Great Continental Railway Journeys (2012–…): Season 1, Episode 1 - London to Monte Carlo - full transcript
I'm embarking on
a new railway adventure
that will take me
across the heart of Europe.
I'll be using this - my Bradshaw's
Continental Railway Guide,
dated 1913,
which opened up an exotic world
of foreign travel
for the British tourist.
It told travellers where to go,
what to see
and how to navigate the thousands
of miles of tracks
criss-crossing the Continent.
Now, a century later,
I'm using my copy
to reveal an era of great optimism
and energy,
where technology, industry, science
and the arts were flourishing.
I want to rediscover
that lost Europe
that, in 1913, couldn't know
that its way of life
would shortly be swept aside
by the advent of war.
Steered by my 1913 railway guide,
I'm journeying through
a prosperous pre-war Europe
of emperors and kings,
pomp and elegance,
a Continent whose industrialists,
factories and mines
had created wealth,
whose scientists and engineers
were discovering and building
the marvellous,
and whose artists were challenging
old ways
whilst intellectuals
plotted revolution.
'On this leg, I'm following
'the most popular route of the
Edwardian traveller through France,
'enjoying the final days
of La Belle Epoque,
'the country's "beautiful age"
of peace
'and economic and artistic triumph.'
I'm standing where Claude Monet
stood a century and a quarter ago,
and I've never felt more inadequate
in my life.
'I'll taste the tipple that fuelled
the Bohemian nightlife of Paris...'
I can see how in this place
of hellish activity,
this might have helped
to take you to heaven.
'..live the Edwardian high life...'
Oh, to have been an Englishman
a hundred years ago!
'..and like so many tourists
before me,
'I'll have a flutter at
the gaming tables of Monte Carlo.'
I'm not the first British traveller
to lose his colourful shirt
on the roulette table.
My journey begins on the Eurostar
to Paris, which, in 1913 as now,
was a capital city
oozing sophistication.
I'll then head south to
the Mediterranean town of La Ciotat,
home to a famous film-making duo,
before continuing eastwards
along the glamorous Cote d'Azur
visiting some of 1913's
best-loved tourist destinations,
before ending my journey
in that den of excess, Monte Carlo.
Of course, in 1913, the British
tourist bound for the Continent
had to cross the waters,
and was spoilt for choice.
My Bradshaw's says,
"For the Dover route Londoners
left from Charing Cross or Victoria.
"The service is four times a day.
"For the Folkestone route,
Londoners left from Charing Cross."
By any route, it was the start of
the Briton's Continental adventure.
Andrew, hello. Nice to see you.
'I'm bound for Paris,
'and to learn just how popular
foreign travel was for Edwardians,
'as I enter France,
I'm meeting author Andrew Martin.'
By 1913, what kind of numbers
of British people
were travelling to Paris,
for example?
Well, a revolution had occurred
between about 1840 and 1913.
In 1840 you had about...estimated
about 150,000 going abroad.
By 1913,
perhaps as many as two million.
Really? I'm quite surprised
by those numbers,
but I suppose
there was still a sense of adventure
about travelling to the Continent.
There WAS a sense of adventure.
You would have marvelled
at the strange coal smell
coming off the locomotive because
it was a different type of coal.
The French locomotives
of the Nord company
looked odd to British eyes with
all their fixtures and fittings
seeming to be on the outside.
They were a rather
drab brown colour,
which in itself was interesting.
There was no platform
on the French stations.
You just stepped up
into the carriage, which in itself
was quite exciting.
But then again,
it was becoming much more
affordable, foreign travel.
You could have a third-class return
to Paris in 1913
for about two pounds.
£150 in today's money.
So, a week's wages for
a fairly poorly paid working man,
so it was quite doable.
Nowadays, when we travel by the
Eurostar, we go under the Channel.
We miss out stages of the journey.
Tell me about the stages
of that traditional journey.
Well, on the boat train
it was very definitely...
a tripartite journey.
You had a train and then a boat
and then a train again,
and the nautical aspect of it
is what we miss today.
You would have been on a small boat.
You stood a good chance
of being sick.
You would have boarded it, at Dover,
from Admiralty Pier,
which was just a stone pier
sticking out into the sea.
The train went along it and
the paddle steamer came alongside,
and you would have not only got
blown about on Admiralty Pier,
you may well have got soaked
as well.
So, with the Channel Tunnel
we really miss out, don't we?
We miss out on being soaked
and on throwing up.
Yes, it's... It's terrible really,
isn't it(?)
A hundred years ago, the traveller
who'd use the route through Calais
would have arrived
at the Gare du Nord,
and, a century later,
I'm doing just the same.
Au revoir, merci.
1913 visitors to Paris
happily endured the travails
of their three-stage journey
for a simple reason.
They came to enjoy the most modern,
beautiful and cultured city,
not only in Europe,
but, arguably, in the world.
The wonderful thing
about arriving by train
is it delivers you
to the heart of the city.
And even here in the station, you
see signs that this is Paris -
something about
the colour of the stone
and the green-painted ironwork.
And outside the station,
I feel the buzz
and the cafes and the bistros
and the brasseries are beckoning me.
After four decades without war,
1913 Paris was characterised
by confidence, prosperity
and joie de vivre.
Dominating its skyline,
the Eiffel Tower
was a symbol of French engineering
and economic success.
Over the previous 60 years,
the city centre
had been expensively beautified
with grand boulevards
and imposing public buildings,
which no doubt impressed
the Edwardian tourist.
But the gentrification of Paris,
begun by city architect Georges
Haussmann, had come at a price.
Between 1851 and 1870, France was
ruled by an emperor, Napoleon III.
He employed Baron Haussmann
to rebuild Paris.
He created miles of new avenues
and tremendous vistas.
In the process, he demolished
thousands of houses
and displaced a much greater
number of people.
It's the sort of great project
that could never have been done
in Britain,
where we think of the state as being
the servant of the citizen,
rather than the citizen
being at the disposal of the state.
Constitutional issues aside,
there's no doubt that
early-20th-century Paris
stood for beauty, elegance and fun.
It was the centre
of Europe's cafe society
and a magnet for a burgeoning,
often risque culture
of arts and entertainment.
But three years before
my 1913 guidebook was written,
a natural disaster struck
this vibrant capital.
My Bradshaw's tells me
that in January 1910,
"Widespread distress and damage
were caused
"by the unprecedented swelling
of the River Seine,
"the water rising
nearly to the keystones
"of the arches of the bridges.
"The quays were entirely submerged,
"and the flood covered
the adjoining streets.
"It was estimated
that the property loss
"reached a total of £40 million."
I had no idea
that the beautiful Seine
could be capable of such violence,
and I wonder
whether Paris is safe today.
It's hard to imagine
such scenes of destruction
and I'm keen to learn more about
this largely forgotten episode
in Parisian history.
Flavie!
Hello!
'Flavie Sauve works
for Paris Flood Protection.'
What was the cause
of the flood of 1910?
So, in autumn for four months
we have...huge rainfall.
It was a nightmare, and...
You know that in Paris
it was a huge building area
at this time.
We had new sewers
and...new metro tunnel,
because at this period we had
already four lines of metro in Paris,
so the water spread into the tunnels
and the Seine and its tributaries...
Overflowed the banks. Yes.
So, actually,
the very modernity of Paris,
with its sewers,
with its metro tunnels,
this then became a cause of danger,
made the disaster worse? Yes, yes.
In deep midwinter the river rose
to almost nine metres.
At some points the banks overflowed
for up to a mile.
It must have been a very huge flood.
Yes, you can imagine.
The flood was like...
just disaster for Paris.
Is Paris still in danger
of flooding?
Yes, it is.
You know that we have
1-on-100 chance per year
to get a flood like this one
happening.
It's one of those things, isn't it?
You have a great city
built on a beautiful river,
but, then, it does pose
some sort of danger.
Yes, it is.
Well, thank you so much.
You're welcome.
'After a good night's sleep,
I've woken with an appetite.
'For Edwardian Britons
visiting for the first time,
'Parisian food must have taken
some getting used to.'
Merci.
'No eggs and bacon here.
'This is the town
of the continental breakfast.'
I'm going to start my day by taking
up a Bradshaw recommendation.
"It will save time, be inexpensive
and give a better idea
"of the situation of the more
notable buildings of interest
"to hire a car to drive around
the heart of the city."
Napoleon used to say that
an army marches on its stomach,
and for my drive I'm preparing
with a croissant.
My 1913 Bradshaw's
recommends hiring a taxi
because Paris was awash with them.
In 1906, there were a thousand cabs
in Paris,
compared to just one hundred
in London.
To correct that imbalance,
the General Cab Company of London
placed a massive order
for 500 vehicles, built in France
by Renault.
With around 600 manufacturers
compared to just 50
in Edwardian Britain,
when it came to making cars,
France was streets ahead.
HORN TOOTS
Motoring historian Pierre-Jean
des Fosses should know why.
Pierre-Jean! Hello!
How lovely to see you.
Beautiful car. Thank you.
This car is Le Zebre.
Zebra, the animal.
And French, of course,
French, yes, built in 1910.
Have you any idea what a car like
this might have cost in 1910?
Who could afford it?
This car had been made
to be a low-cost car,
economic car for people,
and the price was...
3,000 francs at the time.
And 3,000 francs
was a year's salary for an employee
at the Zebre factory.
Why do you think the French were
so advanced in car manufacture
and the British so backward?
Well, I think the English were very
involved in steam for a long time.
Yes, we were very good
at locomotives
and maybe then we didn't realise
that this was the new technology.
Yes, you may realise that
it was the new technology,
but you have a law
that obliged people
to have someone
walking in front of the car
at two miles per hour maximum
in town
with a red flag just to say,
"Hello, mind, the car is coming."
So that stopped the industry.
At the beginning of the 21st century
we were worried about having too
much of a health-and-safety culture,
but, apparently, we had
one in the 19th century, too.
Yeah, yeah, this is always
a revolution. It will come back.
ENGINE STARTS
First time! Well done.
