Destination: Bordeaux

Designated historical monuments

There’s no need to go to Arcachon Bay or the Médoc coast for a swim. You can stay in Bordeaux and splash around in some of the city’s beautiful pools. Not only can you enjoy a great swim, but they’re also a feast for the eyes. There are two pools in the greater Bordeaux area that really stand out from the crowd. Both have been registered on the additional list of French historical monuments.

The Piscine Judaïque Jean Boiteux, named after the 1952 Olympic champion who hailed from Bordeaux, is part of my everyday life as I’ve always lived close to Rue Judaïque. I used to go there as a primary school child and I still drop by every now and then. It’s one of the buildings that was commissioned by Adrien Marquet, the former mayor of Bordeaux, to provide residents with adequate bathing facilities. Designed by Louis Madeline, it was opened in 1934. The stark, rigorous 1930s architecture stands shoulder to shoulder with 18^th-century structures. On the edge of the road is the gateway from the former riding school built by Ange-Jacques Gabriel in 1759. Decorated with sculptures by Claude Francin, it was “transported stone by stone” from the Jardin Public where it used to sit, and rebuilt here in 1865.

If you peer through the gateway, you’ll see a simple bas-relief medallion by Maurice Pico depicting the God of the sea. The structure is made from reinforced concrete, with some walls made from concrete encrusted with pebbles, while panes of glass let natural light pour in and affirm its modernity. The small indoor pool that I prefer, with its blue tiles, is lit by whole walls of windows on each side whose metal frames are reflected in the water. The enormous glass doors opposite the diving board leads out to the summer pool. The walls behind the diving board and behind the seats are decorated with black mosaics bordered by a strip of gilt pâte de verre. It’s worth making a note in your diary for 21, 22 and 23 September. This is when the Piscine Judaïque Jean Boiteux takes part in the Fête du Sport. This unusual event brings together sport and music, with a performance by the chorus of the Opéra de Bordeaux on the Friday evening.

Bègles swimming pool, in the greater Bordeaux area, dates from the same period. Designed by Armand Blanchard, an architect and engineer from the town of Bègles, it was opened in late 1932. Although the corner building, with its mosaic decorations and inscriptions on the outside, may seem large on the outside, the spaces are much more intimate once inside. The floors of the communal areas are covered with mosaics forming blue and brown patterns. The old entrance, featuring large sandblasted glass windows decorated with geometric designs, has been turned into a charming restaurant open to the public. The majority of the food is organic and local. You pay for dishes by weight. So visitors with a small appetite don’t pay through the nose. You could even spend time there just sitting around, enjoying the surroundings.

Up on the ceiling, beneath the dome, 216 glass balls blown by Bun Than Huyn form a spiral shape. When the building was renovated by Patrick Bouchin in 2006, the old covered pool was transformed into a play area containing a wooden and metal structure that looks like an enormous sculpture. Around the edge, the wooden former changing cubicles have been retained. The enamelled metal signs giving instructions for bathers also remain in place. The new stainless steel pool cultivates a certain intimacy with its low ceiling. The water is lit by colour-changing spotlights. And for complete relaxation, there’s a Turkish bath decorated with an iridescent violet-blue music.

There are certain buildings that are like something out of a dream. The Château d’Abbadia is one of them. From the moment I first saw it, my imagination ran wild. Set back on the clifftops overlooking the ocean, the building takes you somewhat by surprise, even if you have heard about it, and all the more so if you just happen to chance upon it.

I came across the Château d’Abbadia in winter. It was closed, but I was enchanted by the originality of this isolated castle with its numerous turrets and crenulations, cloaked in the mist rolling in off the ocean, and nestled amongst green meadows where sheep were grazing. I instantly felt as though I had been whisked away from Hendaye and the French Basque Country to Scotland or Ireland. The castle being closed only aroused my curiosity and I made sure to come back the following summer.

With the sun shining, the Château d’Abbadia is less mysterious, but its architecture, setting and history are no less fascinating. In the middle of summer, with bumper-to-bumper tourist traffic on the roads down to the Atlantic beaches, the castle’s car park – only a few metres from the heaving roads – contained just a smattering of cars.

The only people there were those already in the know. Everyone could head off to their own little bit of the park and the surrounding meadows to enjoy the sea spray, the calm and the oddities outdoors. As I made my way around the château, I encountered a real menagerie: crocodiles near the entrance, greyhounds and frogs on the benches outside, mice caught by a cat, an elephant’s head on the corner of a tower, a snake coiled on a wall, shellfish on a balcony railing, snails on the tops of the walls, and monkeys on the roof.

