Great Continental Railway Journeys (2012) s01e01 Episode Script
London to Monte Carlo
1 I'm embarking on a new railway adventure that will take me across the heart of Europe.
I'll be using this, my Bradshaw's Continental Railway Guide, dated 1913, which opened up an exotic world of foreign travel for the British tourist.
It told travellers where to go, what to see and how to navigate the thousands of miles of tracks criss-crossing the Continent.
Now, a century later, I'm using my copy to reveal an era of great optimism and energy, where technology, Industry, science and the arts were flourishing.
I want to rediscover that lost Europe, that in 1913 couldn't know that its way of life would shortly be swept aside by the advent of war.
Steered by my 1913 railway guide, I'm journeying through a prosperous pre-war Europe of emperors and kings, pomp and elegance.
A continent whose industrialists, factories and mines had created wealth, whose scientists and engineers were discovering and building the marvellous and whose artists were challenging old ways whilst intellectuals plotted revolution.
On this leg I'm following the most popular route of the Edwardian traveller through France, enjoying the final days of La Belle Epoque, the country's beautiful age of peace and economic and artistic triumph.
I'm standing where Claude Monet stood a century and a quarter ago and I've never felt more inadequate in my life.
I'll taste the tipple that fuelled the Bohemian nightlife of Paris, I can see how in this place of hellish activity, this might have helped to take you to heaven.
live the Edwardian highlife Oh, to have been an Englishman a hundred years ago.
and, like so many tourists before me, I'll have a flutter at the gaming tables of Monte Cam.
I'm not the first British traveller to lose his colourful shirt on the roulette table.
My journey begins oh the Eurostar to Paris, which in 1913 as how, was a capital city oozing sophistication.
I'll then head south to the Mediterranean town of La Ciotat, home to a famous filmmaking duo, before continuing eastwards along the glamorous Côte D'Azur, visiting some of 1913's best-loved tourist destinations, before ending my journey in that den of excess, Monte Carlo.
Of course in 1913, the British tourist bound for the Continent had to cross the waters and was spoilt for choice.
My Bradshaw's says, "For the Dover route, Londoners left from Charing Cross or Victoria.
" "The service is four times a day.
" "For the Folkestone route, Londoners left from Charing Cross.
" By any route, it was the start of the Briton's Continental adventure.
- Andrew, hello.
- Nice to see you.
I'm bound for Paris and to learn just how popular foreign travel was for Edward/ans, as I enter France, I'm meeting author Andrew Martin.
By 1913, what kind of numbers of British people were travelling to Paris, for example? Well, a revolution had occurred between about 1840 and 1913.
In 1840 you had about, estimated about 150,000 going abroad.
By 1913, perhaps as many as two million.
Really? I'm quite surprised by those numbers, but there was still a sense of adventure about travelling to the Continent.
There was a sense of adventure.
You would have marvelled at the strange coal smell coming off the locomotive because it was a different type of coal.
The French locomotives of the Nord company looked odd to British eyes with all their fixtures and fittings seeming to be on the outside.
They were a rather drab brown colour which in itself was interesting.
There was no platform on French stations.
You stepped up into the carriage which in itself was quite exciting.
Then again, it was becoming much more affordable, foreign travel.
You could have a third-class return to Paris in 1913 for about £2; £150 in today's money.
So, a week's wages for a fairly poorly paid working man, so it was quite doable.
Nowadays when we travel by Eurostar, we go under the Channel.
We miss out the stages of the journey.
Tell me about the stages of that traditional journey.
On the boat train it was very definitely a tripartite journey.
You had a train, then a boat then a train again, and the nautical aspect of it is what we miss today.
You would've been on a small boat, you stood a good chance of being sick.
You would've boarded it, if you were at Dover, from Admiralty Pier, which was just a stone pier sticking out into the sea.
The train went along it and the paddle steamer came alongside.
You would not only have got blown about on Admiralty Pier, you may well have got soaked as well.
So, with the Channel Tunnel we really miss out on being soaked and on throwing up.
Yes, it's terrible really, isn't it? A hundred years ago the traveller who'd used the route through Calais would have arrived at the Gare du Nord, and a century later, I'm doing just the same.
Au revoir, merci.
1913 visitors to Paris happily endured the travails of their three-stage journey for a simple reason.
They came to enjoy the most modern, beautiful and cultured city not only in Europe, but arguably in the world.
The wonderful thing about arriving by train is it delivers you to the heart of the city.
And even here in the station, you see signs that this is Paris, something about the colour of the stone and the green-painted iron-work.
And outside the station, I feel the bars and the cafes and the bistros and the brassieres are beckoning me.
After four decades without war, 1913 Paris was characterised by confidence, prosperity and joie de vivre.
Dominating its skyline, the Eiffel Tower was a symbol of French engineering and economic success.
Over the previous 60 years the city centre had been expensively beautified with grand boulevards and imposing public buildings, which no doubt impressed the Edwardian tourist.
But the gentrification of Paris, begun by city architect Georges Haussmann, had come at a price.
Between 1851 and 1870, France was ruled by an emperor, Napoleon III.
He employed Baron Haussmann to rebuild Paris.
He created miles of new avenues and tremendous vistas.
In the process he demolished thousands of houses and displaced a much greater number of people.
It's the sort of great project that could never have been done in Britain, where we think of the state as being the servant of the citizen rather than the citizen being at the disposal of the state.
Constitutional issues aside, there 's no doubt that early 20th-century Paris stood for beauty, elegance and fun.
It was the centre of Europe's café society and a magnet for a burgeoning, often risque, culture of arts and entertainment.
But three years before my 1913 guidebook was written, a natural disaster struck this vibrant capital.
My Bradshaw's tells me that in January 1910, "Widespread distress and damage were caused by the unprecedented swelling of the River Seine, the water rising nearly to the keystones of the arches of the bridges.
" "The quays were entirely submerged and the flood covered the adjoining streets.
" "It was estimated that the property loss reached a total of £40 million.
" I had no idea that the beautiful Seine could be capable of such violence and I wonder whether Paris is safe today.
It's hard to imagine such scenes of destruction and I'm keen to learn more about this largely forgotten episode in Parisian history.
Flavie, hello.
Flavie Sauve works for Paris Flood Protection.
What was the cause of the flood of 1910? In autumn for four months we had huge rainfall.
It was a nightmare.
And you know that Paris was a huge building area at this time.
We had new sewers and new metro tunnels, because at this period we had already four lanes of metro in Paris.
The water spread into the tunnels.
- The Seine and its tributaries - Overflowed the banks.
So actually the very modernity of Paris, with sewers, metro tunnels, this then became a cause of danger, - made the disaster worse.
- Yes.
In deep midwinter, the river rose to almost nine metres.
At some points the banks eve/flowed for up to a mile.
- It must've been a very huge flood.
- Yeah, you can imagine.
The flood was just a disaster for Paris.
Is Paris still in danger of flooding? Yes, it is.
You know that we have a one-in-100 chance per year to get a flood like this one happening.
It's one of those things.
You have a great city built on a beautiful river, but then it does pose some danger.
Yes, it is.
- Well, thank you so much.
- You're welcome.
After a good night's sleep, I've woken with an appetite.
For Edwardian Britons visiting for the first time, Parisian food must've taken some getting used to.
Merci.
No eggs and bacon here.
This is the town of the continental breakfast.
I'm going to start my day by taking up a Bradshaw recommendation.
"It will save time, be inexpensive and give a better idea of the situation of the more notable buildings of interest to hire a car to dive around the heart of the city.
' Napoleon used to say that an army marches on its stomach and for my drive, I'm preparing with a croissant.
My 1913 'Bradshaw' recommends Ming a taxi because Paris was awash with them.
In 1906 there were 1,000 cabs in Paris, compared to just 100 in London.
To correct that imbalance, the General Cab Company of London placed a massive order for 500 vehicles, built in France, by Renault.
With around 600 manufacturers compared to just 50 in Edwardian Britain, when It came to making cars, France was streets ahead.
Motoring historian Pierre-Jean des Fosses should know why.
Pierre, hello, how lovely to see you.
- Beautiful car.
- Thank you.
This car is Le Zèbre, zebra, the animal.
- And French of course.
- And French, yes.
Built in 1910.
Have you any idea what a car like this might've cost in 1910? Who could afford it? This car has been made to be a low-cost car, economic car for people, and the price was 3,000 francs at the time.
3,000 francs was a year's salary for an employee at Le Zèbre factory.
Why do you think the French were so advanced in car manufacture and the British so backward? I think the English were very involved in steam for a long time.
We were very good at locomotives and maybe we didn't realise that this was the new technology.
You may realise that it was the new technology, but you have a law that obliged people to have someone walking in front of the car at two miles per hour maximum in town, with a red flag just to say, "Hello, mind, the car is coming.
" So that stopped the industry.
