The Greatest Cities in the World - Paris' Unexpected Treasures with Griff Rhys Jones
by the year 2010 half the people of the world would live in cities the centre of this one is probably the most influential there's ever been but it's no bigger than the whole of london's parks put together oh yes it's paris small intense but full of flavor what are the ingredients of this astonishing creation over the course of an ordinary parisian day i want to investigate the ideas that have made this city the way it is i want to burrow into it to try to get beneath its skin i want to meet its citizens and their eccentric obsessions and by experiencing its astonishing traditions get with to grips why do people adore paris and i think i'd better start at first light here in the place de la concord well this is a very good time of the morning so they tell me to come here to the place to concord to see the lens that paris will go to to look perfect seven and a half kilometers in fact that's how long the triumphal way is from the front door of the louvre along here past this gigantic obelisk and on up here for another four kilometers on up the channels elise there to the top of the hill through straight through the middle of the arc de triomphe there what a magnificent triumphal way and it would be perfection except that this arch the brand new square one at ladder forms is not in line with the others for some reason it was built off center the architects the state the people of paris wanted perfection but there's always one awkward bugger who refuses to conform so the rest of them will have something to talk about and that is the glory of paris paris has probably had more ardent admirers than any other place on earth from the roman emperor julian who called it his beloved city to adolf hitler who in 1940 wrote that he had always longed to visit paris having just done so with his army and 40 000 tanks it was considered too beautiful to bomb and survive the second world war intact when many other places were raised to the ground paris is exquisite in scale and content it has over 40 000 public monuments new york may boast bigger taller london more extensive but paris knows it has the finest it's the attention to detail that makes this city tick you can't just make bread here you've got to make the world's best bread at the poilan bakery that means making it by hand a little bit of flour voila there we are voila now i'm going to go and strangle it the kneaded dough has to be moved to a proving bin to rise and it has to be done to schedule all the bread will spoil french bread is special because of its simplicity the law dictates it must be made from flour yeast salt and water and nothing else except perhaps the odd drop of sweat um felix wants me to hurry up because we have to do all this before before daybreak as it actually quiet even the oven is hard work the bakery uses wood the flames have to reach 300 degrees centigrade one more we're not making baguettes they were a viennese invention we're making traditional french country bread round slightly tough and beyond compare in this city seventy percent of the bread is made by hand in britain three percent it's just continuous physical action it's hard work making bread with no preservatives in it fresh bread has to be collected twice a day so parisians have to work to get hold of the stuff as well you queue for good bread in paris luckily there's a bread shop on average every 100 meters lack of bread was a cause of the french revolution so i hope i've made enough for this lot as the markets open paris is preparing herself for another day showing off to the world for its size paris is the world's biggest spender on keeping up appearances as i negotiate the centre of town i have to jump over a puddle but it's not a casual puddle actually it hasn't been raining there there are two water systems in paris one for drinking and one which was the old water system which they just left and now they're used for cleaning the street and every now and again they turn a switch and it starts pouring out of the curb it's a major industry keeping paris clean and there's a lot more to it than swilling out the gutters on the left bank in the east of the city i'm joining an elite unit of sanitary engineers they have their spies at all the major monuments with specific instructions to move into action at a moment's notice this is the crack graffiti eradication squad de paris it's been estimated that graffiti artists hit 300 000 square meters of paris surface every year 40 of the houses have been tanked and in 2004 there was a concerted campaign to write advertising kills on every single billboard in the city we skirt the pontfiel and rush past notre dame to get down to the banks of the second to find our offending door some years ago parisian politicians needed to debate whether graffiti was an eyesore or a form of free expression they decided any graffiti should be removed immediately from all monuments and the other priorities of politics which have to go like that and racism no racism so the rest of the graffiti if you're in the mind to come and decorate paris you you could get away art it would stay for a bit longer but those things we we had to be here straight off michelle starts up the machine and i get to grips with the blaster ah how very utterly satisfying this is i'll get one of these for where i live in london i can only give a gallic gesture of satisfaction like bravo it's now 7 30 and i take to the river going west i don't want to be late for school and i'm heading to the world's tallest classroom the river sen is the reason why the city of paris