The château’s style and novelty make more sense when you learn that it was built between 1864 and 1884 by renowned architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc in the Gothic Revival style for Antoine d’Abbadie, a scholar and eccentric born in Dublin, Ireland (1810-1901), who travelled the world to quench his passion as an ethnologist, linguist, cartographer and astronomer and to further science.

The interior décor is just as stunning, blending furniture by Edmond Duthoit, layouts in the style of Napoléon III and ethnic touches – souvenirs brought back from far-off lands that recall the travels of its owner and his wife, Virginie de Saint-Bonnet, who journeyed with him once they were married. The hall, with its Ethiopian-inspired frescoes, stops you in your tracks. And then there is the library and the observatory, where a Meridian circle built in 1879 can be found. The couple’s neighbour, Pierre Loti, was a frequent visitor. Abbadia was bequeathed to the Académie des sciences in 1895. It also has a chapel where Antoine and Virginie are buried.

A ceramic house

Everyone knows one or two stories about people who’ve devoted their whole lives to a particular passion, like building a fantasy home. I often find these slightly crazy projects rather endearing. A while back I heard about a very odd building covered in ceramics in Lot-et-Garonne, France. As it’s not a long way from Bordeaux, I decided to go and take a look for myself. The 150 km round trip was fine but the satnav certainly proved handy for the last bit.

A complete work of art to preserve

Ceramics are one of my areas of expertise and I’ve waited far too long to visit the Château de Senelles, in the town of Bias. I was met by Xavier Llopis, who has taken it upon himself to protect this breathtaking creation. He has managed to get it listed by the Regional Directorate for Cultural Affairs and is trying to drive away looters by getting a fence put up. The Maison aux Assiettes de Senelles is so unusual that passers-by can’t help but marvel at the collections of ceramics adorning all of its walls.

A learned eccentric

A native of Senelles, Louis-Léon de Brondeau (1820-1906) was a doctor who studied medicine at the University of Montpellier and the University of Giessen, Germany. But he never actually practised as a doctor, preferring to devote his time to agriculture, devising ingenious devices, and indulging in his passion for collections. This proved such an all-consuming passion that, around 1880, inundated with pottery, he came up with the idea of displaying it not on the inside but on the outside of his house, a renovated former 17th-century château. He set about embedding plates, tiles and platters in the walls of his home. The result is incredible.

A 19th-century open-air museum

The walls are fully decorated with a diverse array of ceramics that sparkle as soon as the sun hits them. Louis-Léon de Brondeau succeeded in creating a coherent collection despite having juxtaposed some 650 different pieces. And as well as enjoying the decorative, creative side of this amazing house, ceramics fans will find a full-on encyclopaedia of factories and ceramicists: Vieillard, Sarreguemines, Martres-Tolosane, Creil-et-Montereau, Gien, Porquier-Beau, Henriot, Desvres, Lunéville, Nevers, Veuve Perrin and Saint-Clément in France, as well as Minton and Adams&Bromley in England, Rörstrand in Sweden, and even artists such as Théodore Deck. The etchings he put up in the stairwell also show de Brondeau’s impertinence and free spirit. I also stopped by the nearby church of Notre-Dame, which is painted red, blue and green and features the Stations of the Cross by François Peltier, a contemporary artist.

Location: Bias (view on Google)

Living far from the bright lights and bustling streets of the capital, and being a huge fan of all forms of art, I’m always tempted by the major exhibitions in Paris and all over Europe. But I often overlook what’s going on right here in Bordeaux. I particularly love the current exhibition on Mohlitz, an artist who has spent his life in Bordeaux.

The chance to see an exhibition dedicated to a living artist doesn’t come along often. But the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux is running a retrospective until the 4^th of June on Philippe Mohlitz (b. 1941) who has made a name for himself in Bordeaux. He is a reserved man who doesn’t enjoy talking about himself. Instead, he prefers to express himself through his chosen form of artistic expression: engravings. I already knew about his work but I took advantage of the opportunity to dive deeper into his world. “The looter of dreams,” as he has been nicknamed for this exhibition, works using a burin. Behind a man who may at first appear gruff, lies a skillful hand and all sorts of phantasmagoria. Mohlitz draws us into a world where the bizarre becomes normal.

A taste for detail

What fascinates me about Philippe Mohlitz is his imagination and his taste for the fantastic, which he depicts through architecture in the style of Piranesi, abundant landscapes, extraordinary machines and strange imaginary characters. His astonishing Lapin sur la ville (1979) portrays a skinned rabbit whose body surrounds a city: Bordeaux. The details are so fine that visitors are given a magnifying glass. I also discovered Mohlitz’s bronze and silver sculptures – unique works since both their complexity and their details are hard to reproduce.