At the beginning of the 21st century we're worried about having too much of a health and safety culture, but apparently we had one in the 19th century too.
Yeah, it's always a revolution.
It will come back.
First time! Well done.
- This is very, very cosy.
- It's a nice car.
When Baron Haussmann beautified the centre of Paris, he did have a head start.
Some of the city's best-known buildings like Notre Dame had been here for a centuries.
This building behind has a very special meaning for me.
It's your Assemble Nationale, isn't it? Your parliament building.
I feel an affinity with it.
Now we cross the River Seine.
We felt that lovely cool breeze as we came across.
And we come into la Place de la Concorde.
- So many people were guillotined here.
- Yes, true.
And there is the Concorde.
With another early 20th-century mode of transport available, it's time for me to bid au revoir to Pierre-Jean and his vintage automobile.
Given the state of traffic in Paris today, it's probably more sensible for me to proceed on the métropolitain, which my Bradshaw's reminds me is the underground railway.
It lists the nine lines that had already been built by 1913 and tells me that "the fares are the same for any distance", which I think is probably still true today, although I'd be lucky to get a first-class fare for 25 centimes.
It was a combination of traffic congestion and the Imminent arrival of the Universal Exposition and the Olympic Games both in 1900, which prompted the building of the metro.
Work started in 1898, 35 years later than London's underground.
By contrast with London, the Paris metro seems to be mainly quite close to the surface, built by the cut-and-cover method, digging a trench and then filling it in.
That means you get these tall trains whereas in London, of course, we have lots that were built very deep in round tubes and you have to stoop all the way.
I'm arriving north of the city centre at Abbesses station in Montmartre.
In 1913, as now, it's where Paris writes its prose, paints its pictures and parties hard.
This beautiful metro station was built around the turn of the 20th century, in Art Nouveau style whose curves draw their inspiration from nature.
This is an expression in public architecture of a broad cultural and artistic movement.
After World War I, people would look back on this period with understandable nostalgia and would describe it as La Belle Epoque, the beautiful era.
Situated in the 18th arrondissement, Montmartre's most notable landmark, the Basilica du Sacré-Coeur, completed just a year before my 1913 guidebook, sits atop the district's steep 130-metre-high hill.
The area was populated by bohemian types who'd been displaced by Haussmann 's revamp of Paris.
Writers and artists followed and, as a busy nightlife developed, out went the stifling morals of the 19th century, to be replaced with the risqué cabarets and can-can girls of Le Chat Noir and the Moulin Rouge.
And even a hundred years on, it seems the spirit of La Belle Epoque lingers here.
Hello.
I came and joined you because, apart from being a beautiful lady, you're sitting here reading a book, you're reading Emile Zola, so you're in the tradition of La Belle Epoque.
Exactly, that's what I get inspired by.
These are your photographs.
- They are actually, indeed.
- Fascinating.
Do you feel that there is a very strong artistic tradition in Montmartre? There is, there is indeed.
The whole neighbourhood has an artistic atmosphere actually and lots of artists live here and expose their work in the street.
- So the tradition continues.
- It does.
- I notice they even paint the trucks.
- Yes.
Bye-bye.
Lovely to see you.
Bye-bye.
No tour of La Belle Epoque would be complete without a visit to the Hotel Fromentin, which in 1913 was a cabaret where they served a liquor affectionately known as the green fairy which should help me with my fantasy of being in the Paris of Mondrian, Picasso, Pizzaro and Toulouse-Lautrec.
- Nadia.
- Oh, hello, Michael.
Lovely to see you.
Nadia Gallouze works at the Hotel Fromentin.
I've come for some absinthe, please.
- Alright.
Have you ever tried it? - No, I have not.
I thought absinthe was banned.
It used to be, but it was at the beginning of the 20th century.
It used to be really strong.
And it used to make people really sick, especially the mind.
Banned in 1915, absinthe fuelled the booziness of La Belle Epoque.
As high as 70% proof, the liquor was made from the bitter herb wormwood.
Absinthe was blamed for an explosion in debauched behaviour that turned respectable establishments into dens of vice and upright citizens into drunks.
Think the gin palaces of Britain with a twist of French.
So, may we begin the ceremony of the absinthe? Of course.
So, you just have to pour some of it here and you use the special spoon, you put some sugar and you just have to open this little tap.
Oh, and now the drops.
You just let the sugar dissolve.
During that waiting time, you talk.
It's about the art of conversation.
It's a way to take life slowly.
I'm so pleased you told me that it was about the art of conversation.
I always thought it was about getting drunk.
Absinthe was a particular favourite in bohemian Montmartre.
It's even rumoured that artist Vincent Van Gogh cut off his ear under the influence of the green fairy.
I'd best nave just a sip.
The water has dripped through the sugar and my absinthe has gone cloudy.
It was quite clear before.
And to taste it Very sweet, still, of course.
Even more sweet.
Hmm, tastes good.
I can see how in this place of hellish activity, this might have helped to take you to heaven.
I'll be leaving Paris for the Côte d'Azur early tomorrow morning and, just like the Edward/ans, whose journey I'm retracing, my train will leave from Gare de Lyon.
Before I depart, I want to find out about this grand terminus.
It was rebuilt in 1900 with some very evocative features.
This clockface is reminiscent of one I lived with for many years, Big Ben.
Indeed, British travellers passing through here in 1913 with their Bradshaw's Guide would have been made to feel at home by it as they hastened through the Gare de Lyon on their way to their express trains and their overnight sleepers to the Riviera.
In the station's restaurant, pecking passengers were greeted by a decadent salon befitting La Bette Epoque, and so well regarded in France that French President Emile Loubet attended its opening.
I'm meeting Railway historian Clive Lamming at Le Train Bleu.
Lovely to meet you here in Le Train Bleu.
This is such a wonderful, beautifully decorated restaurant.
It's more than a restaurant.
It is, I would say, sort of palace.
It was made for the British people.
They came by the blue train, the train bleu, from Calais.
They need to feel at home, so we built for them a sort of little miniature Big Ben, a little tower, so they could feel at home and here everything is supposed to be, I would say, British.
Just look at the furniture with the Chesterfields, the sofas and so on, you see.
So, you are quite in a British place but I can assure you that the cooking is French and the wines tee.
Let's take a tour around.
The whole place is decorated with frescos of what I think are the destinations that you can go to from here, correct? Yes, they were ordered by the French railway.
They wanted that people wished to be there, you see.
It's a place rather, I would say, built for dreaming than reality.
In the 1870s, Belgian George Nagelmackers fanned the International Sleeping-Car Company.
His trains mirrored the comfort of George Pullman's American overnight sleepers.
Edwardian Britons loved the Calais-to-Cannes route, which departed Paris from this station, the Gare de Lyons.
- It's a wonderful view.
- It's a wonderful view.
My Bradshaw's is 1913.
Can you paint for me a picture of the station in 1913? In 1913 we would have seen engines, steam engine locomotives, which were called coupe-vent, wind cutters.
Behind, there were wooden carriages and there were a let of luggage vans because in that time, people would travel heavily with plenty of luggage and ladies would have plenty of boxes and parcels and big hats.
All these luggage vans were full up.
It's famous because nobody was really wanting to travel just for the pleasure.
The British invented the travel for pleasure and travel for learning.
All the other people at the time thought it was wasting your time.
- A joyful prospect.
Thank you so much.
- Enjoy your travel.
Ready for the next leg of my journey, I'm returning to the Gare de Lyon and venturing south through central France.
Had I been travelling in 1913 using my Bradshaw's Guide, I would almost certainly have used the overnight sleeper to reach the French Riviera.
Overnight sleepers are very romantic, although I don't find them very easy to sleep on.
Anyway today, we have the high-speed train, the Train à Grande Vitesse, the TGV, which covers the 450 miles from Paris to Marseilles incredibly in three hours and five minutes.
So I'm on the TGV.
From Marseilles I'll make for La Ciotat, a small town with an impressive history.
From there via Toulon to the Côte D'Azur to retrace a typical Edwardian trip, taking in the artistic heritage of Antibes, the British influence on Nice and finally the brazenness of Monte Carlo.
When you travel at these speeds by train you have something of the experience of travelling by plane.
Suddenly you wake up in a new landscape, new vegetation, new climate.
We've swapped the cold light of northern Europe for the azure blue of the Mediterranean.
I'm changing trains at Marseilles to do what so many Britons did in 1913.
" visit the Côte d'Azur.
It's quite a short run now to my next stop, which is La Ciotat, which my Bradshaw's tells me is beautifully situated on the coast and remarks that it was the Greek settlement of Kitharistes.
But my interest is in more modern history, because La Ciotat is the place where the passions of railway enthusiasts and film buffs coincide.
La Ciotat is something of a shrine to lovers of motion pictures, because this was the summer home of the Lumiere brothers, whose films of the village were some of the earliest movies ever made or shown.
