The French Revolution

Our hotel sits a few hundred yards south of the site of the Bastille, in the heart of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, home in the eighteenth century to a class of fiercely independent craftsmen and artisans, who were to become stalwarts of revolutionary activism. As we walk through the streets of eastern Paris, we will be able to see remnants of pre-revolutionary life scattered around the landscape. The first stage of our pilgrimage takes us to the only surviving remnant of the Bastille's medieval fortifications, before we stroll to the Musée Carnavalet to enjoy its recently-revitalised displays covering the whole sweep of Parisian history. Before our dinner, we will explore the Marais, where winding narrow streets preserve the atmosphere of the pre-modern city. (D)

Today we experience the splendours of the French absolute monarchy and ponder how it was able to be brought low by the common people. Approaching the palace of Versailles through its surrounding town, we will see how it dominates the landscape around it, an entirely conscious articulation of the supremacy of monarchical power, under God. Within the palace, we can observe the spaces within which the display of everyday power was choreographed, against a background of brutally direct monarchical propaganda, as well as seeing how later regimes sought to turn the prestige of this remarkable site into a monument to specifically national glory. Touring the town in the afternoon, we will intersperse the opportunity to look at some treasures of the Old Regime more closely, with visits to the actual sites of revolutionary upheaval, retelling the story of how 'all this' was brought to its knees. (B, D)

Our journey today takes us to many of the most turbulent sites of politics in the revolutionary years. From the heart of the city, we will explore how its dense. medieval streets and buzzing neighbourhoods were called to participate in change, how a culture of both democratic participation and paranoid alarmism developed, and how an age that scorned and feared 'faction' nevertheless developed an intensely partisan political culture, in which everyone was a patriot, and busily denounced everyone else for not being one. As well as visiting some of the key sites where this culture was experienced as a roaring, babbling everyday reality, we will also tour the Conciergerie prison, where a vast swathe of people, from royalty to humble workers, experienced the dreadful consequences of escalating conflict, and the descent to Terror. (B, D)

On our final day, we contemplate how the revolutionaries wanted their epic to be remembered, and some of the very different ways in which it has been. Crossing once again to the Left Bank, we will ascend to the great domed mausoleum of the Panthéon, and its emblazoned message of national gratitude to 'great men'. Inside, as well as exploring the final resting-place of an array of revolutionaries and heroes, we also confront the dramatic ways in which this space itself has been reimagined repeatedly in the centuries since 1789, in the service of very different political traditions. In the afternoon, we will further contemplate the Revolution as an experience to be mourned, in the intimate space of the Picpus cemetery. Here, by a twist of fate, many of the Terror's victims lie beside one of the Revolution's greatest heroes, the Marquis de Lafayette, reflection on whose complex political heritage will bring our exploration to a close. (B)