This is very, very cosy,
Pierre-Jean.
Yeah, yeah, it's a nice car.
When Baron Haussmann beautified
the centre of Paris,
he did have a head start.
Some of the city's best-known
buildings, like Notre Dame,
had been here for centuries.
This building behind now
has a very special meaning for me.
It's your Assemblee Nationale,
isn't it?
Your parliament building.
So I feel an affinity with it.
And now we cross the River Seine.
We felt that lovely cool breeze
as we came across.
And we come into
the Place de la Concorde.
Yeah. So many people were guillotined
here. Yeah, that's true.
And now it's the Concorde.
With another early-20th-century
mode of transport available,
it's time for me to bid au revoir
to Pierre-Jean
and his vintage automobile.
Given the state of traffic in Paris
today,
it's probably more sensible for me
to proceed on the Metropolitain,
which, my Bradshaw's reminds me,
is the underground railway,
and it lists the nine lines that had
already been built by 1913,
and tells me that "the fares are
the same for any distance,"
which I think is probably
still true today,
although I'd be lucky to get
a first-class fare for 25 centimes.
It was a combination
of traffic congestion
and the imminent arrival
of the Universal Exposition
and the Olympic Games, both in 1900,
which prompted the building
of the metro.
Work started in 1898, 35 years later
than London's underground.
By contrast with London,
the Paris metro seems to be
mainly quite close to the surface,
built by the cut-and-cover method -
digging a trench
and then filling it in.
And that means you get
these tall trains,
whereas in London, of course,
we have
lots that were built very deep
in round tubes
and you have to stoop all the way.
'I'm arriving north
of the city centre
'at Abbesses station in Montmartre.
'In 1913, as now,
'it's where Paris writes its prose,
paints its pictures
'and parties hard.'
This beautiful metro station
was built around the turn
of the 20th century
in Art Nouveau style, whose curves
draw their inspiration from nature.
This is an expression
in public architecture
of a broad cultural
and artistic movement.
After World War I, people
would look back on this period
with understandable nostalgia,
and describe it as
"La Belle Epoque" -
"the beautiful era".
Situated in the 18th arrondissement,
Montmartre's most notable
landmark,
the Basilica du Sacre-Coeur,
completed just a year
before my 1913 guidebook,
sits atop the district's
steep 130-metre-high hill.
The area was populated
by Bohemian types
who'd been displaced by
Haussmann's revamp of Paris.
Writers and artists followed and,
as a busy nightlife developed,
out went the stifling morals
of the 19th century,
to be replaced with
the risque cabarets and cancan girls
of Le Chat Noir
and the Moulin Rouge.
And even a hundred years on,
it seems the spirit of
La Belle Epoque lingers here.
Hello. You know I came
and joined you because,
apart from being a beautiful lady,
you're sitting here reading a book.
You're reading Emile Zola,
so you're in the tradition
of La Belle Epoque.
Exactly.
That's what I get inspired by.
These are your photographs? They are
actually, indeed. Fascinating.
Do you feel that
there's a very strong artistic
tradition in Montmartre?
There is, there is indeed.
The whole neighbourhood has
an artistic atmosphere actually,
and...lots of artists live here
and expose their work in the street.
So the tradition continues? It does.
I notice they even paint the trucks.
Yes. That's true! Bye-bye.
Bye-bye. Lovely to see you. Bye-bye.
MUSIC: "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien"
by Edith Piaf
# Non
# Rien de rien... #
No tour of La Belle Epoque
would be complete
without a visit
to the Hotel Fromentin
which, in 1913, was a cabaret
where they served a liquor
affectionately known as
"The Green Fairy" -
which should help me with my fantasy
of being in the Paris
of Mondrian, Picasso, Pissarro
and Toulouse-Lautrec.
Nadia! Oh, hello, Michael.
Delighted to see you.
'Nadia Gallouze works at
the Hotel Fromentin.'
I've...I've come for
some absinthe, please.
All right. Have you ever try it?
No, I have not. No?
I thought absinthe was...was banned.
It used to be but it was at
the beginning of the 20th century.
It used to be really strong
and it used to make people
really sick,
especially the mind.
Banned in 1915,
absinthe fuelled
the booziness of La Belle Epoque.
As high as 70% proof,
the liquor was made
from the bitter herb wormwood.
Absinthe was blamed for an explosion
in debauched behaviour
that turned respectable
establishments into dens of vice
and upright citizens into drunks.
Think the gin palaces of Britain
with a twist of French.
So, may we begin the ceremony
of the absinthe? Yes, of course.
So, you just have to pour
some of it here
and you use this special spoon.
You put some sugar
and you just have to open
this little tap.
Oh, and now the drops...
Yeah, the drops.
And you just let the sugar dissolve.
During that waiting time, you talk.
It's about the art of conversation.
It's a way to take life slowly.
I'm so pleased you told me that it
was about the art of conversation.
I always thought it was about
getting drunk.
Absinthe was a particular favourite
in Bohemian Montmartre.
It's even rumoured that the artist
Vincent Van Gogh
cut off his ear under
the influence of the green fairy.
I'd best have just a sip.
So, the water has dripped
through the sugar
and my absinthe has gone cloudy.
It was quite clear before.
And to taste it...
Very sweet, still, of course.
Even more sweet. Mmm.
Tastes good.
I can see how in this place
of hellish activity,
this might have helped to take you
to heaven.
I'll be leaving Paris for the
Cote d'Azur early tomorrow morning,
and, just like the Edwardians
whose journey I'm retracing, my
train will leave from Gare de Lyon.
Before I depart, I want to find out
about this grand terminus.
It was rebuilt in 1900
with some very evocative features.
This clock face is reminiscent
of one I lived with for many years -
Big Ben -
and, indeed, British travellers
passing through here in 1913
with their Bradshaw's guide
would have been made to feel
at home by it
as they hastened through
the Gare de Lyon
on their way to their express trains
and their overnight sleepers
to the Riviera.
In the station's restaurant,
peckish passengers were greeted
by a decadent salon
befitting La Belle Epoque,
and so well regarded in France that
French president Emile Loubet
attended its opening.
I'm meeting railway historian
Clive Lamming at Le Train Bleu.
Lovely to meet you here
in Le Train Bleu.
This is such a wonderful,
beautifully decorated restaurant.
It's more than a restaurant.
I would say, a sort of palace. Hmm.
It was made for the British people.
They come during the night
by the Blue Train,
Le Train Bleu from Calais,
and they need to feel at home,
so we built for them
a sort of little miniature Big Ben,
a little tower,
so they could feel at home.
And here everything is supposed
to be, I would say, British.
Just look at the furniture
with the chesterfields,
the sofas and so on, you see. Yes.
So you are quite in a British place,
but I can make you sure that the
cooking is French and the wines, too.
Let's take a tour around
because the whole place
is decorated with frescos...
what, I think of the destinations
that you can go to from here?
Is that correct?
Yes, they were ordered
by the French railway
and they wanted that
people wished to be there, you see.
It's a place rather, I would say,
built for dreaming than reality.
In the 1870s,
Belgian Georges Nagelmackers
formed the International
Sleeping Car Company.
His trains mirrored the comfort
of George Pullman's
American overnight sleepers.
Edwardian Britons loved
the Calais-to-Cannes route,
which departed Paris from
this station, the Gare de Lyon.
It's a wonderful view.
It's a wonderful view.
My Bradshaw's is 1913.
Can you paint for me a picture
of the station in 1913?
Yes, in 1913
we would have seen engines,
steam-engine locomotives, which were
called Coupe-Vents - Windcutters -
and behind,
there were wooden carriages.
And there were a lot of luggage vans
because in that time
people would travel heavily
with plenty of luggage,
and ladies would have plenty of
boxes, parcels and big hats,
and all these luggage vans
were full up
and it's famous because
nobody was really wanting to travel
just for the pleasure.
The British invented travel for
pleasure and travel for learning.
All the other people at that time
thought it was wasting your time.
Delightful prospect. Thank you
so much. Enjoy your travel.
'Ready for the
next leg of my journey,
'I'm returning to the Gare de Lyon,
'and venturing south,
through central France.
'Had I been travelling in 1913
using my Bradshaw's guide,
'I would almost certainly have used
the overnight sleeper to reach
the French Riviera.
'Overnight sleepers
are very romantic,
'although I don't find them
very easy to sleep on.
'Anyway, today, we have
the high-speed train -
'the train grande vitesse,
the TGV - which covers'
the 450 miles from
Paris to Marseilles,
incredibly, in three hours
and five minutes,
so I'm on the TGV.
From Marseilles, I'll make
for La Ciotat, a small town
with an impressive history.
From there via Toulon
to the Cote d'Azur
to retrace a typical Edwardian trip,
taking in the
artistic heritage of Antibes,
the British influence on Nice
and, finally,
the brazenness of Monte Carlo.
When you travel at
these speeds by train,
you have something of the experience
of travelling by plane,
that suddenly you wake up in a
new landscape, new vegetation,
new climate.
We've swapped the cold light
of northern Europe
for the azure blue
of the Mediterranean.
I'm changing trains at
Marseille to do what
so many Britons did in 1913 -
visit the Cote d'Azur.
It's quite a short run now to
my next stop, which is La Ciotat,
which my Bradshaw's tells me is
beautifully situated on the coast,
and remarks that it was the
Greek settlement of Kitharistes,
but my interest is in
more modern history
because La Ciotat is the place where
the passions of railway enthusiasts
and film buffs coincide.
'La Ciotat is something of a shrine
to lovers of motion pictures
'because this was the summer home
of the Lumiere brothers,
'whose films of the village
'were some of the earliest
movies ever made or shown,'
amongst which the scene of a
train entering La Ciotat station
has become an icon of early cinema.
'Encouraged by their father,
a stills photography entrepreneur,
'Auguste and Louis Lumiere patented
their portable cinematograph
camera in February 1895,
'and the same year, the brothers
were the first in the world to
'showcase their films
to a paying audience.