Amongst which, the scene of a train entering La Ciotat station has become an icon of early cinema.
Encouraged by their father, a stills photography entrepreneur, August and Louis Lumière patented their portable cinematograph camera in February 1895.
And the same year, the brothers were the first in the world to showcase their films to a paying audience.
At the Eden Theatre, in coastal La Ciotat, currently being restored under the watchful eye of Michel Corn/lie, crowds gathered for screenings of one of the Lumiere brothers' iconic films of a train pulling into the station.
It's wonderful to be here.
I feel the dust of history upon me.
This is extraordinary.
It would be really thrilling to me to be able to sit in the seats here.
- May we do that? - We may.
Why did the Lumière brothers decide to film a train entering the station at La Ciotat? Louis was playing with his cinematograph.
His mother came from Marseilles by train.
He was on the platform and he filmed his mother coming from Marseilles in La Ciotat.
It's 1895 and you and I have been invited here to the Eden Theatre to see the arrival of the train at La Ciotat station.
Do you think it was frightening for them? Yes.
Because as you can imagine, you are on your seat and suddenly the train is coming out of the screen and you are afraid.
Train was the first horror movie in the world.
It's been a great privilege to be allowed to enter this building site and be the last visitor to the old theatre.
I knew that when it's been restored, people will come here in their thousands because this is a very special place.
You are very welcome to come again because Spielberg will open the new place.
- Spielberg? - Spielberg with Michael.
Another legend.
This seaside town plays another significant part in early 20th-century cultural development.
Apart from its important role in history of cinema, La Ciotat, a place that I had never heard of until today, has another claim to fame as the cradle of pétanque.
Hello.
Bien sûr? The trick of this game is that, at the end, your boule needs to be the nearest to the little target ball.
But, of course, in between you can hit other people's boules and knock them out of the way and you can move the target ball as well.
In 1907, La Ciotat resident Jules le Noir, a rheumatic with limited mobility, is thought to have tried playing French bowls without raising a foot.
One good shot.
Believed to be the highest-participation form of bowls on the planet, the game's name, pétanque, derives from the Provençal words "pied tanqué", which translate as "feet together on the ground".
And that's the end of me.
With one flick he sent my ball into paradise.
With some time before my next train, I'm going to explore La Ciotat's harbour.
As my Bradshaw's Guide told me, La Ciotat really is beautifully situated by the sea.
The contrasting blues of sea and sky, the contrasting browns of terracotta and brick make it gorgeous.
It just invites the painter's brush.
I can't believe that I had never heard of it, but it seems that I am not alone.
As far as I can tell, it's undiscovered by the British tourist.
I'm bound now for Antibes on the Riviera.
When the railways arrived on the Côte D'Azur, visitor numbers soared from 4,000 in 1860 to 100,000 by 1900.
But mechanised travel wasn't the only reason that they came in such droves.
They were following the lead of their monarch and the advice of an Influential book, Dr Henry Bennet's "Winter and Spring on the Shores of the Mediterranean".
Boba Vukadinovic, a tourist guide, knows more.
The first edition of the book definitely brought Queen Victoria to the French Riviera and she spent altogether 332 days on the Riviera, which was half of her foreign travelling.
Why did she come to the Riviera the first time? It was actually because of her son, Leopold, Duke of Albany, who was a haemophiliac.
Queen Victoria was convinced of the beneficial effects of the temperate Mediterranean climate on Leopold, her haemophiliac son.
But another British royal also frequented the Côte D'Azur for less wholesome reasons.
One of Queen Victoria's other sons, the Prince of Wales, who later became Edward VII, he was keen on the Riviera for different reasons from his mother's.
You're absolutely right.
He would never stay in the same town as Queen Victoria.
Never.
Why? Because actually she didn't approve of his, let's say, pleasure-seeking life.
And definitely when he was on the Riviera, he was seeking pleasure, with young ladies, with elderly ladies later on and he was keen on sports too.
He played a lot of tennis.
The French liked him.
Actually, they adored him, because he brought tennis to the Riviera.
And later on, on his yacht Britannia, he was participating in all the regattas on the French Riviera.
My Bradshaw's Guide, which is 1913, still refers to most of these places on the Riviera as being vi/inter resorts.
So when does it begin to change to summer? It's in the '20s.
They started actually integrating the idea of being on the French Riviera in the summer and of hotels being open all the year round.
The word scenic is a cliche often used to describe towns along the Côte D'Azur.
Antibes is amongst the most beguiling.
Its bays define beautiful shapes in a glistening sea, whose intense blueness responds to the skies and the changing angle of the sun.
Even the least artistic person would love somehow to capture that shifting light.
Antibes.
My Bradshaw's promises "a sheltered winter place and small seaport", which is today filled with billionaires' yachts, "in a fine situation between Golfe Juan and Baie des Anges.
" The rain has brought a cool evening, but the pink sky promises fine weather tomorrow.
Le Figaro, s'il vous plait.
Merci.
- Merci.
- Merci.
Au revoir, merci.
My Bradshaw's says that the Cap d'Antibes is "a beautiful peninsula about two and a half miles long, clothed with a wonderfully rich vegetation and having a wild, picturesque coast.
" "As a winter resort, it's growing in favour.
" And that word 'picturesque' is well chosen, because the intensity of the light and the vibrancy of the colour attracted to Antibes some of the greatest painters who'd ever lifted a paintbrush.
Antibes was a magnet for Edwardian art lovers, although the great impressionist painter Claude Monet first worked here as early as 1888.
Inspired by beautiful surroundings, impressionist artists usually painted in the open air rather than in a studio, depicting everyday life and using vibrant colours to recreate the effect of light and atmosphere.
By 1913, many of the most influential painters of the early 20th century had followed Monet to Antibes as, in the 21st, has British artist Mitch Waite.
- Mitch, good to see you.
- And you.
I suppose on a day like today, I don't really have to ask what it was about Antibes that attracted artists.
No, well, it's right there in front of us, isn't it? Clear blue skies, deep blue sea, crystal clear horizon.
And my Bradshaw's refers also to the richness of the vegetation, so that would be a factor too? Absolutely.
Just look around us here.
We've got the sun coming through the yellow in this plant here and that brings a highlight and sparkle and a richness to colour, which artists like to use.
If you go back into this son of vegetation, the colours go bluer and deeper and contrast with the highlights that we like to put in a picture.
Then if you look further back at Cap d'Antibes, there, the grey blues in all of the shadows of the trees give depth to the picture.
Just what we want.
That's a wonderful explanation.
Shall we take a walk through the town? Absolutely.
Which is the first of the famous artists to come to Antibes? That would be Claude Monet, who famously painted from the Cap d'Antibes, several paintings.
- Came on the train I imagine.
- I should think he did, yes.
And with the railways, I suppose other artists followed in his train.
Yes.
He inspired Paul Signac who came and was very inspired by Monet's work.
I'm interested in Paul Signac, because he came here I think in 1913, the year of my Bradshaw's Guide.
Yes, in fact he did, that's right.
He came from St Tropez where he'd been painting for many years before that.
It was important to them to paint in the open air.
That's what they wanted.
They were outside.
They came to places like this for the beautiful light.
They, in turn, inspired people like Signac, in fact, who developed something called Pointillism, painting very small brush strokes, almost mosaic-like, with bright, fresh, clean colours.
He, in turn, inspired people like Henry Matisse who was pan of the Fauvism movement.
Bright, strong colours, but bigger, bolder brushstrokes and again, inspired by this beautiful light from this area.
So, really you can read the history of an in the late 19th, early 20th century here in Antibes? It's all here, in Antibes.
Mitch wants me to see the shoreline that many Edwardian art connoisseurs would have visited to see where Monet painted his famous work "Antibes Seen from La Sallis".
I see you have a group of artists here.
Is it good to be pan of a community of painters? Absolutely, we enjoy it a lot.
We go out together painting, inspire each other, share common interests.
Here is Paul Rafferty, one of my friends.
- Paul, Michael.
- Pleasure to meet you.
A great pleasure to see you.
Beautiful piece of work.
Do you find yourself treading in giants' footsteps as you stand here? I think any artist does when there's such a plethora of fantastic art that has gone before, but it doesn't stop you doing it.
Do you think there was anything special about the beginning of the 20th century? Do feel really important changes were occurring then? Everything was changing.
The nice thing about the Impressionists is that they depicted what was the reality from train stations to lamp fixtures that I'm reluctant to do.
I don't like cars, for instance.
But I have to put them in.
It just seems with the passage of time, it looks more bucolic then.
But there really were so many changes going on for them.
You can't really compare a modern-day car with a classic locomotive.
No, but that might be your and my romanticism rather than To them it might have been ugly, but they depicted it.
Well, Michael, you've seen how the experts do it and I thought you might like to have a go yourself.
I haven't lifted a paintbrush since I was at school.
You'd better show me exactly what to do, please.
