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The French landscape garden was influenced first of all by the new style of English Landscape Garden. The French were inspired by plenty of other country landscape design by paintings, letters and journals. The French landscapers strives to create new breathtaking landscape that can both inspire and blend in nature.

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1. ELLIS ELLISA SULAIMAN (2019418202)
2. SHARIFAH PUTERI SOPHIA BT SYED FAISAL (2019647234)
3. NUR ATHIRAH HANIS BINTI JAMALUDIN (2019282034)
4. ANDREA ANGEL ROBERT (2019407134)
5. NURHIDAYATUL SHAMIMI BT AHMAD MUSHADAT (2019258212)

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France under the Ancien Régime (before the French Revolution) divided society into three estates: the First Estate (clergy); the Second Estate (nobility); and the Third Estate (commoners). The king was considered part of no estate

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22.1.3: The Ancien Regime

The Ancien Régime was the social and political system fin the Kingdom of France from the 15th until the end of the 18th centuries. It was based on the rigid division of the society into three disproportionate and unequally treated classes.

Learning Objective

Describe the structure of the Ancien Régime and the societal rules at play

Key Points

The Ancien Régime (Old Regime or Former Regime) was the social and political system established in the Kingdom of France from approximately the 15th century until the latter part of the 18th century under the late Valois and Bourbon dynasties.

The estates of the realm were the broad orders of social hierarchy used in Christian Europe from the medieval period to early modern Europe. Different systems for dividing society members into estates evolved over time. The best-known system is the three-estate system of the French Ancien Régime.

The First Estate comprised the entire clergy, traditionally divided into "higher" (nobility) and "lower" (non-noble) clergy. In 1789, it numbered around 130,000 (about 0.5% of the population).

The Second Estate was the French nobility and (technically, although not in common use) royalty, other than the monarch himself, who stood outside of the system of estates. It is traditionally divided into "nobility of the sword" and "nobility of the robe," the magisterial class that administered royal justice and civil government. The Second Estate constituted approximately 1.5% of France's population

The Third Estate comprised all of those who were not members of the above and can be divided into two groups, urban and rural, together making up 98% of France's population. The urban included the bourgeoisie and wage-laborers. The rural included peasants.

The French estates of the realm system was based on massive social injustices that were one of the key factors leading up to the French Revolution.

Key Terms

the gabelle

A very unpopular tax on salt in France that was established during the mid-14th century and lasted, with brief lapses and revisions, until 1946. Because all French citizens needed salt (for use in cooking, for preserving food, for making cheese, and for raising livestock), the tax propagated extreme regional disparities in salt prices and stood as one of the most hated and grossly unequal forms of revenue generation in the country's history.

estates of the realm

The broad orders of social hierarchy used in Christendom (Christian Europe) from the medieval period to early modern Europe. Different systems for dividing society members into estates evolved over time. The best-known system is a three-estate system of the French Ancien Régime used until the French Revolution (1789-1799). This system was made up of clergy (the First Estate), nobility (the Second Estate), and commoners (the Third Estate).

the taille

A direct land tax on the French peasantry and non-nobles in Ancien Régime France. The tax was imposed on each household based on how much land it held.

Ancien Régime

The social and political system established in the Kingdom of France from approximately the 15th century until the latter part of the 18th century under the late Valois and Bourbon dynasties. The term is occasionally used to refer to the similar feudal social and political order of the time elsewhere in Europe.

The Ancien Régime (Old Regime or Former Regime) was the social and political system established in the Kingdom of France from approximately the 15th century until the latter part of the 18th century under the late Valois and Bourbon dynasties. The term is occasionally used to refer to the similar feudal social and political order of the time elsewhere in Europe. The administrative and social structures of the Ancien Régime were the result of years of state-building, legislative acts, internal conflicts, and civil wars, but they remained a patchwork of local privilege and historic differences until the French Revolution ended the system. Despite the notion of absolute monarchy and the efforts by the kings to create a centralized state, Ancien Régime France remained a country of systemic irregularities. Administrative (including taxation), legal, judicial, and ecclesiastic divisions and prerogatives frequently overlapped (for example, French bishoprics and dioceses rarely coincided with administrative divisions).

The estates of the realm were the broad orders of social hierarchy used in Christendom (Christian Europe) from the medieval period to early modern Europe. Different systems for dividing society members into estates evolved over time. The best-known system is the three-estate system of the French Ancien Régime used until the French Revolution (1789-1799). This system was made up of clergy (the First Estate), nobility (the Second Estate), and commoners (the Third Estate).

The First Estate comprised the entire clergy, traditionally divided into "higher" and "lower" clergy. Although there was no formal demarcation between the two categories, the upper clergy were effectively clerical nobility from the families of the Second Estate. In the time of Louis XVI, every bishop in France was a nobleman, a situation that had not existed before the 18th century. At the other extreme, the "lower clergy" (about equally divided between parish priests and monks and nuns) constituted about 90 percent of the First Estate, which in 1789 numbered around 130,000 (about 0.5% of the population).

The Second Estate was the French nobility and (technically, although not in common use) royalty, other than the monarch himself, who stood outside of the system of estates. It is traditionally divided into "nobility of the sword" and "nobility of the robe," the magisterial class that administered royal justice and civil government. The Second Estate constituted approximately 1.5% of France's population and were exempt from the corvée royale (forced labor on the roads) and from most other forms of taxation such as the gabelle (salt tax) and most important, the taille (the oldest form of direct taxation). This exemption from paying taxes led to their reluctance to reform.

The Third Estate comprised all who were not members of the above and can be divided into two groups, urban and rural, together making up 98% of France's population. The urban included the bourgeoisie and wage-laborers. The rural included peasants who owned their own land (and could be prosperous) and peasants who worked on nobles' or wealthier peasants' land. The peasants paid disproportionately high taxes compared to the other Estates and simultaneously had very limited rights. In addition, the First and Second Estates relied on the labor of the Third, which made the latter's unequal status all the more unjust.

The Third Estate men and women shared the hard life of physical labor and food shortages. Most were born within this group and died as part of it. It was extremely rare for individuals of this status to advance to another estate. Those who crossed the class lines did so as a result of either being recognized for their extraordinary bravery in a battle or entering religious life. Some commoners were able to marry into the Second Estate, although that was very rare.

The population of France in the decade prior to the French Revolution was about 26 million, of whom 21 million lived in agriculture. Few of these owned enough land to support a family and most were forced to take on extra work as poorly paid laborers on larger farms. Despite regional differences and French peasants' generally better economic status than that of their Eastern European counterparts, hunger was a daily problem and the condition of most French peasants was poor.

The fundamental issue of poverty was aggravated by social inequality as all peasants were liable to pay taxes from which the nobility could claim immunity, and feudal dues payable to a local lord. Similarly, the tithes (a form of obligatory tax, at the time often paid in kind), which the peasants were obliged to pay to their local churches, were a cause of grievance as the majority of parish priests were poor and the contribution was being paid to an aristocratic and usually absentee abbot. The clergy numbered about 100,000 and yet owned 10% of the land. The Catholic Church maintained a rigid hierarchy as abbots and bishops were all members of the nobility and canons were all members of wealthy bourgeois families. As an institution, it was both rich and powerful. It paid no taxes and merely contributed a grant to the state every five years, the amount of which was self-determined. The upper echelons of the clergy also had considerable influence over government policy.

Successive French kings and their ministers tried to suppress the power of the nobles but did so with very limited success.

Attributions

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The Ancien Régime was the social and political system fin the Kingdom of France from the 15th until the end of the 18th centuries. It was based on the rigid division of the society into three disproportionate and unequally treated classes.

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The human–nature relationship extends beyond an individual's belief or feeling of being a part of nature. It may also be seen as our adaptive synergy with nature, as well as our long-standing acts and experiences that link us to the natural world.

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Intro to French Revolution - Social Structure

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Vaux le Vicomte; where walkers could lose track of time in a pleasant setting

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Parks and garden was an expression of the power and glory of the monarchy unlike italy, art was a passionable desire in all things .

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The culture of France has been shaped by geography, historical events, and foreign and internal forces and groups. Historically, French culture was influenced by Celtic and Gallo-Roman cultures as well as the Franks, a Germanic tribe. Further, France has been a centre of Western cultural development for centuries. Many French artists have been among the most renowned of their time and France is still recognised in the world for its rich cultural tradition.

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The cultural heritage of the country is developed and preserved to make it available to the public. France receives the highest number of tourists per year, largely thanks to the numerous cultural establishments and historical buildings implanted all over the territory.

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Chateau de Versailles; design laid on the main axis

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Tuileries Garden; stepped terraces to replace the distance between the Palace and the garden

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Andre le Notre, the greatest French garden and landscape designer. Andre Le Notre followed his father as head gardener at the Jardin des Tuilleries in Paris and also studied fine art in Paris. The designer also enjoyed a warm relationship with his patron Louis XIV. Both were men of taste with a passion for gardens and architecture. The baroque style of garden design, which they brought to a crescendo, became widely influential in Europe and beyond the wider world. Every prince and potentate dreamed of owning a garden which would 'outshine Versailles'. This ambition resulted in vast works, though few were executed with a fraction of Le Notre's excellent design judgement.[1]

We will go through some of his works that made him famous, to understand his design principles and working style as a landscape architect. The form of the French garden was strongly influenced by the Italian gardens of the Renaissance, and was largely fixed by the middle of the 17th century.[2]

The Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte is a baroque French château located in Maincy, near Melun, 55 kilometres (34 mi) southeast of Paris in the Seine-et-Marne département of France.[3] The place was solely constructed for the purpose of meeting places, revolutionized art pieces and for entertainment of guests.

One of the main aspects of French garden style was that the site limitations did not interfere or guide the design laid on it. Notre's design was a living evidence for the same. The original terrain was flat, where low terraces were created, stepping down from the level of Chateau and rising up back to Grotto, giving an illusion of flat terrain.

