I was recently approached for an interview by the Bordeaux tourist office ahead of the launch of their new webzine, Un Air de Bordeau...

Introducing 'Un Air de Bordeaux', taking locals out of their comfort zone!


I was recently approached for an interview by the Bordeaux tourist office ahead of the launch of their new webzine, Un Air de Bordeaux. The webzine has now gone live, and it is a fine resource that is set to be a valuable addition to the local online ecosystem! 

Un Air de Bordeaux is primarily aimed at locals, to encourage them to get out and about, to see, visit and explore the surrounding metropole, but it is also bound to be of interest to international readers! It covers everything from parks to museums, tries out various oddball offerings, pinpoints child-friendly activities and lists upcoming events (exhibitions, sport, concerts, festivals, etc.).

The interview I gave features among a collection of “Super week-end” suggestions in the lifestyle section of the webzine. In it I reveal five unusual places to head to in order to enjoy an unusual take on the city, such as the scenic Parc Floral and the wide open spaces of Eysines, the “vegetable garden of Bordeaux”. One of my top tips is the national social security museum in Lormont, but do note that this most unusual of museums is only open on weekdays!

So, head on over to Un Air de Bordeaux and see where the webzine takes you. There is, after all, so much more to Bordeaux than its waterfront and Rue Sainte-Catherine!


Video introduction here:

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A few weeks ago, Invisible Bordeaux teamed up with la Mémoire de Bordeaux Métropole to head inside one of the city’s most famous la...

Three things you (possibly) didn’t know about Bordeaux’s Pont de Pierre

A few weeks ago, Invisible Bordeaux teamed up with la Mémoire de Bordeaux Métropole to head inside one of the city’s most famous landmarks, the Pont de Pierre, and met Laurent Rascouailles, the person who is in charge of visits to civil engineering works for Bordeaux Métropole.

The resulting video interview was subsequently published by Mémoire de Bordeaux Métropole on social media, and here is what Laurent taught us about the inner secrets of the emblematic bridge.

1. The Pont de Pierre is hollow!
Inside view of the Pont de Pierre!
Laurent Rascouailles: "Two tunnels run from one bank to the other inside the bridge, carrying water lines through the first, and telecommunications and electrical cables through the other. The tunnels are low-ceilinged, 1.10 metre high on average, and the only people who use the tunnels these days are the technicians who monitor the bridge. Generally they cross the bridge once a year, to check the inside of the structure. They go inside each pillar, and it takes them half a day to make it all the way across the bridge.

"In August 1944, the Spanish guerilla Pablo Sanchez saved the bridge simply by walking through these tunnels. The Germans had positioned explosives inside each pillar in order to blow up the bridge. Pablo Sanchez defused all the explosives; sadly he was shot when exiting the bridge on the left bank. There is a plaque in his honour on the waterfront and his name was recently given to a road in the new dockside developments."

2. Instruments permanently monitor the bridge
Laurent Rascouailles: "There are instruments inside each pillar and in its abutments, to monitor all the bridge's movements. There is a displacement sensor in each abutment and each pillar, to keep track of how much the pillars are sinking into the ground. Then there is an inclinometer to know which way the pillars are leaning in relation to the river, whether it's upstream or downstream. And a mechanical level enables us to monitor the transversal and longitudinal rotations of its supports."

3. Steps that now lead nowhere... used to provide underground access to toll collection offices!
Stairway to nowhere.
Laurent Rascouailles: "When construction work began, the State funded the project. But work came to a halt when Napoleon abdicated in 1814 and it was the shipowner Pierre Balguerie-Stuttenberg who enabled work to start again, by seeking donations. He founded the Compagnie du Pont de Bordeaux, made up of Bordeaux traders and other shipowners. Thanks to the company, building work began again but, in return, they demanded a toll be implemented for a 99-year period. Therefore, when the bridge opened on May 1st 1822, everyone had to pay in order to cross.