'At the Eden Theatre,
in coastal La Ciotat,
'currently being restored under
the watchful eye of Michel Cornille,
'crowds gathered for screenings
of one of the Lumiere brothers'
'iconic films of a train
pulling into the station.'
It's wonderful to be here.
I feel the dust of history upon me.
This is extraordinary.
It would be really thrilling to me
to be able to sit in the seats here.
May we do that? We may.
Why did the Lumiere brothers
decide to film a train
entering the station at La Ciotat?
Louis was playing
with his cinematograph.
His mother came
from Marseille by train,
he was on the platform
and he filmed his mother
coming from Marseille in La Ciotat.
So it's 1895, and you and I
have been invited here
to the Eden Theatre
to see the arrival of the
train at La Ciotat Station.
Do you think it was
frightening for them?
Yes. Yes.
Because, as you can imagine,
you are on your seat
and suddenly the train
is coming out of the screen
and you are afraid.
The train was the first
horror movie in the world!
MICHAEL CHUCKLES
Well, it's been a great privilege to
be allowed to enter this building
site and be, apparently,
the last visitor to the old theatre,
but I know that
when it's been restored,
people will come here
in their thousands,
because this is a
very special place.
You are very welcome to
come again because Spielberg
will open the new place.
Spielberg? Spielberg with Michael.
Another legend.
This seaside town plays
another significant part
in early-20th-century
cultural development.
Apart from its important role
in the history of cinema, La Ciotat,
a place I had never
heard of until today,
has another claim to fame
as the cradle of...petanque.
MICHAEL SPEAKS FRENCH
The trick of this game
is that at the end,
your boule needs to be the nearest
to the little target ball,
but, of course, in-between, you
can hit other people's boules
and knock them out the way, and you
can move the target ball as well.
In 1907, La Ciotat
resident Jules Le Noir,
a rheumatic with limited mobility,
is thought to have tried playing
French bowls without raising a foot.
One good shot.
'Believed to be the highest
participation form of
bowls on the planet
'the game's name, petanque, derives
from the Provencal words
pieds tanques
'which translate as
feet together on the ground.'
And that's the end of me!
With one flick, he just
sent my ball into paradise.
With some time before my next train,
I'm going to explore
La Ciotat's harbour.
As my Bradshaw's guide told me,
La Ciotat really is
beautifully situated by the sea.
The contrasting blues
of sea and sky,
the contrasting browns
of terracotta and brick,
make it gorgeous.
It just invites the painter's brush.
I can't believe that
I'd never heard of it,
but it seems that I am not alone.
As far as I can tell, it's
undiscovered by the British tourist.
'I'm bound now for
Antibes on the Riviera.
'When the railways
arrived on the Cote d'Azur,
'visitor numbers soared
from 4,000 in 1860,
'to 100,000 by 1900.
'But mechanised travel
wasn't the only reason
'that they came in such droves.
'They were following
the lead of their monarch,
'and the advice of
an influential book -
'Dr Henry Bennet's Winter And Spring
On The Shores Of The Mediterranean.
'Boba Vukadinovic,
a tourist guide, knows more.'
The first edition of the book
definitely brought Queen Victoria
to the French Riviera.
She spent altogether
332 days on the Riviera,
which was half of her
foreign travelling.
Why did she come to the
Riviera the first time?
It was actually because of
her son Leopold, Duke of Albany,
who was a haemophiliac.
Queen Victoria was convinced
of the beneficial effects
of the temperate Mediterranean
climate on Leopold,
her haemophiliac son,
but another British royal also
frequented the Cote d'Azur,
for less wholesome reasons.
Now, one of Queen Victoria's
other sons, the Prince of Wales,
who later became Edward VII,
he was keen on the Riviera for
different reasons from his mother's.
You're absolutely right.
He would never stay in the same
town as Queen Victoria. Ha-ha!
Never. Why? Because, actually,
she didn't approve of his, um,
let's say, uh,
pleasure-seeking life,
and, definitely,
when he was on the Riviera,
he was seeking for pleasure
with young ladies,
with elderly ladies later on,
and he was keen on sport, too.
He played a lot of tennis,
the French liked him.
Actually they adored him because
he brought tennis to the Riviera,
and, later on,
on his yacht Britannia,
he was participating in all
the regattas on the French Riviera.
My Bradshaw's guide, which is 1913,
still refers to most of these places
on the Riviera as winter resorts,
so when does it begin
to change to summer?
It's in the '20s.
They started actually
integrating the idea of being
on the French Riviera in the summer,
and of hotels being open
all the year round.
The word scenic is a cliche,
often used to describe towns
along the Cote d'Azur.
Antibes is amongst
the most beguiling.
Its bays define beautiful
shapes in a glistening sea,
whose intense blueness
responds to the skies,
and the changing angle of the sun.
Even the least artistic person
would love somehow to
capture that shifting light.
Antibes. My Bradshaw's promises,
"A sheltered winter place
and small seaport,"
which is today filled
with billionaires' yachts,
"in a fine situation between
Golfe-Juan and Baie des Anges."
The rain has brought a cool evening,
but the pink sky promises
fine weather tomorrow.
Le Figaro, s'il vous plait.
Un euro cinquante.
Merci.
Merci. Merci. Un ticket pour vous.
Au revoir. Merci. Bye-bye.
My Bradshaw's says that,
"The Cap d'Antibes
"is a beautiful peninsula,
about two and a half miles long,
"clothed with a
wonderfully rich vegetation,
"and having a wild,
picturesque coast.
"As a winter resort,
it's growing in favour."
And that word picturesque
is well chosen because
the intensity of the light,
and vibrancy of the colour,
attracted to Antibes some of the
greatest painters who'd ever
lifted a paintbrush.
Antibes was a magnet
for Edwardian art lovers,
although the great impressionist
painter Claude Monet
first worked here as early as 1888.
Inspired by beautiful surroundings,
impressionist artists usually
painted in the open air,
rather than in a studio,
depicting everyday life
and using vibrant colours
to recreate the effect of light
and atmosphere.
By 1913, many of the most
influential painters
of the early 20th century
had followed Monet to Antibes
as, in the 21st,
has British artist Mitch Waite.
Mitch, good to see you. And you.
I suppose on a day like today
I don't really have to ask
what it was about Antibes
that attracted artists.
No! Well, it's right there
in front of us, isn't it?
Clear blue skies, deep blue sea,
crystal-clear horizon.
And my Bradshaw's refers also to
the richness of the vegetation,
so that would be a factor, too?
Absolutely.
Just look around us here.
We've got the sun coming through
the yellow in this plant here,
and that brings a highlight and a
sparkle and a richness to colour
which artists like to use.
And if you go back into
this sort of vegetation,
the colours go bluer and deeper,
and contrast with the highlights
that we like to put in a picture.
And then, if you look further back,
at Cap d'Antibes there,
the grey-blues in all of the
shadows of the trees give
depth to the picture.
Just what we want.
That's an absolutely
wonderful explanation.
Shall we take a walk
through the town? Absolutely.
Which is the first of the famous
artists, then, to come to Antibes?
Well, that would
have to be Claude Monet,
who famously painted from the
Cap d'Antibes several paintings.
Came on the train, I imagine.
I should think he did, yes.
And with the railways I suppose
other artists followed in his train.
Yes. Well, he inspired Paul Signac
who came and was very
inspired by Monet's work.
I'm interested in
Paul Signac because
he came here, I think, in 1913,
the year of my Bradshaw's guide.
Yes, in fact he did, that's right.
He came from St Tropez,
where he'd been painting
for many years before that.
And it was very important to
them to paint in the open air?
Absolutely. That's what they wanted.
They were outside and
they came to places like this
for the beautiful light, of course,
and they in turn inspired
people like Signac, in fact,
who developed into something
called Pointillism,
painting very small brush strokes,
almost mosaic-like,
with bright, fresh, clean colours,
and he in turn inspired
people like Henry Matisse,
who was part of
the Fauvism movement.
Bright strong colours but
bigger, bolder, brush strokes
and, again, inspired by this
beautiful light from this area.
So, really, you can read the
history of art in the late 19th,
early 20th century here in Antibes.
It's all here, in Antibes.
Mitch wants to show me the shoreline
that many Edwardian art connoisseurs
would have visited to see where
Monet painted his famous work
Antibes Seen From La Salis.
I see you have a
group of artists here.
Is it good to be part of a
community of painters?
Absolutely. We enjoy it a lot,
go out together painting,
inspire each other,
share common interests.
And here is Paul Rafferty,
one of my friends.
Paul, Michael. A pleasure to meet
you. A great pleasure to see you.
Beautiful piece of work. Thank you.
Do you find yourself treading in
giants' footsteps as you stand here?
Well, I think any artist does
when there's such a plethora of
fantastic art that's gone before,
but that doesn't stop you doing it.
Do you think there was anything
special about the beginning
of the 20th century?
Do you feel really important
changes were occurring then?
Everything was changing and
I think the nice thing about
the impressionists, for instance,
is they depicted
what was the reality,
from train stations to lamp fixtures,
that I'm reluctant to do.
I don't like cars for instance,
but I have to put them in,
and it just seems maybe with passage
of time, it looks more bucolic then,
but there really were so
many changes going on for them.
You can't really compare
a modern-day car with
a classic locomotive.
No, but that might be your and
my romanticism rather than...
To them it might have been ugly,
but they depicted it.
Well, Michael, you've
seen how the experts do it,
and I thought you might like
to have a go yourself.
I haven't lifted a paintbrush
since I was at school.
MICHAEL LAUGHS
All right, you better show me
exactly what to do, please.
What we're looking for on here...
We've got a roughly rendered in
sky and tree and sea,
but what's really special about
Antibes is the golden light
on the town here,
and that I've totally
left off for the moment,
so what you have to do is keep your
eye on the subject all the time.
What the impressionists did was
paint reality as they saw it,
brush stroke by brush stroke.
It wasn't invented.
So every time you put a brush stroke
down, you're looking across there.
