Fontfroide Abbey. During our journey along the Canal du Midi, we visited Fontfroide Abbey, situated in a secluded valley among the wooded hills southwest of Narbonne. Having visited several magnificent medieval churches during our travels through southern France, I thought I had developed a reasonable appreciation of medieval religious architecture. Fontfroide was different. Unlike the enormous cathedrals built to impress congregations and demonstrate ecclesiastical power, Fo

There is a German word for a particular kind of freedom that the English language has never quite managed to capture. That word is Sturmfrei. Imagine that you are a teenager. Your parents have announced that they are going away for the weekend. The house will be yours. No supervision. No questions about where you are going, what you are doing, or when you intend to go to bed. You can turn up the music, invite your friends over, eat pizza for breakfast, and leave the dishes in

There are museums devoted to art, archaeology, history and famous people. And then, in Pézenas, there is a museum devoted to doors. That may sound rather specialized. But after wandering the narrow streets of this remarkable old town, a museum of doors begins to make perfect sense. In Pézenas, doors are not simply things through which one passes. They are part of the architecture, part of the history and, in many cases, works of art. And behind this unusual museum is an equal

During our recent journey through southern France, we visited Pézenas, a charming medieval town in the Languedoc region. Famous for its association with the playwright Molière, Pézenas is a delightful collection of narrow cobblestone streets, elegant Renaissance mansions, artisan workshops and inviting little squares. But one of my most memorable encounters in Pézenas had nothing to do with Molière. It involved a Black Madonna, an extraordinary embroidered gown, and a centuri

There are towns that preserve their history behind glass, and there are towns where history simply carries on living. Pézenas is one of the latter. Set in the Hérault department of southern France, not far from the Mediterranean and the Canal du Midi, Pézenas is a town made for wandering. Its narrow lanes twist between honey-colored stone buildings. Heavy wooden doors conceal courtyards. Wrought-iron balconies project over streets that seem scarcely wide enough for a horse an

Oscar W. Schalm. This is an original artistic likeness based on a historical photographic reference. This illustration is not a photograph. Oscar Schalm died in 1982. I never met Oscar Schalm. I arrived at UC Davis in 1978, and although I do not recall meeting him, his reputation and contributions were on display in every corner of the UC Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital. Anyone who has spent much time at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine knows his name. Sc

Pont des Marchands, Narbonne. Two thousand years of history beneath your feet. There are cities that preserve their history in museums, and there are cities where history remains part of everyday life. Narbonne, in southern France, belongs firmly in the second category. During our visit to Narbonne, two remarkable structures caught my attention. One was an ancient Roman road, uncovered beneath the city's central square. The other was a bridge that had evolved into a street, c

In the south of France, a visit to the local market is about much more than buying food. Sometimes, it involves a former international rugby player, a megaphone, and packages of meat flying through the air. A Market with a History There is something wonderfully French about a traditional covered market. It is simultaneously a place to shop, eat, socialize, argue, gossip, drink wine, and observe humanity. Narbonne's famous covered market, Les Halles, is an excellent example. S

Three monuments, three stories, and several centuries of history. Narbonne Cathedral is an extraordinary building. Begun in 1272, it was intended to become one of the great Gothic cathedrals of France. Yet it was never completed. Its enormous choir, soaring vaults and magnificent stained-glass windows survive, but the nave was never constructed. Perhaps that is why I found the cathedral so fascinating. It is a building that tells stories not only through what was accomplished

There is something strangely compelling about an unfinished building. A ruin invites us to imagine what once stood there. An unfinished building asks a rather different question: What was supposed to be here? That question confronts you at the Cathedral of Saint-Just-et-Saint-Pasteur in Narbonne. Yet when you first enter, incompleteness is probably the last thing you notice. You notice height. Extraordinary height. Gothic columns climb almost impossibly upward toward ribbed v