"The toll system stopped in August 1861 when the State acquired the bridge with the support of the city of Bordeaux and the département. One of the conditions was to make the bridge free to cross, so that Bordeaux could expand on the right bank, towards La Bastide. The toll booths were then used to collect octroi duty tax from 1861 until its abolition in 1927, and the buildings were finally demolished in 1954 when the bridge was widened, from a width of around 15 metres to 19 metres. At ground level, the pavements you walk on these days were added when that extension took place. The duty collection buildings had become a hindrance for movement and, therefore, hindered access to the bridge."

And here is the video interview featuring some incredible archive footage (and English subtitles):

 
Click here if video does not display properly on your device.

> Video produced by Sandie Fabre for la Mémoire de Bordeaux Métropole in conjunction with Invisible Bordeaux, Bernard Avril and IJBA, originally published on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/228215463

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On almost every street in Bordeaux there are bricked-up windows that add a sense of mystery to the associated buildings. What can the sto...

The phantom windows of Bordeaux

On almost every street in Bordeaux there are bricked-up windows that add a sense of mystery to the associated buildings. What can the story be? 

As reported in a recent Invisible Bordeaux item, in most cases the windows were bricked up in the 19th century as a means of paying less so-called "window tax" (impôt sur les fenêtres), an unpopular
Rue Croix-de-Seguey.
means of taxation that had first been used at the time of the Roman Empire and that was applied in France from 1798 to 1926. The system served as a simpler way of calculating how much tax was owed than entering and measuring the surface area of each property.

While this is the primary reason for so many windows having disappeared into thin air, there can be others: in some cases, owners may have added window-shaped designs as a "trompe l’œil" feature to add coherency and/or symmetry to an exterior, or to visually break up an otherwise monotonous empty space. Finally, some may have simply chosen to block off their windows for structural reasons or because they were having to deal with too much sunlight!

In many cases, phantom windows of the like are to be found on buildings located on street corners; having two walls to play with obviously provided owners with more leeway, such as pictured below on rue Commandant-Arnould (also featured in the lead photo) and rue Barennes. In both cases, the brickwork and smooth lines suggest these may be trompe l'œil features.
 

These next tall buildings, on rues du Serpolet, Chai-des-Farines and Ducau are all heavy on phantom windows. The rue Ducau residence on the right almost comes across as a game of Tetris in progress, with the blocked-up windows seemingly gradually replacing the real ones from the bottom up!
 

This charming building, on the corner of rue du Hâ and rue des Étuves even includes some faded handpainted adverts (or ghostsigns, a recurring Invisible Bordeaux subject!). On the lower floor, the presence of a corner window suggests that there may also have been similar windows on the upper levels in a previous life. 


The scenario below is a classic one, particularly when the buildings involved are not on street corners: full rows of windows are simply not there. These photos were taken on cours Pasteur and rue des Bahutiers.
 

The phenomenon is by no means restricted to tall buildings in the city centre. Bourgeois townhouses in residential neighbourhoods are also short of a few windows, as can be seen here on rue Rochambeau, rue des Deux-Ormeaux and cours Marc-Nouaux. In each case, anything between four and seven windows (and even a large arched doorway) have either disappeared from view, or else were never there to begin with!


Smaller homes have also played the phantom window game, such as here on rue Henri-Matisse (where no less than three of the six first-floor windows have been cancelled out) and rue de l'Arsenal.
 

Meanwhile, at the other end of the Bordeaux class system spectrum, Château Pape-Clément, out in Pessac, also boasts its own mystery windows!


In some cases, bricked-up windows, whatever their reason for being, have been cultivated as bona fide trompe l’œils. That is the case for instance on rue Mandron, where the windows in the row over to the left of the picture below are full-on optical illusions, the non-windows convincingly painted to look like genuine ones.


Elsewhere, such as here on rue Ravez, efforts were made in the past to dissimulate and embellish the ghost windows by adding outdoor venetian blinds. The blinds are now well past their best though...


But perhaps my favourite use of a ghost window, pictured below, is to be found on rue d'Arcachon. A board which has been affixed to the window features, appropriately enough, an interpretation of Salvador Dalí's "Figura en una finestra" (Figure at the Window). The picture is signed/credited to "B. Bodin d'après Dalí".
 

So start hunting out your own phantom windows and decide for yourself why and how they came to be. Once you begin looking for them, you'll see that they crop up everywhere, in all quarters and on all sides!


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