Another distinguishing feature is the way the site reveals itself to the visitor like a kingdom of water: ponds, jets and canals line the visitor's path and delight the senses and to merge with the surrounding forests. Perhaps Le Nôtre wanted this artistic creation to become a public space for walkers, where strollers could lose track of time in a pleasant, peaceful setting [4].

Le Nôtre's original goal was to design a formal garden that remained the same throughout the seasons, and he achieved this with large, dramatic parterres framed with low boxwood hedges, wide pebble alleys, statues, fountains, basins, grottoes, and a canal. He played with symmetry, scale, and perspective, using a technique called anamorphosis abscondita ("hidden distortion") to create a sweeping view from the château's Terrace de Diane that makes the garden appear longer and larger than it actually is.[5]

The Palace of Versailles, Château de Versailles, or simply Versailles (English /vɛərˈsaɪ/ or /vərˈsaɪ/; French: [vɛʁsaj]), is a royalchâteau in Versailles in the Île-de-France region of France. When the château was built, Versailles was a small village dating from the 11th century; today it is a wealthy suburb of Paris, 20 km (12 mi) southwest of the centre of the French capital (point zero at square in front of Notre Dame). Versailles was the seat of political power in the Kingdom of France from 1682, when Louis XIV moved the royal court from Paris, until the royal family was forced to return to the capital in October 1789, within three months after the beginning of the French Revolution.

The main design features for these gardens were based on the same principles as the above. As per French style, Chateau and house was the focal point of the design. The house and garden were indivisible and complemented each other. The design was laid on the main axis leading towards the facade of the chateau and bisected at intervals by transverse axis for walkways, pools and canals. [6]

Louis XIV summoned Notre to Versailles in 1662 when he was working on the gardens of Chantilly for the Grand Condé. Starting from the base of the primitive garden of Louis XIII, Le Nôtre laid out close to the Château two large parterres, the north and south parterres. He remodelled the great east-west axis which he intended to prolong in an endless perspective. While he kept the natural slope of the northern section, the rest was remodelled by human labour.

At Versailles, Le Nôtre refined his gardening concepts: the principal walks cut by secondary walks surrounding the groves; trellises and tree-covered archways formed vast walls of greenery that emphasized the perspectives; side or winding paths led to the groves in order to ensure the surprise of the spectator; original decors and water effects contrasted with the rigorous symmetry of the wooded masses. Using all the resources of water, Le Nôtre created a play on shadow and sunlight by alternating shady places (groves) with clearer areas (parterres).[7]

The Tuileries Garden (French: Jardin des Tuileries, IPA: [ʒaʁdɛ̃ de tɥilʁi]) is a public garden located between the Louvre Museum and the Place de la Concorde in the 1st arrondissement of Paris. Created by Catherine de Medici as the garden of the Tuileries Palace in 1564, it was eventually opened to the public in 1667, and became a public park after the French Revolution. [8]

Le Notre projected the central axis of the Tuileries, which became the grand axis of Paris running to the Arc de Triomphe and La Defense.[1]

Tuileries Garden , stepped terraces to replace the distance between the Palace and the garden.[8]

In 1664, Colbert, the superintendent of buildings of the King, commissioned the landscape architect André Le Nôtre, to redesign the entire garden. Le Nôtre was the grandson of Pierre Le Nôtre, one of the gardeners of Catherine De Medici, and his father Jean had also been a gardener at the Tuileries. He immediately began transforming the Tuileries into a formal garden à la française, a style he had first developed at Vaux-le-Vicomte and perfected at Versailles, based on symmetry, order and long perspectives. Le Nôtre's were designed to be seen from above, from a building or terrace. He eliminated the street which separated the palace and the garden, and replaced it with a terrace looking down upon parterres bordered by low boxwood hedges and filled with designs of flowers.

In the centre of the parterres he placed three basins with fountains. In front of the center first fountain he laid out the grand allée, which extended 350 metres. He built two other alleys, lined with chestnut trees, on either side. He crossed these three main alleys with small lanes, to create compartments planted with diverse trees, shrubs and flowers. The French gardens are edged by moats, canals, galleried walkways to provide an ordered ground planes with an untamed landscape. [9]

Between 1679 and 1691, he was involved in the planning of several other gardens such as Château de Meudon for François-Michel le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois. His work has often been favorably compared and contrasted ("the antithesis") to the works of Lancelot "Capability" Brown, the English landscape architect.[1]

References:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Le_N%C3%B4tre

2. http://www.pua.edu.eg/PUASite/uploads/file/Engineering/Fall%202012/AE%20465/Lecture-5-French%20garden%20style.pdf

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaux-le-Vicomte.

4. http://www.vaux-le-vicomte.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Presskit-Vaux-le-Vicomte.pdf

5. http://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/french-chateau-gardens-vaux-le-vicomte-andre-le-notre.

6. http://www.gardenvisit.com/gardens/versailles_chateau_de

7. http://en.chateauversailles.fr/history-/versailles-during-the-centuries/the-palace-construction/andre-le-notre-1613-1700

8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuileries_Garden.

9. https://www.google.co.in/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fthumb%2F7%2F74%2FLouvre1615.jpg%2F577px-Louvre1615.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FLouvre_Palace&docid=67e4isBOCRSbZM&tbnid=gSwZgCZbJ

10. Illustrated History of landscape architecture ,Elizabeth boults & Chip sullivan

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Andre le Notre, the greatest French garden and landscape designer. Andre Le Notre followed his father as head gardener at the Jardin des Tuilleries in Paris and also studied fine art in Paris. The designer also enjoyed a warm relationship with his patron Louis XIV.

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The ideas of the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) had a major influence on the landscape garden, and he himself was buried in the first important such garden in France. Then, new landscaper and theorist giving critiques to each other projects.

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French culture has played a vital role in shaping world arts, cultures, and sciences. This is the evidence that shows France is internationally recognized because of its art, architecture, fashion, cuisine, music, and cinema.

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French culture, from art and fashion to food and language, is one of the most influential in the world today

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The oldest patisserie in Paris

Arc de Triomphe

The culture of France has been shaped by geography, by historical events, and by foreign and internal forces and groups. France, and in particular Paris, has played an important role as a center of high culture since the 17th century and from the 19th century on, worldwide. From the late 19th century, France has also played an important role in cinema, fashion, cuisine, literature, technology, the social sciences, and mathematics. The importance of French culture has waxed and waned over the centuries, depending on its economic, political and military importance. French culture today is marked both by great regional and socioeconomic differences and strong unifying tendencies. A global opinion poll for the BBC saw France ranked as the country with the fourth most positive influence in the world (behind Germany, Canada and the UK) in 2014.

French culture

The Académie Française sets an official standard of linguistic purism; however, this standard, which is not mandatory, is occasionally ignored by the government itself: for instance, the left-wing government of Lionel Jospin pushed for the feminisation of the names of some functions ( madame la ministre) while the Académie pushed for some more traditional madame le ministre.

France counts many regional languages, some of them being very different from standard French, such as Breton (a Celtic language close to Cornish and Welsh) and Alsatian (an Alemannic dialect of German). Some regional languages are Roman, like French, such as Occitan. The Basque language is completely unrelated to the French language and to any other language in the world; it is spoken in an area that straddles the border between the southwest of France and the north of Spain.

Many of these languages have enthusiastic advocates; however, the real importance of local languages remains subject to debate. In April 2001, the Minister of Education, Jack Lang, admitted formally that for more than two centuries, the political powers of the French government had repressed regional languages. He announced that bilingual education would, for the first time, be recognised, and bilingual teachers recruited in French public schools to support teaching these other languages. In French schools, pupils are expected to learn at least two foreign languages, the first of which is typically German or English.

A revision of the French constitution creating official recognition of regional languages was implemented by the Parliament in Congress at Versailles in July 2008.

Religions in France

Notre-Dame de Reims is the Roman Catholic cathedral where the kings of France were crowned until 1825.[3]

France is a secular country where freedom of thought and of religion is preserved, by virtue of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The Republic is based on the principle of , that is of freedom of religion (including of agnosticism and atheism) enforced by the Jules Ferry laws and the 1905 law on the separation of the State and the Church, enacted at the beginning of the Third Republic (1871-1940). A 2011 European poll found that a third (33%) of the French population "does not believe there is any sort of spirit, God or life force. In 2011, in a poll published by Institut français d'opinion publique 65% of the French population describes itself as Christians, and 25% as not adhering any religion.

According to Eurobarometer poll in 2012, Christianity is the largest religion in France accounting 60% of French citizens. Catholics are the largest Christian group in France, accounting for 50% of French citizens, while Protestants make up 8%, and other Christians make up 2%. Non believer/Agnostic account for 20%, Atheist 13%, and Muslim 7%.

France guarantees freedom of religion as a constitutional right, and the government generally respects this right in practice. A long history of violent conflict between groups led the state to break its ties to the established Catholic Church early in the last century, which previously had been the state religion. The government adopted a strong commitment to maintaining a totally secular public sector.

Catholicism

Long the established state religion, the Catholic Church has historically played a significant role in French culture and in French life. Kings were prominent members as well as head of the state and social order. Most French people are Catholics; however, many of them are secular but still place high value on Catholicism.

The Catholic faith is no longer considered the state religion, as it was before the 1789 Revolution and throughout the various, non-republican regimes of the 19th century (the Restoration, the July Monarchy and the Second Empire). The institutional split of the Catholic Church and French State ("Séparation de l'Eglise et de l'Etat") was imposed by the latter in 1905 and represented the crest of a wave of the laicist and anti-clericalist movement among French Radical Republicans in this period.

At the beginning of the 20th century, France was a largely rural country with conservative Catholic mores, but in the hundred years since then, the countryside has become depopulated as people have become urbanized. The urban populations have become more secular. A December 2006 poll by Harris Interactive, published in The Financial Times, found that 32% of the French population described themselves as agnostic, some 32% as atheist, and only 27% believed in any type of God or supreme being. according to the French Market research Ipsos, Catholics today constitute 57.5% of the French population.

