Black Pantheon

Paris' Pantheon is a landmark site in the 5th arrondissement that we have included on two of our most popular Entrée to Black Paris walks. It sits at the top of rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève (Saint Genevieve's mountain), only a few hundred meters away from the Luxembourg Garden.

Pantheon viewed from the Luxembourg Garden
© Discover Paris!
From a "black Paris" perspective, the Pantheon has many interesting features:

It is the final resting place of two men of African descent - Alexandre Dumas, père and Félix Eboué. Information boards on both men can be found in the crypt.

Dumas' remains were relocated there with much pomp and ceremony in 2002.

Pantheon in red, white, and blue for the interment of Alexandre Dumas
© Discover Paris!
Three black men are honored by inscriptions in the crypt - Toussaint L'Ouverture, Louis Delgres, and Aimé Césaire.

Inscription in honor of Toussaint l'Ouverture
© Discover Paris!
L'Ouverture's inscription reads:

IN MEMORY OF TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE
Freedom Fighter - Artisan of the abolition of slavery
Haitian Hero - Died in deportation at Fort-de-Joux in 1803
There are images of blacks in the Alexandre Cabanel mural depicting the life of Saint Louis found inside the building.

The Life of Saint Louis (detail)
1874-1877 Alexandre Cabanel
© Discover Paris!
While its interior is not the most beautiful, the Pantheon was spectacularly transformed for the ceremonial events held in honor of Aimé Césaire after his death in 2008.

Homage to Aimé Césaire
© Discover Paris!
Black French have contributed to the current renovation of the monument. Their photos are displayed on the north gate along with those of several other donors.

Four contributors to the Pantheon restoration
© Discover Paris!
The Pantheon remains open during its restoration. It is located at:
Place du Panthéon
75005 Paris
Telephone: 01 44 32 18 00
Closest public transporation: RER B - Luxembourg
Entry fee: 7.50 euros; 4.50 euros for non-EU persons between the ages of 18-25

Pantheon dome under restoration
© Discover Paris!
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360° of African Diaspora Paris

Would you believe me if I told you that every monument and site visible from the middle of place de la Concorde is associated with at least one aspect of African Diaspora history, culture, and contemporary life?

It's true!

Begin with place de la Concorde itself.  At the base of the Obelisk of Luxor, African-American Jessye Norman sang the French National Anthem for the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution - dressed in a billowing rendition of the French flag!



To the north, up rue Royale, Eglise de la Madeleine was the site of Josephine Baker's funeral in 1975.

Eglise de la Madeleine
© Discover Paris!

To the east, the octagonal boat basin near the wrought iron gate of the Tuileries Garden served as inspiration for Henry O. Tanner's painting The Man who Rented Boats and for James Emanuel's poem "The Boat Basin, Years Later."

Octagonal Boat Basin at Tuileries Garden
© Discover Paris!

To the west, up the Champs Elysées, the Arc de Triomphe shelters the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. African-American fighter pilot Eugene Bullard was invited to rekindle the Flame of Remembrance at the tomb by Charles de Gaulle in 1954.

Arc de Triomphe viewed from the Champs Elysées
© Discover Paris!

To the south, across the river, Martinique's Aimé Césaire (poet, playwright, and statesman; died in 2008) and French Guiana's Christiane Taubira (currently France's Minister of Justice) both served as members of the Assemblée Nationale.

Assemblée Nationale
© Discover Paris!

At place de la Concorde, you are literally surrounded by the African Diaspora presence in Paris, past and present!

If you are planning a trip to Paris in 2013, walk with us to learn about this amazing history and the vibrant fabric that the African Diaspora continues to weave in Paris today! Until January 31, 2013, Discover Paris! is offering a $25 discount on the private, guided

Entrée to Black Paris tour

of your choice. To claim your discount, send an e-mail to info(at)discoverparis(dot)net and include 2013 ETBP Offer in the subject line. We will then work with you to schedule your tour.

See you in the City of Light!

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Homage to Césaire, Senghor, and Damas at Dorothy's Gallery

On Friday evening, April 13th, a remarkable event took place at The American Center for the Arts at Dorothy's Gallery in the 11th arrondissement. Two actors - Jean-Michel Martial and Virginie Emane - interpreted several works by famed Francophone writers Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Léon-Gontran Damas in a reading entitled Paroles Croisées (Crossed Words) as the penultimate event for the Surrealist Heritage art exposition at the gallery. Césaire, Senghor, and Damas were founders of the Négritude movement of the 1930s.