What we're looking for on here, we've got a roughly rendered in sky and tree and sea, but what's really special about Antibes is the golden light en the town here.
That I've totally left off for the moment.
What you've got to do is keep your eye on the subject all the time.
What the Impressionists did was they painted reality as they saw it, brushstroke by brushstroke.
It wasn't invented.
Every time you put a brushstroke down, you're looking across there.
You've got to know where to stop, exactly where the tower is, then you look for the little bit of light that's coming on that building.
It just slightly down diagonally like that.
See if you can just continue and maybe put a few brushstrokes of light coming down here.
- The light is on this side.
- Exactly that.
That's perfect.
I'm standing where Claude Monet stood a century and a quarter ago holding a paintbrush for the first time in 40 years and I've never felt more inadequate in my life.
OK, Michael, I would like to congratulate you and now welcome you to our painting group.
It's quite a tradition that we painters paint each other when we go out together.
Oh, my goodness, that's absolutely lovely.
And you've got this shin and, of course, the towers of the Picasso Museum of Antibes.
Thank you so much.
Just wait until you see mine of you.
Oh, yes.
On this journey I'd already discovered that at the turn of the 20th century the French had a lead in the manufacture of cars and a lead in cinema.
Here in Antibes, I've discovered how remarkable were the developments in French painting.
France on the eve of the First World War was a country of extraordinary intellectual energy.
But my next destination is a place to rest the brain and the body.
The crowded beaches and elegant seafront confirm that Nice is a city built on tourism.
Bradshaw's is always helpful with directions.
"The principal railway station is en the northwest side of the town.
" "All the streets running south from the railway lead through the town and eventually to the sea.
" It's to the water that I'm bound to find the lasting legacy of those British people who flocked here over the centuries.
The town was a winter destination of choice for grand-touring early Victorians.
And some, who made Nice their home, played a surprisingly important role in creating one of the town's best-known landmarks.
Built in the 19th century as perhaps the world's most elegant and fashionable seaside boulevard, the Promenade des Anglais has origins in the Anglican church of Nice, where the British residents and visitors worshipped.
Kenneth Letts is Holy Trinity's rector.
So what is the connection between the Anglican church and this very fashionable promenade? Well, it's a big connection.
This began as an act of solidarity with the unemployed.
That was in the 1820s.
And Father Lewis Way who was the priest in charge of the parish at that time said to his people, "We need to do something to help the unemployed of the area in which we live.
" He got a subscription going and with that money they employed the local Niçois to build a path for the ladies to take a stroll along the seaside.
That's extraordinary.
It's one of the best-known promenades in the world and it began as a poverty relief project.
I think you could put it that way, yes.
I doubt whether many Edwardian visitors knew that the swankiest esplanade in Europe started as a dusty two-metre-wide path funded by Anglicans.
And I'd be amazed if today's tourists had the slightest idea.
- Hello.
Do you speak English? - A little.
Do you know the name of the promenade you're walking on at the moment? Of course.
The Promenade des Anglais.
Do you know particularly why it's called "des Anglais"? There's a part that was built by a reverend.
That's how it started.
He gave some work.
But it's because we had the tour this morning, that's why we knew.
- Hello, ladies.
- Hello.
- Are you English? - We are.
De you knew that you're en the Promenade des Anglais? We did.
Do you knew why it's called the Promenade des Anglais? - No.
- I only found out today.
Apparently it's because the Anglican church here raised some money to do a project to give work to the unemployed people in the 1820s.
What do you think of that? That's a nice connection between our country and here.
We'll feel different carrying on our promenade now, I think.
Enjoy your holiday.
I know that my hotel for the night is somewhere along the Promenade des Anglais.
All I need to do now is locate it.
A-ha! My Bradshaw's often has a recommendation or an advertisement for a hotel.
On this occasion it has a picture and since the Negresco appears not to have changed in a century, I had no excuse for not being able to find it.
Just months before my guidebook was published, Hotel Negresco, the most famous Belle Epoque building in Nice, opened for business.
It was owned by Romanian Henri Negresco, who had left Bucharest as a teenager to seek his fortune and succeeded as a Nice hotelier.
Sadly, war was on the horizon and, when it came in 1914, Henri funded the running of his palatial hotel as a military hospital.
In the post-war period, bookings didn't pick up and Henri died in 1920 without seeing his beloved hotel returned to its former glory.
In the 1950s, the Negresco's new golden age dawned.
The list of the 20th century's best-known statesmen and celebrities who have spent the night here is endless.
And tonight I'm excited to have a mom hem.
It's a beautiful lift in mahogany and mirrors.
Look at that.
Gold leaf and an automatically opening door.
That is classy.
Ah, such elegance.
Oh, to have been an Englishman a hundred years ago.
Breakfast facing the Mediterranean.
Not bad! After a breakfast contemplating the azure sea, the final destination on this leg of my European journey is about two other very significant colours: red and black.
Rouge et noir.
In France, before you get on a train, you have to stamp your ticket in a little machine to validate it.
And it prints some numbers on there.
Ready to go.
I'm visiting Monaco, the second-smallest independent state in the world.
A principality whose royal family was able to adopt a novel approach to swelling the state's coffers.
My journey takes me through some of the most beautiful resorts in the world towards Monte Carlo, which Bradshaw's tells me is "situated on a sheltered bay and enjoys a delightful climate, while the surrounding scenery is full of charm and variety.
" "The bath establishment is supplied with every form of medical and hygienic bath, and at the 'bar'", the word is in inverted commas, "the mineral waters of all the best-known European resorts may be obtained.
" But since my Bradshaw's was Mitten, I think that Monte Carlo has become famous for an activity which most people would regard as less healthy.
In the 19th century, gambling was illegal in Britain and much of Europe.
So Monaco legalised it and sanctioned a casino, which became so successful that the government was able to abolish taxation on its citizens.
The plan succeeded beyond expectation as Monte Carlo attracted Edwardian gentleman keen on a flutter like moths to a candle.
And if Nice is the tourist hot spot, then Monte Carlo draws in the fiber-rich.
Those who can afford to lose a fortune but hold on to their super yachts, super cars and supermodel girlfriends.
"The casino," my Bradshaw's says, "is on a promontory on the east side of the twn.
" "There are elaborately decorated and widely known salles de jeu, or gaming rooms, open from 11:30am until midnight.
" "Trente et quarante and roulette are the games played here.
" It must be worth a whirl.
The Monte Carlo Casino was designed in 1863 by the renowned French architect Charles Garnier, who also built the Paris Opera.
Guillaume Jahan de Lestang is the press officer.
Hello, Michael.
Welcome to the Monte Carlo Casino, the legendary of Monte Carlo.
Legendary and magnificent.
Casinos were not legalised until the middle of the 20th century, so it must have been attractive to British travellers.
And it was not even in Italy nor France, so this is what made the casino so successful.
Was it an instant success? It was a great success from the beginning.
Monte Carlo already had a railway station.
It was located just nearby the casino, so it was easy access for the gamblers to enter, gamble a little chip on a table and get us some more income.
They could just get off a train and have a flutter.
Baroque in style, the casino has several ornately decorated gaming rooms.
Another beautiful salon.
I'm wondering how much things have changed since my Bradshaw's Guide was written in 1913.
For instance, it says that the inhabitants of the principality were not allowed to enter the casino.
ls that still true? That is still true.
The Monaco people are not allowed to enter and gamble.
Even the prince is not allowed to come and gamble.
So everyone here is, by definition, a foreigner.
- I think it's time to have a spin.
- Yes.
My 1913 guidebook says that the minimum stake at the roulette table is five francs and the maximum 6,000.
A sizeable sum.
Today, I'll not be wagering a single cent/me as we're playing just for fun.
Mr Croupier, may I have some money, please? Wow.
Those are thousands, those are hundreds, those are 50s.
- And these are 20,000! - Yes.
No one seems to have bet on evens.
I'll bet on that.
Messieurs, faites le jeu.
At the last minute, I bet on 26.
And 25 has come up and my counter has been swept away.
Oh, dear! I'm not the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo, nor I think the first British traveller to lose his colourful shirt on the roulette table.
I'm sure you will do better next time.
There's a hidden treasure in this building that I hope the Edwardians, whose steps I'm retracing, would have seen.
Surprisingly, just a few yards from the riches of the gambling tables is a little gem, a little temple devoted to an art that's close to my heart.
I love opera.
It's the most demanding and complicated form of theatre.
And opera houses have to be equally over the top.
One of the finest houses in the world is that at Paris, built by the architect Charles Garnier, and he was employed here in Monte Carlo to build a replica in miniature.
Here have been played works by Mozart, Verdi, Rossini, Gounod.
But here the audience would have experienced an intimacy with the singers and with the players.
If there's one thing that's better than a big grand opera house, it's a small grand opera house.
Using my "Bradshaw's Guide", I've followed in the footsteps of British haw-fliers journeying across France In 1913.