is here 200 years ago paris was the second biggest port in france it's still one of the biggest river ports in the world but somehow manages to be a little more alluring than felixstowe docks it's rush hour for the three million students who live here i'm joining a school trip to the itage the eiffel tower dominates this town as indeed it was meant to it was built in 1889 to convincingly demonstrate that france was the top of her class they are afraid of i know me too today madame betran will teach her pupils from leon the significance of the world's largest meccano model with special reference to its 2.5 million rivets what madam is probably not going to tell them is that all the intellectuals all the writers absolutely hated this tower when it went up guido mopisson the novelist used to come here and have lunch every day and when he was asked why he said because having lunch here is the only place in paris that i can't see the damn thing but it didn't stay unpopular for long ten years after it was built 50 million visitors or one-fifth of the whole population of europe came to the 1900 world fair to have a look at the theme it has remained the world's most visited attraction ever since the petty palais the grand palais were also all built for these mammoth expositions and all have stayed to adorn the city they were meant to demonstrate not just that france was perfect but food-wide fashion but also that france is perfect with science manufacturing and engineering for all its obvious visibility the real wonder of this place is hidden away out of sight 120 years ago the lift mechanism was hailed as a miracle of french engineering incredibly it's still faithfully lifting and lowering and i've been invited to keep it lubricated once a week a special grease has to be applied to the mechanism while it's still moving it's boiling hot and it smells incredible and that's because it's molten mutton fat and it gets everywhere you just get the impression that sooner or later it's going to slip on the mutton grease into the machinery deary me here we go a little more fat flying the mutton good stuff releasing the wheels no doubt if i was a proper frenchman what i do know is take a big scoop of that and spread it on a piece of bread and have it for my lunch the tower was meant to be temporary but stuck around as a symbol of french pride in their engineering prowess it also came to symbolize french pride in their military prowess during the first world war the germans came to within 50 miles of paris and the eiffel tower was used as a giant lookout post to direct the french troops who were ferried to the battle in parisian taxis this had two results first of all it made parisian taxi drivers rather rich because well 50 miles is a long way and they charged the full fare and secondly it turned the eiffel tower into a monument of victory so the tower celebrates yet another victory for the french army as if there wasn't quite enough of that sort of thing around here anyway the west of paris is dominated by grand military buildings and vast parade grounds like the officer training school where i have a 10 a.m meeting with born and bred parisian captain betty g what do you think is the great secret of paris the great secret of paris well i don't mean the great secret hidden secret but what is this what is the if i tell you to kill your parents if i tell you i would have to kill you oh well you're one of the few people who could probably have that done quite efficiently i should think indeed he could because the school proudly leads the world in unarmed combat and i'm due in class okay i think the sergeant is explaining that he now has the complete attention of the recruit and could break his arm in four places it's probably very worth remembering if you should ever come to paris that means i surrender i hope after subduing me captain betterjee reminded me how france had once dominated the whole of europe one of the most famous credits same celebrated graduates i was going to say of this of the school was napoleon that's right that's why he was a great graduate he attended the course of one year instead of three years is that because he was so good no was um he was in a hurry you know you had to conquer europe so that's the reason why he was so he got through the whole thing quickly just did his year and then and then galloped off to conquer europe and conquer it he did the arc de triomphe is a monument to that boast it dominates northwest paris completed 50 years after his death the only time boney ever came here was during his funeral procession today as every day french war veterans commemorate their fallen comrades by relighting the flame on the tomb of the unknown soldier this eternal fire has been alight since 1920. the flame has only been extinguished once and that was by drunken mexican football supporter on the night that brazil beat france here in paris the tomb of the mexican football supporter is unknown army maneuvers are why paris has one of the most magnificent layouts of any city in the world and the arc de triomphe is the perfect place to appreciate it in 1852 after 80 years of fighting in the streets paris's narrow medieval lanes some of which exist today were seen as overcrowded congested and perfect for riots the city was set for its makeover king or perhaps i should say baron now here we are this is what i'm looking for because this is the name houseman of the baron who essentially completely and utterly transformed paris into what we think of it as being today and working for his boss napoleon iii what he essentially did was bash a series of enormous streets right the way