Flier for Surrealist reading
© Discover Paris!
The announcement for the event read as follows:

Sculpteurs de verbe, Aimé Césaire, Léon Gontran Damas et Léopold Sédar Senghor réinventent la langue, disent la vie, l’amour, la peur, l’espoir… avec des mots qui sentent le poivre et le piment de Cayenne… Surréalistes, jusqu’au bout des mots, mais réalistes aussi jusqu’à vous faire entendre ou pousser le grand cri nègre.

Translation: Sculptors of words, Aimé Césaire, Léon-Gontran Damas and Léopold Sédar Senghor reinvent language, talk of life, love, fear, hope...with words that smell of black and Cayenne pepper...Surrealists through and through, but also realists to the point of making you listen to or shout out "the great black cry."

Both actors read from loose leaf pages, with Emane seated on the arm of an overstuffed chair and Martial standing and pacing in turn across the floor. They wove elements of multiple writings together, including Césaire's Cahier d'un Retour au Pays Natal, Senghor's Hosties Noires, and Damas' Black-Label, before a full house.

Virginie Emane and Jean-Michel Martial
© Discover Paris!

The crowd
© Discover Paris!
Emane and Martial read from several texts, never pausing between them, so the words of the three great writers flowed as though they comprised a single work. The effect was riveting!

Rapt attention
© Discover Paris!
When I asked Dorothy why she conceived of and hosted this event, she responded that was great friends with Ina Césaire, the daughter of Aimé and Suzanne Roussi-Césaire. She knew the Césaires well and visited Martinique - their homeland - multiple times. She knew that they embraced surrealism and wanted to pay tribute to them through this magical evening in association with the exposition of surrealist works that she mounted at the gallery.

Dorothy Polley with flier
© Discover Paris!
The event was free, but Dorothy passed a hat among the attendees at the end of the presentation for those who wanted to donate a small sum to show their appreciation for the artists' performance.

Dorothy passing the hat
© Discover Paris!
The evening was a great success, with more than twice the number of persons who sent RSVPs showing up for the reading. It represented Emane and Martial's debut performance of Paroles Croisées. They plan to present this performance again, particularly in French schools as part of an effort to increase awareness of the history, literature, and culture of African Diaspora peoples.

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Bakary Sangaré Brings Color to the Comédie Française

The 323-year old Comédie Française – the most prestigious of French theaters – opened membership of its permanent troupe to a black man almost nine years ago when it elected Bakary Sangaré, a Malian of considerable reputation on stage and screen, to be a member of its permanent troupe. On September 1, 2002, Sangaré was the 673rd person to be elected to the troupe.
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Bakary Sangaré
© Christophe Reynaud de Lage
Before joining the troupe, Sangaré studied theater at the National School of the Arts and Theater Techniques in Paris, where he fulfilled an apprenticeship under the supervision of Marcel Bozonnet during the late 1980s. It is Bozonnet who, as director of the theater troupe, submitted Sangaré’s name for election to the Comédie Française cast.

Sangaré has played Shakespearean roles such as Ariel (1989) and Hamlet (1996) on the French stage under the direction of Britain’s Peter Brooks. He performed in a theatrical rendition of Aimé Césaire’s Cahier d'un Retour au Pays Natal (Notebook of a Return to the Native Land) at the TILF in 1993, and staged his own production of James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time in 2000 – 2002. And he starred in a critically acclaimed African film entitled Samba Traore in 1992.

Sangaré’s debut at the Comédie Française was coupled with another historic event – for the first time in its history, the troupe produced a play written by an African playwright. Papa Doit Manger (Papa Must Eat), by Franco-Senegalese Marie NDiaye, made its debut in the Salle Richelieu of the revered theater on February 22, 2003. The story centers around the return of a wayward African man to his French wife and two metisse daughters after a 10-year absence, and the havoc that it wreaks on the household. Sangaré played the glib, apparently contrite Papa, and delivered a masterful performance in his first role as a member of the Comédie Française. Papa Doit Manger is also the first play performed at the Comédie Française to be written by a woman.

