Please look at the eight photos below selected as the finalists in our Second Readers' Choice Photo Contest, and vote for the one or two you like the most ~ perhaps a photo that reminds you of a place you've visited in France (or would like to visit) or that says to you "This is really France!"   Maybe you will be looking for the most artistic photo ~ the one with the best composition, lighting or color palette that appeals to you.

         1  Monpazier Market Day                                                     2   River Dordogne at Sarlat                                               3  Passage Through Time, St-Paul de Vence 
 

                        4  Left Bank Delight                                                                                       5   Emperor Still, Les Invalides

                  6  Herd in Buziet, Haute-Pyrénées                                                                           7   Empty Tables in the Mist, Eze

It is very easy to vote for your favorite:  just address an email to publisher@franceonyourown.com, put the word Photo with corresponding number (1 through 8) in the subject line, and hit send!  We will tally up the votes over the next few months and announce the winner in the May issue of our newsletter. Remember, you can vote for 1 or 2 photos!  Voting will close on April 1st.  We and the photographers thank you in advance for participating. 
 
 
 

                        8  Moret-sur-Loing

---

SPONSORING THIS ISSUE

au Château - the Ultimate Lodging Experience in France

Don't spend your next holiday in France without the truly special experience
of spending a few nights in an elegant and historic château bed and breakfast.
Once you've tried it, you won't be happy with anything less.  And, for those
who want the place all to themselves, we have weekly rental manoirs and
châteaus, too ~ more than 80 B&Bs and rentals throughout France.

Please click on above  photo to visit our web site

DRINKING IN PARIS ~  believe it or not, water as well as wine. . .

                           HAPPY 400th BIRTHDAY TO  QUEEN MARIE DE MEDIC I'S AQUEDUCT! 

                                                                                                                                                by Arthur Gillette

Around 1600, water supply to Paris was in a perilous state. The Seine was polluted as were many private wells. Also, the short aqueducts from north of the city to its Right Bank could not keep pace with the Parisians’ needs, although these were much more limited than the cleanliness-obsessed Roman Lutetia's aquatic consumption of something like 100 liters per person per day.

The 19 public fountains on the Right Bank couldn't satisfy the great demand for fresh water there. And, on the increasingly populated Left Bank, there wasn't a single public fountain.

The then-King Henri IV was the more sensitive to the situation since ~ despised or at least denigrated by many for having converted from Protestantism to Catholicism in order to gain the crown ~ he wanted to curry favor with the population. The idea of tapping major clean water sources to the south, near today's Orly Airport, gained royal favor. But, in 1610, Henri IV was assassinated.

His widow, and Regent of their very young son and future King Louis XIII, Marie de Medici decided to proceed with the project. This decision stemmed from personal as well as public/political reasons. She had come to abhor her Louvre residence and decided to have built the Palais du Luxembourg as a homesick reminder (if not exact replica) of the Palazzo Pitti in her native Florence. Ah, but the Palazzo Pitti boasted (and 
still boasts) the magnificent and huge Boboli Gardens, hence the large Jardins du Luxembourg, which would need. . .much watering.

In 1613, just four hundred years ago, the Queen-ordered mostly underground aqueduct, some 15 kilometers long, began to come into being. It was designed mainly for the Luxembourg Gardens but also to quench the thirst of several religious establishments (e.g. monasteries) and of the public at large through street fountains.  How to fund such an ambitious undertaking? Well, a special extra tax was put on wine.

And today? Well, yes you can still see several of the aqueduct's vestiges.  Here, for instance, is a photo of its open-air span at the town of Arcueil (get the 'arc' in question?), atop which you can see a 19th-century extension. 

The aqueduct's end-station in Paris still exists near the Observatoire, at the Maison du Fontainier, the oldest building in Paris’ 14th arrondissement. Abandoned around 1904, it was lovingly restored in the 1990s by volunteers from the Paris Historique association who, for example, removed some 400 tons of gravel from its dilapidated site.
 
 

The basement of the Maison du Fontainier received from the aqueduct an average of 1,650 cubic meters of water a day. This was then channeled out to three (see photo) kinds of consumer: 41%  for the Queen (chiefly the Luxembourg Palace and Gardens), 31% to religious establishments  (monasteries and convents) and 28% to public fountains.  Now a public park, the Luxembourg Gardens offer visitors a somewhat original, but also revamped, Medici Fountain.

Some fourteen Parisian public fountains were also served. Somewhat ornate, one of these opened in 1623 on rue Mouffetard (where you can still see it), called the Iron Pot Fountain;  'Iron Pot' to recall the vessels with which people came to fetch their water?  No. The name refers to the helmets of soldiers in a nearby barracks.

A fun P.S. is that, having searched for an appropriate source/route for quite a while, the royal engineers decided the best way to go was to replicate the passage of the... Roman aqueduct, built some 1,400 years earlier to supply the Thermes de Cluny ~ the Latin Quarter Roman baths ~ part of which you can still visit at the museum of the same name!

P.P.S. from the Editor: Perhaps Arthur is particularly interested in Marie de Medici because they share April 27th as a birthday, although he trailed her by 363 years.