I recently published an essay that generated some spirited disagreement. That was precisely what I had hoped it would do. The essay was titled Greed: When is Enough Enough? https://www.ricklecouteur.com/post/greed-when-is-enough-enough-732 I write because I enjoy exploring ideas, questioning accepted wisdom, and encouraging conversations about subjects that matter to me. I do not expect everyone to agree with my opinions. Indeed, I often learn more from people who disagree w

Grand escalier du Palais des Archevêques de Narbonne. (Grand staircase of the Archbishop's Palace in Narbonne) Power is not simply something you possess. Sometimes, it is something you perform. During our visit to the Palais des Archevêques (Archbishop’s Palace) in Narbonne, Rex pointed out an extraordinary architectural detail. The staircase leading to the archbishop's private apartments had supposedly been designed so that, when the archbishop ascended in his magnificent ec

Reflections on time, opportunity, happiness, and the business of being alive. Carpe Diem. Two Latin words. Eight letters. An entire philosophy of life. I photographed these words tattooed across the back of a woman in Le Someil, France, whose brightly colored dress had slipped from her shoulders. Her hair was a striking copper red. The tattoo was black, elaborate, and unmistakable. Against the riot of color in her dress, the message seemed almost understated. Carpe Diem. Seiz

Four centuries of engineering, one man's extraordinary vision, and the pleasure of traveling slowly. There is something wonderfully theatrical about traveling through a lock on the Canal du Midi. Our barge, Saraphina, approaches a pair of enormous wooden gates set between centuries-old stone walls. The gates open, we glide inside, and the gates close behind us. Water begins to enter or leave the chamber. Almost imperceptibly, our barge rises or falls. The stone walls appear t

There is an old idea that seems increasingly important in a world obsessed with ownership. Stewardship. A steward is not an owner. A steward is someone who has been entrusted with something valuable for a period of time and accepts responsibility for caring for it before passing it on. That distinction changes everything. If I own something, I might reasonably ask: What can I get from it? If I am its steward, the question becomes: What condition will I leave it in? And perhap

There is an old question that seems increasingly relevant to the world in which we live: How much is enough? Enough money. Enough property. Enough influence. Enough power. For most of human history, the answer was constrained by circumstance. There was only so much land one could own, so much food one could eat, so many possessions one could accumulate. We have removed many of those constraints. Today, an individual can possess not millions, but billions of dollars. And not m

We were returning to the Hôtel Récamier late one evening when we heard it. Music. Not the distant thump of a nightclub or the polished sound spilling from a restaurant, but something quite different - rhythmic, melancholy, unmistakable. Tango. It seemed to drift through the trees and across the Place Saint-Sulpice, filling the warm Paris night. We followed the sound toward the hotel, and then we saw its source. People were dancing. Right there in the square, almost outside th

Sydney. There is something wonderfully contradictory about the electric bicycle. It represents freedom, efficiency, exercise, reduced emissions, and a way of moving through a crowded city without sitting inside a two-tonne automobile. And yet, in some cities, the e-bike has become part of the clutter it was supposed to help eliminate. I was reminded of this recently while comparing two cities I know well: Sydney and Paris. Walk around central Sydney and you can encounter shar

There are hotels that could be anywhere. And then there are hotels that belong completely to their street, their neighborhood, and their city. The Hôtel Récamier is one of those. Tucked discreetly into a corner of the Place Saint-Sulpice in Paris’s sixth arrondissement, the hotel seems almost reluctant to announce itself. There is no grand entrance, no procession of taxis, no uniformed doorman standing beneath an enormous canopy. At 3 bis Place Saint-Sulpice, Hôtel Récamier o

There is something peculiar about time. A minute is always sixty seconds. An hour is always sixty minutes. A year is always 365 days, give or take the occasional adjustment demanded by astronomy. And yet almost nobody experiences time that way. Think back to childhood. Summer holidays seemed enormous. Christmas took forever to arrive. The interval between birthdays felt like an appreciable fraction of a lifetime. Because, of course, it was. At ten years old, a year represents