While Sangaré is the first African to be admitted to the Comédie Française, he is not the first black person. In 1967, Jacques Maline (aka Georges Aminel, whose father was from Martinique) was elected to the troupe. He was with the theater for only five years – he resigned in 1972 after the Comédie Française was strongly criticized for having him portray Sophocles’ Oedipus. The theater’s director replaced him in the role with the promise that he would be asked to play Othello at a later time.

At the time of his acceptance to the troupe, the theater expressed its commitment to have Sangaré play roles that are not based on racial personifications. This is significant because the Comédie Française produces almost exclusively classical French works, very few of which portray black characters. It has lived up to this commitment – to date Sangaré has played the Lion in Fables de La Fontaine, Organ in Molière’s Tartuffe, Antione Vitez in Conversations avec Antoine Vitez, and Sebastian in Shakespeare’s La Nuit des Rois (The Twelvth Night). In another bold move by the Comédie Française to modernize and become more interdisciplinary, the theater cast Sangaré to play Titus in the Jean Racine play Berenice – which it commissioned from a Congolese choreographer.

Sangaré was fervent admirer of Martinican poet, playright, and statesman Aimé Césaire. He and two other members of the Comédie Française paid homage to Césaire at the ceremony organized by the Assemblée Nationale after Césaire’s death in 2008.

Bakary Sangaré, Mariann Mathéus, Muriel Mayette, and Pierre Vial pay tribute to Aimé Césaire
© Assemblée Nationale
Sangaré has stated his belief that other blacks will follow him and take their place on this stage. “If theater is a mirror of society, then necessarily, one day all the faces of our mosaic society can be reflected there,” he said.

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Aimé Césaire at the Pantheon

On April 6, 2011, France commemorated the life and work of Aimé Césaire at the Pantheon. French President Nicolas Sarkozy presided over a grand ceremony that was broadcast live on France 2 and France ô, as well as on giant screens installed outside the building.

Ceremony viewed outside the Pantheon
© Patrick Kolavik, AFP

Roughly 1000 persons were invited to participate in the ceremony, including Césaire's family, junior and senior high school students from Martinique and France, and students from the Paris' prestigious educational institutions Louis le Grand (high school) and l'Ecole Normale Supérieure (college). Césaire attended both of these schools in his youth.

To celebrate the event, entry to the Pantheon was free from April 7-10. I took advantage of this opportunity to photograph the visual and literary tributes to Césaire that were mounted inside.

The famous pendulum of Foucault was dismantled for the occasion so that a huge fresco comprised of four images representing different periods of Césaire's life could be projected from the ceiling of the nave onto a disc-shaped screen below. An eight-minute film by Euzhan Palcy that reviews the life of the revered poet and statesman was not functioning during my visit.

Image of Césaire fresco and its location in the Pantheon

View of Césaire fresco and projection screen in background
© Discover Paris!

Four quotations from Césaire's works were displayed in front of the stone pillars that border the nave. The works quoted were Cahier d'un retour du pays natal (1939), Tropiques (1943), Moi, Laminaire (1982) and La Poésie (1993).

Quotation from La Poésie (1993)
© Discover Paris!

A plaque that honors the memory of Césaire and his work has been placed in the crypt. It lies between Caves XXV and XXVI. Alexandre Dumas, père and Félix Eboué are laid to rest close by, in Caves XXIV and XXVI, respectively. Dumas and Eboué are the only two men of African descent whose remains are found in the Pantheon. Césaire's remains are interred in Martinique, his native land.

Aimé Césaire plaque
© Discover Paris!

While in this corner of the Pantheon's crypt, visitors should not fail to look for the plaques that honor Toussaint l'Ouverture and Louis Delgres as well. These are located along the side walls of the short passage that leads to the tombs of Félix Eboué and Victor Schoelcher in Cave XXVI.

In the souvenir shop that is located at the exit, there were two tables stacked with books written by or about Césaire. A number of visitors took their time examining the tomes and leafing through them.

Looking at books
© Discover Paris!

The montage for the ceremony in Césaire's honor was quite striking, and the plaque will serve as a permanent reminder of this great man.

Homage to Aimé Césaire
© Discover Paris!

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Entrée to Black Paris!™ is a Discover Paris! blog.