Protestantism

France was touched by the Reformation during the 16th century; some 30% of the population converted to Protestantism and became known as French Huguenots. Some princes joined the reform movement. But the national monarchy felt threatened by people who wanted to leave the established state religion. Protestants were discriminated against and suppressed. On 24 August 1572, the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre took place in Paris and the French Wars of Religion are considered to have begun. this French civil war took place between Catholics, led by Henry I, Duke of Guise, and Protestants, led by Henri de Navarre. Henri de Navarre became king after converting to Catholicism in 1589.

Louis XIII, Henri IV's son, began to suppress Protestants in violent attacks, such as the Siege of La Rochelle. After Louis XIV revoked the Edit de Nantes in 1685, Protestants who did not leave the country were generally suppressed. Thousands of Protestant Huguenots emigrated from France for their safety and to gain religious freedom, generally going to Protestant nations such as the Netherlands, England, South Africa, and the North American colonies. Their exile continued during the 17th century and until 1787, when religious freedom was re-established by Louis XVI.

The history of the Jews in France dates back over 2,000 years. In the early Middle Ages, France was a center of Jewish learning, but persecution increased as the Middle Ages wore on. France was the first country in Europe to emancipate its Jewish population during the French Revolution, but despite legal equality anti-Semitism remained an issue, as illustrated in the Dreyfus affair of the late 19th century. However, through the 1870 Décret Crémieux, France secured full citizenship for the Jews in then French-ruled Algeria. Despite the death of a quarter of all French Jews during the Holocaust, France currently has the largest Jewish population in Europe.

The Grande Mosquée in Paris.

Islam is the third-largest faith in France in the early 21st century. The Grande Mosquée was constructed in Paris in 1929 in honour of French colonial troops from North Africa who fought in the First World War. Arabs from North Africa started to settle in France. In the early 21st century, France had the largest Muslim population (in percentage) of any Western European country. This is a result of immigration and permanent family settlement in France, from the 1960s on, of groups from, principally, former French colonies in North Africa ( Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia), and, to a lesser extent, other areas such as Turkey and West Africa. The government does not collect data on religious beliefs in census records, but estimates and polls place the percentage of Muslims at between 4% and 7%.

Buddhism is widely reported to be the fifth largest religion in France, after Christianity, atheism, Islam, and Judaism. France has over two hundred Buddhist meditation centers, including about twenty sizable retreat centers in rural areas. The Buddhist population mainly consists of Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants, with a substantial minority of native French converts and "sympathizers". The rising popularity of Buddhism in France has been the subject of considerable discussion in the French media and academy in recent years. The Plum Village Tradition school of Buddhism was developed in France with the Plum Village Monastery located in the Dordogne.

Cults and new religious movements

Regional customs and traditions

Modern France is the result of centuries of nation building and the acquisition and incorporation of a number of historical provinces and overseas colonies into its geographical and political structure. These regions all evolved with their own specific cultural and linguistic traditions in fashion, religious observance, regional language and accent, family structure, cuisine, leisure activities, industry, and including the simple way to pour wine, etc.

The evolution of the French state and culture, from the Renaissance up to this day, has however promoted a centralization of politics, media and cultural production in and around Paris (and, to a lesser extent, around the other major urban centers), and the industrialization of the country in the 20th century has led to a massive move of French people from the countryside to urban areas. At the end of the 19th century, around 50% of the French depended on the land for a living; today French farmers only make up 6-7%, while 73% live in cities. Nineteenth century French literature abounds in scenes of provincial youth "coming up" to Paris to "make it" in the cultural, political or social scene of the capital (this scheme is frequent in the novels of Balzac). Policies enacted by the French Third Republic also encouraged this displacement through mandatory military service, a centralized national educational system, and suppression of regional languages. While government policy and public debate in France in recent years has returned to a valorization of regional differences and a call for decentralization of certain aspects of the public sphere (sometimes with ethnic, racial or reactionary overtones), the history of regional displacement and the nature of the modern urban environment and of mass media and culture have made the preservation of a regional "sense of place or culture" in today's France extremely difficult.

The names of the historical French provinces - such as Brittany ( Bretagne), Berry, Orléanais, Normandy ( Normandie), Languedoc, Lyonnais, Dauphiné, Champagne, Poitou, Guyenne and Gascony ( Gascogne), Burgundy ( Bourgogne), Picardy ( Picardie), Provence, Touraine, Limousin, Auvergne, Béarn, Alsace, Flanders, Lorraine, Corsica ( Corse), Savoy ( Savoie)... (please see individual articles for specifics about each regional culture) - are still used to designate natural, historical and cultural regions, and many of them appear in modern région or département names. These names are also used by the French in their self-identification of family origin.

Regional identification is most pronounced today in cultures linked to regional languages and non-French-speaking traditions - French language itself being only a dialect of Langue d'oïl, the mother language of many of the languages to-be-mentioned, which became a national vehicular language, like (in alphabetical order): Alsatian, Arpitan, Basque, Brezhoneg ( Breton), Burgundian, Corsu ( Corsican), Català ( Catalan), Francique, Gallo, Lorrain, Norman, Occitan, Picard, Poitevin, Saintongeais, etc., and some of these regions have promoted movements calling for some degree of regional autonomy, and, occasionally, national independence (see, for example, Breton nationalism, Corsica and Occitania).

In addition to its metropolitan territory, France also consists of overseas departments made up of its former colonies of Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Guiana in the Caribbean, and Mayotte and Réunion in the Indian Ocean. (There also exists a number of " overseas collectivities" and " overseas territories". For a full discussion, see administrative divisions of France. Since 1982, following the French government's policy of decentralisation, overseas departments have elected regional councils with powers similar to those of the regions of metropolitan France. As a result of a constitutional revision which occurred in 2003, these regions are now to be called overseas regions.) These overseas departments have the same political status as metropolitan departments and are integral parts of France, (similar to the way in which Hawaii is a state and an integral part of the United States), yet they also have specific cultural and linguistic traditions which set them apart. Certain elements of overseas culture have also been introduced to metropolitan culture (as, for example, the musical form the biguine).

Industrialization, immigration and urbanization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have also created new socioeconomic regional communities in France, both urban (like Paris, Lyon, Villeurbanne, Lille, Marseille, etc.) and the suburban and working class hinterlands (like Seine-Saint-Denis) of urban agglomerations (called variously ("suburbs", sometimes qualified as "chic" or "pauvres" or les cités " housing projects")) which have developed their own "sense of place" and local culture (much like the various boroughs of New York City or suburbs of Los Angeles), as well as cultural identity.

Other specific communities

Paris has traditionally been associated with alternative, artistic or intellectual subcultures, many of which involved foreigners. Such subcultures include the " Bohemians" of the mid-nineteenth century, the Impressionists, artistic circles of the Belle époque (around such artists as Picasso and Alfred Jarry), the Dadaists, Surrealists, the " Lost Generation" ( Hemingway, Gertrude Stein) and the post-war "intellectuals" associated with Montparnasse ( Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir).

France has an estimated 280,000-340,000 Roma, generally known as Gitans, Tsiganes, Romanichels (slightly pejorative), Bohémiens, or Gens du voyage ("travellers").

There are gay and lesbian communities in the cities, particularly in the Paris metropolitan area (such as in Le Marais district of the capital). Although homosexuality is perhaps not as well tolerated in France as in Spain, Scandinavia, and the Benelux nations, surveys of the French public reveal a considerable shift in attitudes comparable to other Western European nations. As of 2001, 55% of the French consider homosexuality "an acceptable lifestyle." The past mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, is gay. A 2017 Pew Research Center poll found that 73% of French people were in favour of same-sex marriage, while 23% were opposed. The 2019 Eurobarometer found that 79% of French respondents thought same-sex marriage should be allowed throughout Europe, 15% were against. Additionally, 85% believed gay, lesbian and bisexual people should enjoy the same rights as heterosexual people.

Families and romantic relationships

Household structure

Growing out of the values of the Catholic Church and rural communities, the basic unit of French society was traditionally held to be the family. Over the twentieth century, the "traditional" family structure in France has evolved from various regional models (including extended families and nuclear families) to, after World War II, nuclear families. Since the 1960s, marriages have decreased and divorces have increased in France, and divorce law and legal family status have evolved to reflect these social changes.

According to INSEE figures, household and family composition in metropolitan France continues to evolve. Most significantly, from 1982 to 1999, single parent families have increased from 3.6% to 7.4%; there have also been increases in the number of unmarried couples, childless couples, and single men (from 8.5% to 12.5) and women (from 16.0% to 18.5%). Their analysis indicates that "one in three dwellings are occupied by a person living alone; one in four dwellings are occupied by a childless couple.."

Voted by the French Parliament in November 1999 following some controversy, the pacte civil de solidarité ("civil pact of solidarity") commonly known as a PACS, is a form of civil union between two adults (same-sex or opposite-sex) for organizing their joint life. It brings rights and responsibilities, but less so than marriage. From a legal standpoint, a PACS is a "contract" drawn up between the two individuals, which is stamped and registered by the clerk of the court. Individuals who have registered a PACS are still considered "single" with regard to family status for some purposes, while they are increasingly considered in the same way as married couples are for other purposes. While it was pushed by the government of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in 1998, it was also opposed, mostly by people on the right-wing who support traditionalist family values and who argued that PACS and the recognition of homosexual unions would be disastrous for French society.

As of 2013, same-sex marriage is legally recognized in France. Same-sex marriage was an important factor in the presidential election of 2012 between François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy, who represents the right-wing UMP party, opposed gay marriage, while François Hollande, of the left wing socialist party, supported it. Hollande was elected in May 2012 and his government proposed the law known as "Mariage pour tous" ("marriage for all") to the parliament in November 2012. The law was passed in April 2013 and validated by the Conseil constitutionnel (the constitutional council, tasked with insuring that the new laws passed do not contradict the French constitution) in May 2013. The first French same-sex marriage took place on 29 May 2013 in Montpellier.

Role of the State

The French state has traditionally played an important role in promoting and supporting culture through the educational, linguistic, cultural and economic policies of the government and through its promotion of national identity. Because of the closeness of this relationship, cultural changes in France are often linked to, or produce, political crisis.

