On Saturday, I went to a museum in Bordeaux called the Musée d'Aquitaine. This is a wonderful museum because it not only explores the city of Bordeaux and the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region as a whole, but other countries and cultures too. It covers the prehistory of the Aquitaine region, the protohistory (the Period of the Iron Age, 800-50 BC), Antiquity (Bordeaux in the Gallo-Roman time and Aquitaine romanized province), the Medieval Period (16th and 17th centuries: Aquitaine under kings of England and return in French Guyenne), the Modern Era of Bordeaux (18th century), the Port of Bordeaux and its gateway to the world (1800-1939), and the 20th and 21st centuries.
Below are some photos I took at the museum:
This is the first room of the museum: it is devoted to the Neolithic period and the Bronze Age, between 5200 and 800 BC where the most typical object is the axe, first made from polished flint and then bronze. This period saw the emergence of agriculture and livestock breeding in Aquitaine, with the development of pottery for the storage of food.
The Pair-non-Pair site (Prignac-et-Marcamps, Gironde) is shown, which is the only real decorated cave in Gironde (the department that Bordeaux is located in). It was discovered in 1881 and it is known for remarkable and ancient prehistoric parietal engravings of wild animals.
This is the first room of Antiquity. Romanization in Aquitaine started in 56 B.C. and Burdigala was the ancient name that the Romans gave to Bordeaux. The Romans brought rich ornamental decoration, which we can see here in this vast mosaic.
This is the cenotaph of Michel de Montaigne, a significant philosopher of the French Renaissance.
This is the impressive rose window from the ancient Église (church) des Grands Carmes in the Medieval Period room.
The museum also talked about the Counter-Reformation and the development of the intellectual civilization in which the humanists consolidated the use of the French language in Bordeaux.
These photos were taken in the Modern Era rooms, which talk about Bordeaux in the 18th century, transatlantic commerce, and slavery. Bordeaux was a major port city and participated heavily in maritime commerce. Bordeaux was also one of the second-level slave trading ports in France and represented 12% of the French slave trade. Approximately 180 Bordeaux-based shipowners were behind these expeditions, which displaced between 120,000 and 150,000 Africans.
The museum talked about art and traditions of Africans and the Eskimos.
This is a second-hand bookstore I went to after the museum.
Later that day, I went to a ballet with one of my professors in Marmande called Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring). This ballet and orchestral concert work is written by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It depicts various primitive rituals celebrating the advent of spring, after which a young girl is chosen as a sacrificial victim and dances herself to death. This ballet was different than classical ballet, where there is a story and scenery and ballet dancers traditionally wear costumes and ballet slippers. What we saw last night was contemporary ballet: the dancers had no footwear, there was no scenery, and a lot of the story was up to the viewer's interpretation.
Anyway, the ballet was composed of two parts: a prelude and a main part after the intermission. The prelude showed the start of springtime, and only had two ballet dancers, dancing very romantically. The second part composed of 7 dancers, 5 men and 2 women, and their choreography was more combative and earthly to symbolize the themes of sacrifice and struggle. It was an interesting ballet to say the least -- quite different than The Nutcracker.
And lastly, let's all admire how pretty Bordeaux was yesterday after the rain cleared.
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