SUMMER hardly over, news comes in that according to the latest figures some 85 million tourists arrived in France last year, thus making it the most visited country in the world, well ahead of the United States, Italy or Spain.
There are many things to do and see in France, the most enthusiastically sought after being, north to south, the Mount Saint Michel in Normandy, the Versailles and Fontainebleau palaces not far from Paris, the many chateaux of the Loire Valley and, naturally the Cote d’Azur, or French Riviera as the English speakers prefer to call it.
The French capital however remains the top attraction, though its permanent residents go on vacation to their country homes during this period. “In summertime”, goes a favourite saying, “we leave our city to the care of tourists and pigeons.”
When it comes to discovering Paris, most foreigners evidently rush immediately to the Eiffel Tower, or the Iron Lady as it was called long, long before Margaret Thatcher claimed that title. But currently an old Gothic monument is attracting tourists’ attention and emerging as a possible and potential future rival to the Eiffel Tower.
Situated in the heart of the city, the tower was once part of a cathedral known as Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie, a reference to the patron saint of the butchers. The church was frequented by wealthy meat dealers who used to trade their products at the nearby Les Halles food market which remains still functional today, though deprived of its past glory.
The construction of Saint Jacques Tower was completed in 1523, more than 360 years before the Eiffel Tower’s inauguration in 1889. But France being France, from the very first day the monument became more than a religious lieu for an uninterrupted line of famous scientists and writers.
Blaise Pascal, the youthful mathematician who had invented the calculating machines that would later become inspiration for the modern-day laptop computers, had carried some of his early experiments here. A meteorological laboratory would later be installed at the top of the tower and at the base Pascal’s statue was erected; it is still there today.
The tower could have been destroyed in 1797 when the French revolutionaries demolished the cathedral in their anti-religious zeal, but for some reason they left it unharmed. For nearly a whole century it stood at Rue de Rivoli as a ghost amid the rabble of the torn down cathedral and as a mysterious presence for the newer generations of Parisians who were too frightened to approach it.
However, to many others it was not that scary and, with fresh scientific and literary movements taking off, the tower would soon once again become a source of curiosity for the intellectuals.
By the year 1830 the city of Paris had decided to do something about the ruined zone and the renovation project was begun when Saint Jacques Tower was officially declared a national heritage. Rue de Rivoli at the same time began to emerge in its present form as a broad and busy artery of Parisian traffic.
In 1850 the tower was rejuvenated by the architect Theodore Ballu who built a stone terrace and a small park around it. Then in 1856 Alexander Dumas wrote an entire play devoted to and named after the monument.
The Saint Jacques Tower, historically speaking, marks a resting halt on the route that pilgrims have taken for centuries, and still do today, to go to Santiago de Compostela shrine across the border in Spain.
The latest resuscitation project, keeping in view the modern day touristic angle, was taken up in 2006. Following eight years of intricate renovation and construction work that cost the city of Paris some 10 million euros, the tower was finally opened to the general public, and tourists, for the first time in its history. This year special summertime visits were initiated on an experimental basis from Friday to Sunday; they are to last until Sept 15.
Climbing up the Saint Jacques Tower is not the same experience as visiting the Iron Lady. You have to have deep breath and strong legs to keep steady on the first 300 steps that take you to the middle terrace some 60 metres up where guides explain to you the details of the original construction and the complex and costly restoration procedure.
With your breath back, you are then required to go up another 150 steps; but you are largely compensated once you are on the top with a magnificent 360-degree view of Paris with the Arc de Triomphe, the Notre Dame cathedral, the Eiffel Tower, the legendary Moulin Rouge and the Sacre-Cœur church on the Montmartre hill and, to the north-west, the modern La Defense by the Seine that resembles New York’s Big Apple-all thrown into the bargain.
The writer is a journalist based in Paris.
Published in Dawn, August 17th, 2014
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