You've got to know where to stop,
exactly where the tower is.
Then you look for the little bit
of light coming on that building.
It just goes slightly down
diagonally, like that.
See if you can just continue
and maybe put a few brush strokes
of light coming down here.
The light is on this side.
Exactly that.
That's perfect!
I'm standing where Claude Monet
stood a century and a quarter ago,
I'm holding a paintbrush
for the first time in 40 years,
and I've never felt more
inadequate in my life.
OK, Michael, I would
like to congratulate you
and now welcome you
to our painting group.
You know, it's quite a tradition
that we painters paint each other
when we go out together.
Oh, my goodness!
That's absolutely lovely.
And you've got this
shirt and, of course,
you got the towers of the
Picasso Museum of Antibes.
Thank you so much. Just wait
until you see mine of you! Oh, yes!
On this journey,
I'd already discovered that,
at the turn of the 20th century,
the French had a lead in
the manufacture of cars
and a lead in cinema.
Here in Antibes,
I've discovered how remarkable were
the developments in French painting.
France, on the eve of
the First World War,
was a country of extraordinary
intellectual energy.
But my next destination is a place
to rest the brain and the body.
The crowded beaches
and elegant seafront
confirm that Nice is
a city built on tourism.
Bradshaw's is always helpful
with directions.
"The principal railway station is
on the north-west side of the town.
"All the streets running south from
the railway lead through the town
"and eventually to the sea."
And it's to the water
that I'm bound,
to find the lasting legacy
of those British people
who flocked here over the centuries.
The town was a winter
destination of choice
for grand-touring early Victorians,
and some, who made Nice their home,
played a surprisingly important role
in creating one of the
town's best-known landmarks.
Built in the 19th century as perhaps
the world's most elegant and
fashionable seaside boulevard,
the Promenade des Anglais
has origins in the
Anglican church of Nice,
where British residents
and visitors worshipped.
Kenneth Letts is
Holy Trinity's rector.
So what is the connection
between the Anglican church
and this very fashionable promenade?
Well, it's a big connection.
This began as an act of solidarity
with the unemployed.
That was in the 1820s
and Father Lewis Way,
who was the priest in charge
of the parish at that time,
said to his people,
"We need to do something to help
the unemployed of the area
in which we live,"
and he got a subscription going,
and, with that money,
they employed the local Nicois
to build a path for the ladies to
take a stroll along the seaside.
That's extraordinary.
It's one of the best-known
promenades, probably, in the world,
and it began as a
poverty relief project.
I think you could
put it that way, yes.
I doubt whether many
Edwardian visitors knew that
the swankiest esplanade in Europe
started as a dusty two-metre-wide
path funded by Anglicans,
and I'd be amazed if today's
tourists have the slightest idea.
Hello! Do you speak English?
A little bit.
Do you know the name of the
promenade you're walking on?
Of course. It's the
Promenade des Anglais.
Do you know particularly
why it's called "des Anglais"?
Ah, there's a part that was
built by a reverend and
that's how it started.
He gave some work, but it's because
we had a tour this morning!
That's why we know!
Hello, ladies. Hello. Hello.
Are you English? We are.
Do you know that you're on the
Promenade des Anglais? We did. Yes.
Do you know why it's called the
Promenade des Anglais? No.
I only found out today. OK.
Apparently, it's because the
Anglican church here raised some
money
to do a project and give work to the
unemployed people in the 1820s.
What do you think of that?
That's a nice connection between our
country and here, isn't it? Yes.
We'll feel different carrying
on our promenade now, I think.
Enjoy your holiday. Thank you.
I know that my hotel for the night
is somewhere along the
Promenade des Anglais.
All I need now is to locate it.
A-ha! My Bradshaw's often
has a recommendation or an
advertisement for a hotel.
On this occasion, it has a picture,
and since the Negresco appears
not to have changed in a century,
I had no excuse for
not being able to find it.
Just months before my
guidebook was published,
Hotel Negresco, the most famous
Belle Epoque building in Nice,
opened for business.
It was owned by
Romanian Henri Negresco,
who had left Bucharest as a teenager
to seek his fortune and
succeeded as a Nice hotelier.
Sadly, war was on the horizon,
and when it came in 1914,
Henri funded the running
of his palatial hotel as
a military hospital.
In the post-war period,
bookings didn't pick up
and Henri died in 1920,
without seeing his beloved hotel
returned to its former glory.
In the 1950s, the Negresco's
new golden age dawned.
The list of the 20th century's
best-known statesmen
and celebrities who have spent
the night here is endless.
'And, tonight, I'm excited
to have a room here.'
It's a beautiful lift,
in mahogany and mirrors.
Oh, look at that!
Gold leaf, and an
automatically opening door.
That is classy.
Ah! Such elegance!
Oh, to have been an Englishman
a hundred years ago!
Breakfast facing the Mediterranean.
Not bad!
After a breakfast
contemplating the azure sea,
the final destination on this
leg of my European journey
is about two other very significant
colours - red and black,
rouge et noir.
In France,
before you get on the train,
you have to stamp your ticket
in a little machine to validate it,
and it prints some numbers on there.
Ready to go.
'I'm visiting Monaco,
'the second-smallest
independent state in the world...
'..a principality whose royal family
was able to adopt a novel approach
'to swelling the state's coffers.'
My journey takes me through
some of the most beautiful
resorts in the world,
towards Monte Carlo,
which Bradshaw's tells me is
"situated on a sheltered bay
and enjoys a delightful climate,
"while the surrounding scenery
is full of charm and variety.
"The bath establishment
is supplied with every form
of medical and hygienic bath,
"and at the 'bar',"
the word is in inverted commas,
"the mineral waters of all the
best-known European resorts
may be obtained."
But since my Bradshaw's was written,
I think Monte Carlo has
become famous for an activity
which most people would
regard as less healthy.
In the 19th century,
gambling was illegal in
Britain and much of Europe,
so Monaco legalised it
and sanctioned a casino,
which became so successful
the government was able to
abolish taxation on its citizens.
The plan succeeded beyond
expectation as Monte Carlo
attracted Edwardian gentlemen keen
on a flutter like moths to a candle.
And if Nice is the tourist hotspot,
then Monte Carlo
draws in the uber rich -
those who can afford
to lose a fortune,
but hold on to their super yachts,
super cars and
supermodel girlfriends.
The casino, my Bradshaw's says,
"is on a promontory on
the east side of the town.
"There are elaborately decorated
and widely known salles de jeu,
"or gaming rooms,
open from 11.30am until midnight.
"Trente et quarante and roulette
are the games played here."
It must be worth a whirl.
The Monte Carlo Casino
was designed in 1863
by the renowned French architect
Charles Garnier,
who also built the Paris Opera.
Guillaume Jahan de Lestang
is the press officer.
Hello, Michael.
Welcome to the Monte Carlo Casino,
the legendary of Monte Carlo.
Legendary and magnificent.
Casinos were not legalised until
the middle of the 20th century,
so it must have been very attractive
to British travellers.
Yes, and it was not even
in Italy or France,
so this is what made
the casino that successful.
Was it an instant success?
It was a great success
from the beginning. Yes.
Monte Carlo already
had a railway station?
Yes, it was located
just nearby the casino,
so it was easy access also to
the gamblers to come and enter,
gamble a little chip on a table,
and then get us some more income.
They could just get off their
train and have a flutter? Yes.
Baroque in style,
the casino has several
ornately decorated gaming rooms.
Another beautiful salon. Yeah.
I'm wondering how much things
have changed since my Bradshaw's
guide was written in 1913.
For instance, it says that
"inhabitants of the principality
were not allowed to
enter the casino."
Is that still true?
Yes, it is still true.
The Monaco people are not allowed
to come, enter and gamble.
Even the prince is not
allowed to come and gamble.
So everyone here is,
by definition, a foreigner.
I think it's time to have a spin.
Yes.
My 1913 guidebook says that the
minimum stake at the roulette table
is five francs and the maximum
6,000 - a sizeable sum.
Today, I'll not be wagering
a single centime as we're
playing just for fun.
Mr Croupier, may I have
some money, please?
Wow! Those are thousands,
those are hundreds,
and those are fifties...
and these are twenty thousand! Yes.
No-one seems to have bet on even,
so I'll bet on that.
Messieurs, faites le jeu.
Ooh!
At the last minute, I bet
on 26 and 25 has come up,
and my counter has been swept away.
Well, Guillaume, I'm not the man who
broke the bank at Monte Carlo,
nor, I think, the
first British traveller
to lose his colourful
shirt on the roulette table.
I'm sure you will do
better next time.
MICHAEL LAUGHS
There's a hidden treasure
in this building that
I hope the Edwardians, whose steps
I'm retracing, would have seen.
Surprisingly, just a few yards from
the riches of the gambling tables,
is a little gem, a little temple,
devoted to an art
that's close to my heart.
I love opera.
It's the most demanding and
complicated form of theatre,
and opera houses have to
be equally over the top.
One of the finest houses in
the world is that at Paris,
built by the architect
Charles Garnier,
and he was employed here in
Monte Carlo to build a
replica in miniature,
and here have been played works
by Mozart, Verdi, Rossini, Gounod.
But here the audience would have
experienced an intimacy
with the singers
and with the players,
because if there's one
thing that's better than
a big, grand opera house,
it's a small, grand opera house.
Using my Bradshaw's guide,
I've followed in the footsteps
of British travellers journeying
across France in 1913.
It's given me a window on a society
at the pinnacle of achievement
in technology,
cinematography and art,
and brought me here to Monte Carlo
to perceive the heights
of elegance and of decadence.
That universe was about
to be destroyed by war
and, looking back through
the haze of that catastrophe,
we glimpse a golden age.
'My next continental journey waltzes
into pre-war Austria-Hungary.
'A proud empire.'
The Hapsburgs were
one of the most dynamic
and powerful European families.
'Pulling middle European strings.'
Rargh!
'Countries with surprising vistas.'
I never expected anything as
grand and as magnificent as this.
'And an emperor with
Europe's destiny on his mind.'