through the middle of paris called boulevards they were designed to get cavalry troops straight to the heart of any future trouble from paris citizens but they also bizarrely got rid of all the working classes and turned paris into a city of rich people living in expensive houses this essentially made inner city paris into one big kensington and chelsea even today paris is the richest city in europe to service the wealthy it's stuffed with expensive shops and natty boutiques if you know your way you can virtually cross the centre of the city via these hidden passages they were built to stop the rich from getting wet naturally paris is thick with beauty salons and i've met up with a natural parisian redhead for her 12 o'clock appointment here we are this is vaini who's named after at eden maiden and she's an apricot coloured ganesh um a poodle she's here for a cut and blow dry it's clear that fashion is a serious business even for dogs she's taken on a different sort of demeanor now as unfair lady in this way as hold on tight oh my dog yes are we good 75 euros lighter i'm ready to walk my poodle about a bit and walking about a bit really is a parisian obsession baron hausmann may have developed the boulevard but he didn't invent it that happened a hundred years earlier when king louis xiv the sun king knocked down the city walls to show how sunny he was the walkways he made in their place were called boulevards after the dutch word for walls and they created another side effect the parisians started parading about in fact they like parading about so much that they had have lots of extra places made for doing it like the twilight gangs here outside drawing rooms not really parks places for walking up and down and of course if you walk up and down like that in front of lots of people you have to look good so fashion became extremely important but i'm in search of another great historical tradition lunch lunch is so important in paris nearly all office workers are still given luncheon vouchers to ensure that they eat properly paris is actually the center of oat cuisine because of the revolution when the palace is closed their chefs opened a recent invention called the restaurant the grower before actually dates from before that time hello grief how are you i'm all right it's been here since 1760. it's an appropriate place to meet a parisian socialite called florence i've brought vagini isn't she pretty and the dog well she's perfectly welcome in one of paris's perfect restaurants it seems that in london we like to have lots of things in paris it's completely different people don't like to consume like this like crazy they like to take the time and to make the nice choice the right shots the right selection so although things are expensive people are being very demanding yes very demanding about the quality so the shoes they take their time for this you have to to work for the pleasure but when you get the pleasure you're so happy at 98 euros my lobster wasn't cheap but of course it was excellent as far as the dog was concerned it was choosiness also applies to relationships paris is known as the city of love but in reality it has the highest proportion of singles in any city in europe unsurprisingly pets have become essential alternative companions to the east of the city is a cemetery which certainly shows the intensity of that relationship to my prince who left me with a great sadness now it's not very well tended unfortunately the grave i wonder whether tapatit namo louisian has uh gone to the great walkies in the sky but i don't think that you see i didn't think the parisians were sentimental about animals i think they'd submit everything yeah but not their pets pull yourself together while in paris many visitors like to pay their respects at the grave of jim morrison the late lead singer of the doors but in fact he wasn't the only american star to end his days here the very bricks stones and cobbles remind us of the past in paris although it is a few years since they were torn up and thrown about in the name of revolution but we should not assume that the spirit of rebellion is dead parisians are still fiercely independent of all petty rules and regulations particularly at the wheel of a car i've got to get across town dr thierry has lent me his prized vehicle to do so we intend to negotiate our way past the greatest obstacle to road safety in the whole of paris seem to be responding i must be in third do you think no you're probably first it's got us into second yes arc de triomphe the great monument is in the middle of a monumental roundabout 12 massive highways converge on it this is the wild a west oh here we go now we're coming out into the arctic triumph right do we have priority you have priority paris does not try to control the traffic it lets it fight it out for itself there are no lane markings but there are lots of cars and just two rules one give way to your right yes i agree i absolutely agree and two are they no other rules i don't want to get too far into the middle because we'll never get out of here we won't to add to my difficulties any motorists might also like to know a little secret of the arc to triumph regarding accidents i also understand that the traffic is so complicated that if you have a crash it doesn't matter yeah you you who you crash or who is to blame you are you okay 50 50. always this is dodgens we're down here is that a ride yeah we're off we're off the arctic trail are you okay you're good hey it's a u-turn illegal normally you could you can't well normally normally okay oh oh it was nice there we go thank you bye bye bye good oh