The relationship between the French state and culture is an old one. Under Louis XIII's minister Richelieu, the independent Académie française came under state supervision and became an official organ of control over the French language and seventeenth-century literature. During Louis XIV's reign, his minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert brought French luxury industries, like textile and porcelain, under royal control and the architecture, furniture, fashion and etiquette of the royal court (particularly at the Château de Versailles) became the preeminent model of noble culture in France (and, to a great degree, throughout Europe) during the latter half of the seventeenth century.

The cultural policies of the (current) French Fifth Republic have been varied, but a consensus seems to exist around the need for preservation of French regionalisms (such as food and language) as long as these don't undermine national identity. Meanwhile, the French state remains ambivalent over the integration into "French" culture of cultural traditions from recent immigrant groups and from foreign cultures, particularly American culture (movies, music, fashion, fast food, language, etc.). There also exists a certain fear over the perceived loss of French identity and culture in the European system and under American "cultural hegemony".

The National and University Library on the campus of the University of Strasbourg.

The French educational system is highly centralized. It is divided into three different stages: primary education, or enseignement primaire, corresponding to grade school in the United States; secondary education, or and corresponding to middle and high school in the United States; and higher education ( l'université or les Grandes écoles).

Primary and secondary education is predominantly public (private schools also exist, in particular a strong nationwide network of primary and secondary Catholic education), while higher education has both public and private elements. At the end of secondary education, students take the baccalauréat exam, which allows them to pursue higher education. The baccalauréat pass rate in 2012 was 84.5%.

In 1999-2000, educational spending amounted to 7% of the French GDP and 37% of the national budget.

France's performance in math and science at the middle school level was ranked 23 in the 1995 Trends in International Math and Science Study. France was ranked 22 in 2019.

Since the Jules Ferry laws of 1881-2, named after the then Minister of Public Instruction, all state-funded schools, including universities, are independent from the (Roman Catholic) Church. Education in these institutions is free. Non-secular institutions are allowed to organize education as well. The French educational system differs strongly from Northern-European and American systems in that it stresses the importance of partaking in a society as opposed to being responsibly independent.

Secular educational policy has become critical in recent issues of French multiculturalism, as in the " affair of the Islamic headscarf".

Minister of Culture

The modern post of Minister of Culture was created by Charles de Gaulle in 1959 and the first Minister was the writer André Malraux. Malraux was responsible for realizing the goals of the "droit à la culture" ("the right to culture") - an idea which had been incorporated in the French constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) - by democratizing access to culture, while also achieving the Gaullist aim of elevating the "grandeur" ("greatness") of post-war France. To this end, he created numerous regional cultural centres throughout France and actively sponsored the arts. Malraux's artistic tastes included the modern arts and the avant-garde, but on the whole he remained conservative.

The Ministry of Jacques Toubon was notable for a number of laws (the " Toubon Laws") enacted for the preservation of the French language, both in advertisements (all ads must include a French translation of foreign words) and on the radio (40% of songs on French radio stations must be in French), ostensibly in reaction to the presence of English.

Académie Française

The Académie Française (English: French Academy) is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution, it was restored in 1803 by Napoleon Bonaparte (the Académie considers itself having been suspended, not suppressed, during the revolution). It is the oldest of the five académies of the Institut de France.

The Académie consists of forty members, known as immortels (immortals). New members are elected by the members of the Académie itself. Académicians hold office for life, but they may be removed for misconduct. The body has the task of acting as an official authority on the language; it is charged with publishing an official dictionary of the language. Its rulings, however, are only advisory; not binding on either the public or the government.

Military service

Until 1996, France had compulsory military service of young men. This has been credited by historians for further promoting a unified national identity and by breaking down regional isolationism.

Labour and employment policy

In France, the first labour laws were Waldeck Rousseau's laws passed in 1884. Between 1936 and 1938 the Popular Front enacted a law mandating 12 days (2 weeks) each year of paid vacation for workers, and a law limiting the work week to 40 hours, excluding overtime. The Grenelle accords negotiated on 25 and 26 May in the middle of the May 1968 crisis, reduced the working week to 44 hours and created trade union sections in each enterprise. The minimum wage was also increased by 25%. In 2000 Lionel Jospin's government then enacted the 35-hour workweek, down from 39 hours. Five years later, conservative prime minister Dominique de Villepin enacted the New Employment Contract (CNE). Addressing the demands of employers asking for more flexibility in French labour laws, the CNE sparked criticism from trade unions and opponents claiming it was lending favour to contingent work. In 2006 he then attempted to pass the First Employment Contract (CPE) through a vote by emergency procedure, but that it was met by students and unions' protests. President Jacques Chirac finally had no choice but to repeal it.

Healthcare and social welfare

The French are profoundly committed to the public healthcare system (called "sécurité sociale") and to their "pay-as-you-go" social welfare system.

In 1998, 75% of health payments in France were paid through the public healthcare system. Since 27 July 1999, France has a universal medical coverage for permanent residents in France (stable residence for more than three months). Using five performance indicators to measure health systems in 191 member states, it finds that France provides the best overall health care followed among major countries by Italy, Spain, Oman, Austria and Japan (The World Health Report).

Food and alcohol

A sweet crêpe. Crêpes are originally from Brittany.

Traditional French culture places a high priority on the enjoyment of food. French cuisine was codified in the 20th century by Georges Auguste Escoffier to become the modern version of haute cuisine. Escoffier's major work, however, left out much of the regional character to be found in the provinces of France. Gastro-tourism and the Guide Michelin helped to bring people to the countryside during the 20th century and beyond, to sample this rich and peasant cuisine of France. Basque cuisine has also been a great influence over the cuisine in the southwest of France.

Ingredients and dishes vary by region (see: Regional cuisine). There are many significant regional dishes that have become both national and regional. Many dishes that were once regional, however, have proliferated in different variations across the country in the present day. Cheese (see: List of French cheeses) and wine (see: French wine) are also a major part of the cuisine, playing different roles both regionally and nationally with their many variations and Appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC) (regulated appellation) laws, ( lentils from Le Puy-en-Velay also have an AOC status). Another French product of special note is the Charolais cattle.

A nouvelle cuisine presentation

Food shopping in France was formerly done almost daily in small local shops and markets, but the arrival of the supermarket and the even larger "hypermarchés" (large-surface distributors) in France have disrupted this tradition. With depopulation of the countryside, many towns have been forced to close shops and markets.

French pâtisserie play a role in traditional part in French culture

Rates of obesity and heart disease in France have traditionally been lower than in other north-western European countries. This is sometimes called the French paradox (see, for example, Mireille Guiliano's 2006 book French Women Don't Get Fat). French cuisine and eating habits have however come under great pressure in recent years from modern fast food, such as American products and the new global agricultural industry. While French youth culture has gravitated toward fast food and American eating habits (with an attendant rise in obesity), the French in general have remained committed to preserving certain elements of their food culture through such activities as including programs of taste acquisition in their public schools, by the use of the appellation d'origine contrôlée laws, and by state and European subsidies to the French agricultural industry. Emblematic of these tensions is the work of José Bové, who founded in 1987, the Confédération Paysanne, an agricultural union that places its highest political values on humans and the environment, promotes organic farming and opposes genetically modified organisms; Bové's most famous protest was the dismantling of a McDonald's franchise in Millau ( Aveyron), in 1999.

French wines are a traditional part of French cuisine.

In France, cutlery is used in the continental manner (with the fork in the left hand, prongs facing down and the knife in the right hand). French etiquette prohibits the placing of hands below the table and the placing of elbows on it.

The legal drinking age is officially 18 (see: Legal drinking age).

France is one of the oldest wine producing regions of Europe. France now produces the most wine by value in the world (although Italy rivals it by volume and Spain has more land under cultivation for wine grapes). Bordeaux wine, Bourgogne wine and Champagne are important agricultural products.

Tobacco and drugs

The cigarette smoking age is 18 years. According to a widespread cliché, smoking has been part of French culture - actually figures indicate that in terms of consumption per capita, France is only the 60th country out of 121.

France, from 1 February 2007, tightened the existing ban on smoking in public places found in the 1991 Évin law: Law n°91-32 of 10 January 1991, containing a variety of measures against alcoholism and tobacco consumption.

Smoking is now banned in all public places (stations, museums, etc.); an exception exists for special smoking rooms fulfilling drastic conditions, see below. A special exemption was made for cafés and restaurants, clubs, casinos, bars, etc. which ended, 1 January 2008. Opinion polls suggest 70% of people support the ban. Previously, under the former implementation rules of the 1991 Évin law, restaurants, cafés etc. just had to provide smoking and non-smoking sections, which in practice were often not well separated.

Under the new regulations, smoking rooms are allowed, but are subjected to very strict conditions: they may occupy at most 20% of the total floor space of the establishment and their size may not be more than 35 m ²; they need to be equipped with separate ventilation which replaces the full volume of air ten times per hour; the air pressure of the smoking room must constantly be lower than the pressure in the contiguous rooms; they have doors that close automatically; no service can be provided in the smoking rooms; cleaning and maintenance personnel may enter the room only one hour after it was last used for smoking.

Popular French cigarette brands include Gauloises and Marlboro.

The possession, sale and use of cannabis (predominantly Moroccan hashish) is illegal in France. Since 1 March 1994, the penalties for cannabis use are from two months to a year and/or a fine, while possession, cultivation or trafficking of the drug can be punished much more severely, up to ten years. According to a 1992 survey by SOFRES, 4.7 million French people ages 12-44 have smoked cannabis at least once in their lives.

Sports and hobbies

Football (French: Le Foot) is the most popular sport in France. Other popular sports played in France are rugby union, cycling, tennis, handball, basketball and sailing. France is notable for holding and winning the FIFA World Cup in 1998 and 2018, and holding the annual cycling race Tour de France, and the tennis Grand Slam tournament the French Open. Sport is encouraged in school, and local sports clubs receive financial support from the local governments. While football is definitely the most popular, rugby union and rugby league takes dominance in the southwest, especially around the city of Toulouse (see: Rugby union in France and Rugby league in France).