He knew even then that
this was going to mean war.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
a new railway adventure
that will take me
across the heart of Europe.
I'll be using this - my Bradshaw's
Continental Railway Guide,
dated 1913,
which opened up an exotic world
of foreign travel
for the British tourist.
It told travellers where to go,
what to see
and how to navigate the thousands
of miles of tracks
criss-crossing the Continent.
Now, a century later,
I'm using my copy
to reveal an era of great optimism
and energy,
where technology, industry, science
and the arts were flourishing.
I want to rediscover
that lost Europe
that, in 1913, couldn't know
that its way of life
would shortly be swept aside
by the advent of war.
Steered by my 1913 railway guide,
I'm journeying through
a prosperous pre-war Europe
of emperors and kings,
pomp and elegance,
a Continent whose industrialists,
factories and mines
had created wealth,
whose scientists and engineers
were discovering and building
the marvellous,
and whose artists were challenging
old ways
whilst intellectuals
plotted revolution.
'On this leg, I'm following
'the most popular route of the
Edwardian traveller through France,
'enjoying the final days
of La Belle Epoque,
'the country's "beautiful age"
of peace
'and economic and artistic triumph.'
I'm standing where Claude Monet
stood a century and a quarter ago,
and I've never felt more inadequate
in my life.
'I'll taste the tipple that fuelled
the Bohemian nightlife of Paris...'
I can see how in this place
of hellish activity,
this might have helped
to take you to heaven.
'..live the Edwardian high life...'
Oh, to have been an Englishman
a hundred years ago!
'..and like so many tourists
before me,
'I'll have a flutter at
the gaming tables of Monte Carlo.'
I'm not the first British traveller
to lose his colourful shirt
on the roulette table.
My journey begins on the Eurostar
to Paris, which, in 1913 as now,
was a capital city
oozing sophistication.
I'll then head south to
the Mediterranean town of La Ciotat,
home to a famous film-making duo,
before continuing eastwards
along the glamorous Cote d'Azur
visiting some of 1913's
best-loved tourist destinations,
before ending my journey
in that den of excess, Monte Carlo.
Of course, in 1913, the British
tourist bound for the Continent
had to cross the waters,
and was spoilt for choice.
My Bradshaw's says,
"For the Dover route Londoners
left from Charing Cross or Victoria.
"The service is four times a day.
"For the Folkestone route,
Londoners left from Charing Cross."
By any route, it was the start of
the Briton's Continental adventure.
Andrew, hello. Nice to see you.
'I'm bound for Paris,
'and to learn just how popular
foreign travel was for Edwardians,
'as I enter France,
I'm meeting author Andrew Martin.'
By 1913, what kind of numbers
of British people
were travelling to Paris,
for example?
Well, a revolution had occurred
between about 1840 and 1913.
In 1840 you had about...estimated
about 150,000 going abroad.
By 1913,
perhaps as many as two million.
Really? I'm quite surprised
by those numbers,
but I suppose
there was still a sense of adventure
about travelling to the Continent.
There WAS a sense of adventure.
You would have marvelled
at the strange coal smell
coming off the locomotive because
it was a different type of coal.
The French locomotives
of the Nord company
looked odd to British eyes with
all their fixtures and fittings
seeming to be on the outside.
They were a rather
drab brown colour,
which in itself was interesting.
There was no platform
on the French stations.
You just stepped up
into the carriage, which in itself
was quite exciting.
But then again,
it was becoming much more
affordable, foreign travel.
You could have a third-class return
to Paris in 1913
for about two pounds.
£150 in today's money.
So, a week's wages for
a fairly poorly paid working man,
so it was quite doable.
Nowadays, when we travel by the
Eurostar, we go under the Channel.
We miss out stages of the journey.
Tell me about the stages
of that traditional journey.
Well, on the boat train
it was very definitely...
a tripartite journey.
You had a train and then a boat
and then a train again,
and the nautical aspect of it
is what we miss today.
You would have been on a small boat.
You stood a good chance
of being sick.
You would have boarded it, at Dover,
from Admiralty Pier,
which was just a stone pier
sticking out into the sea.
The train went along it and
the paddle steamer came alongside,
and you would have not only got
blown about on Admiralty Pier,
you may well have got soaked
as well.
So, with the Channel Tunnel
we really miss out, don't we?
We miss out on being soaked
and on throwing up.
Yes, it's... It's terrible really,
isn't it(?)
A hundred years ago, the traveller
who'd use the route through Calais
would have arrived
at the Gare du Nord,
and, a century later,
I'm doing just the same.
Au revoir, merci.
1913 visitors to Paris
happily endured the travails
of their three-stage journey
for a simple reason.
They came to enjoy the most modern,
beautiful and cultured city,
not only in Europe,
but, arguably, in the world.
The wonderful thing
about arriving by train
is it delivers you
to the heart of the city.
And even here in the station, you
see signs that this is Paris -
something about
the colour of the stone
and the green-painted ironwork.
And outside the station,
I feel the buzz
and the cafes and the bistros
and the brasseries are beckoning me.
After four decades without war,
1913 Paris was characterised
by confidence, prosperity
and joie de vivre.
Dominating its skyline,
the Eiffel Tower
was a symbol of French engineering
and economic success.
Over the previous 60 years,
the city centre
had been expensively beautified
with grand boulevards
and imposing public buildings,
which no doubt impressed
the Edwardian tourist.
But the gentrification of Paris,
begun by city architect Georges
Haussmann, had come at a price.
Between 1851 and 1870, France was
ruled by an emperor, Napoleon III.
He employed Baron Haussmann
to rebuild Paris.
He created miles of new avenues
and tremendous vistas.
In the process, he demolished
thousands of houses
and displaced a much greater
number of people.
It's the sort of great project
that could never have been done
in Britain,
where we think of the state as being
the servant of the citizen,
rather than the citizen
being at the disposal of the state.
Constitutional issues aside,
there's no doubt that
early-20th-century Paris
stood for beauty, elegance and fun.
It was the centre
of Europe's cafe society
and a magnet for a burgeoning,
often risque culture
of arts and entertainment.
But three years before
my 1913 guidebook was written,
a natural disaster struck
this vibrant capital.
My Bradshaw's tells me
that in January 1910,
"Widespread distress and damage
were caused
"by the unprecedented swelling
of the River Seine,
"the water rising
nearly to the keystones
"of the arches of the bridges.
"The quays were entirely submerged,
"and the flood covered
the adjoining streets.
"It was estimated
that the property loss
"reached a total of £40 million."
I had no idea
that the beautiful Seine
could be capable of such violence,
and I wonder
whether Paris is safe today.
It's hard to imagine
such scenes of destruction
and I'm keen to learn more about
this largely forgotten episode
in Parisian history.
Flavie!
Hello!
'Flavie Sauve works
for Paris Flood Protection.'
What was the cause
of the flood of 1910?
So, in autumn for four months
we have...huge rainfall.
It was a nightmare, and...
You know that in Paris
it was a huge building area
at this time.
We had new sewers
and...new metro tunnel,
because at this period we had
already four lines of metro in Paris,
so the water spread into the tunnels
and the Seine and its tributaries...
Overflowed the banks. Yes.
So, actually,
the very modernity of Paris,
with its sewers,
with its metro tunnels,
this then became a cause of danger,
made the disaster worse? Yes, yes.
In deep midwinter the river rose
to almost nine metres.
At some points the banks overflowed
for up to a mile.
It must have been a very huge flood.
Yes, you can imagine.
The flood was like...
just disaster for Paris.
Is Paris still in danger
of flooding?
Yes, it is.
You know that we have
1-on-100 chance per year
to get a flood like this one
happening.
It's one of those things, isn't it?
You have a great city
built on a beautiful river,
but, then, it does pose
some sort of danger.
Yes, it is.
Well, thank you so much.
You're welcome.
'After a good night's sleep,
I've woken with an appetite.
'For Edwardian Britons
visiting for the first time,
'Parisian food must have taken
some getting used to.'
Merci.
'No eggs and bacon here.
'This is the town
of the continental breakfast.'
I'm going to start my day by taking
up a Bradshaw recommendation.
"It will save time, be inexpensive
and give a better idea
"of the situation of the more
notable buildings of interest
"to hire a car to drive around
the heart of the city."
Napoleon used to say that
an army marches on its stomach,
and for my drive I'm preparing
with a croissant.
My 1913 Bradshaw's
recommends hiring a taxi
because Paris was awash with them.
In 1906, there were a thousand cabs
in Paris,
compared to just one hundred
in London.
To correct that imbalance,
the General Cab Company of London
placed a massive order
for 500 vehicles, built in France
by Renault.
With around 600 manufacturers
compared to just 50
in Edwardian Britain,
when it came to making cars,
France was streets ahead.
HORN TOOTS
Motoring historian Pierre-Jean
des Fosses should know why.
Pierre-Jean! Hello!
How lovely to see you.
Beautiful car. Thank you.
This car is Le Zebre.
Zebra, the animal.
And French, of course,
French, yes, built in 1910.
Have you any idea what a car like
this might have cost in 1910?
Who could afford it?
This car had been made
to be a low-cost car,
economic car for people,
and the price was...
3,000 francs at the time.
And 3,000 francs
was a year's salary for an employee
at the Zebre factory.
Why do you think the French were
so advanced in car manufacture
and the British so backward?
Well, I think the English were very
involved in steam for a long time.
Yes, we were very good
at locomotives
and maybe then we didn't realise
that this was the new technology.
Yes, you may realise that
it was the new technology,
but you have a law
that obliged people
to have someone
walking in front of the car
at two miles per hour maximum
in town
with a red flag just to say,
"Hello, mind, the car is coming."
So that stopped the industry.
At the beginning of the 21st century
we were worried about having too
much of a health-and-safety culture,
but, apparently, we had
one in the 19th century, too.
Yeah, yeah, this is always
a revolution. It will come back.
ENGINE STARTS
First time! Well done.
This is very, very cosy,
Pierre-Jean.
