Paris in Bleu Blonde Rouge

The first time I visited the Château de Chantilly, it was raining sideways. It was still beautiful, but last week, on a peak sunny autumn day, the visit was perfection, and I went for one reason: to see two diamonds.  The beautiful château is a quick 20-minute train ride from Paris, yet few people make the trip. The Renaissance château dates back to the 14th century, but most of what you see today...

It rises from one of Paris's most symbolic places and predates the city itself.  The Luxor Obelisk and its pair date to the 13th century BC and were commissioned by Ramses II.   On October 25, 1836, 190 years ago this week, Louis-Philippe erected and inaugurated the long-awaited obelisk in the center of the Place de la Concorde, the virtual epicenter of Paris.  But how did it get here, and wh...

One year ago today, the unthinkable happened. On a quiet Sunday morning, as Paris woke up, four thieves pulled off the heist that would shock the world.  It was October 19, 2025, along the Quai François Mitterrand, below the window of the Petit Galerie at the Musée du Louvre, when four criminals parked their stolen nacelle truck. In under 8 minutes, two men entered the gilded Galerie d’Apollon arm...

On October 16, 1793, the blade fell and ended the life of Marie Antoinette. Today, 233 years later, she remains one of the world's most popular figures. This autumn, two exhibits have opened at the Château de Versailles and Fontainebleau, and stacks of books dedicated to her sell in nearly every bookstore worldwide in every imaginable language.  Of course, the myth of the former queen often e...

On April 18, 1946, Christian Dior was walking down the Rue Saint Honoré and stumbled upon a cast-iron star at the edge of the sidewalk.  During WWII, Dior worked for the Lucien Lelong fashion house alongside Pierre Balmain, negotiating the Occupation years in Paris. Coming out of the fog of war and at a crossroads, Dior ran into a childhood friend, Georges Vigouroux, who was working at the Philipp...

On the first day of each season at true noon, inside the Église Saint-Sulpice, the sun hits a small hole in the window high above the south transept, and on the spring and autumn equinox, it hits a brass marker just inside the altar.  But why, you ask? It goes back almost three hundred years, to 1727, when the parish priest Jean Baptiste Languet de Gergy wanted to ensure the exactitude of the eccl...

Anne d’Autriche was born on September 22, 1601, 425 years ago today. The wife of Louis XIII and the mother of Louis XIV has emblazoned her story into the history books, but it’s a set of rooms within the Louvre that really makes her legacy shine.   Today’s episode focuses on the suite of rooms within what was once the Palais du Louvre where the queen mother would spend her summer days and was crea...

Henri Désiré Landru was born on April 12, 1869, in Paris, near the lovely Buttes Charmant. As a child, he seemed destined for a life in the church, but his path took a sharp turn along the way.  In 1912, at was the start of the Great War, and the men were dying on the battlefield, leaving women behind in Paris in need of new companions.  Henri used this to his advantage. In 1914, he posted his fir...

In September 1792, over five nights, thieves broke into the Garde-Meuble and stole thousands of France's Crown Jewels.   Of course, there is the “Heist of the Century” that hit the Musée du Louvre on October 19, 2025, but it pales in comparison to the 1792 theft.    Support the show

In 1939, as Hitler came knocking on the door of France, the keepers of the great art of Paris sprang into action. While Hitler’s art-loving henchmen headed to Paris with a shopping list of must-have pieces of art, the treasures of the Musée du Louvre were at the top. Jacques Jaujard, the director of France’s National Museum, and René Huyghe, curator of paintings, devised a plan to save the art of...

There are many events that truly altered and changed the entire trajectory of hundreds of thousands of people's lives. Every five years, we mark the rounded anniversaries of the Armistice, VE Day, D-Day, and the Liberation of Paris. While the clean numbers on the 5s and 10s look good, we should be reminded of many things every single year. At the end of August 1944, the Parisians had had enou...

Six days a week, for 115 years since her theft, more than 30,000 people a day push and shove to snap a photo or selfie with the Mona Lisa, and most have no idea why they even need to.  On a hot Sunday, August 20, 1911, at around 4 pm. Vincenzo Peruggia entered the Musée du Louvre just like any other visitor. In the final moments, as the museum closed and guards ushered people out, Peruggia slipped...

