was warm and gay. I heard the laughter of her heart in every street café.' (Oscar Hammerstein II). Paris welcomes you to its corner cafes, its bistros and its restaurants. Discover the history of the Paris café, with its properly attired waiters, its bread baskets and its cluster of little tables, spilling their contents onto the pavements. Find out about the...

Shopping in Paris is always a delight, whether you are popping to a local food market to choose some of the very best seasonal produce, wandering the 'passages', the maze of little covered shopping arcades dating from the nineteenth century or visiting one of the high-end department stores whose art deco interiors and piled-high top brands lure visitors from all over the world. From the macaroons...

A rundown of some of the events and 'happenings' in Paris which celebrate modern art, plus a visit to three of the big hitter museums where you can see 20th and 21st century works: the National Museum of Modern Art in the Pompidou Centre, the City of Paris Museum of Modern Art and the Musée Picasso. To finish off, some ideas on other places to enjoy contemporary art in all its many forms, be that...

The world's grandest art gallery, the Louvre's enormity presents both a pleasure and a challenge. It is said that it would take a hundred days to see everything, if you stopped at each exhibit for 30 seconds. So this is a whistle-stop and rather esoteric tour, stopping off at some pointers to French history and at some representative examples of the best of French painting, with also a very quick...

The Parisian district of St Germain oozes class and intellectual allure, being home to the Sorbonne, and also to some of the big publishing houses, the Académie Française, proud guardian of the French language, and the lovely Luxembourg Gardens, so fondly described in many a memoir. This pot-pourri of an episode also considers the area's political importance as the home of the Assemblée Nationale...

This episode looks at two of the loveliest ways to see Paris, wandering along the Seine and strolling down the Champs Elysées. Informed by a little history, some travel writing and a snatch or two of poetry, we take a closer look at some of the famous places you will pass on these two routes. We also make time for such highly Parisian details as the role of the bouquinistes and the reason why the...

A well-known Parisian saying tells us that the right bank may be for spending and shopping ('La rive droite dépense'), but that the left bank is for more intellectual pursuits ('La rive gauche pense'). This episode looks at the Quarter Latin, where the city's best known university, the Sorbonne, has its roots and at Montparnasse, the adopted home of many of the 20th century's best-known writers, b...

There are still signs of 'les années noires' (the dark years) of German occupation in Paris to be found all over the city, for example the many plaques in memory of fallen Resistance fighters and of deported Jewish Parisians, which can be spotted on buildings everywhere. This episode offers a little history, some testimonies from the time and a pointer to two institutions where you can learn much...

Can there be a city and an art movement more intertwined than Paris and impressionism? Home to many of the movement's best-known artists, Paris itself was often the subject of their paintings, whether lovely views of the city like Pissarro's Boulevard Montmartre on a Wintry Afternoon or canvases capturing Parisians at leisure, such as Renoir's Bal du Moulin de la Galette. This tour of impressionis...

Impressionist painters, the Folies Bergères, the city’s art-deco style metro stations and its grandest cafes all date from the Belle Époque, the 40 year period so well captured in Toulouse Lautrec’s quintessentially Parisian posters. It is the era when the Opéra Garnier, the Eiffel Tower and the Galéries Lafayette were built, a time when Paris seemed to be the centre of the civilised world. The ep...

We look first at Montmartre as one of the centres of the Paris Commune. After a visit to the Basilique de Sacré Coeur, built in commemoration of the city's suffering, we consider the other important aspect of the area, its artistic heritage and a visit to the Musée de Montmartre will illuminate the lives of the artists who lived and worked here, as well as the goings-on in such well-known venues a...

This look at Napoleon's Paris focuses on the Emperor himself and the buildings most closely connected with him: the Arc de Triomphe, begun under his own instructions in 1805 to mark his victory at Austerlitz; the Invalides, where not just his hat and his field equipment, but also his imposing tomb are on display; and the lovely Château de Malmaison, the country retreat he bought for Josephine a fe...

1789, the defining moment in the history of Paris, is the focus of today's episode. Of course, the Bastille prison no longer exists, but we can visit the Conciergerie, where Marie-Antoinette and so many of her subjects were imprisoned, the Place de la Concorde, one of the sites where revolutionaries executed several thousand people in their quest to overthrow the authorities and the Musée Carnaval...