A tradition of engraving artists in Bordeaux

Philippe Mohlitz isn’t the only famous engraver in Bordeaux. The famous Spanish artist Francisco de Goya (1746-1828), who is best known for his paintings and Los Caprichos, a series of aquatint prints, lived in exile in Bordeaux from 1824. When he died in 1828, he was initially interred in Bordeaux’s Chartreuse Cemetery. In 1825 he made a series of four lithographs, The Bulls of Bordeaux. The building that Goya once lived in has retained its link to Spain and now houses the Institut Cervantes de Bordeaux. Bordeaux artist Odilon Redon (1840-1916) also excelled in this fantastical style of art. I am captivated by his dreamlike, dark Noirs with their evocative titles: the smiling spider, swamp flower, and the eye in the balloon. The colorful, enchanting universe that he introduced from the 1890s also fascinates me. And I love poring over the disturbing, enthralling lithographs by Miguel Fraley, who lives in Bordeaux and who I sometimes spot out and about with his beret perched on his head.

Bordeaux bookshops

Reading has always been something I’ve loved doing as far back as I can remember. So, bookshops are some of my favourite places. And Bordeaux has no shortage of bookshops.

Even though I sometimes order books on Amazon, I still go into bookshops, to discover a writer as yet unknown or a novel with a front cover that attracts me and a back cover that persuades me to buy it. I have a particular fondness for some bookshops for very different reasons.

Inevitably, everyone in Bordeaux knows Librairie Mollat, an old institution dating back to 1896. Its 2,500 m² of floorspace makes it the largest independent bookshop in France and its location in Rue Porte Dijeaux puts it in an unmissable position on my rounds. It is still run by the descendants of Albert Mollat, its founder. Every time I pass by, I can’t stop myself from going in, which means several times a week, to leaf through a book and check out the latest publications. I just have to review the fine arts, literature, paperbacks, detective stories and travel sections. The added advantage is that Montesquieu, the famous philosopher, lived there from 1754 to 1755, last year of his life. Conferences are organised at Station Ausone in Rue de la Vieille Tour, a recently renovated former garage. The petrol pump at the entrance has been retained and the name of Ausone was given to it in reference to Ausone, a Bordeaux literary figure from the Gallo-Roman period.

La Librairie de la Comédie is much more recent because it only opened in 2016. But it is derived from the publishers Editions Féret which date back to 1812. They were taken over in the meantime, but the company has remained famous because of Bordeaux et ses Vins, a book published for the first time in 1850 and regularly updated, with an English language edition, Bordeaux and its Wines. It is now in its nineteenth edition. It’s the bible for wine lovers. Féret has published other books about wine over the years and also on other subjects. You’ll find these books and along with those from other publishers on the first floor of La Librairie de la Comédie. I like the place for its ground-floor tea room and for the beautiful view of the Grand-Théâtre, which can be seen from the first-floor windows.

Another bookshop on my rounds is La Mauvaise Réputation. More intimate, it specialises in art, eroticism and transgression, and is also an art gallery. I discovered it on the occasion of the presentation by a friend of one of his works, on the disreputable Bordeaux painter, Molinier.

Location: Bordeaux. See on Google

Even when I travel, I always feel like I see the same big international fashion brands. It’s reassuring when there’s a change of season and you need a lighter blouse or a slightly warmer pullover but it’s also a bit lazy. However, there are more original boutiques out there for you to discover.

In Bordeaux, I have a few brands in mind whose fame has reached far beyond this city and whose headquarters or factory is based in Nouvelle-Aquitaine. I think it’s great to opt for a local product whether it’s for me or is a present for somebody else.

Here is my little list, which is far from being comprehensive, but is full of sure winners and covers quite a broad range.

Caudalie emerged from the vineyards of château Smith Haut Lafitte, who produce Crus Classés vintage Graves wine. The daughter of the owner, Mathilde Thomas-Cathiard, and her husband launched this range of cosmetics based on the properties of grape vine seeds and shoots. A nod to anti-wrinkle creams based on resveratrol.

My little weakness, Adopt’. While Adopt’ also sells makeup and accessories, I love it for its perfumes, and I go pretty frequently to discover what’s new and stock up on amber with orange flower, neroli, violet with raspberry and vanilla with ylang ylang. I love all the reasonable prices and the 30ml bottles that are perfect for slipping into my toiletries bag when I travel.

When I was a little girl, I used to go to classical dancing lessons, and my leotard and shoes were from Repetto. The brand has expanded since to make shoes that fashionistas all around the world truly adore. But what they don’t know is that these shoes are made in the Dordogne, not far from Bordeaux.

