Paris

Paris had invaded history and history of art lessons all year, whether via the revolutionary chatter of the Palais Royal or Renoir's studies of glances across the Opera.

The trip to Paris for the VII (Year 12) at the end of last term was a chance to put our studies into context. We found traces of the past at Bastille, and in statues whose changing subjects revealed the city's turbulent history. In the courtyard of the Musée Carnavalet, for example, Louis XIV stood in stone, hair perfectly coiffed as if nothing had happened; meanwhile, inside the museum the boot of a destroyed statue of a king was on display. Even more chilling was a visit to the Conciergerie, the prison where victims of the terror awaited the guillotine; the lists of victims were sobering. Fontainebleau, old seat of the French crown, was more peaceful, its placid canal and manicured gardens seemingly frozen in time. Da Vinci left his Mona Lisa here; now in the Louvre, she was a pilgrimage site for art historians visiting the epic history paintings of David, Delacroix and Gericault. In contrast was the mad Pompidou centre, with its bright external escalators, housing subversive works by the Fauvists and Surrealists. We left with a sense of Paris' dense history and culture, and an eternal longing for another nutella crepe.