Heather Stimmler-Hall

Four months away from Paris and friends seemed an eternity, but Florida’s warm weather, time with Dennis, and our funky cottage in the art community of Gulfport beckoned. Even after I learned about the lockdown in France, I couldn’t bring myself to cancel my March 29 flight to Paris. We had food delivered, learned how to use Zoom, and took walks with our masks on, stopping to talk with neighbors sitting on their porches, just as we enjoyed their occasional stops in front of our house to ask if we were OK or needed anything. Their daughter, Valerie Perruchot-Garcia, working from home, began a diary to chronicle life in confinement with grown children home.

Over 2000 Parisians gathered last night at the Place de la République for a memorial service in remembrance of George Floyd, the African-American man killed on May 25th by a policeman in Minneapolis, and in support of the #BlackLivesMatter protests taking place across the United States against systematic racism. Gatherings of more than 10 people are still banned in Paris as part of the Covid-19 measures, but police did not attempt to stop the event or disperse the crowd, and there wasn’t any police presence around the Place de la République. How to Support the Black Lives Matter Movement in Paris Almost two thirds of Secrets of Paris readers are visitors in France, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use your tourism euros responsibly by supporting the many wonderful black-owned businesses and services during your stay. Here are just a few (feel free to send suggestions): 50+ Local Black-Owned businesses to support in Paris (by Maya Dorsey of LaVieLocale.com) Time to Shine a Light on Black-Owned Businesses in France (by Inspirelle contributor Elizabeth Milovidov) with the Google spreadsheet of businesses here.

Although most artists have long since relocate to the outer rim of Paris, the gallery district of the Marais has ripened into an internationally renowned cultural hub, and before the confinement was predicted to be the next center of the international art scene. Today the Haut Marais district is home to blue chip galleries and internally renowned movers and shakers, including Thaddaus Ropac, named an Officer of the l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres by French President Jacques Chirac in 2005. Besides her role in Papillon gallery, Marion was recently elected president of the French Comité Professionnel des Galeries d'Art (CPGA) and is also the spearhead of Paris Gallery Weekend hosted This month: Jérôme Poggi has extended the group exhibition "La Peur au Ventre” and will be opening a new exhibition June 20th titled « L’arc-en-ciel de la gravité » (The Rainbow’s Gravity) based on Thomas Pynchon’s book of the same name.

The wedding festivities culminated with a fireworks show in Paris near the Seine at the Place Louis XV (now known as the Place de la Concorde) on May 30th. According to an account by Louis-Sébastien Mercier, a chronicler of the time who attended the event, the square and surrounding streets were packed tightly full of hundreds of thousands of Parisians hoping to get their first glimpse of the fireworks, since these were usually only seen by royalty and their guests at Versailles. Louis and Marie-Antoinette were reportedly horrified at the tragedy that took so many lives at what was supposed to be a rapprochement of royalty with their subjects in a time of great distrust (the lavish spending for the wedding angered many who were still feeling the effects of the famine during Louis XV’s reign). The dead were buried in the cemetery of the La Ville-L’Evêque, a hamlet just outside the city not far from the Madeleine, where, ironically, the decapitated bodies of Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI would be dumped 23 years later during the French Revolution.