The modern Olympics was invented in France, in 1894 by Pierre de Coubertin.

Other important sports include:

Like other cultural areas in France, sport is overseen by a government ministry, the Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports (France) which is in charge of national and public sport associations, youth affairs, public sports centers and national stadia (like the Stade de France).

Along with Milan, London and New York, Paris is center of an important number of fashion shows. Some of the world's biggest fashion houses (ex: Chanel) have their headquarters in France.

The association of France with fashion ( la mode) dates largely to the reign of Louis XIV when the luxury goods industries in France came increasingly under royal control and the French royal court became, arguably, the arbiter of taste and style in Europe.

France renewed its dominance of the high fashion ( couture or haute couture) industry in the years 1860-1960 through the establishing of the great couturier houses, the fashion press ( was founded in 1892; was founded in 1945) and fashion shows. The first modern Parisian couturier house is generally considered the work of the Englishman Charles Frederick Worth who dominated the industry from 1858 to 1895. In the early twentieth century, the industry expanded through such Parisian fashion houses as the house of Chanel (which first came to prominence in 1925) and Balenciaga (founded by a Spaniard in 1937). In the post war year, fashion returned to prominence through Christian Dior's famous "new look" in 1947, and through the houses of Pierre Balmain and Hubert de Givenchy (opened in 1952). In the 1960s, "high fashion" came under criticism from France's youth culture while designers like Yves Saint Laurent broke with established high fashion norms by launching prêt-à-porter ("ready to wear") lines and expanding French fashion into mass manufacturing and marketing. Further innovations were carried out by Paco Rabanne and Pierre Cardin. With a greater focus on marketing and manufacturing, new trends were established in the 70s and 80s by Sonia Rykiel, Thierry Mugler, Claude Montana, Jean Paul Gaultier and Christian Lacroix. The 1990s saw a conglomeration of many French couture houses under luxury giants and multinationals such as LVMH.

Since the 1960s, France's fashion industry has come under increasing competition from London, New York, Milan and Tokyo, and the French have increasingly adopted foreign (particularly American) fashions (such as jeans, tennis shoes). Nevertheless, many foreign designers still seek to make their careers in France.

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In 2006, 52% of French households had at least one pet: In total, 9.7 million cats, 8.8 million dogs, 2.3 million rodents, 8 million birds, and 28 million fish were kept as pets in France during this year.

Media and art

Art and museums

The first paintings of France are those that are from prehistoric times, painted in the caves of Lascaux well over 10,000 years ago. The arts were already flourishing 1,200 years ago, at the time of Charlemagne, as can be seen in many hand made and hand illustrated books of that time.

Gothic art and architecture originated in France in the 12th century around Paris and then spread to all of Europe. In the 13th century, French craftsmen developed the stained glass painting technique and sophisticated illuminated manuscripts for private devotion in the new gothic style. The final phase of gothic architecture, known as Flamboyant, also began in France in the 15th century before spreading to the rest of Europe.

The 17th century was one of intense artistic achievements : French painting emerged with a distinct identity, moving from Baroque to Classicism. Famous classic painters of the 17th century in France are Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain. French architecture also proved influential with the Palace of Versailles, built for the powerful king Louis XIV, becoming the model of many European royal palaces. During the 18th century the Rococo style emerged as a frivolous continuation of the Baroque style. The most famous painters of the era were Antoine Watteau, François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard. At the end of the century, Jacques-Louis David and Dominique Ingres were the most influential painters of the Neoclassicism.

Géricault and Delacroix were the most important painters of the Romanticism. Afterwards, the painters were more realistic, describing nature (Barbizon school). The realistic movement was led by Courbet and Honoré Daumier. Impressionism was developed in France by artists such as Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Camille Pissarro. At the turn of the century, France had become more than ever the center of innovative art. The Spaniard Pablo Picasso came to France, like many other foreign artists, to deploy his talents there for decades to come. Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin and Cézanne were painting then. Cubism is an avant-garde movement born in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century.

France boasts a wide variety of indigenous folk music, as well as styles played by immigrants from Africa, Latin America and Asia. In the field of classical music, France has produced a number of notable composers such as Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Hector Berlioz while modern pop music has seen the rise of popular French hip hop, French rock, techno/ funk, and turntablists/djs.

The Fête de la Musique was created in France (first held in 1982), a music festival, which has since become celebrated worldwide as world music day. It takes place every 21 June, on the first day of summer.

In 2010, the French electronic music duo, Daft Punk was admitted into the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, an order of merit of France. Bangalter and de Homem-Christo were individually awarded the rank of Chevalier (knight)..

France is the birthplace of cinema and was responsible for many of its early significant contributions: Antoine Lumière realized, on 28 December 1895, the first projection, with the Cinematograph, in Paris. Philippe Binant realized, on 2 February 2000, the first digital cinema projection in Europe, with the DLP CINEMA technology developed by Texas Instruments, in Paris. Several important cinematic movements, including the Nouvelle Vague, began in the country.

Additionally, France is an important Francophone film production country. A certain amount of the movies created share international distribution in the western hemisphere thanks to Unifrance. Although French cinema industry is rather small in terms of budget and revenues, it enjoys qualitative screenplay, cast and story telling. French Cinema is often portrayed as more liberal in terms of subjects (Sex, Society, Politics, Historical).[citation needed ] Within the domestic market, French movies are ranked by the number of admissions. Movies are premiered on Wednesdays.

"Going to the movies" is a popular activity within metropolitan areas. Many cinema operators offer a "flat-rate pass" for approx. €20 per month. Prices per movie range between €5.50 and €10.

French major cinema operators are UGC and Pathé, mainly located in city suburbs due to the number of screens and seating capacity.

Within France many "small" cinemas are located in the downtown parts of a city, resisting the big cinema operators nationwide. Paris has the highest density of cinemas (movie theaters) in the world: biggest number of movie theaters per inhabitants, and that in most "downtown Paris" movie theaters, foreign movies which would be secluded to "art houses" cinemas in other places, are shown alongside "mainstream" works as Parisians are avid movie-goers. Proximity of restaurants, accessibility, ambiance and the showing of alternative foreign movies is often cited as being the advantage of these small theaters.

The Cinémathèque Française holds one of the largest archives of films, movie documents and film-related objects in the world. Located in Paris, the Cinémathèque holds daily screenings of films unrestricted by country of origin.

Television

Books, newspapers and magazines

France has the reputation of being a "literary culture", and this image is reinforced by such things as the importance of French literature in the French educational system, the attention paid by the French media to French book fairs and book prizes (like the Prix Goncourt, Prix Renaudot or Prix Femina) and by the popular success of the (former) literary television show " Apostrophes" (hosted by Bernard Pivot).

Although the official literacy rate of France is 99%, some estimates have placed functional illiteracy at between 10% and 20% of the adult population (and higher in the prison population).

While reading remains a favorite pastime of French youth today, surveys show that it has decreased in importance compared to music, television, sports and other activities. The crisis of academic publishing has also hit France (see, for example, the financial difficulties of the Presses universitaires de France (PUF), France's premier academic publishing house, in the 1990s).

Literary taste in France remains centered on the novel (26.4% of book sales in 1997), although the French read more non-fiction essays and books on current affairs than the British or Americans. Contemporary novels, including French translations of foreign novels, lead the list (13% of total books sold), followed by sentimental novels (4.1%), detective and spy fiction (3.7%), "classic" literature (3.5%), science fiction and horror (1.3%) and erotic fiction (0.2%). About 30% of all fiction sold in France today is translated from English (authors such as William Boyd, John le Carré, Ian McEwan, Paul Auster and Douglas Kennedy are well received).

An important subset of book sales is comic books (typically Franco-Belgian comics like The Adventures of Tintin and ) which are published in a large hardback format; comic books represented 4% of total book sales in 1997. French artists have made the country a leader in the graphic novel genre and France hosts the Angoulême International Comics Festival, Europe's preeminent comics festival.

Like other areas of French culture, book culture is influenced, in part, by the state, in particular by the "Direction du livre et de la lecture" of the Ministry of Culture, which oversees the "Centre national du livre" (National Book Center). The French Ministry of Industry also plays a role in price control. Finally, the VAT for books and other cultural products in France is at the reduced rate of 5.5%, which is also that of food and other necessities ( see here).

In terms of journalism in France, the regional press (see list of newspapers in France) has become more important than national dailies (such as and ) over the past century: in 1939, national dailies were 2/3 of the dailies market, while today they are less than 1/4. The magazine market is currently dominated by TV listings magazines followed by news magazines such as , and .

Architecture and housing

Transportation

There are significant differences in lifestyles with respect to transportation between very urbanized regions such as Paris, and smaller towns and rural areas. In Paris, and to a lesser extent in other major cities, many households do not own an automobile and simply use efficient public transport. The cliché about the Parisien is rush hour in the subway. However, outside of such areas, ownership of one or more cars is standard, especially for households with children.

France has a number of traditional road naming conventions.

Despite the principles of laïcité and the separation of church from state, public and school holidays in France generally follow the Roman Catholic religious calendar (including Easter, Christmas, Ascension Day, Pentecost, Assumption of Mary, All Saints Day, etc.). Labor Day and the National Holiday are the only business holidays determined by government statute; the other holidays are granted by convention collective (agreement between employers' and employees' unions) or by agreement of the employer.

The five holiday periods of the public school year are:

the vacances de la Toussaint (All Saints Day) - two weeks starting near the end of October.

the vacances de Noël (Christmas) - two weeks, ending after New Years.

the vacances d'hiver (winter) - two weeks in February and March.

the vacances de printemps (spring), formerly vacances de Pâques (Easter) - two weeks in April and May.

the vacances d'été (summer), or grandes vacances (literally: big holidays) - two months in July and August.

On 1 May, Labour Day ( La Fête du Travail) the French give flowers of Lily of the Valley (Le Muguet) to one another.

