Gothic survivor a treasure
“Voila Monsieur Journalist!” Xavier Jouffrieau ends his story with a flourish, our empty plates and glasses still sitting outside his restaurant and shop, Le Pichet 3, the mixed sounds of his Orgue de Barbarie (portable mechanical organ) and the cathedral bells just now fading away.
The voluble, mildly eccentric Monsieur Jouffrieau is proud of the shop he and his wife opened last year, after running a straight restaurant for a quarter of a century. Now, along with an impressive menu of regional and national dishes including poule-au-pot, in honour of Henri IV who famously promised every peasant the means to enjoy “a chicken in every pot” every Sunday, there are also clothes, antiques and local produce. “Beef, pate, wine, cider, beer . . . we sell everything now. Even Australian wine!”
It’s not quite what I expected to find in the French city of Chartres, capital of the beautiful region of Beauce. Then again, I didn’t know what to expect until I started reading up on the city on the 100km train ride from Paris, all the while trying to ignore the three gendarmes sitting across the aisle.
I learnt the city’s name came from its original inhabitants, the Carnutes, and that it is known for its perfume and light festivals, as well as for its stained glass, ancient half-timbered houses and “tertres”, the steep, narrow lanes and steps which criss-cross the Old Town.
I already knew of the city’s famous Notre-dame cathedral, built between 1134 and 1250 and the only Gothic cathedral to retain two-thirds of its original stained glass. But I didn’t know it had narrowly escaped complete destruction during World War II.
Imagine: an American army officer, Colonel Welborn Barton Griffith, volunteers to undertake a dangerous reconnaissance mission with just one other soldier to find out whether the occupying Germans are using the cathedral. He safely returns and is able to confirm they are not.
The order to destroy it is duly cancelled. Sadly, Griffith dies in action not long afterwards.
It’s a poignant story. But no less poignant is the tale of Raymond Isidore, nicknamed Picassiette — a pun on “pique-assiette”, or “stealer of plates”, and Picasso.
On the day we visit the Maison de Picassiette, the weather is spring-perfect. We breakfast at our hotel, the characterful Grande Monarque, a former inn which now boasts a Michelin-starred restaurant, before ambling through the city. Cats scurry across rooftops as women stand on small balconies applying make-up or talking on their mobile phones.
While some people enjoy an alfresco coffee in the sunshine, inside the cathedral, pilgrims are enacting an age-old meditative custom as they slowly walk around the medieval pavement labyrinth, bathed in coloured light. Then it’s a suburban bus to Rue de Repos and a pilgrimage of sorts to another temple to colour and light.
By 1938 Raymond Isidore, a man of humble origins who had been a moulder before becoming a sweeper at the Cimetiere St Cheron, had owned the nearby plot of land, and the small house he built on it, for nine years.
But imagine: it’s the year before the war and Isidore is taking a walk when he discovers some broken crockery. Suddenly, an idea. And for the next three decades he collects thousands of fragments of glass and porcelain, obsessively covering his family’s entire home, inside and out — not even sewing machines and furniture escape — with polychrome mosaics inspired by dreams and the symbols of his Christian faith. The townsfolk consider Isidore mad but gradually his art attracts serious attention, with Picasso visiting the house in 1954.
By the time of his death in 1964, Isidore and his creation are famous.
William Yeoman was a guest of Railbookers.
FACT FILE
Railbookers offers tailor-made rail holidays throughout Europe. For example, its 13-night Paris to Barcelona holiday includes Bordeaux, Madrid, Cordoba, Seville and Granada. Prices start from $2470 per person and include accommodation in central hotels with breakfast daily and all train connections with seat reservations. There are many other itineraries which include stays in Chartres. railbookers.com.au or 1300 971 578.