For 65 years, the Janine Robin family company, rechristened Janine Robin Bassin d’Arcachon has been specialising in lingerie and swimwear. What I love about their clothing is that the fit and the materials have been carefully researched to ensure they make your figure look good.

Petrusse‘s scarves and stoles marry poetry and refinement in cotton, silk or wool. I am all the more furious at having lost my scarf during a trip, an indispensable accessory for both pleasure and comfort. Petrusse’s headquarters are located near Langon in the house that was built in 1860 by Jacques Mauriac, grandfather of the famous writer, François Mauriac.

I’ve known DDP for years as a women’s fashion brand that is easy to wear, and On.You as a more recent and on-trend branch of the same, with a more raw and more sophisticated style. But I was surprised to learn that the Bordeaux group BMC is in charge of Bonendroi, a kind of elegant and contemporary bazaar that I like visiting, as well as Eggman children’s bags and pencil cases that can be customised with stick-on silicone pieces, Etwog adults’ bags, La Carafe a 1950s style coffee pot, Yeh-Loh lamps and Bijoux de Mimi jewellery.

In and around Bordeaux, I treat myself to a number of beautiful walks that simultaneously combine pure pleasure and the utilitarian. My strolls in Temple-sur-Lot are part of this. I always return thrilled, and equipped with a small packet of water lilies or other curiosities.

When we bought our house, which was around twenty years ago now, we discovered a desperately empty small pond in the garden. For the pond to stay that way was out of the question. I added a few goldfish and, in order to provide them with a nicer living environment, it felt necessary that I grow a few water lilies in the pond. This was great seeing that in Aquitaine we have a specialist in these aquatic plants, Latour-Marliac, based in Temple-sur-Lot, in the Lot-et-Garonne.

This historic nursery was established in 1850 by Joseph Bory Latour-Marliac, a native of Lot-et-Garonne, with a view to growing the bamboo that is still present on the holding, forming nice tall and thick hedges at the entrance to the property. However, what made the nursery famous was its ability to produce water lilies of all colours, by means of the hybridisation of the white European water lily with wild water lilies in various colours. This was a genuine revolution at the time, that resulted in a resounding success at the Exposition universelle de Paris world fair in 1889. It was there that painter Claude Monet discovered them. He then placed several orders for water lilies for his water garden in Giverny and drew inspiration for his famous 200 m² tableau, Les Nymphéas (Water Lilies), which I admired at the musée de l’Orangerie (Orangery Museum) in Paris.

In the gardens of Latour-Marliac, I like to stroll among the 80 fish pools in which more than 200 varieties of water lily and shimmering lotuses flourish. Upon closer inspection, I entertain myself by looking for the tiny frogs that populate these pools, along with a multitude of small fish. I pass by the little museum before venturing into the park with its pond, which is, of course, home to a host of floating water lilies. I then go to admire the enormous multicoloured Koi carp in a large pond dedicated exclusively to them.

If I have the time I grab some lunch on the terrace of the restaurant Marliacea, between the pools and the pond, to sample the regional products, foie gras in lotus tea jelly, duck confit or Broc cheeses. I then set off again, admiring the commandery made from small bricks, which is located on the main thoroughfare and was founded in the 13^th century by the Templars. It serves as accommodation for the interns of the Temple-sur-Lot “La Base” sports centre, and is also home to a restaurant.

Actually, I only drink water. But this presents no problem and does not prevent me appreciating the history of its wines, the multifarious  vineyard landscapes nor from trying to understand all that is happening in this field of work and art.

Now and again, I take the opportunity of doing a vineyard circuit to admire the architecture of the Châteaux. Careful, “Château” does not often mean palace.  If some do indeed resemble small palaces, others are much more modest. These quite enormous edifices are devoted to the running of vineyards and to wine making. Visits focused on wine tasting can be arranged by appointment but I prefer to concentrate on more cultural walks because the owners of certain châteaux are very attached to contemporary art and warmly welcome artists. You cannot see everything in one go, so to speak, so I limited my visit to a small area in the Médoc, returning to well-known places or setting out to discover new splendours.

Very near Bordeaux, the Château d’Arsac with with its bright blue winery, has 25 works of art dotted about the domain, permanently on display, that Philippe Raoux, the owner, has acquired over time. I particularly appreciated “The cloud measurer” by Jan Fabre, “The visionaries”, that recall wood-carved owls, Zebra 3, and the work entitled “le Chevêtre” by Bernard Pagès. But there are also works by Niki de Saint Phalle or César to mention but widely known artists.