Yeah, yeah, it's a nice car.
When Baron Haussmann beautified
the centre of Paris,
he did have a head start.
Some of the city's best-known
buildings, like Notre Dame,
had been here for centuries.
This building behind now
has a very special meaning for me.
It's your Assemblee Nationale,
isn't it?
Your parliament building.
So I feel an affinity with it.
And now we cross the River Seine.
We felt that lovely cool breeze
as we came across.
And we come into
the Place de la Concorde.
Yeah. So many people were guillotined
here. Yeah, that's true.
And now it's the Concorde.
With another early-20th-century
mode of transport available,
it's time for me to bid au revoir
to Pierre-Jean
and his vintage automobile.
Given the state of traffic in Paris
today,
it's probably more sensible for me
to proceed on the Metropolitain,
which, my Bradshaw's reminds me,
is the underground railway,
and it lists the nine lines that had
already been built by 1913,
and tells me that "the fares are
the same for any distance,"
which I think is probably
still true today,
although I'd be lucky to get
a first-class fare for 25 centimes.
It was a combination
of traffic congestion
and the imminent arrival
of the Universal Exposition
and the Olympic Games, both in 1900,
which prompted the building
of the metro.
Work started in 1898, 35 years later
than London's underground.
By contrast with London,
the Paris metro seems to be
mainly quite close to the surface,
built by the cut-and-cover method -
digging a trench
and then filling it in.
And that means you get
these tall trains,
whereas in London, of course,
we have
lots that were built very deep
in round tubes
and you have to stoop all the way.
'I'm arriving north
of the city centre
'at Abbesses station in Montmartre.
'In 1913, as now,
'it's where Paris writes its prose,
paints its pictures
'and parties hard.'
This beautiful metro station
was built around the turn
of the 20th century
in Art Nouveau style, whose curves
draw their inspiration from nature.
This is an expression
in public architecture
of a broad cultural
and artistic movement.
After World War I, people
would look back on this period
with understandable nostalgia,
and describe it as
"La Belle Epoque" -
"the beautiful era".
Situated in the 18th arrondissement,
Montmartre's most notable
landmark,
the Basilica du Sacre-Coeur,
completed just a year
before my 1913 guidebook,
sits atop the district's
steep 130-metre-high hill.
The area was populated
by Bohemian types
who'd been displaced by
Haussmann's revamp of Paris.
Writers and artists followed and,
as a busy nightlife developed,
out went the stifling morals
of the 19th century,
to be replaced with
the risque cabarets and cancan girls
of Le Chat Noir
and the Moulin Rouge.
And even a hundred years on,
it seems the spirit of
La Belle Epoque lingers here.
Hello. You know I came
and joined you because,
apart from being a beautiful lady,
you're sitting here reading a book.
You're reading Emile Zola,
so you're in the tradition
of La Belle Epoque.
Exactly.
That's what I get inspired by.
These are your photographs? They are
actually, indeed. Fascinating.
Do you feel that
there's a very strong artistic
tradition in Montmartre?
There is, there is indeed.
The whole neighbourhood has
an artistic atmosphere actually,
and...lots of artists live here
and expose their work in the street.
So the tradition continues? It does.
I notice they even paint the trucks.
Yes. That's true! Bye-bye.
Bye-bye. Lovely to see you. Bye-bye.
MUSIC: "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien"
by Edith Piaf
# Non
# Rien de rien... #
No tour of La Belle Epoque
would be complete
without a visit
to the Hotel Fromentin
which, in 1913, was a cabaret
where they served a liquor
affectionately known as
"The Green Fairy" -
which should help me with my fantasy
of being in the Paris
of Mondrian, Picasso, Pissarro
and Toulouse-Lautrec.
Nadia! Oh, hello, Michael.
Delighted to see you.
'Nadia Gallouze works at
the Hotel Fromentin.'
I've...I've come for
some absinthe, please.
All right. Have you ever try it?
No, I have not. No?
I thought absinthe was...was banned.
It used to be but it was at
the beginning of the 20th century.
It used to be really strong
and it used to make people
really sick,
especially the mind.
Banned in 1915,
absinthe fuelled
the booziness of La Belle Epoque.
As high as 70% proof,
the liquor was made
from the bitter herb wormwood.
Absinthe was blamed for an explosion
in debauched behaviour
that turned respectable
establishments into dens of vice
and upright citizens into drunks.
Think the gin palaces of Britain
with a twist of French.
So, may we begin the ceremony
of the absinthe? Yes, of course.
So, you just have to pour
some of it here
and you use this special spoon.
You put some sugar
and you just have to open
this little tap.
Oh, and now the drops...
Yeah, the drops.
And you just let the sugar dissolve.
During that waiting time, you talk.
It's about the art of conversation.
It's a way to take life slowly.
I'm so pleased you told me that it
was about the art of conversation.
I always thought it was about
getting drunk.
Absinthe was a particular favourite
in Bohemian Montmartre.
It's even rumoured that the artist
Vincent Van Gogh
cut off his ear under
the influence of the green fairy.
I'd best have just a sip.
So, the water has dripped
through the sugar
and my absinthe has gone cloudy.
It was quite clear before.
And to taste it...
Very sweet, still, of course.
Even more sweet. Mmm.
Tastes good.
I can see how in this place
of hellish activity,
this might have helped to take you
to heaven.
I'll be leaving Paris for the
Cote d'Azur early tomorrow morning,
and, just like the Edwardians
whose journey I'm retracing, my
train will leave from Gare de Lyon.
Before I depart, I want to find out
about this grand terminus.
It was rebuilt in 1900
with some very evocative features.
This clock face is reminiscent
of one I lived with for many years -
Big Ben -
and, indeed, British travellers
passing through here in 1913
with their Bradshaw's guide
would have been made to feel
at home by it
as they hastened through
the Gare de Lyon
on their way to their express trains
and their overnight sleepers
to the Riviera.
In the station's restaurant,
peckish passengers were greeted
by a decadent salon
befitting La Belle Epoque,
and so well regarded in France that
French president Emile Loubet
attended its opening.
I'm meeting railway historian
Clive Lamming at Le Train Bleu.
Lovely to meet you here
in Le Train Bleu.
This is such a wonderful,
beautifully decorated restaurant.
It's more than a restaurant.
I would say, a sort of palace. Hmm.
It was made for the British people.
They come during the night
by the Blue Train,
Le Train Bleu from Calais,
and they need to feel at home,
so we built for them
a sort of little miniature Big Ben,
a little tower,
so they could feel at home.
And here everything is supposed
to be, I would say, British.
Just look at the furniture
with the chesterfields,
the sofas and so on, you see. Yes.
So you are quite in a British place,
but I can make you sure that the
cooking is French and the wines, too.
Let's take a tour around
because the whole place
is decorated with frescos...
what, I think of the destinations
that you can go to from here?
Is that correct?
Yes, they were ordered
by the French railway
and they wanted that
people wished to be there, you see.
It's a place rather, I would say,
built for dreaming than reality.
In the 1870s,
Belgian Georges Nagelmackers
formed the International
Sleeping Car Company.
His trains mirrored the comfort
of George Pullman's
American overnight sleepers.
Edwardian Britons loved
the Calais-to-Cannes route,
which departed Paris from
this station, the Gare de Lyon.
It's a wonderful view.
It's a wonderful view.
My Bradshaw's is 1913.
Can you paint for me a picture
of the station in 1913?
Yes, in 1913
we would have seen engines,
steam-engine locomotives, which were
called Coupe-Vents - Windcutters -
and behind,
there were wooden carriages.
And there were a lot of luggage vans
because in that time
people would travel heavily
with plenty of luggage,
and ladies would have plenty of
boxes, parcels and big hats,
and all these luggage vans
were full up
and it's famous because
nobody was really wanting to travel
just for the pleasure.
The British invented travel for
pleasure and travel for learning.
All the other people at that time
thought it was wasting your time.
Delightful prospect. Thank you
so much. Enjoy your travel.
'Ready for the
next leg of my journey,
'I'm returning to the Gare de Lyon,
'and venturing south,
through central France.
'Had I been travelling in 1913
using my Bradshaw's guide,
'I would almost certainly have used
the overnight sleeper to reach
the French Riviera.
'Overnight sleepers
are very romantic,
'although I don't find them
very easy to sleep on.
'Anyway, today, we have
the high-speed train -
'the train grande vitesse,
the TGV - which covers'
the 450 miles from
Paris to Marseilles,
incredibly, in three hours
and five minutes,
so I'm on the TGV.
From Marseilles, I'll make
for La Ciotat, a small town
with an impressive history.
From there via Toulon
to the Cote d'Azur
to retrace a typical Edwardian trip,
taking in the
artistic heritage of Antibes,
the British influence on Nice
and, finally,
the brazenness of Monte Carlo.
When you travel at
these speeds by train,
you have something of the experience
of travelling by plane,
that suddenly you wake up in a
new landscape, new vegetation,
new climate.
We've swapped the cold light
of northern Europe
for the azure blue
of the Mediterranean.
I'm changing trains at
Marseille to do what
so many Britons did in 1913 -
visit the Cote d'Azur.
It's quite a short run now to
my next stop, which is La Ciotat,
which my Bradshaw's tells me is
beautifully situated on the coast,
and remarks that it was the
Greek settlement of Kitharistes,
but my interest is in
more modern history
because La Ciotat is the place where
the passions of railway enthusiasts
and film buffs coincide.
'La Ciotat is something of a shrine
to lovers of motion pictures
'because this was the summer home
of the Lumiere brothers,
'whose films of the village
'were some of the earliest
movies ever made or shown,'
amongst which the scene of a
train entering La Ciotat station
has become an icon of early cinema.
'Encouraged by their father,
a stills photography entrepreneur,
'Auguste and Louis Lumiere patented
their portable cinematograph
camera in February 1895,
'and the same year, the brothers
were the first in the world to
'showcase their films
to a paying audience.