It's given me a window on a society at the pinnacle of achievement in technology, cinematography and art.
And brought me hereto Monte Carlo to perceive the heights of elegance and of decadence.
That universe was about to be destroyed by war and looking back through the haze of that catastrophe, we glimpse a golden age.
My next Continental journey Waltzes into pre-war Austria-Hungary, a proud empire The Hapsburgs were one of the most dynamic and powerful European families.
pulling Middle European strings countries with surprising vistas I never expected anything as grand and magnificent as this.
and an emperor with Europe's destiny on his mind.
He knew even then that this was going to mean war.
I'll be using this, my Bradshaw's Continental Railway Guide, dated 1913, which opened up an exotic world of foreign travel for the British tourist.
It told travellers where to go, what to see and how to navigate the thousands of miles of tracks criss-crossing the Continent.
Now, a century later, I'm using my copy to reveal an era of great optimism and energy, where technology, Industry, science and the arts were flourishing.
I want to rediscover that lost Europe, that in 1913 couldn't know that its way of life would shortly be swept aside by the advent of war.
Steered by my 1913 railway guide, I'm journeying through a prosperous pre-war Europe of emperors and kings, pomp and elegance.
A continent whose industrialists, factories and mines had created wealth, whose scientists and engineers were discovering and building the marvellous and whose artists were challenging old ways whilst intellectuals plotted revolution.
On this leg I'm following the most popular route of the Edwardian traveller through France, enjoying the final days of La Belle Epoque, the country's beautiful age of peace and economic and artistic triumph.
I'm standing where Claude Monet stood a century and a quarter ago and I've never felt more inadequate in my life.
I'll taste the tipple that fuelled the Bohemian nightlife of Paris, I can see how in this place of hellish activity, this might have helped to take you to heaven.
live the Edwardian highlife Oh, to have been an Englishman a hundred years ago.
and, like so many tourists before me, I'll have a flutter at the gaming tables of Monte Cam.
I'm not the first British traveller to lose his colourful shirt on the roulette table.
My journey begins oh the Eurostar to Paris, which in 1913 as how, was a capital city oozing sophistication.
I'll then head south to the Mediterranean town of La Ciotat, home to a famous filmmaking duo, before continuing eastwards along the glamorous Côte D'Azur, visiting some of 1913's best-loved tourist destinations, before ending my journey in that den of excess, Monte Carlo.
Of course in 1913, the British tourist bound for the Continent had to cross the waters and was spoilt for choice.
My Bradshaw's says, "For the Dover route, Londoners left from Charing Cross or Victoria.
" "The service is four times a day.
" "For the Folkestone route, Londoners left from Charing Cross.
" By any route, it was the start of the Briton's Continental adventure.
- Andrew, hello.
- Nice to see you.
I'm bound for Paris and to learn just how popular foreign travel was for Edward/ans, as I enter France, I'm meeting author Andrew Martin.
By 1913, what kind of numbers of British people were travelling to Paris, for example? Well, a revolution had occurred between about 1840 and 1913.
In 1840 you had about, estimated about 150,000 going abroad.
By 1913, perhaps as many as two million.
Really? I'm quite surprised by those numbers, but there was still a sense of adventure about travelling to the Continent.
There was a sense of adventure.
You would have marvelled at the strange coal smell coming off the locomotive because it was a different type of coal.
The French locomotives of the Nord company looked odd to British eyes with all their fixtures and fittings seeming to be on the outside.
They were a rather drab brown colour which in itself was interesting.
There was no platform on French stations.
You stepped up into the carriage which in itself was quite exciting.
Then again, it was becoming much more affordable, foreign travel.
You could have a third-class return to Paris in 1913 for about £2; £150 in today's money.
So, a week's wages for a fairly poorly paid working man, so it was quite doable.
Nowadays when we travel by Eurostar, we go under the Channel.
We miss out the stages of the journey.
Tell me about the stages of that traditional journey.
On the boat train it was very definitely a tripartite journey.
You had a train, then a boat then a train again, and the nautical aspect of it is what we miss today.
You would've been on a small boat, you stood a good chance of being sick.
You would've boarded it, if you were at Dover, from Admiralty Pier, which was just a stone pier sticking out into the sea.
The train went along it and the paddle steamer came alongside.
You would not only have got blown about on Admiralty Pier, you may well have got soaked as well.
So, with the Channel Tunnel we really miss out on being soaked and on throwing up.
Yes, it's terrible really, isn't it? A hundred years ago the traveller who'd used the route through Calais would have arrived at the Gare du Nord, and a century later, I'm doing just the same.
Au revoir, merci.
1913 visitors to Paris happily endured the travails of their three-stage journey for a simple reason.
They came to enjoy the most modern, beautiful and cultured city not only in Europe, but arguably in the world.
The wonderful thing about arriving by train is it delivers you to the heart of the city.
And even here in the station, you see signs that this is Paris, something about the colour of the stone and the green-painted iron-work.
And outside the station, I feel the bars and the cafes and the bistros and the brassieres are beckoning me.
After four decades without war, 1913 Paris was characterised by confidence, prosperity and joie de vivre.
Dominating its skyline, the Eiffel Tower was a symbol of French engineering and economic success.
Over the previous 60 years the city centre had been expensively beautified with grand boulevards and imposing public buildings, which no doubt impressed the Edwardian tourist.
But the gentrification of Paris, begun by city architect Georges Haussmann, had come at a price.
Between 1851 and 1870, France was ruled by an emperor, Napoleon III.
He employed Baron Haussmann to rebuild Paris.
He created miles of new avenues and tremendous vistas.
In the process he demolished thousands of houses and displaced a much greater number of people.
It's the sort of great project that could never have been done in Britain, where we think of the state as being the servant of the citizen rather than the citizen being at the disposal of the state.
Constitutional issues aside, there 's no doubt that early 20th-century Paris stood for beauty, elegance and fun.
It was the centre of Europe's café society and a magnet for a burgeoning, often risque, culture of arts and entertainment.
But three years before my 1913 guidebook was written, a natural disaster struck this vibrant capital.
My Bradshaw's tells me that in January 1910, "Widespread distress and damage were caused by the unprecedented swelling of the River Seine, the water rising nearly to the keystones of the arches of the bridges.
" "The quays were entirely submerged and the flood covered the adjoining streets.
" "It was estimated that the property loss reached a total of £40 million.
" I had no idea that the beautiful Seine could be capable of such violence and I wonder whether Paris is safe today.
It's hard to imagine such scenes of destruction and I'm keen to learn more about this largely forgotten episode in Parisian history.
Flavie, hello.
Flavie Sauve works for Paris Flood Protection.
What was the cause of the flood of 1910? In autumn for four months we had huge rainfall.
It was a nightmare.
And you know that Paris was a huge building area at this time.
We had new sewers and new metro tunnels, because at this period we had already four lanes of metro in Paris.
The water spread into the tunnels.
- The Seine and its tributaries - Overflowed the banks.
So actually the very modernity of Paris, with sewers, metro tunnels, this then became a cause of danger, - made the disaster worse.
- Yes.
In deep midwinter, the river rose to almost nine metres.
At some points the banks eve/flowed for up to a mile.
- It must've been a very huge flood.
- Yeah, you can imagine.
The flood was just a disaster for Paris.
Is Paris still in danger of flooding? Yes, it is.
You know that we have a one-in-100 chance per year to get a flood like this one happening.
It's one of those things.
You have a great city built on a beautiful river, but then it does pose some danger.
Yes, it is.
- Well, thank you so much.
- You're welcome.
After a good night's sleep, I've woken with an appetite.
For Edwardian Britons visiting for the first time, Parisian food must've taken some getting used to.
Merci.
No eggs and bacon here.
This is the town of the continental breakfast.
I'm going to start my day by taking up a Bradshaw recommendation.
"It will save time, be inexpensive and give a better idea of the situation of the more notable buildings of interest to hire a car to dive around the heart of the city.
' Napoleon used to say that an army marches on its stomach and for my drive, I'm preparing with a croissant.
My 1913 'Bradshaw' recommends Ming a taxi because Paris was awash with them.
In 1906 there were 1,000 cabs in Paris, compared to just 100 in London.
To correct that imbalance, the General Cab Company of London placed a massive order for 500 vehicles, built in France, by Renault.
With around 600 manufacturers compared to just 50 in Edwardian Britain, when It came to making cars, France was streets ahead.
Motoring historian Pierre-Jean des Fosses should know why.
Pierre, hello, how lovely to see you.
- Beautiful car.
- Thank you.
This car is Le Zèbre, zebra, the animal.
- And French of course.
- And French, yes.
Built in 1910.
Have you any idea what a car like this might've cost in 1910? Who could afford it? This car has been made to be a low-cost car, economic car for people, and the price was 3,000 francs at the time.