thank you ah well that was exciting made just a little bit more demanding by the fact that i drove 50 of the way with the brake on leaving the driving to those who do it worst i continue on one of the city's free bikes at the top of montmartre behind the cathedral sacra kur i'm looking for one of paris's little unexpected treasures this area used to be the largest wine making region in france now it's the smallest and this is the last working vineyard in the capital we're right in the middle of the city here but this isn't a toy vineyard at all in fact it produces about 2 000 half bottles of red wine which are much sought after which have won a whole series of prizes for the region after half an hour of chatting about the vines president decided to entrust me with a little secret apparently some of the vines here are an illegal grape type banned in the rest of the country it's a strictly forbidden variety of great because it makes you hallucinatory yes yes but it goes in this line well i don't mind and neither does this be as it makes its round of paris's exceptional outdoor spaces flying from the vineyard of montmartre to the flowers of the botanical gardens and on to the finest fruit blossom in the country which just happens to be grown in the luxembourg gardens eventually it'll come home but this bee doesn't live in an ordinary hive it lives on a roof and that roof is on top of the paris opera the hive was set up here by jean the opera prop maker he did it at the recommendation of the fire department as albina tries one of the firemen of the opera house who himself starts breeding trout at the basement of the opera house right wait a minute now so there was a so there was a fireman of the opera house who was breeding trout already exactly in in the basement of the opera house because there is a secret lake underneath the opera exactly so what makes it so good if you go to the french countryside you don't find exactly the same quality of honey because of the pesticides that they use i see so how wonderful so this is not just a sort of crazy hobby having the bees on the roof of the opera house it actually produces the very finest honey in france absolutely lovely honey vicious bees as soon as i took off my netting they simply came and got me all my hand and one just settled on my head and it hurt the opera house was designed by charles garnier using a mishmash of exotic architectural details when he was asked by the emperor's wife what style it was supposed to be he hesitated and in a moment of inspiration named it after her husband the style napoleon iii is now everywhere in paris and part of architectural history the five to seven bell calls the audience to their seats and the bees go off to sleep on the roof i joined some hardy people who like their evening entertainment these parisians are lining up to skate across paris and so i hope am i though i've never inline skated further than the edge of the curb it's still the rush hour but in paris they close the streets for this every friday evening as it happens tonight is wednesday my new companions head straight into the traffic and i head straight into a bus paris is the skating capital of europe some of these rambles attract up to 24 000 people the inline skates were originally seen as the solution to the out-of-line public transport workers who are going on strike all the time i think i am now the major obstruction in the paris streets potentially going to cause a gridlock of my own at any moment this is your correspondent on the inline skates in the streets of paris heading towards the maui a sweat bucket most of it pure fear that was the most dangerous thing i have ever done in my life the city of light lives up to its reputation and switches itself on 80 000 tourists will have enjoyed its pleasures today 25 000 of them will have pondered the smile of the mona lisa at the louvre the world's largest and busiest museum and now many of them are pondering the menu du jour it may be approaching midnight but the brasserie was invented to satisfy the desire to eat good food no matter what time of day or night last orders here at beaufaget are at 1am but you can stay until you finish they won't throw you out however long you linger over your coffee hi it's your first day here yeah yeah just to close the restaurant yeah just to help in any way i can yeah am i dressed okay you're welcome okay it's beautiful there are 120 000 waiters at work in paris what's the view from the other side of the table okay you want something from the no no it's okay this place is a favorite with french prime ministers and presidents but if they come tonight i won't be let loose on them thierry takes his job seriously things must be done correctly never no one of these yeah great are they go here trays must be carried properly they've just arrived it's ten to one in the morning and people are still arriving to eat your problem oh yeah meanwhile i'm still struggling with the basics yes of course and those damn trays let's go on the train as well let's go quickly please yes and how many coffee in france being a waiter is a proper career not an option between engagements in a west end musical how long would it take me to learn two years two years for starters for weather for headweather maybe ten years i have six tables to look after and now i've lost an order i'm not carrying this off with a plum at the moment at 2 31 am the restaurant finally closes and i may have even got the hang of the tray tonight here at bowfisher they will have served 800 dinners and dished up 20 kilos of foie gras across paris 82 tons of oysters will have been washed down by 