'At the Eden Theatre,
in coastal La Ciotat,
'currently being restored under
the watchful eye of Michel Cornille,
'crowds gathered for screenings
of one of the Lumiere brothers'
'iconic films of a train
pulling into the station.'
It's wonderful to be here.
I feel the dust of history upon me.
This is extraordinary.
It would be really thrilling to me
to be able to sit in the seats here.
May we do that? We may.
Why did the Lumiere brothers
decide to film a train
entering the station at La Ciotat?
Louis was playing
with his cinematograph.
His mother came
from Marseille by train,
he was on the platform
and he filmed his mother
coming from Marseille in La Ciotat.
So it's 1895, and you and I
have been invited here
to the Eden Theatre
to see the arrival of the
train at La Ciotat Station.
Do you think it was
frightening for them?
Yes. Yes.
Because, as you can imagine,
you are on your seat
and suddenly the train
is coming out of the screen
and you are afraid.
The train was the first
horror movie in the world!
MICHAEL CHUCKLES
Well, it's been a great privilege to
be allowed to enter this building
site and be, apparently,
the last visitor to the old theatre,
but I know that
when it's been restored,
people will come here
in their thousands,
because this is a
very special place.
You are very welcome to
come again because Spielberg
will open the new place.
Spielberg? Spielberg with Michael.
Another legend.
This seaside town plays
another significant part
in early-20th-century
cultural development.
Apart from its important role
in the history of cinema, La Ciotat,
a place I had never
heard of until today,
has another claim to fame
as the cradle of...petanque.
MICHAEL SPEAKS FRENCH
The trick of this game
is that at the end,
your boule needs to be the nearest
to the little target ball,
but, of course, in-between, you
can hit other people's boules
and knock them out the way, and you
can move the target ball as well.
In 1907, La Ciotat
resident Jules Le Noir,
a rheumatic with limited mobility,
is thought to have tried playing
French bowls without raising a foot.
One good shot.
'Believed to be the highest
participation form of
bowls on the planet
'the game's name, petanque, derives
from the Provencal words
pieds tanques
'which translate as
feet together on the ground.'
And that's the end of me!
With one flick, he just
sent my ball into paradise.
With some time before my next train,
I'm going to explore
La Ciotat's harbour.
As my Bradshaw's guide told me,
La Ciotat really is
beautifully situated by the sea.
The contrasting blues
of sea and sky,
the contrasting browns
of terracotta and brick,
make it gorgeous.
It just invites the painter's brush.
I can't believe that
I'd never heard of it,
but it seems that I am not alone.
As far as I can tell, it's
undiscovered by the British tourist.
'I'm bound now for
Antibes on the Riviera.
'When the railways
arrived on the Cote d'Azur,
'visitor numbers soared
from 4,000 in 1860,
'to 100,000 by 1900.
'But mechanised travel
wasn't the only reason
'that they came in such droves.
'They were following
the lead of their monarch,
'and the advice of
an influential book -
'Dr Henry Bennet's Winter And Spring
On The Shores Of The Mediterranean.
'Boba Vukadinovic,
a tourist guide, knows more.'
The first edition of the book
definitely brought Queen Victoria
to the French Riviera.
She spent altogether
332 days on the Riviera,
which was half of her
foreign travelling.
Why did she come to the
Riviera the first time?
It was actually because of
her son Leopold, Duke of Albany,
who was a haemophiliac.
Queen Victoria was convinced
of the beneficial effects
of the temperate Mediterranean
climate on Leopold,
her haemophiliac son,
but another British royal also
frequented the Cote d'Azur,
for less wholesome reasons.
Now, one of Queen Victoria's
other sons, the Prince of Wales,
who later became Edward VII,
he was keen on the Riviera for
different reasons from his mother's.
You're absolutely right.
He would never stay in the same
town as Queen Victoria. Ha-ha!
Never. Why? Because, actually,
she didn't approve of his, um,
let's say, uh,
pleasure-seeking life,
and, definitely,
when he was on the Riviera,
he was seeking for pleasure
with young ladies,
with elderly ladies later on,
and he was keen on sport, too.
He played a lot of tennis,
the French liked him.
Actually they adored him because
he brought tennis to the Riviera,
and, later on,
on his yacht Britannia,
he was participating in all
the regattas on the French Riviera.
My Bradshaw's guide, which is 1913,
still refers to most of these places
on the Riviera as winter resorts,
so when does it begin
to change to summer?
It's in the '20s.
They started actually
integrating the idea of being
on the French Riviera in the summer,
and of hotels being open
all the year round.
The word scenic is a cliche,
often used to describe towns
along the Cote d'Azur.
Antibes is amongst
the most beguiling.
Its bays define beautiful
shapes in a glistening sea,
whose intense blueness
responds to the skies,
and the changing angle of the sun.
Even the least artistic person
would love somehow to
capture that shifting light.
Antibes. My Bradshaw's promises,
"A sheltered winter place
and small seaport,"
which is today filled
with billionaires' yachts,
"in a fine situation between
Golfe-Juan and Baie des Anges."
The rain has brought a cool evening,
but the pink sky promises
fine weather tomorrow.
Le Figaro, s'il vous plait.
Un euro cinquante.
Merci.
Merci. Merci. Un ticket pour vous.
Au revoir. Merci. Bye-bye.
My Bradshaw's says that,
"The Cap d'Antibes
"is a beautiful peninsula,
about two and a half miles long,
"clothed with a
wonderfully rich vegetation,
"and having a wild,
picturesque coast.
"As a winter resort,
it's growing in favour."
And that word picturesque
is well chosen because
the intensity of the light,
and vibrancy of the colour,
attracted to Antibes some of the
greatest painters who'd ever
lifted a paintbrush.
Antibes was a magnet
for Edwardian art lovers,
although the great impressionist
painter Claude Monet
first worked here as early as 1888.
Inspired by beautiful surroundings,
impressionist artists usually
painted in the open air,
rather than in a studio,
depicting everyday life
and using vibrant colours
to recreate the effect of light
and atmosphere.
By 1913, many of the most
influential painters
of the early 20th century
had followed Monet to Antibes
as, in the 21st,
has British artist Mitch Waite.
Mitch, good to see you. And you.
I suppose on a day like today
I don't really have to ask
what it was about Antibes
that attracted artists.
No! Well, it's right there
in front of us, isn't it?
Clear blue skies, deep blue sea,
crystal-clear horizon.
And my Bradshaw's refers also to
the richness of the vegetation,
so that would be a factor, too?
Absolutely.
Just look around us here.
We've got the sun coming through
the yellow in this plant here,
and that brings a highlight and a
sparkle and a richness to colour
which artists like to use.
And if you go back into
this sort of vegetation,
the colours go bluer and deeper,
and contrast with the highlights
that we like to put in a picture.
And then, if you look further back,
at Cap d'Antibes there,
the grey-blues in all of the
shadows of the trees give
depth to the picture.
Just what we want.
That's an absolutely
wonderful explanation.
Shall we take a walk
through the town? Absolutely.
Which is the first of the famous
artists, then, to come to Antibes?
Well, that would
have to be Claude Monet,
who famously painted from the
Cap d'Antibes several paintings.
Came on the train, I imagine.
I should think he did, yes.
And with the railways I suppose
other artists followed in his train.
Yes. Well, he inspired Paul Signac
who came and was very
inspired by Monet's work.
I'm interested in
Paul Signac because
he came here, I think, in 1913,
the year of my Bradshaw's guide.
Yes, in fact he did, that's right.
He came from St Tropez,
where he'd been painting
for many years before that.
And it was very important to
them to paint in the open air?
Absolutely. That's what they wanted.
They were outside and
they came to places like this
for the beautiful light, of course,
and they in turn inspired
people like Signac, in fact,
who developed into something
called Pointillism,
painting very small brush strokes,
almost mosaic-like,
with bright, fresh, clean colours,
and he in turn inspired
people like Henry Matisse,
who was part of
the Fauvism movement.
Bright strong colours but
bigger, bolder, brush strokes
and, again, inspired by this
beautiful light from this area.
So, really, you can read the
history of art in the late 19th,
early 20th century here in Antibes.
It's all here, in Antibes.
Mitch wants to show me the shoreline
that many Edwardian art connoisseurs
would have visited to see where
Monet painted his famous work
Antibes Seen From La Salis.
I see you have a
group of artists here.
Is it good to be part of a
community of painters?
Absolutely. We enjoy it a lot,
go out together painting,
inspire each other,
share common interests.
And here is Paul Rafferty,
one of my friends.
Paul, Michael. A pleasure to meet
you. A great pleasure to see you.
Beautiful piece of work. Thank you.
Do you find yourself treading in
giants' footsteps as you stand here?
Well, I think any artist does
when there's such a plethora of
fantastic art that's gone before,
but that doesn't stop you doing it.
Do you think there was anything
special about the beginning
of the 20th century?
Do you feel really important
changes were occurring then?
Everything was changing and
I think the nice thing about
the impressionists, for instance,
is they depicted
what was the reality,
from train stations to lamp fixtures,
that I'm reluctant to do.
I don't like cars for instance,
but I have to put them in,
and it just seems maybe with passage
of time, it looks more bucolic then,
but there really were so
many changes going on for them.
You can't really compare
a modern-day car with
a classic locomotive.
No, but that might be your and
my romanticism rather than...
To them it might have been ugly,
but they depicted it.
Well, Michael, you've
seen how the experts do it,
and I thought you might like
to have a go yourself.
I haven't lifted a paintbrush
since I was at school.
MICHAEL LAUGHS
All right, you better show me
exactly what to do, please.
What we're looking for on here...
We've got a roughly rendered in
sky and tree and sea,
but what's really special about
Antibes is the golden light
on the town here,
and that I've totally
left off for the moment,
so what you have to do is keep your
eye on the subject all the time.
What the impressionists did was
paint reality as they saw it,
brush stroke by brush stroke.
It wasn't invented.
So every time you put a brush stroke
down, you're looking across there.
You've got to know where to stop,
exactly where the tower is.
Then you look for the little bit
of light coming on that building.
