BORDEAUX RISING
Now halfway through a massive 30-year development project, the ‘sleeping beauty’ is waking up
France’s sleeping beauty.
AT A TABLE ON A SMALL TERRACE overlooking the Garonne River, I’ve just finished a classic southern French dish of scallops and shellfish. The restaurant seems to be one of the last on the block to cater to more locals than tourists. I sip from a glass of cognac with my coffee and wait for the moment when the bright sky reaches that post-sunset shade of dark blue that is perfect for evening photography. As it nears, I finish my glass and walk 200 metres to join a throng of photographers on the boulevard, across from the Place de la Bourse.
We gather at the edge of the Miroir d’Eau (‘water mirror’). It is a shallow pool the size of a sports field that goes through an eternal 15-minute cycle of filling with about two centimetres of water, then emptying out. I place my camera on a small tripod and wait.
After a few minutes, the water has drained away, leaving a field of flat, wet, slabs of granite to create a perfect ref lection of the magnificent 18th-century buildings framing this elegant square. At precisely that moment, the floodlights at the foot of the building facades switch on, creating an image of instant beauty that is received with a mix of “wows” and “oohs” and the clicking of cameras.
It’s the ultimate iconic image of the city of Bordeaux. The whole thing lasts a minute or two, then it’s gone. The sky turns black, and the tiny holes between the water mirror’s tiles start spewing a thin vapour of droplets at the beginning of its next ‘fill’ cycle.
SATISFIED, I PACK UP my camera and cross the street to reacquaint myself with the Old City, which I last visited ten years ago, before the Water Mirror was built. I have fond memories of its limestone buildings and laid-back atmosphere. Although Bordeaux is some 2000 years old, the entire Old City, with some exceptions, is
made up of these limestone buildings - the result of a radical city modernisation around 1750 directed by the Marquis de Tourny, at the time the king’s governor, whose name graces a square and some shops.
I pass the imposing structures along the Quai Richelieu and stroll the narrow streets behind it, which are lined with restaurants, wine bars and shops. This contrast is what I always liked so much about Bordeaux, the capital of the south-western region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine. The architecture of the Grand Théâtre, the museums and the town hall underlines the fact that the word ‘grandeur’ is truly French.
At the same time, its narrow streets breathe a provincial – even parochial – air that many major European cities lost decades ago.
But the city known in France as La Belle Endormie (‘the sleeping beauty’) is waking up. A massive restoration and development project is well underway. Bordeaux is now more than halfway through implementing the plan, which will continue until 2030.
One of the most visible features of this massive undertaking is at the waterfront, along the crescent-shaped curve in the Garonne River that gave this Atlantic port its old name – Port of the Moon. Once occupied by derelict warehouses and car parks, the riverside Quai Richelieu now boasts a new tramline, bicycle lanes and a wide boulevard. The quay is the scene of a daily parade of strollers, runners, cyclists and playing children.
A newly opened high-speed train hub sits at the centre of a huge modern building project called Bordeaux Euratlantique, which is designed to spearhead a new economic and population boom pushing the current 750,000 inhabitants to more than a million.
The careful restoration of the Old City has already led to the city being recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But will Bordeaux lose its Old World charm in the process?
“That’s a very important issue,” says Bordeaux’s deputy mayor Stephan Delaux when I pose the question to him the next morning.
“We have a group here in town hall that acts as a sounding board in discussions on how we can maintain the spirit of Bordeaux,” he says. Then he points out the window overlooking the square with the massive limestone St André Cathedral, which is being restored, and says, “But have you looked at the splendid view out my window? When Alain Juppé started in 1995, this square had five traffic lanes, full of trucks.
“Now there is a tram, the traffic is pushed to one side, and the square is for pedestrians. This is how we approach all aspects of the project.”
Juppé is the driving force behind the plan for the revival of Bordeaux. His name is on the lips of everybody I speak with. The former French prime minister and mayor since 1995 may well go down in history as the prince who kissed the sleeping beauty back to life. And his name will undoubtedly be attached to one of the grands oeu
vres, the huge structural works that will be finished after his retirement.
THAT AFTERNOON I meet Veronique Baggio, a city guide who takes me on a two-hour walk to show me what is new and what is restored. When I was here last, much of Tourny’s Bordeaux was covered with soot. “The property owners were told to clean the facades,” she explains. “That was an expensive operation, but worth it. Now you can see the mascarons.”
Last time I had barely noticed the intricately carved limestone heads on the keystones over the porches and windows. This was never a town that invited you to look up. But there they are: some 3000 fascinating portraits found throughout the city.
Baggio tells me the portraits were probably local people, but also mythological figures. Some also symbol ise products that were sold here.
Wine is represented, of course, and wheat, but also people. Baggio explains that Bordelais traders in the 18th and 19th centuries took part in the European slave trade from Africa to the Americas. She tells me about a permanent exhibition dedicated to the slave trade in the municipal Aquitaine Museum.