Chasse-Spleen opened its art centre in an18th century Carthusian monastery and in front of its mauve painted shutters Lilian Bourgeat‘s two immense “Unsold” boots are displayed. The temporary exhibition until 15 October  is dedicated to Rolf Julius, a German artist born in 1939. His experimental and minimalist works are not generally accessible to the public. Next year, it will be the turn of Benoît Maire to exhibit his works.

As Lynch-Bages is under reconstruction, I returned to wander around the village of Bages, a gathering of more or less abandoned houses that the owner of the château, Jean-Michel Cazes,  purchased some ten years ago to reconstitute a traditional village with a bakery, general store called Bages’ Bazaar, and a cafe restaurant, Café Lavinal. As Jean-Michel Cazes is very attached to contemporary art, I went to take a further look at Cordeillan-Bages, his Relais et Châteaux, in which he exhibits paintings as he acquires them.

I wound up my expedition with a visit to Beychevelle. This marvellous Château dates from 1565, boasts a 300 year-old cedar in the interior court and its spacious grounds overlook the Gironde Estuary from afar . When Jean-Louis Nogaret of Valette, Duke of Epernon (Duc d’Epernon) and Lord High Admiral was the owner in the 17th century century, boats sailing on the Gironde would lower their sails as a sign of respect. In the vatroom and winery designed by Arnaud Boulain and inaugurated in 2016, glass works by Biot region artists such as Jean-Paul Van Lith, Luc de Muelenaere or Robert Pierini are on display until September 2. If you are unable to come this year, you can benefit from other artists’ works in 2018.

Mériadeck has been subject to some dramatic metamorphoses. Those of recent decades have been spectacular. But were the changes appropriate and suitable for purpose? Whatever the verdict, Mériadeck is a living experiment in urban planning that is definitely worth a trip to see.

The case of Mériadeck, in Bordeaux, is quite an unusual one: the entire neighbourhood was raised to the ground in 1971 and replaced by an architectural ensemble that, though intended to be innovative and groundbreaking, turned out to be somewhat utopian in the end. Over the space of just a few years, a site of around 75 acres underwent a complete change of use. Planted right in the middle of the city-centre’s middle-class neighbourhoods and with its badly maintained buildings and deprived population, it stood out like a sore thumb.

Residing on the outskirts of Mériadeck myself, though in a more privileged neighbourhood, I got to witness this transformation at first hand. As a young girl I would accompany my mother on bargain-hunting trips to its central square, where scrap dealers and rag-and-bone men would set out their wares. I used to fantasise about the bright, gleaming lights of the local bar “Chez Etienne”, though I never actually set foot in the place. The fact that my mother would even take me to this ill-reputed district, home to prostitutes and people who were not exactly on good terms with the law, was already a daring enough exploit in itself.

The neighbourhood was parcelled into separate lots by the Archbishop of Bordeaux Ferdinand Maximilen Mériadec de Rohan (1738-1813) in order to finance the construction of the nearby Palais Rohan, which today serves as Bordeaux’s town Hall. It was another occupant of Palais Rohan, Jacques Chaban Delmas (1915-2000), Mayor of Bordeaux (1947-1995), who was responsible for completely rebuilding Mériadeck in concrete using a raised walkway-based approach to urban planning, separating the pedestrians from the cars on the roadways below.

Mériadeck’s high-rise residential blocks are constructed in the shapes of crosses. The rest of the ensemble is made up of Mériadeck shopping centre, which opened in 1980 and is where I always do my food shopping, and the offices of various administrative departments, namely the Regional Council, the Departmental Council and Bordeaux Métropole (an intercommunal body serving the greater Bordeaux region). I have often visited Mériadeck and these buildings in the course of carrying out my work as a journalist. The neighbourhood is also home to a library, an ice skating rink and various hotels. Additionally, the former building of French savings bank Caisse d’Epargne can be found here. It was designed by the architect Edmond Lay and construction was completed in 1977.

I used to have an account at that branch of Caisse d’Epargne, which meant I was able to go inside the building. I particularly like its rounded forms and out-of-sync main structures, which remind me of a snail. When Caisse d’Epargne decided to relocate, there were some who wanted to see the building demolished. Fortunately, it has been officially listed as a historic building since 2014. But what will become of it in the future?

Of the former Mériadeck, all that still remains is the drinking fountain, which has now been reinstalled in a position in front of the fine art gallery. Though educational in terms of what it can teach us about the history of urban planning, the original concept behind the new Mériadeck neighbourhood is beginning to show its age. Did the graft take? Not entirely perhaps. When they need to get together, local politicians go to the restaurants located just on the outskirts of Mériadeck, such as the Vachetnous and the Bistrot du Sommelier, thus allowing them to get out from this world of concrete.