On 2 November, All Souls Day ( La Fête des morts), the French traditionally bring chrysanthemums to the tombs of departed family members.

On 11 November, Remembrance Day ( Le Jour de la Commémoration or L' Armistice) is an official holiday.

Candlemas ( La Chandeleur) is celebrated with crêpes. The popular saying is that if the cook can flip a crêpe singlehandedly with a coin in the other hand, the family is assured of prosperity throughout the coming year.

The Celtic holiday Halloween, which is popular throughout the English speaking world, has grown in popularity following its introduction in the mid-1990s by the trade associations. The growth seems to have stalled during the following decade.

Conventions

France is the home of the International System of Units (the metric system). Some pre-metric units are still used, essentially the (a unit of weight equal to half a kilogram) and the (a unit of weight equal to 100 kilograms).

In mathematics, France uses the infix notation like most countries. For large numbers the long scale is used. Thus, the French use the word for the number 1,000,000,000,000, which in countries using short scale is called a trillion. However, there exists a French word, milliard, for the number 1,000,000,000, which in countries using the short scale is called a billion. Thus, despite the use of the long scale, one billion is called un milliard ("one milliard") in French, and not mille millions ("one thousand million"). It should also be noted that names of numbers above the milliard are rarely used. Thus, one trillion will most often be called mille milliards ("one thousand milliard") in French, and rarely un billion.

In the French numeral notation, the comma (,) is the decimal separator, whereas a space is used between each group of three digits (fifteen million five hundred thousand and thirty-two should be written as 15 500 032). In finance, the currency symbol is used as a decimal separator or put after the number. For example, €25,048.05 is written either 25 048€05 or 25 048,05€ (always with an extra space between the figure and the currency symbol).

In computing, a bit is called a bit yet a byte is called an octet (from the Latin root octo, meaning "8"). SI prefixes are used.

24-hour clock time is used, with h being the separator between hours and minutes (for example 2:30 pm is 14h30).

The all-numeric form for dates is in the order day-month-year, using a slash as the separator (example: 31 December 1992 or 31/12/92).

Problem in defining "French" culture

Wherever one comes from, "culture" consists of beliefs and values learned through the socialization process as well as material artifacts. "Culture is the learned set of beliefs, values, norms and material goods shared by group members. Culture consists of everything we learn in groups during the life course-from infancy to an old age."

The conception of "French" culture however poses certain difficulties and presupposes a series of assumptions about what precisely the expression "French" means. Whereas American culture posits the notion of the " melting-pot" and cultural diversity, the expression "French culture" tends to refer implicitly to a specific geographical entity (as, say, " metropolitan France", generally excluding its overseas departments) or to a specific historico-sociological group defined by ethnicity, language, religion and geography. The realities of "Frenchness" however, are extremely complicated. Even before the late 18th-19th century, "metropolitan France" was largely a patchwork of local customs and regional differences that the unifying aims of the Ancien Régime and the French Revolution had only begun to work against, and today's France remains a nation of numerous indigenous and foreign languages, of multiple ethnicities and religions, and of regional diversity that includes French citizens in Corsica, Guadeloupe, Martinique and elsewhere around the globe also in America.

In recent years, to fight the loss of regional diversity, many in France have promoted forms of multiculturalism and encouraged cultural enclaves ( communautarisme), including reforms on the preservation of regional languages and the decentralization of certain government functions, but French multiculturalism has had a harder time of accepting, or of integrating into the collective identity, the large non-Christian and immigrant communities and groups that have come to France since the 1960s.

The last 70 years has also seen French cultural identity "threatened" by global market forces and by American " cultural hegemony". Since its dealings with the 1943 GATT free trade negotiations, France has fought for what it calls the exception culturelle, meaning the right to subsidize or treat favorably domestic cultural production and to limit or control foreign cultural products (as seen in public funding for French cinema or the lower VAT accorded to books). The notion of an explicit exception française however has angered many of France's critics.

The French are often perceived as taking a great pride in national identity and the positive achievements of France (the expression " chauvinism" is of French origin) and cultural issues are more integrated in the body of the politics than elsewhere (see "The Role of the State", below). The French Revolution claimed universalism for the democratic principles of the Republic. Charles de Gaulle actively promoted a notion of French "grandeur" ("greatness"). Perceived declines in cultural status are a matter of national concern and have generated national debates, both from the left (as seen in the anti-globalism of José Bové) and from the right and far right (as in the discourses of the National Front).

According to Hofstede's Framework for Assessing Culture, the culture of France is moderately individualistic and high Power Distance Index.

Now, the interracial blending of some native French and newcomers stands as a vibrant and boasted feature of French culture, from popular music to movies and literature. Therefore, alongside mixing of populations, exists also a cultural blending ( le métissage culturel) that is present in France. It may be compared to the traditional US conception of the melting-pot. The French culture might have been already blended in from other races and ethnicities, in cases of some biographical research on the possibility of African ancestry on a small number of famous French citizens. Author Alexandre Dumas, père possessed one-fifth black Haitian descent, and Empress Josephine Napoleon who was born and raised in the French West Indies from a plantation estate family. We can mention as well, the most famous French-Canadian singer Celine Dion whose grandmother was a North African from Kabylie.

For a long time, the only objection to such outcomes predictably came from the far-left schools of thought. In the past few years, other unexpected voices are however beginning to question what they interpret, as the new philosopher Alain Finkielkraut coined the term, as an "Ideology of miscegenation" ( une idéologie du métissage) that may come from what one other philosopher, Pascal Bruckner, defined as The Tears of the White Man ( le sanglot de l'homme blanc). These critics have been dismissed by the mainstream and their propagators have been labelled as new reactionaries ( les nouveaux réactionnaires), even if racist and anti-immigration sentiment has recently been documented to be increasing in France at least according to one poll.

Cultural imperialism

Ethnographic museums such as the Musée du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac have been criticized for the political role they play in France.[64]

French culture, language, and education have been mobilized to further French imperial interests. The concept of mission civilisatrice or 'civilizing mission' figured into France's politique indigène throughout its colonies, with its goal fluctuating between assimilation and association of colonial subjects with French culture.

Aspects of French cultural imperialism-as embodied in the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie or Françafrique-have endured beyond the decolonization period.

Transformations in French ethnographic museums since the early 2000s have provoked criticisms of their alleged political role: reconciling increasing ethnic diversity among the nation's population within its republican model of assimilation, and even homogeneity. The criticisms have also included allegations of an erasure of France's colonial past as well as an erasure of the history of the collections.

Culture of Overseas France

Culture within European France and Overseas France differs. Overseas France consists of 13 French-administered territories outside Europe, mostly the remains of the French colonial empire that remained a part of the French state under various statuses after decolonization. Overseas French cultures include the cultures of Martinique and Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, the Culture of French Guiana in South America, the blend of European, African, Indian, Chinese and insular traditions in Reunion, the Polynesian cultures of French Polynesia, and the mix of indigenous Kanak, European, and Polynesian cultures of New Caledonia.

References

Bernstein, Richard. Fragile Glory: A Portrait of France and the French. Plume, 1991.

Carroll, Raymonde. Carol Volk, translator. Cultural Misunderstandings: The French-American Experience. University of Chicago Press, 1990.

Darnton, Robert. The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History. Vintage, 1984. ISBN 0-394-72927-7

Dauncey, Hugh, ed. French Popular Culture: An Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press (Arnold Publishers), 2003.

DeJean, Joan. The Essence of Style: How The French INvented High Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafés, Style, Sophistication, and Glamour. New York: Free Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0-7432-6413-6

Forbes, Jill and Michael Kelly, eds. French Cultural Studies: An Introduction. Clarendon Press, 1996. ISBN 0-19-871501-3

Girod, André. " French-American class: It's a long way to France" Redleadbooks <www.usa-decouverte.com>

Gopnik, Adam. Paris to the Moon. Random House, 2001.

Hall, Edward Twitchell and Mildred Reed Hall. Understanding Cultural Differences: Germans, French and Americans. Intercultural Press, 1990.

Howarth, David and Georgios Varouzakis. Contemporary France: An Introduction to French Politics and Society. New York: Oxford University Press (Arnold Publishers), 2003. ISBN 0-340-74187-2

Kelly, Michael. French Culture and Society: The Essentials. New York: Oxford University Press (Arnold Publishers), 2001. (A Reference Guide)

Kidd, William and Siân Reynolds, eds. Contemporary French Cultural Studies. Arnold Publishers, 2000. ISBN 0-340-74050-7

Marmer, Nancy, "Out of Paris: Decentralizing French Art," Art in America, September 1986, pp. 124-137, 155-157.

Nadeau, Jean-Benoît and Julie Barlow. Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong: Why We Love France But Not The French. Sourcebooks Trade, 2003. ISBN 1-4022-0045-5

Robb, Graham. The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography, from the Revolution to the First World War. New York: Norton, 2007. ISBN 978-0-393-05973-1

(in French) Wylie, Laurence and Jean-François Brière. Les Français. 3rd edition. Prentice Hall, 2001.

Zedlin, Theodore and Philippe Turner, eds. The French. Kodansha International, 1996.

1. ^ (PDF). 30 April 2011 https://web.archive.org/web/20110430163128/http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_225_report_en.pdf. Archived from the original (PDF) on 30 April 2011.

2. ^ "Discrimination in the EU in 2012" (PDF), Special Eurobarometer, 383, European Union: European Commission, p. 233, 2012, archived from the original (PDF) on 2 December 2012 The question asked was "Do you consider yourself to be...?" With a card showing: Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Other Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu, Atheist, and Non-believer/Agnostic. Space was given for Other (SPONTANEOUS) and DK. Jewish, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu did not reach the 1% threshold.

3. (in Romanian) ^ Franţa nu mai e o ţară catolică (France is no longer a Catholic country)], Cotidianul, 11 January 2007; "France 'no longer a Catholic country'", The Daily Telegraph, 10 January 2007

4. ^ Religion Important for Americans, Italians Archived 7 July 2007 at the Wayback Machine, Angus Reid Global Monitor, 16 December 2008

5. ^ UNESCO (16 November 2010). "Celebrations, healing techniques, crafts and culinary arts added to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage". UNESCO.