3,000 francs was a year's salary for an employee at Le Zèbre factory.
Why do you think the French were so advanced in car manufacture and the British so backward? I think the English were very involved in steam for a long time.
We were very good at locomotives and maybe we didn't realise that this was the new technology.
You may realise that it was the new technology, but you have a law that obliged people to have someone walking in front of the car at two miles per hour maximum in town, with a red flag just to say, "Hello, mind, the car is coming.
" So that stopped the industry.
At the beginning of the 21st century we're worried about having too much of a health and safety culture, but apparently we had one in the 19th century too.
Yeah, it's always a revolution.
It will come back.
First time! Well done.
- This is very, very cosy.
- It's a nice car.
When Baron Haussmann beautified the centre of Paris, he did have a head start.
Some of the city's best-known buildings like Notre Dame had been here for a centuries.
This building behind has a very special meaning for me.
It's your Assemble Nationale, isn't it? Your parliament building.
I feel an affinity with it.
Now we cross the River Seine.
We felt that lovely cool breeze as we came across.
And we come into la Place de la Concorde.
- So many people were guillotined here.
- Yes, true.
And there is the Concorde.
With another early 20th-century mode of transport available, it's time for me to bid au revoir to Pierre-Jean and his vintage automobile.
Given the state of traffic in Paris today, it's probably more sensible for me to proceed on the métropolitain, which my Bradshaw's reminds me is the underground railway.
It lists the nine lines that had already been built by 1913 and tells me that "the fares are the same for any distance", which I think is probably still true today, although I'd be lucky to get a first-class fare for 25 centimes.
It was a combination of traffic congestion and the Imminent arrival of the Universal Exposition and the Olympic Games both in 1900, which prompted the building of the metro.
Work started in 1898, 35 years later than London's underground.
By contrast with London, the Paris metro seems to be mainly quite close to the surface, built by the cut-and-cover method, digging a trench and then filling it in.
That means you get these tall trains whereas in London, of course, we have lots that were built very deep in round tubes and you have to stoop all the way.
I'm arriving north of the city centre at Abbesses station in Montmartre.
In 1913, as now, it's where Paris writes its prose, paints its pictures and parties hard.
This beautiful metro station was built around the turn of the 20th century, in Art Nouveau style whose curves draw their inspiration from nature.
This is an expression in public architecture of a broad cultural and artistic movement.
After World War I, people would look back on this period with understandable nostalgia and would describe it as La Belle Epoque, the beautiful era.
Situated in the 18th arrondissement, Montmartre's most notable landmark, the Basilica du Sacré-Coeur, completed just a year before my 1913 guidebook, sits atop the district's steep 130-metre-high hill.
The area was populated by bohemian types who'd been displaced by Haussmann 's revamp of Paris.
Writers and artists followed and, as a busy nightlife developed, out went the stifling morals of the 19th century, to be replaced with the risqué cabarets and can-can girls of Le Chat Noir and the Moulin Rouge.
And even a hundred years on, it seems the spirit of La Belle Epoque lingers here.
Hello.
I came and joined you because, apart from being a beautiful lady, you're sitting here reading a book, you're reading Emile Zola, so you're in the tradition of La Belle Epoque.
Exactly, that's what I get inspired by.
These are your photographs.
- They are actually, indeed.
- Fascinating.
Do you feel that there is a very strong artistic tradition in Montmartre? There is, there is indeed.
The whole neighbourhood has an artistic atmosphere actually and lots of artists live here and expose their work in the street.
- So the tradition continues.
- It does.
- I notice they even paint the trucks.
- Yes.
Bye-bye.
Lovely to see you.
Bye-bye.
No tour of La Belle Epoque would be complete without a visit to the Hotel Fromentin, which in 1913 was a cabaret where they served a liquor affectionately known as the green fairy which should help me with my fantasy of being in the Paris of Mondrian, Picasso, Pizzaro and Toulouse-Lautrec.
- Nadia.
- Oh, hello, Michael.
Lovely to see you.
Nadia Gallouze works at the Hotel Fromentin.
I've come for some absinthe, please.
- Alright.
Have you ever tried it? - No, I have not.
I thought absinthe was banned.
It used to be, but it was at the beginning of the 20th century.
It used to be really strong.
And it used to make people really sick, especially the mind.
Banned in 1915, absinthe fuelled the booziness of La Belle Epoque.
As high as 70% proof, the liquor was made from the bitter herb wormwood.
Absinthe was blamed for an explosion in debauched behaviour that turned respectable establishments into dens of vice and upright citizens into drunks.
Think the gin palaces of Britain with a twist of French.
So, may we begin the ceremony of the absinthe? Of course.
So, you just have to pour some of it here and you use the special spoon, you put some sugar and you just have to open this little tap.
Oh, and now the drops.
You just let the sugar dissolve.
During that waiting time, you talk.
It's about the art of conversation.
It's a way to take life slowly.
I'm so pleased you told me that it was about the art of conversation.
I always thought it was about getting drunk.
Absinthe was a particular favourite in bohemian Montmartre.
It's even rumoured that artist Vincent Van Gogh cut off his ear under the influence of the green fairy.
I'd best nave just a sip.
The water has dripped through the sugar and my absinthe has gone cloudy.
It was quite clear before.
And to taste it Very sweet, still, of course.
Even more sweet.
Hmm, tastes good.
I can see how in this place of hellish activity, this might have helped to take you to heaven.
I'll be leaving Paris for the Côte d'Azur early tomorrow morning and, just like the Edward/ans, whose journey I'm retracing, my train will leave from Gare de Lyon.
Before I depart, I want to find out about this grand terminus.
It was rebuilt in 1900 with some very evocative features.
This clockface is reminiscent of one I lived with for many years, Big Ben.
Indeed, British travellers passing through here in 1913 with their Bradshaw's Guide would have been made to feel at home by it as they hastened through the Gare de Lyon on their way to their express trains and their overnight sleepers to the Riviera.
In the station's restaurant, pecking passengers were greeted by a decadent salon befitting La Bette Epoque, and so well regarded in France that French President Emile Loubet attended its opening.
I'm meeting Railway historian Clive Lamming at Le Train Bleu.
Lovely to meet you here in Le Train Bleu.
This is such a wonderful, beautifully decorated restaurant.
It's more than a restaurant.
It is, I would say, sort of palace.
It was made for the British people.
They came by the blue train, the train bleu, from Calais.
They need to feel at home, so we built for them a sort of little miniature Big Ben, a little tower, so they could feel at home and here everything is supposed to be, I would say, British.
Just look at the furniture with the Chesterfields, the sofas and so on, you see.
So, you are quite in a British place but I can assure you that the cooking is French and the wines tee.
Let's take a tour around.
The whole place is decorated with frescos of what I think are the destinations that you can go to from here, correct? Yes, they were ordered by the French railway.
They wanted that people wished to be there, you see.
It's a place rather, I would say, built for dreaming than reality.
In the 1870s, Belgian George Nagelmackers fanned the International Sleeping-Car Company.
His trains mirrored the comfort of George Pullman's American overnight sleepers.
Edwardian Britons loved the Calais-to-Cannes route, which departed Paris from this station, the Gare de Lyons.
- It's a wonderful view.
- It's a wonderful view.
My Bradshaw's is 1913.
Can you paint for me a picture of the station in 1913? In 1913 we would have seen engines, steam engine locomotives, which were called coupe-vent, wind cutters.
Behind, there were wooden carriages and there were a let of luggage vans because in that time, people would travel heavily with plenty of luggage and ladies would have plenty of boxes and parcels and big hats.
All these luggage vans were full up.
It's famous because nobody was really wanting to travel just for the pleasure.
The British invented the travel for pleasure and travel for learning.
All the other people at the time thought it was wasting your time.
- A joyful prospect.
Thank you so much.
- Enjoy your travel.
Ready for the next leg of my journey, I'm returning to the Gare de Lyon and venturing south through central France.
Had I been travelling in 1913 using my Bradshaw's Guide, I would almost certainly have used the overnight sleeper to reach the French Riviera.
Overnight sleepers are very romantic, although I don't find them very easy to sleep on.
Anyway today, we have the high-speed train, the Train à Grande Vitesse, the TGV, which covers the 450 miles from Paris to Marseilles incredibly in three hours and five minutes.
So I'm on the TGV.
From Marseilles I'll make for La Ciotat, a small town with an impressive history.
From there via Toulon to the Côte D'Azur to retrace a typical Edwardian trip, taking in the artistic heritage of Antibes, the British influence on Nice and finally the brazenness of Monte Carlo.
When you travel at these speeds by train you have something of the experience of travelling by plane.
Suddenly you wake up in a new landscape, new vegetation, new climate.
We've swapped the cold light of northern Europe for the azure blue of the Mediterranean.
I'm changing trains at Marseilles to do what so many Britons did in 1913.
" visit the Côte d'Azur.
