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Cabinet of Chic Curiosities
Category / Nostalgia

When They Say ‘Haussmann’s Paris’, What Do They Mean?

Walking through Paris, as a tourist or a local, it’s hard to miss the sense of harmony that the city exudes. The standardized buildings, the parks, the long angular streets that seem to always lead to a landmark. Everything feels intentional, organized, and connected. This isn’t by chance, this sensation is largely thanks to the…

The Legend of the Little Renault that Could

The French have arguably mastered the art of slow living in the name of joie de vivre, and perhaps nowhere else has this been best demonstrated than on the cobblestone streets of Montmartre, which for many years, played host to the world’s slowest race… The story goes that one New Year’s Eve in 1898, a…

Dangerous Dancing Dandies were the Bad Boys of the Belle Epoque

The Paris of the Belle Époque saw the emergence of a certain type of street outcasts; a subculture that combined killer style with the criminal underworld. They were known as, les Apaches. They lived in secret dens in the city outskirts, shunned the idea of honest labor and took their name from the allegedly savage native American…

Paris’s Missing Palace and the Making of the Louvre

In many ways, the history of the Louvre is the history of France, from the era of monarchs and the temples they built to their power to the radical ambitions of the French Revolution and Paris Commune. While many of the millions of tourists now flocking back to Paris will gawk at the architecture of…

Drama on the Seine: A Compendium of Watery Turmoil

The Seine river flows through the heart of the northern region of France, including Paris, bringing life, business, and recreation to the city alongside an overflow of stories and events. It’s Paris’ ancient highway of activity and certainly the source of many people-watching spectacles, so let’s stroll along its bank and ogle at some of…

A Real Life Diagon Alley, Buried in Time

It may not have sold wands or grimoires, but this subterranean shopping alley remained just as hidden as J K Rowling’s, until it was accidentally stumbled upon in 2002 by builders renovating the Edwardian Royal Arcade, in Keighley, West Yorkshire, situated above it. Believed to have last been used in the 1890s, it was when…

Born into Slavery, She Became the First “Queen of Drag”

It’s a little before 11 PM on April 12th, 1888 in downtown Washington DC. President Grover Cleveland has just finished up a speech on what will become American Somoa, his wife Frances is already asleep, and, four blocks east, at the intersection of F and 12th Street, thirty Black, gay men are having a party.…

Bastille Day Street Parties of a Hundred Years Ago

Check out Le Petit Journal’s recap of lavish and loving Bastille Day street parties in 1914: “In none of the innumerable balls which were held in Paris during these festive evenings was a single serious incident reported. Few arguments, no fights. The people of Paris have proven that they know how to have quite a…

Jane Avril, “The Strange” Poster Child of the Moulin Rouge

If you knew that “Satine”, Baz Luhrmann’s lead character in his 2001 movie musical Moulin Rouge! was in fact based on a real-life French can-can dancer called Jane Avril, the decision to cast Nicole Kidman might make even more sense. Avril, with her flaming red hair, thin lips and delicate facial features, tall gaunt physique…

In 19th Century Paris, She Held a Permit to Wear Pants

A cigarette-smoking, pants-wearing, animal-dissecting painter, Rosa Bonheur spent her life doing exactly as she pleased. 2022 marks the bicentenary of the birth an artist who opened countless doors for female creatives, both in her home country of France and abroad. Born in 1822 in Bordeaux, Rosa Bonheur was the daughter of Sophie Marquis, a piano…
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