6. ^ Decree n°2006-1386 over 15th November, 2006 taken as application of article L3511-7 of the Public Health Code, banning smoking in public places.

7. ^ Le marché des aliments pour chiens et chats en Belgique. Mission Economique de Bruxelles, 2006. Read this document (in French) PDF Archived 26 November 2008 at the Wayback Machine

8. see, for example, ^ Jonathan Fenby: On the Brink: the Trouble with France Warner Books London, 1998, ISBN 0316646652

9. Aïcha Saïd Ben Mohamed (1876-1930) was born in ^ Kabylie, Généalogie Magazine, N° 233, p. 30/36

10. ^ Dias, Nélia (2008). "Double erasures: rewriting the past at the Musée du quai Branly". Social Anthropology. 16 (3): 300-311. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8676.2008.00048.x. ISSN 0964-0282.

11. ^ Chafer, Tony (2001). "TEACHING AFRICANS TO BE FRENCH?: France's 'civilising mission' and the establishment of a public education system in French West Africa, 1903-30". Africa: Rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazione dell'Istituto italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente. 56 (2): 190-209. ISSN 0001-9747. JSTOR 40761537. PMID 18254200.

12. ^ Burrows, Mathew (1986). "'Mission civilisatrice': French Cultural Policy in the Middle East, 1860-1914". The Historical Journal. 29 (1): 109-135. doi:10.1017/S0018246X00018641. ISSN 0018-246X. JSTOR 2639258. S2CID 154801621.

13. ^ Canut, Cécile (1 October 2010). "" À bas la francophonie ! " De la mission civilisatrice du français en Afrique à sa mise en discours postcoloniale". Langue française. n° 167 (3): 141-158. doi:10.3917/lf.167.0141. ISSN 0023-8368.

14. ^ Martin, Guy (1995). "Continuity and Change in Franco-African Relations". The Journal of Modern African Studies. 33 (1): 1-20. doi:10.1017/S0022278X00020826. ISSN 0022-278X. JSTOR 161543. S2CID 144466522.

External links

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The culture of France has been shaped by geography, by historical events, and by foreign and internal forces and groups. France, and in particular Paris, has played an important role as a center of high culture since the 17th century and from the 19th century on, worldwide.

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The French landscape garden ( French: jardin paysager, jardin à l'anglaise, jardin pittoresque, jardin anglo-chinois) is a style of garden inspired by idealized romantic landscapes and the paintings of Hubert Robert, Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin, European ideas about Chinese gardens, and the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The style originated in England as the English landscape garden in the early 18th century, and spread to France where, in the late 18th and early 19th century, it gradually replaced the symmetrical French formal garden ( jardin à la française).

The decline of the jardin à la française

Even during the lifetime of Louis XIV and his gardens of Versailles, the formal, symmetrical jardin à la française was criticized by writers La Fontaine, Madame de Sévigné, Fénelon and Saint-Simon for imposing tyranny over nature. In 1709, in his influential book on garden design, Dezallier d'Argenville called for garden designers to pay more attention to nature than to art. Signs of a new, more natural style were seen in the design of the bosquet des Sources at the Trianon, created by André Le Nôtre, and in the bosquets of the Château de Marly, created by Hardouin-Mansart. After the military defeats of France at the beginning of the 18th century and the freezing winter of 1709, the royal treasury was unable to finance upkeep of the elaborate gardens of Versailles. Trees were untrimmed, gardens and paths were overgrown. France was ready for the introduction of a new style of gardens.

The French landscape garden was influenced first of all by the new style of English landscape garden, particularly those of William Kent at Stowe (1730-1748) and Rousham (1738-1741), and the garden by Henry Hoare at Stourhead (begun in 1741), which were themselves inspired by trips to Italy and filled with recreations of antique temples. A later influence was the gardens of Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill (beginning 1750), where Gothic ruins replaced antique temples. Later, the gardens of Capability Brown, who had studied with William Kent, had an important influence in France, particularly his work at Stowe (1748), Petworth (1752), Chatsworth (1761), Bowood (1763) and Blenheim Palace (1769).

Descriptions of English gardens were first brought to France by the Abbé Le Blanc, who published accounts of his voyage in 1745 and 1751. A treatise on the English garden, Observations on Modern Gardening, written by Thomas Whately and published in London in 1770, was translated into French in 1771. After the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763, French noblemen were able to voyage to England and see the gardens for themselves. During the French Revolution, many French nobles went into exile in England, and brought back with them the new style of gardening.

In 1743, Father Attiret, a French Jesuit priest and painter in service to the Emperor of China, wrote a series of letters describing the Chinese gardens he had seen. In particular he described the Emperor's summer residence, Yuanming Yuan near Beijing:

A beautiful disorder reigns almost everywhere. An anti-symmetry. Everything works on this principle: it is a pastoral and natural countryside that one wants to represent: a solitude and not a well-ordered palace following all the rules of symmetry and proportions.

Attiret's letters were a success in both France and in England, where they were translated and published in 1752. They had an important influence on what became known as the Anglo-Chinese garden.

In 1757 Sir William Chambers, an English writer and traveller who made three trips to China, published a book called Designs of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, Dresses, Machines, and Utensils, with a chapter about gardens. The book was quickly translated into French. Chambers brought to Europe the Chinese idea that gardens should be composed of a series of scenes which evoke different emotions, ranging from enchantment to horror to laughter. Chambers wrote, "The enchanted or romanesque scenes abound in the marvellous. They provoke a series of violent or opposing sensations; footpaths leading down to underground passages where mysterious lights reveal strange groupings; winding roads which pass through beautiful forests leading to precipices or melancholy rivers lined with funerary monuments shaded by laurels and willows. The horrible scenes present hanging rocks, cataracts, caverns, dead tree broken by the storm, burnt or shattered by lightning, and buildings in ruins... The scenes of horror are only one act in a theatrical production that usually ends in a soothing extended perspective, simple forms and beautiful colors. The laughing scenes make one forget the enchantment and the horror of the landscapes that one has passed through."

Chambers became the creator of the first Chinese garden in Europe, complete with the Great Pagoda at Kew Gardens, in the southwest of London. Chambers' book and the Chinese garden he created at Kew Gardens brought Chinese gardens into fashion in both England and France. Landscape gardens in France began to include artificial hills, pagodas, and promenades designed to provoke emotions ranging from melancholy to sadness to joy.

Rousseau's philosophy of the landscape garden

The ideas of the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) had a major influence on the landscape garden, and he himself was buried in the first important such garden in France, at Ermenonville. Rousseau wrote in 1762, on the "nobility of nature": "Everything is good when it leaves the hand of the creator"; "Everything degenerates in Man's hands." In his novel Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse Rousseau imagined a perfect landscape, where people could be true to themselves. This imaginary garden became a model for French landscape gardens. The French historian Jurgis wrote: "the theme of this Paradise, once restored by setting free flowers, earth and water, was the guiding principle in the development of landscape gardens. It was a glorification of that which had long been denatured by artifice." In opposing his Elysian Fields, the Orchard at Clarens to the serried trees sculpted into parasols, fans, marmosets, and dragons, Rousseau reawakens this myth with its new liberties.

Rousseau visited England in 1761 and saw the famous gardens, including that at Stowe, but he criticized the mish-mash of different styles there. "It is composed of very beautiful and picturesque places, of which different features have been chosen from different countries," he wrote. "It all seems natural, except the assembly."

René Louis de Girardin, who created the park at Ermenonville, was an avid pupil of Rousseau. He designed the garden to illustrate the idyllic landscapes described in Rousseau's books. He travelled to Paris, was introduced to Rousseau, and persuaded him to visit the garden and stay in a small cottage designed to resemble the house of Julie, called Elysee, described in La Nouvelle Heloise. Rousseau came to visit in May 1778 and revised Les Confessions and continued writing Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire while staying there; he died there of kidney failure in July 1778. His remains were placed in a tomb in a grove of poplar trees on a small island in the lake.

Girardin made the park at Ermenonville a living illustration of Rousseau's ideas; making carefully constructed landscapes, like paintings, designed to invite the visitor to take long walks and to feel pure and simple emotions. The paths were designed to follow the hillsides, climbing up and down, to give a various view, from shadows of groves of trees to sunlight, and meandering to let the viewer delight the scene from different angles and light. Girardin described the purpose of his garden in a book called De la composition des paysages (1777) ("On the Composition of Landscapes"):

If you wish to have true joy, you must always search for the simplest ways and find amusements which conform to nature, because those pleasures are the only ones that are true and lasting.

The principles taken from Rousseau and transformed into avenues and landscapes by Girardin and other garden designers were copied in landscape gardens around France.

The views in landscape gardens were rarely copied from real nature; they were more often inspired by romantic paintings, particularly those of Nicolas Poussin, Salvator Rosa and Claude Lorrain, who depicted Arcadian landscapes with mythological scenes. In France they were influenced by the paintings and drawings of Hubert Robert, who depicted romantic scenes of crumbling antique ruins seen during his visits to Italy. Robert himself became a garden designer, contributing to the landscape garden at Betz and the Hameau de la Reine at Versailles.

Landscape gardens were designed to be allegories, taken from literature and painting, and filled with symbols and messages. They were usually either recreations of the Garden of Eden or of the pastoral Arcadia of Roman myths, or they were designed to offer a visual tour of the history of mankind or of all the world. The landscape was not enough - it had to have architecture. The French gardens were filled with fabriques de jardin, imitations of Roman temples, ruins or tombs.

The gardens at Betz, created by the Duc d'Harcourt and the painter Hubert Robert for the Princess of Monaco, were supposed to be a journey around the world. The different parts of the world were represented by an obelisk, a Doric temple, a Chinese kiosk, a Druid temple, and the ruins of a medieval chapel. The gardens of the Château de Bagatelle at Paris contained follies in the form of the temple of the God Pan, the house of the Chinese philosopher, a Pharaoh's tomb, and a hermit's cell. As the architect Louis Carrogis Carmontelle wrote about the garden he created at Monceau, "Let us vary the regions so that we may forget where we are. Let us change the scenes of a garden like the decors at the Opera; let us show what the most able painters can offer as decoration; all periods and all places."