On August 10, 1793, the Musée Central des Arts de la République was opened. You may know it as the Musée du Louvre.  Art was not a stranger to the Palais du Louvre and going back to the 16th century, François I first held a few of his prized pieces. Under Louis XIV, they added the Salle des Rois, today's Galerie d’Apollon, and in 1725 moved the yearly Salon to the Salon Carré along with the A...

On February 10, 1638,  Louis XIII officially proclaimed the Virgin as the “special protector of the kingdom of France”. After 23 years of marriage, Queen Anne d’Autriche was finally pregnant, and Louis XIII vowed his kingdom to the Virgin Mary and to Notre Dame de Paris.  Louis XIII wanted a “great altar of the Cathedral church of Paris built with an image of the Virgin and her son,” and at her fe...

The most recognized painting by the Romantic master Éugene Delacroix, La Liberté Guidant le Peuple le 28 Juillet 1830, depicts the event of this day, 196 years ago. Painted in 1830 for the Salon of 1831, the painting commemorates the Paris uprising of 1830, known as the Trois Glorieuses (Three Glorious Days) that ousted King Charles X.  Liberty is the focal point of the painting, an allegorical fi...

Napoleon has carried the brunt of most of the blame for the looting of art from Italy and other European countries, but not all of it lies on his shoulders.  The looting of art from country to country isn’t a new idea. It all started with the Romans and the Greeks and continues to this day. There are a few more international rules in place to stop this, but not everyone follows them. In the 12th c...

On July 13, 1793, Charlotte Corday talked her way into the apartment of writer Jean-Paul Marat and plunged a knife into his chest while he soaked in the bath, killing the Voice of the People within seconds.   It was a pivotal moment in the French Revolution and was made famous by the painting by Jacques-Louis David. A painting that is as much propaganda as it is historical and has become the very...

Few paintings in the Louvre are as unforgettable as The Raft of the Medusa , but behind Théodore Géricault's masterpiece lies one of the most horrifying true stories in French history. In this episode, we uncover the disastrous 1816 voyage of the Méduse , a shipwreck caused by political favoritism, incompetence, and arrogance during the Bourbon Restoration. Stranded on a makeshift raft, 147 p...

When the giant silver Olympic balloon rose above the Jardin des Tuileries during the Paris 2024 Games, it instantly became one of the city's most unforgettable sights. But in Paris, almost nothing exists without a connection to the past. In this episode, we uncover the remarkable history behind the Olympic cauldron and why a balloon was the perfect symbol. From the daring experiments of the M...

Poison, black magic, royal mistresses, and murder at the highest levels of French society—welcome to one of the most shocking scandals in French history. In this episode, we dive into the infamous Affair of the Poisons, the dark conspiracy that gripped Paris and the court of Versailles during the reign of King Louis XIV. What began with the crimes of Marie-Madeleine d'Aubray, the Marquise de...

She is the most famous painting in the world, and everyone has an opinion of her. Are there better paintings in the Louvre? Sure, but she also deserves every bit of fame she has garnered for many reasons. Sadly, because of the chaos that surrounds her, you aren’t able to truly appreciate her the way you might other paintings. Who is the woman behind the most famous painting in the world? Was she t...

Pont Neuf wasn’t just the “new bridge,” it was so much more. Sure, it was the first in stone, without houses, the widest and the longest, and the first to have sidewalks in Europe. It was also the first celebrity monument in Paris. People traveled from all over Europe to see it, including Peter the Great. In 1717, Peter arrived in Paris after visiting Amsterdam to collect books, check in on Madame...

The debate surrounding the new stained-glass windows of Notre-Dame de Paris has reignited a familiar question: how much of the past should be preserved, and how much should be reimagined?  In this episode, we explore the controversial plans to replace historic windows in the cathedral and place the discussion within a much larger story. From revolutions and restorations to political movements and...

The last restored large-format painting by Eugène Delacroix has finally returned to the Pompei red walls of the Salle Mollien at the Musée du Louvre. Since 2019, the Louvre has been restoring the king of the Romantic movement's paintings.  Last week, the fifth and final from the master of color was revealed. The Capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders, April 12, 1204. Before the restoratio...

The jewels of the French Crown were never just glittering ornaments. They were symbols of power, legitimacy, dynasty, and empire. For centuries, they adorned kings, queens, emperors, and empresses, surviving revolution, theft, exile, and war. But after the fall of Napoleon III in 1870, the new Republic feared that these treasures represented something even more dangerous: the possibility that Fran...