Summer 2024
Full of fabulous features, fantastic photos - inspiring, entertaining and informative. Culture and history, destination guides including Paris, Brittany, Toulouse, Troyes, Alsace-Lorraine, Champagne and more. Discover brilliant city, country, seaside and gourmet breaks. Truly scrumptious recipes to make at home. And much, much more. Bringing France to you - wherever you are.
Full of fabulous features, fantastic photos - inspiring, entertaining and informative. Culture and history, destination guides including Paris, Brittany, Toulouse, Troyes, Alsace-Lorraine, Champagne and more. Discover brilliant city, country, seaside and gourmet breaks. Truly scrumptious recipes to make at home. And much, much more. Bringing France to you - wherever you are.
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Renaissance to art deco, and contemporary.<br />
There are great shopping facilities, including<br />
a super Saturday morning market in Rue de<br />
Mars, the perfect place to pick up some pink<br />
biscuits, les biscuits roses, a Reims speciality<br />
and traditionally dipped in Champagne.<br />
They were invented in 1690, and served at<br />
King Louis XVI at his coronation in the city in<br />
1775 – he loved them and had them supplied<br />
to the Palace of Versailles! Several museums<br />
will please culture vultures including the<br />
fabulous Tau Palace, the former home of the<br />
Bishops of Reims. This is also where the Kings<br />
stayed while awaiting their coronation in the<br />
Cathedral next door, including 12-year-old<br />
Louis XV, the first king to drink<br />
Champagne. Tau Palace now<br />
hosts an exceptional collection<br />
of religious artefacts including<br />
the Coronation chalice.<br />
You’ll also spot Roman remains<br />
as you wander – Reims was an<br />
important city in Roman Gaul,<br />
called Durocortorum, and the<br />
monumental 30m high Mars<br />
Gate, originally one of four<br />
triumphal arches, is one of the<br />
largest known porticos of the<br />
Roman world.<br />
The absolute must-see in<br />
Reims is one of the world’s<br />
most famous churches – the<br />
great Gothic Cathedral of<br />
Notre-Dame. Listening to the<br />
sonorous bells of this working<br />
church is mesmerising, and<br />
the incredible facade is mindbogglingly<br />
beautiful as you<br />
enter under the gaze of a stone<br />
angel seemingly beaming<br />
with pleasure at church goers.<br />
Inside, as the light shines<br />
through the dazzling rose<br />
window, kids run up and down<br />
the nave, mums and dads<br />
‘shush’ them, tourists from<br />
around the globe ‘ooh’ and ‘ah’<br />
at the beauty of this building<br />
and its stained-glass windows. The coronations<br />
of a mind-boggling 37 Kings of France took<br />
place here, beginning with Charlemagne’s<br />
son, Louis the Pious in 816, and ending with<br />
Charles X in 1825. Charles VII, with Joan of<br />
Arc at his side, was crowned here in 1429.<br />
Built over the foundations of a 4th century<br />
church, the Cathedral was begun in 1211 and<br />
took almost 100 years to complete. It was<br />
shelled by the Germans in the Franco-Prussian<br />
War in 1870, and again in World War I, when<br />
its dazzling stained-glass windows were<br />
destroyed, but rose again to its former glory.<br />
The restored cathedral was reopened in 1938<br />
and miraculously avoided the destruction<br />
suffered by much of the rest of Reims in World<br />
War II. A truly divine must-see in Reims, a city<br />
that sparkles from start to finish.<br />
Get there: You can reach Reims in just 46<br />
minutes by train from Gare de l’Est, Paris.<br />
Stay: Hôtel La Caserne Chanzy A former<br />
fire station converted into a 5-star spa hotel<br />
offers lovely, luxurious rooms and great<br />
Week-long Creative workshops for writing,<br />
photography and painting in the south of France<br />
Memoir writing<br />
workshops<br />
Be inspired and gain the skills<br />
and confidence to tell the<br />
story only you can tell.<br />
Watercolour painting<br />
workshops<br />
Take a meditative approach<br />
to watercolours inspired by<br />
Japanese masters.<br />
creativefranceworkshops.com<br />
service (including valet-parking, a real bonus in a<br />
city where parking isn’t always easy). There’s also<br />
a fabulously glamorous and elegant Champagne<br />
bar. And for extra wow factor, ask for a room with<br />
a balcony overlooking the Cathedral opposite.<br />
Useful websites: reims-tourisme.com<br />
tourisme-en-champagne.co.uk<br />
Scenic photography<br />
workshop<br />
Develop the skills to create<br />
images that resonate with<br />
emotion and authenticity.<br />
38 | The Good Life France<br />
The Good Life France | 39