In the center of one of Paris’s busiest quarters—the Latin
Quarter, near Boulevard St.-Michel and the Sorbonne—is the Musée National du
Moyen Age and Hotel de Cluny. This area
is so busy, in fact, that one can only be alone on the intersection of
St.-Michel and St.-Germain, where the museum is located, early on a Sunday
morning, before Paris has awoken. The
museum is an important one for France, and also for the sharing of medieval
history; inside are the famous La Dame à
la licorne (The Lady and the Unicorn) medieval tapestries, numerous
religious sculptures, illuminated manuscripts, and an uncovering of the site’s
history back to its Roman founders. Less
celebrated, however, is a garden, which adjoins the museum, modeled after what
little is known about gardens of the medieval ages. Although open to the public, it, unlike its
surrounding area, is rarely busy; there is always a place to sit.
If you know about the history of gardens, then you know that
the gardens of the medieval ages were slight and humble compared to later royal
gardens like those of Versailles or Luxembourg. Neither were they wild and
expansive, like the now-protected Bois de Boulogne—the remnants of the old
forest that spanned western Paris up to Normandy. Instead, medieval gardens were small and
manicured. Most were for growing food, but the rich kept “pleasure gardens,”
specifically for the pleasure of the senses, which grew flowers and herbs. These gardens’ various uses were usually
sectioned, included seating, and sometimes—if large enough—areas for musicians
or entertainment.
The park adjoining the Hotel de Cluny is separated from the
busy streets of the quarter by fences and surrounded by trees, not dissimilar
from most other Parisian parks. It has a
lookout area where park-visitors can see the old ruins of the Roman thermes—or baths—and another area with
sand and “jungle gyms” for children to play.
This park along-side the garden is always open to the public and usually
populated. Further secluded behind a
wooden enclosure or gate are le préau and
la terrasse, the two areas of the
park created by the museum most closely modeled after what little is known of
medieval gardens. Though its hours are
regulated by the museum, it is usually open to the public. The wooden enclosure around the garden gives
less of a sense of further barrier or separation from the street and instead
confirms intimacy and quiet thereby retaining its instructive quality as part
of the Musée du Moyen Age.
There are two entrances to le préau and la terrasse:
one through the park by way of the children’s play area and up a wooden ramp,
and the other I quite prefer, by way of a small cobble-stone walk separated
from but alongside Rue de Cluny. The
walk’s pragmatic utility is slight: it only gives entrance to le jardin or gives exit onto Rue du
Sommerard. Unless one is using the walk
to get to the garden, it serves no purpose different from Rue de Cluny. If used as an entrance to the garden,
however, it is particularly effective in preparing the visitor for their
experience of the garden.
The narrow walk has a
Secret Garden spell to it: the trees
and plants which line the walkway and its surrounding fence muffle the city
sounds, or else the visitor intentionally forgets them. Birds live in this area of green—not just
pigeons, but sparrows, and robins and songbirds—they live throughout Paris’s
gardens, however hard to believe. The
area is shaded; it’s secluded. And all
of these things make nature more important than the city—not unbridled,
sprawling nature—but the kind of nature placed, grown and cared for by human
hands.
Though the view of the pleasance garden and the terrace are
far more man-made than that of the walkway, the walkway is only a preparatory
step to transporting you into an older time.
Before you walk up the steps to the wooden walkway of the garden, you
see the Hotel de Cluny, a seamless blend of Gothic and Renaissance architecture
bursting with medieval acknowledgment. A
townhouse in Paris for the abbots of Cluny, the building was later owned by
several other religious figures, an astronomer, the Revolutionary state, and
Alexandre du Sommerard, an art collector.
It was finally purchased by the state and converted into a museum, which
it has remained for 170 years.
As you ascend the steps, in front of you is le préau or, the pleasance. This is a garden of various flowers and
grasses surrounded by clear baths of water.
This area most closely resembles what one might expect from a pleasure
garden, while off to the right sits the terrace, “evoking the domestic nature
and diverse facets of a medieval garden” (translation my own, www.musee-moyanage.fr). Every aspect of the garden has a meaning or
dedication. A ménagier aligns and separates the different potted areas: basic
medicinal herbs are planted in one, vegetables in another. One potted area contains only flowers which
symbolize the Virgin; a sunken path and its surrounding flowers are dedicated
to the ancient Sainte-Geneviève, patron saint to Paris; another flower bed
evokes l’amour courtois—courtly
love—the expression of which, so the stories and poetry say, gave pleasure
gardens their utility. No area of the
garden goes without purpose: pleasing to the senses, useful for survival, or in
memory of beloved religious figures—all important and vital aspects to medieval
life in France. For a moment, it feels
you might exist alongside an older realm.
It is curious to me, why, then, erected in the center of le préau, is a shiny, metal, modern-art
installment, impossible not to be seen from anywhere in the garden. Spanning half of le préau are several narrow strips of shiny metal, bent into
elegant and clean swirls and lined up beside each other. It isn’t that the installment in and of
itself is something laughable, but that it so obviously out of place. It is not a stone sculpture of a saint,
neither is it a recognized commemorative art piece. These obtrusive sheets of bent metal disturb
one of the few places in Paris that has the potential to be somewhere truly
apart and outside of modernity. It is
not the unfulfilled desire for such a place, but the sheer attainability of the
space to have that unique charm which makes the breaking of that charm so
disappointing.
Yes, there are children in sneakers and backpacks traipsing
down the wooden walks after their teachers who are explaining about the
vegetable garden. And yes, the man
sitting across from me in the park is rolling and lighting a cigarette; we’re
eating lunch out of plastic bags; we’re texting on cellphones, we’re changing
the song on our iPods. Each visitor is
aware we’re living in the 21st century, but apart from the people
themselves, there is very little to indicate that within the garden, or amongst
the trees, or beside the stone building—except those ill-fitted pieces of
metal. The garden itself is an edifice dedicated
to a different time, place, and people.
There is no need for a commemoration inside of a commemoration; there is
no need for a reminder of modernity; there is no need to apologize that the
garden was a creation of the 21st century instead of the 14th.