The 18th and early 19th century was an age of discovery and enormous activity in the natural sciences, botany and horticulture. Explorers, diplomats and missionaries were instructed to bring new species of plants to France, where they were acclimated in special gardens at the seaports. In 1764 the larch tree was imported from England to France, soon after the cedar of Lebanon. The dahlia and the chrysanthemum, hydrangea and mimosa were imported from Mexico to France. The reverend Charles Plumier (1646-1704) brought back the magnolia, the fuchsia and the begonia from Latin America. Louis Feuilée (1660-1732) brought the calceolaria, oxalis, opuntia and papaya. Pierre Nicholas Le Chéron d'Incarville (1706-1757) introduced Sophora japonica. Bernard de Jussieu (1699-1777) brought the first cedar to be planted in France (1734), while his brother Joseph de Jussieu (1704-1779) introduced heliotrope. The explorers Bougainville (1729-1811) and La Pérouse (1741-1788) brought back numerous plants which made their way into French gardens. Thanks to their discoveries, French landscape gardens were soon ornamented with exotic trees and colorful flowers not seen before in Europe.

The Moulin Joly ("Pretty Mill"), designed by the landscape architect Claude-Henri Watelet, was probably the first garden in France designed in the new style. It was located along the Seine between Colombes and Argenteuil. Watelet discovered the site during a walk, bought it, and created a garden which preserved its natural beauty. It consisted of three islands, with a rustic house, a grotto, shelters for animals, a Chinese bridge, a Dutch bridge and a floating bridge, a mill, and a garden with a traditional layout. Watelet, who called the garden "l'île enchantée", wrote that his garden was "in a pastoral style following the long tradition born in antiquity and carried on by the Italian and French Renaissance." Visitors to the garden included the painters Boucher, Hubert Robert, and Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun. Marie Antoinette visited several times.

Parc Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Parc Jean-Jacques Rousseau at Ermenonville was designed by René Louis de Girardin, who spent time as an officer in the army of Louis XV before retiring to his estate. He had visited Italy, Switzerland, Germany and England, and was familiar with the early English landscape gardens. He was particularly inspired by the garden of the British poet William Shenstone, The Leasowes, which became the model for Ermenonville.

In 1776 Girardin published a book, A la composition des paysages ( On the Composition of Landscapes), which laid out his theories of gardens, theories that quoted the French translation of a book on gardening by Thomas Whately, and the Théorie des jardins of Jean-Marie Morel (1776).

Girardin created the garden at Ermenonville to be a series of tableaux to be seen from various points at different times of day. The artist Hubert Robert contributed drawings for its design. The park occupied 100 hectares (250 acres), lying in a valley along the River Launette. It took ten years to build the garden; ponds needed to be drained and the river had to be diverted. The gardens were ornamented with follies representing a Gothic tower, an obelisk, the Temple of Philosophy (left unfinished to represent the incompleteness of human knowledge), and a hermit's hut.

The 17th-century mansion sat on an island in the middle; northwards was all farmland, and to the west, towards the village, was Le Désert, a wildlife garden. Girardin filled the garden with metaphors representing philosophical Renaissance and Mediaeval themes.

The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau spent the last weeks of his life in a cottage in this garden, in a part that had been inspired by his novel La Nouvelle Heloise (Julie, or the New Heloise). On his death he was interred on an island in the river, the Île des Peupliers; the neo-classical tomb and its attendant grove of poplar trees were depicted in several prints of the period - it became a place of pilgrimage for his many admirers. On October 11, 1794 his body was removed and reinterred in the Pantheon in Paris near the remains of Voltaire.

Because of its connection with Rousseau, the garden has attracted many famous visitors, including Joseph II of Austria, King Gustave III, the future Czar Paul I of Russia, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Danton, Robespierre, Chateaubriand, Queen Marie Antoinette and Napoleon Bonaparte.

This landscape garden with its follies was built by Jean-Jacques Lefranc de Pompignan, a friend of Rousseau. It featured picturesque structures and mysterious ruins, and the walks and views took advantage of the park's site on a hillside overlooking the Garonne valley and, in the far distance, the chain of the Pyrenees, stretched out along the southern horizon. The chateau is still inhabited, and although the parc has been neglected for a very long time, vestiges of the works and walks are still to be seen.

Parc Monceau was designed by Louis Carrogis Carmontelle (15 August 1717 - 26 December 1806), a French dramatist, painter, architect, set designer and author. In 1773, he was asked by the Duc de Chartres, the son of Louis-Philippe d'Orleans and the future Philippe Egalité, to design a garden around a small house that he was building to the northwest of Paris. Between 1773 and 1778, he created the folie de Chartres (now Parc Monceau), one of the most famous French landscape gardens of the time.

It departed from the more natural English landscape gardens of the time by presenting a series of fantastic scenes designed "to unite in one garden all places and all times." It included a series of fabriques, or architectural structures, while it illustrated all the styles known at the time: antiquity, exoticism, Chinese, Turkish, ruins, tombs, and rustic landscapes, all created to surprise and divert the visitor.

The garden was created by François Racine de Monville (1734-1797), a French aristocrat, musician, architect and landscape designer. In 1774, de Monville bought a country estate at Saint-Jacques-de-Retz, which had a farm, lands, and a formal jardin à la française. He resolved to create a new garden in the new English style. He called the garden le Désert de Retz, and planted it with four thousand trees from the royal greenhouses, and rerouted a river and created several ponds.

The garden, completed in 1785, contained twenty-one follies, or architectural constructions, representing different periods of history and parts of the world; they included an artificial rock, a temple of rest, a theatre, a Chinese house, a tomb, a ruined Gothic church, a ruined altar, an obelisk, a temple to the god Pan, a Siamese tent, and an ice-house in the form of a pyramid. The best-known feature was the ruined classical column, "La Colonne détruite", large enough to hold a residence inside.

Along with the development of the French landscape garden, there was a parallel development in the 18th century of ornamental farms and picturesque "villages". The first such ornamental farm in France was the Moulin Joly, but there were similar rustic buildings at Ermenonville, Parc Monceau, and the Domaine de Raincy. In 1774, the Prince de Condé conceived an entire rustic village, the Hameau de Chantilly, for his estate at the Château de Chantilly. The little village was modelled on a farm in Normandy, and had seven buildings with thatched roofs, designed by architect Jean-François Leroy. The exteriors were rustic, but the interiors were extremely elegant, and used for concerts, games, and dinners. They were used for a reception for members of the Russian imperial court in 1782.

In 1749 Louis XV had created a "jardin d'instruction" next to the gardens of Versailles, with domestic animals, a kitchen garden, and a botanical garden of plants brought from around the world. In 1750, he added a pavilion, designed by Ange-Jacques Gabriel, with a formal garden and a few winding paths and bosquets of trees in the new style. A one time he intended the Petit Trianon as a residence for Madame de Pompadour, who took an interest in the design of the house and its gardens. At her death in 1764 the unfinished house passed into the sphere of his new mistress Madame du Barry, who did little with it being more interested in her new Pavilion at Château de Louveciennes.

On his death the still unfinished property passed back into the possession of the new king, Louis XVI, who in 1774, presented it to his wife Marie-Antoinette. She had the house completed and commanded that a new garden be built in the new fashionable Anglo-Chinese style. The garden was designed by Richard Mique, Antoine Richard, and painter Hubert Robert. Richard was responsible for the choice of trees and plants, and Mique and Robert took charge of the composition and the follies, or architectural constructions.

The garden was conceived around a small stream whose source was in a artificial mountain called the "Grand Rocher". On one side was a butte with an octagonal belvedere on top. The Belvédère was also known as the pavilion of music, and was decorated with murals inspired by the paintings of Pompeii. The stream wound through the garden, and was crossed by bridges or stones. It formed an island on which was placed the Temple de l'Amour.

The construction of the garden required the destruction of the old botanical gardens which had formal layouts and several of the greenhouses. Some of the plants were incorporated into the new gardens, while others were sent to other royal gardens and the new Botanical Gardens in Paris.

In 1783 Marie Antionette ordered the creation of the Hameau de la Reine, the most famous of all the rustic villages created for gardens of the period. Between 1783 and 1787, the hamlet was thus created in the spirit of a Normandy village, with eleven houses spread out around the a lake. Five of the buildings were actual residences for staff engaged in farm work, while several contained suites of rooms for the queen and her guests to relax in.

Other gardens

Baltrušaitis, Jurgis (1978). Jardins en France 1760-1820 (in French). Paris: Caisse National des Monuments Historiques et des Sites. OCLC 174457405.

Wenzler, Claude (2003). Architecture du Jardin (in French). Rennes: Editions Ouest-France.

Prévôt, Philippe (2006). Histoire des jardins (in French). Editions Sud Ouest.

Allain, Yves-Marie; Christiany, Janine (2006). L'art des jardins en Europe (in French). Paris: Citadelles.

Racine, Michel, ed. (2001). "de la Renaissance au debut du XIX siècle". Créateurs des jardins et de paysages en France de la Renaissance au XXIe siècle ("The landscape gardeners of the 21st century French renaissance"). I. École Nationale Supérieure du Paysage.

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The French landscape garden ( French: jardin paysager, jardin à l'anglaise, jardin pittoresque, jardin anglo-chinois) is a style of garden inspired by idealized romantic landscapes and the paintings of Hubert Robert, Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin, European ideas about Chinese gardens, and the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

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The French picturesque and the invention of landscape architecture as a design discipline

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Abstract 'Landscape architect' as a term was invented at the start of the nineteenth century in France. It referred to a new way of thinking about spatial design that originated from a collaboration between different disciplines. This contribution investigates this disciplinary shift in design practices and how it deeply influenced the discourses on what landscape design ought to be.