80 000 bottles of champagne as for me i'm feeling a little exhausted though it's nearly 3 am i have one last appointment it's with a group of people who seem to typify the parisian frame of mind the ux are rebellious passionate and nocturnal they restore monuments to exacting standards without any permission at all in the middle of the night two years ago they broke into one of paris's most important monuments the pompfilm they spent a year mending a clock the authorities didn't notice the thing even when the clock started working eventually they took the group to court but a judge decided no law had been broken lazar claims they have secret access to anywhere in paris and these are underground places not not obligatory it could be anything the city or doesn't even know they got some they own some buildings some flats and place tonight they're taking me to look at their latest baby they've driven me to a street in paris and i've no idea where i am they open a locked manhole cover and tell me to get in quickly before the police spot us we descend into a tunnel deep underground lazar doesn't want the authorities to know what he's doing so there are certain things we were not allowed to film suddenly we hear music perhaps this connects to a night club or something it's possible isn't it there's obviously a lot of power required here for bus okay okay we're passing a venue and in order not to be discovered we're told to continue in silence 15 minutes later and we reach what we're looking for it's a whole yeah it's an internet interconnection or between two different network right and i have to go down and do it sure you do the break in the floor is where two tunnel systems meet good stuff it will take us into a much deeper and older system of passageways where are we now we are in the last ancient original crore in under paris and we still have a way to go yeah let's go to my office to your office yeah okay in order to build paris they needed a lot of stone so they carved out huge subterranean quarries where the southern reaches of the city now stand there are nearly 300 kilometers of underground passages some of them are open to the public but this section definitely is not okay guys welcome have a seat mazar and his team are here to make an illegal survey of this least explored section of the subterranean tunnels until gunter are supposed our our goal is to try to preserve the most hidden heritage we can you are the unter gunter yeah and you are a sort of an association a club no we are a clandestine globe to understand this clandestine group not only do they restore the forgotten treasures of paris they also stage private cultural events holding clandestine film festivals in secret cinemas well nearly always secret someone told the police someone told the police and the police came and because there was a couscous maker they thought it was a bomb it was a bomb this was a thing for making couscous yeah so you ate couscous while no festival no films yes sometimes we do but yeah it wasn't the point it was a purely decorative couscous maker justice this is very french that you had a couscous maker decoration yes for decoration but anyway where's another one to make couscous of course but that's not the one they say and we would have a popcorn maker at the very least we have one too but they don't take it for a bomb leaving lazar to his work i take the opportunity to explore another part of the quarry in 1800 all of these underground tunnels were mapped by government inspectors some were marked with the name of the street immediately above them so people didn't get lost but i'm heading to a particular part of the tunnel system with a very particular use it was used to store bones these catacombs contain the remains of nearly six million parisians you have to imagine in 18th century france there was quite a lot of death it was a rather gruesome place plagues and things like that and the cemeteries were getting rather full so what they did was they they emptied them out and they threw all the bones down in these tunnels and about 50 years later along came someone who thought they better tidy them up so they made these walls over here you see here the arm bones laid one on top of the other and a row of skulls on the top for decoration with a nice bit of skull work about halfway down around here i think it's rather exciting to think that here is essentially the medieval population of paris we've been exploring this city for nearly 24 hours nazar offers to take me to watch the dawn come up he knows a superb vantage point and special access is required we're at the top of an 11th century gothic masterpiece 250 years ago notre dame cathedral was so badly damaged it was sold for scrap but the author victor hugo wrote the hunchback of notre dame in order to draw attention to its plight and the great church was saved and ultimately restored today she takes her place at the head of a legion of great parisian buildings in a city her citizens are justly proud of a city striving for perfection and even in its showier moments achieving a sort of fairy tale majesty there may be no such thing as a perfect city but i don't know paris is pretty magical especially at this time of night and what i love about the place what i've really what i've really discovered is the way that people really do put so much discipline and effort and work into the quality of life even the rebels put them back into it it's rather nice to think that somewhere out there now someone is actually having a sleepless night about trying to improve a source or make a delicious soup or bake the perfect cake you
2021-06-17 22:39