It's quite a short run now to my next stop, which is La Ciotat, which my Bradshaw's tells me is beautifully situated on the coast and remarks that it was the Greek settlement of Kitharistes.
But my interest is in more modern history, because La Ciotat is the place where the passions of railway enthusiasts and film buffs coincide.
La Ciotat is something of a shrine to lovers of motion pictures, because this was the summer home of the Lumiere brothers, whose films of the village were some of the earliest movies ever made or shown.
Amongst which, the scene of a train entering La Ciotat station has become an icon of early cinema.
Encouraged by their father, a stills photography entrepreneur, August and Louis Lumière patented their portable cinematograph camera in February 1895.
And the same year, the brothers were the first in the world to showcase their films to a paying audience.
At the Eden Theatre, in coastal La Ciotat, currently being restored under the watchful eye of Michel Corn/lie, crowds gathered for screenings of one of the Lumiere brothers' iconic films of a train pulling into the station.
It's wonderful to be here.
I feel the dust of history upon me.
This is extraordinary.
It would be really thrilling to me to be able to sit in the seats here.
- May we do that? - We may.
Why did the Lumière brothers decide to film a train entering the station at La Ciotat? Louis was playing with his cinematograph.
His mother came from Marseilles by train.
He was on the platform and he filmed his mother coming from Marseilles in La Ciotat.
It's 1895 and you and I have been invited here to the Eden Theatre to see the arrival of the train at La Ciotat station.
Do you think it was frightening for them? Yes.
Because as you can imagine, you are on your seat and suddenly the train is coming out of the screen and you are afraid.
Train was the first horror movie in the world.
It's been a great privilege to be allowed to enter this building site and be the last visitor to the old theatre.
I knew that when it's been restored, people will come here in their thousands because this is a very special place.
You are very welcome to come again because Spielberg will open the new place.
- Spielberg? - Spielberg with Michael.
Another legend.
This seaside town plays another significant part in early 20th-century cultural development.
Apart from its important role in history of cinema, La Ciotat, a place that I had never heard of until today, has another claim to fame as the cradle of pétanque.
Hello.
Bien sûr? The trick of this game is that, at the end, your boule needs to be the nearest to the little target ball.
But, of course, in between you can hit other people's boules and knock them out of the way and you can move the target ball as well.
In 1907, La Ciotat resident Jules le Noir, a rheumatic with limited mobility, is thought to have tried playing French bowls without raising a foot.
One good shot.
Believed to be the highest-participation form of bowls on the planet, the game's name, pétanque, derives from the Provençal words "pied tanqué", which translate as "feet together on the ground".
And that's the end of me.
With one flick he sent my ball into paradise.
With some time before my next train, I'm going to explore La Ciotat's harbour.
As my Bradshaw's Guide told me, La Ciotat really is beautifully situated by the sea.
The contrasting blues of sea and sky, the contrasting browns of terracotta and brick make it gorgeous.
It just invites the painter's brush.
I can't believe that I had never heard of it, but it seems that I am not alone.
As far as I can tell, it's undiscovered by the British tourist.
I'm bound now for Antibes on the Riviera.
When the railways arrived on the Côte D'Azur, visitor numbers soared from 4,000 in 1860 to 100,000 by 1900.
But mechanised travel wasn't the only reason that they came in such droves.
They were following the lead of their monarch and the advice of an Influential book, Dr Henry Bennet's "Winter and Spring on the Shores of the Mediterranean".
Boba Vukadinovic, a tourist guide, knows more.
The first edition of the book definitely brought Queen Victoria to the French Riviera and she spent altogether 332 days on the Riviera, which was half of her foreign travelling.
Why did she come to the Riviera the first time? It was actually because of her son, Leopold, Duke of Albany, who was a haemophiliac.
Queen Victoria was convinced of the beneficial effects of the temperate Mediterranean climate on Leopold, her haemophiliac son.
But another British royal also frequented the Côte D'Azur for less wholesome reasons.
One of Queen Victoria's other sons, the Prince of Wales, who later became Edward VII, he was keen on the Riviera for different reasons from his mother's.
You're absolutely right.
He would never stay in the same town as Queen Victoria.
Never.
Why? Because actually she didn't approve of his, let's say, pleasure-seeking life.
And definitely when he was on the Riviera, he was seeking pleasure, with young ladies, with elderly ladies later on and he was keen on sports too.
He played a lot of tennis.
The French liked him.
Actually, they adored him, because he brought tennis to the Riviera.
And later on, on his yacht Britannia, he was participating in all the regattas on the French Riviera.
My Bradshaw's Guide, which is 1913, still refers to most of these places on the Riviera as being vi/inter resorts.
So when does it begin to change to summer? It's in the '20s.
They started actually integrating the idea of being on the French Riviera in the summer and of hotels being open all the year round.
The word scenic is a cliche often used to describe towns along the Côte D'Azur.
Antibes is amongst the most beguiling.
Its bays define beautiful shapes in a glistening sea, whose intense blueness responds to the skies and the changing angle of the sun.
Even the least artistic person would love somehow to capture that shifting light.
Antibes.
My Bradshaw's promises "a sheltered winter place and small seaport", which is today filled with billionaires' yachts, "in a fine situation between Golfe Juan and Baie des Anges.
" The rain has brought a cool evening, but the pink sky promises fine weather tomorrow.
Le Figaro, s'il vous plait.
Merci.
- Merci.
- Merci.
Au revoir, merci.
My Bradshaw's says that the Cap d'Antibes is "a beautiful peninsula about two and a half miles long, clothed with a wonderfully rich vegetation and having a wild, picturesque coast.
" "As a winter resort, it's growing in favour.
" And that word 'picturesque' is well chosen, because the intensity of the light and the vibrancy of the colour attracted to Antibes some of the greatest painters who'd ever lifted a paintbrush.
Antibes was a magnet for Edwardian art lovers, although the great impressionist painter Claude Monet first worked here as early as 1888.
Inspired by beautiful surroundings, impressionist artists usually painted in the open air rather than in a studio, depicting everyday life and using vibrant colours to recreate the effect of light and atmosphere.
By 1913, many of the most influential painters of the early 20th century had followed Monet to Antibes as, in the 21st, has British artist Mitch Waite.
- Mitch, good to see you.
- And you.
I suppose on a day like today, I don't really have to ask what it was about Antibes that attracted artists.
No, well, it's right there in front of us, isn't it? Clear blue skies, deep blue sea, crystal clear horizon.
And my Bradshaw's refers also to the richness of the vegetation, so that would be a factor too? Absolutely.
Just look around us here.
We've got the sun coming through the yellow in this plant here and that brings a highlight and sparkle and a richness to colour, which artists like to use.
If you go back into this son of vegetation, the colours go bluer and deeper and contrast with the highlights that we like to put in a picture.
Then if you look further back at Cap d'Antibes, there, the grey blues in all of the shadows of the trees give depth to the picture.
Just what we want.
That's a wonderful explanation.
Shall we take a walk through the town? Absolutely.
Which is the first of the famous artists to come to Antibes? That would be Claude Monet, who famously painted from the Cap d'Antibes, several paintings.
- Came on the train I imagine.
- I should think he did, yes.
And with the railways, I suppose other artists followed in his train.
Yes.
He inspired Paul Signac who came and was very inspired by Monet's work.
I'm interested in Paul Signac, because he came here I think in 1913, the year of my Bradshaw's Guide.
Yes, in fact he did, that's right.
He came from St Tropez where he'd been painting for many years before that.
It was important to them to paint in the open air.
That's what they wanted.
They were outside.
They came to places like this for the beautiful light.
They, in turn, inspired people like Signac, in fact, who developed something called Pointillism, painting very small brush strokes, almost mosaic-like, with bright, fresh, clean colours.
He, in turn, inspired people like Henry Matisse who was pan of the Fauvism movement.
Bright, strong colours, but bigger, bolder brushstrokes and again, inspired by this beautiful light from this area.
So, really you can read the history of an in the late 19th, early 20th century here in Antibes? It's all here, in Antibes.
Mitch wants me to see the shoreline that many Edwardian art connoisseurs would have visited to see where Monet painted his famous work "Antibes Seen from La Sallis".
I see you have a group of artists here.
Is it good to be pan of a community of painters? Absolutely, we enjoy it a lot.
We go out together painting, inspire each other, share common interests.
Here is Paul Rafferty, one of my friends.
- Paul, Michael.
- Pleasure to meet you.
A great pleasure to see you.
Beautiful piece of work.
Do you find yourself treading in giants' footsteps as you stand here? I think any artist does when there's such a plethora of fantastic art that has gone before, but it doesn't stop you doing it.
Do you think there was anything special about the beginning of the 20th century? Do feel really important changes were occurring then? Everything was changing.
The nice thing about the Impressionists is that they depicted what was the reality from train stations to lamp fixtures that I'm reluctant to do.