It just goes slightly down
diagonally, like that.
See if you can just continue
and maybe put a few brush strokes
of light coming down here.
The light is on this side.
Exactly that.
That's perfect!
I'm standing where Claude Monet
stood a century and a quarter ago,
I'm holding a paintbrush
for the first time in 40 years,
and I've never felt more
inadequate in my life.
OK, Michael, I would
like to congratulate you
and now welcome you
to our painting group.
You know, it's quite a tradition
that we painters paint each other
when we go out together.
Oh, my goodness!
That's absolutely lovely.
And you've got this
shirt and, of course,
you got the towers of the
Picasso Museum of Antibes.
Thank you so much. Just wait
until you see mine of you! Oh, yes!
On this journey,
I'd already discovered that,
at the turn of the 20th century,
the French had a lead in
the manufacture of cars
and a lead in cinema.
Here in Antibes,
I've discovered how remarkable were
the developments in French painting.
France, on the eve of
the First World War,
was a country of extraordinary
intellectual energy.
But my next destination is a place
to rest the brain and the body.
The crowded beaches
and elegant seafront
confirm that Nice is
a city built on tourism.
Bradshaw's is always helpful
with directions.
"The principal railway station is
on the north-west side of the town.
"All the streets running south from
the railway lead through the town
"and eventually to the sea."
And it's to the water
that I'm bound,
to find the lasting legacy
of those British people
who flocked here over the centuries.
The town was a winter
destination of choice
for grand-touring early Victorians,
and some, who made Nice their home,
played a surprisingly important role
in creating one of the
town's best-known landmarks.
Built in the 19th century as perhaps
the world's most elegant and
fashionable seaside boulevard,
the Promenade des Anglais
has origins in the
Anglican church of Nice,
where British residents
and visitors worshipped.
Kenneth Letts is
Holy Trinity's rector.
So what is the connection
between the Anglican church
and this very fashionable promenade?
Well, it's a big connection.
This began as an act of solidarity
with the unemployed.
That was in the 1820s
and Father Lewis Way,
who was the priest in charge
of the parish at that time,
said to his people,
"We need to do something to help
the unemployed of the area
in which we live,"
and he got a subscription going,
and, with that money,
they employed the local Nicois
to build a path for the ladies to
take a stroll along the seaside.
That's extraordinary.
It's one of the best-known
promenades, probably, in the world,
and it began as a
poverty relief project.
I think you could
put it that way, yes.
I doubt whether many
Edwardian visitors knew that
the swankiest esplanade in Europe
started as a dusty two-metre-wide
path funded by Anglicans,
and I'd be amazed if today's
tourists have the slightest idea.
Hello! Do you speak English?
A little bit.
Do you know the name of the
promenade you're walking on?
Of course. It's the
Promenade des Anglais.
Do you know particularly
why it's called "des Anglais"?
Ah, there's a part that was
built by a reverend and
that's how it started.
He gave some work, but it's because
we had a tour this morning!
That's why we know!
Hello, ladies. Hello. Hello.
Are you English? We are.
Do you know that you're on the
Promenade des Anglais? We did. Yes.
Do you know why it's called the
Promenade des Anglais? No.
I only found out today. OK.
Apparently, it's because the
Anglican church here raised some
money
to do a project and give work to the
unemployed people in the 1820s.
What do you think of that?
That's a nice connection between our
country and here, isn't it? Yes.
We'll feel different carrying
on our promenade now, I think.
Enjoy your holiday. Thank you.
I know that my hotel for the night
is somewhere along the
Promenade des Anglais.
All I need now is to locate it.
A-ha! My Bradshaw's often
has a recommendation or an
advertisement for a hotel.
On this occasion, it has a picture,
and since the Negresco appears
not to have changed in a century,
I had no excuse for
not being able to find it.
Just months before my
guidebook was published,
Hotel Negresco, the most famous
Belle Epoque building in Nice,
opened for business.
It was owned by
Romanian Henri Negresco,
who had left Bucharest as a teenager
to seek his fortune and
succeeded as a Nice hotelier.
Sadly, war was on the horizon,
and when it came in 1914,
Henri funded the running
of his palatial hotel as
a military hospital.
In the post-war period,
bookings didn't pick up
and Henri died in 1920,
without seeing his beloved hotel
returned to its former glory.
In the 1950s, the Negresco's
new golden age dawned.
The list of the 20th century's
best-known statesmen
and celebrities who have spent
the night here is endless.
'And, tonight, I'm excited
to have a room here.'
It's a beautiful lift,
in mahogany and mirrors.
Oh, look at that!
Gold leaf, and an
automatically opening door.
That is classy.
Ah! Such elegance!
Oh, to have been an Englishman
a hundred years ago!
Breakfast facing the Mediterranean.
Not bad!
After a breakfast
contemplating the azure sea,
the final destination on this
leg of my European journey
is about two other very significant
colours - red and black,
rouge et noir.
In France,
before you get on the train,
you have to stamp your ticket
in a little machine to validate it,
and it prints some numbers on there.
Ready to go.
'I'm visiting Monaco,
'the second-smallest
independent state in the world...
'..a principality whose royal family
was able to adopt a novel approach
'to swelling the state's coffers.'
My journey takes me through
some of the most beautiful
resorts in the world,
towards Monte Carlo,
which Bradshaw's tells me is
"situated on a sheltered bay
and enjoys a delightful climate,
"while the surrounding scenery
is full of charm and variety.
"The bath establishment
is supplied with every form
of medical and hygienic bath,
"and at the 'bar',"
the word is in inverted commas,
"the mineral waters of all the
best-known European resorts
may be obtained."
But since my Bradshaw's was written,
I think Monte Carlo has
become famous for an activity
which most people would
regard as less healthy.
In the 19th century,
gambling was illegal in
Britain and much of Europe,
so Monaco legalised it
and sanctioned a casino,
which became so successful
the government was able to
abolish taxation on its citizens.
The plan succeeded beyond
expectation as Monte Carlo
attracted Edwardian gentlemen keen
on a flutter like moths to a candle.
And if Nice is the tourist hotspot,
then Monte Carlo
draws in the uber rich -
those who can afford
to lose a fortune,
but hold on to their super yachts,
super cars and
supermodel girlfriends.
The casino, my Bradshaw's says,
"is on a promontory on
the east side of the town.
"There are elaborately decorated
and widely known salles de jeu,
"or gaming rooms,
open from 11.30am until midnight.
"Trente et quarante and roulette
are the games played here."
It must be worth a whirl.
The Monte Carlo Casino
was designed in 1863
by the renowned French architect
Charles Garnier,
who also built the Paris Opera.
Guillaume Jahan de Lestang
is the press officer.
Hello, Michael.
Welcome to the Monte Carlo Casino,
the legendary of Monte Carlo.
Legendary and magnificent.
Casinos were not legalised until
the middle of the 20th century,
so it must have been very attractive
to British travellers.
Yes, and it was not even
in Italy or France,
so this is what made
the casino that successful.
Was it an instant success?
It was a great success
from the beginning. Yes.
Monte Carlo already
had a railway station?
Yes, it was located
just nearby the casino,
so it was easy access also to
the gamblers to come and enter,
gamble a little chip on a table,
and then get us some more income.
They could just get off their
train and have a flutter? Yes.
Baroque in style,
the casino has several
ornately decorated gaming rooms.
Another beautiful salon. Yeah.
I'm wondering how much things
have changed since my Bradshaw's
guide was written in 1913.
For instance, it says that
"inhabitants of the principality
were not allowed to
enter the casino."
Is that still true?
Yes, it is still true.
The Monaco people are not allowed
to come, enter and gamble.
Even the prince is not
allowed to come and gamble.
So everyone here is,
by definition, a foreigner.
I think it's time to have a spin.
Yes.
My 1913 guidebook says that the
minimum stake at the roulette table
is five francs and the maximum
6,000 - a sizeable sum.
Today, I'll not be wagering
a single centime as we're
playing just for fun.
Mr Croupier, may I have
some money, please?
Wow! Those are thousands,
those are hundreds,
and those are fifties...
and these are twenty thousand! Yes.
No-one seems to have bet on even,
so I'll bet on that.
Messieurs, faites le jeu.
Ooh!
At the last minute, I bet
on 26 and 25 has come up,
and my counter has been swept away.
Well, Guillaume, I'm not the man who
broke the bank at Monte Carlo,
nor, I think, the
first British traveller
to lose his colourful
shirt on the roulette table.
I'm sure you will do
better next time.
MICHAEL LAUGHS
There's a hidden treasure
in this building that
I hope the Edwardians, whose steps
I'm retracing, would have seen.
Surprisingly, just a few yards from
the riches of the gambling tables,
is a little gem, a little temple,
devoted to an art
that's close to my heart.
I love opera.
It's the most demanding and
complicated form of theatre,
and opera houses have to
be equally over the top.
One of the finest houses in
the world is that at Paris,
built by the architect
Charles Garnier,
and he was employed here in
Monte Carlo to build a
replica in miniature,
and here have been played works
by Mozart, Verdi, Rossini, Gounod.
But here the audience would have
experienced an intimacy
with the singers
and with the players,
because if there's one
thing that's better than
a big, grand opera house,
it's a small, grand opera house.
Using my Bradshaw's guide,
I've followed in the footsteps
of British travellers journeying
across France in 1913.
It's given me a window on a society
at the pinnacle of achievement
in technology,
cinematography and art,
and brought me here to Monte Carlo
to perceive the heights
of elegance and of decadence.
That universe was about
to be destroyed by war
and, looking back through
the haze of that catastrophe,
we glimpse a golden age.
'My next continental journey waltzes
into pre-war Austria-Hungary.
'A proud empire.'
The Hapsburgs were
one of the most dynamic
and powerful European families.
'Pulling middle European strings.'
Rargh!
'Countries with surprising vistas.'
I never expected anything as
grand and as magnificent as this.
'And an emperor with
Europe's destiny on his mind.'
He knew even then that
this was going to mean war.
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