At the museum I meet former director François Hubert, author of the book that accompanies the exhibition. Mayor Juppé wrote the preface, in which he calls the exhibition “a crucial step in the remembrance process
the City of Bordeaux has embarked on.” It is to Juppé’s credit again that coming to terms with the city’s past has become an integral part of the plans for the future of Bordeaux.
Hubert leads me through rooms filled with ship models, paintings and the paraphernalia of suppression. We are surrounded by a group of 12 year olds, brought here to learn this dark history. More than 11 million enslaved Africans were traded like cattle by the British, French, Dutch and others. “For too long we have hidden behind the notion that slavery was an American issue,” says Hubert. “It was not. It was very European.”
The exhibition lends a degree of honesty to the way Bordeaux wants to present itself. But there is still a long way to go. Since I met Veronique Baggio, I have asked several other locals about the slave trade and found that the subject is as sensitive here as it is in my own hometown, Amsterdam. We don’t like to be reminded of the crimes of our forefathers.
A popular myth among locals has it that the Bordeaux traders were forced by law to ship slaves to America, as a result of a deal between the king and the Americans. It is an excuse that places responsibility with the regime that was overthrown in the French Revolution. Hubert laughs out loud when I tell him this: “There was no such contract. Absolutely not.”
AS I LEAVE the museum I am just in time for my reservation at Racines, a small restaurant nearby, owned and run by Scottish chef Daniel Gallacher. He left Scotland to work with and learn from France’s most famous chefs. Racines is his first restaurant. “I don’t have a Michelin star yet,” he
The Rue de Fessets, a pedestrian zone in the Old City, has an Old World charm
tells me, “but we do have a Bib Gourmand.” For tout Bordeaux that is a good omen of stars to come.
“I want a star of course,” says Gallacher after serving me an elegant, modern lunch. “It would allow me to work with more exclusive ingredients. But right now, it is also challenging to serve surprising menus using more common ingredients.”
After lunch I board the modern Line B tram to be taken a couple of stops north, where I get off and rent a V3 public bicycle from a docking station on the river bank. V3 stations are found on squares around the city. I head off through the Chartrons area, a former working-class neighbourhood that has gone through a process of rapid gentrification in the wake of the restoration of the city centre. In the narrow streets, I pass antique shops, curio shops and small, single- storey worker’s houses called échoppe that sell for record prices.
Through a shop window, my eye is drawn towards a clockmaker, bent over his workbench, peering through a jeweller’s magnifying glass at an antique brass clock. I ask him if I may look around. Master clockmaker Peter Peschel looks up and smiles. “Of course,” he says.
Peschel tells me he opened his shop 12 years ago. With so many antique shops around, he is perfectly situated. We find common ground in our love for craftsmanship when he recognises the classic, handmade lens on my camera. He’s pleasantly surprised at how it blends with digital technology.
Back on my bicycle, I head to the edge of the Old City, to the futuristic vertical lift bridge named after former mayor Jacques Chaban-Delmas. This is the former docks district where Bordeaux is now rapidly building modern housing projects and luxury apartment buildings.
The eye-catcher, besides the bridge, is the Cité du Vin. Opened in 2016, this international wine museum is housed in a building shaped to symbolise the swirl of wine in a glass.
Bordeaux, whose name is synonymous with wine, has placed itself above the market with its Cité du Vin and its biennial international wine festival. People come to the Cité du Vin for wine- tast ing workshops, wine-themed special expositions and the splendidly designed multimedia presentations about wine from around the globe. Not least, the spectacular round shop in the heart of the building displays wines from around the world. Many of these can be tasted at the top floor bar.
ON THE LAST DAY of my visit, I decide to check out a more folksy part of the city that I fondly remembered. I walk south on the Rue Sainte-Catherine shopping street. The Apple Store, Galeries Lafayette and luxury brand shops gradually make way for T-shirt shops, fast-food eateries and tattoo parlours. At the end of the
street, I turn towards the flea market around the Basilica of St Michel, where standard French gives way to West African dialects and Arabic.
This is no longer the polished and shiny city of the tourist brochures, but a typical lively and colourful southern French city. Men in djellabas and women in high heels share the footpaths. But I see early signs of gentrification. Young professionals are beginning to make their mark here, as I saw in Chartrons. Outside a corner café, children play on a small playground as their young parents enjoy their lattes, some bent over their laptops.
But I am pleased to see that the Marché des Capucins food market still offers its splendid mix of North African herbs, tropical fruits and French specialties, and that French, Arabic and African dealers still peddle everything from second-hand shoes to antiques in the St Michel flea market. As I watch two women haggling with an old man over some second-hand clothes, it strikes me that this scene could well disappear from Bordeaux as gentrification intensifies and real estate prices rise.
That would be a tremendous loss for them and for the city. I’ll just have to come back in ten years to check.