I don't like cars, for instance.
But I have to put them in.
It just seems with the passage of time, it looks more bucolic then.
But there really were so many changes going on for them.
You can't really compare a modern-day car with a classic locomotive.
No, but that might be your and my romanticism rather than To them it might have been ugly, but they depicted it.
Well, Michael, you've seen how the experts do it and I thought you might like to have a go yourself.
I haven't lifted a paintbrush since I was at school.
You'd better show me exactly what to do, please.
What we're looking for on here, we've got a roughly rendered in sky and tree and sea, but what's really special about Antibes is the golden light en the town here.
That I've totally left off for the moment.
What you've got to do is keep your eye on the subject all the time.
What the Impressionists did was they painted reality as they saw it, brushstroke by brushstroke.
It wasn't invented.
Every time you put a brushstroke down, you're looking across there.
You've got to know where to stop, exactly where the tower is, then you look for the little bit of light that's coming on that building.
It just slightly down diagonally like that.
See if you can just continue and maybe put a few brushstrokes of light coming down here.
- The light is on this side.
- Exactly that.
That's perfect.
I'm standing where Claude Monet stood a century and a quarter ago holding a paintbrush for the first time in 40 years and I've never felt more inadequate in my life.
OK, Michael, I would like to congratulate you and now welcome you to our painting group.
It's quite a tradition that we painters paint each other when we go out together.
Oh, my goodness, that's absolutely lovely.
And you've got this shin and, of course, the towers of the Picasso Museum of Antibes.
Thank you so much.
Just wait until you see mine of you.
Oh, yes.
On this journey I'd already discovered that at the turn of the 20th century the French had a lead in the manufacture of cars and a lead in cinema.
Here in Antibes, I've discovered how remarkable were the developments in French painting.
France on the eve of the First World War was a country of extraordinary intellectual energy.
But my next destination is a place to rest the brain and the body.
The crowded beaches and elegant seafront confirm that Nice is a city built on tourism.
Bradshaw's is always helpful with directions.
"The principal railway station is en the northwest side of the town.
" "All the streets running south from the railway lead through the town and eventually to the sea.
" It's to the water that I'm bound to find the lasting legacy of those British people who flocked here over the centuries.
The town was a winter destination of choice for grand-touring early Victorians.
And some, who made Nice their home, played a surprisingly important role in creating one of the town's best-known landmarks.
Built in the 19th century as perhaps the world's most elegant and fashionable seaside boulevard, the Promenade des Anglais has origins in the Anglican church of Nice, where the British residents and visitors worshipped.
Kenneth Letts is Holy Trinity's rector.
So what is the connection between the Anglican church and this very fashionable promenade? Well, it's a big connection.
This began as an act of solidarity with the unemployed.
That was in the 1820s.
And Father Lewis Way who was the priest in charge of the parish at that time said to his people, "We need to do something to help the unemployed of the area in which we live.
" He got a subscription going and with that money they employed the local Niçois to build a path for the ladies to take a stroll along the seaside.
That's extraordinary.
It's one of the best-known promenades in the world and it began as a poverty relief project.
I think you could put it that way, yes.
I doubt whether many Edwardian visitors knew that the swankiest esplanade in Europe started as a dusty two-metre-wide path funded by Anglicans.
And I'd be amazed if today's tourists had the slightest idea.
- Hello.
Do you speak English? - A little.
Do you know the name of the promenade you're walking on at the moment? Of course.
The Promenade des Anglais.
Do you know particularly why it's called "des Anglais"? There's a part that was built by a reverend.
That's how it started.
He gave some work.
But it's because we had the tour this morning, that's why we knew.
- Hello, ladies.
- Hello.
- Are you English? - We are.
De you knew that you're en the Promenade des Anglais? We did.
Do you knew why it's called the Promenade des Anglais? - No.
- I only found out today.
Apparently it's because the Anglican church here raised some money to do a project to give work to the unemployed people in the 1820s.
What do you think of that? That's a nice connection between our country and here.
We'll feel different carrying on our promenade now, I think.
Enjoy your holiday.
I know that my hotel for the night is somewhere along the Promenade des Anglais.
All I need to do now is locate it.
A-ha! My Bradshaw's often has a recommendation or an advertisement for a hotel.
On this occasion it has a picture and since the Negresco appears not to have changed in a century, I had no excuse for not being able to find it.
Just months before my guidebook was published, Hotel Negresco, the most famous Belle Epoque building in Nice, opened for business.
It was owned by Romanian Henri Negresco, who had left Bucharest as a teenager to seek his fortune and succeeded as a Nice hotelier.
Sadly, war was on the horizon and, when it came in 1914, Henri funded the running of his palatial hotel as a military hospital.
In the post-war period, bookings didn't pick up and Henri died in 1920 without seeing his beloved hotel returned to its former glory.
In the 1950s, the Negresco's new golden age dawned.
The list of the 20th century's best-known statesmen and celebrities who have spent the night here is endless.
And tonight I'm excited to have a mom hem.
It's a beautiful lift in mahogany and mirrors.
Look at that.
Gold leaf and an automatically opening door.
That is classy.
Ah, such elegance.
Oh, to have been an Englishman a hundred years ago.
Breakfast facing the Mediterranean.
Not bad! After a breakfast contemplating the azure sea, the final destination on this leg of my European journey is about two other very significant colours: red and black.
Rouge et noir.
In France, before you get on a train, you have to stamp your ticket in a little machine to validate it.
And it prints some numbers on there.
Ready to go.
I'm visiting Monaco, the second-smallest independent state in the world.
A principality whose royal family was able to adopt a novel approach to swelling the state's coffers.
My journey takes me through some of the most beautiful resorts in the world towards Monte Carlo, which Bradshaw's tells me is "situated on a sheltered bay and enjoys a delightful climate, while the surrounding scenery is full of charm and variety.
" "The bath establishment is supplied with every form of medical and hygienic bath, and at the 'bar'", the word is in inverted commas, "the mineral waters of all the best-known European resorts may be obtained.
" But since my Bradshaw's was Mitten, I think that Monte Carlo has become famous for an activity which most people would regard as less healthy.
In the 19th century, gambling was illegal in Britain and much of Europe.
So Monaco legalised it and sanctioned a casino, which became so successful that the government was able to abolish taxation on its citizens.
The plan succeeded beyond expectation as Monte Carlo attracted Edwardian gentleman keen on a flutter like moths to a candle.
And if Nice is the tourist hot spot, then Monte Carlo draws in the fiber-rich.
Those who can afford to lose a fortune but hold on to their super yachts, super cars and supermodel girlfriends.
"The casino," my Bradshaw's says, "is on a promontory on the east side of the twn.
" "There are elaborately decorated and widely known salles de jeu, or gaming rooms, open from 11:30am until midnight.
" "Trente et quarante and roulette are the games played here.
" It must be worth a whirl.
The Monte Carlo Casino was designed in 1863 by the renowned French architect Charles Garnier, who also built the Paris Opera.
Guillaume Jahan de Lestang is the press officer.
Hello, Michael.
Welcome to the Monte Carlo Casino, the legendary of Monte Carlo.
Legendary and magnificent.
Casinos were not legalised until the middle of the 20th century, so it must have been attractive to British travellers.
And it was not even in Italy nor France, so this is what made the casino so successful.
Was it an instant success? It was a great success from the beginning.
Monte Carlo already had a railway station.
It was located just nearby the casino, so it was easy access for the gamblers to enter, gamble a little chip on a table and get us some more income.
They could just get off a train and have a flutter.
Baroque in style, the casino has several ornately decorated gaming rooms.
Another beautiful salon.
I'm wondering how much things have changed since my Bradshaw's Guide was written in 1913.
For instance, it says that the inhabitants of the principality were not allowed to enter the casino.
ls that still true? That is still true.
The Monaco people are not allowed to enter and gamble.
Even the prince is not allowed to come and gamble.
So everyone here is, by definition, a foreigner.
- I think it's time to have a spin.
- Yes.
My 1913 guidebook says that the minimum stake at the roulette table is five francs and the maximum 6,000.
A sizeable sum.
Today, I'll not be wagering a single cent/me as we're playing just for fun.
Mr Croupier, may I have some money, please? Wow.
Those are thousands, those are hundreds, those are 50s.
- And these are 20,000! - Yes.
No one seems to have bet on evens.
I'll bet on that.
Messieurs, faites le jeu.
At the last minute, I bet on 26.
And 25 has come up and my counter has been swept away.
Oh, dear! I'm not the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo, nor I think the first British traveller to lose his colourful shirt on the roulette table.
I'm sure you will do better next time.
There's a hidden treasure in this building that I hope the Edwardians, whose steps I'm retracing, would have seen.
Surprisingly, just a few yards from the riches of the gambling tables is a little gem, a little temple devoted to an art that's close to my heart.
I love opera.
It's the most demanding and complicated form of theatre.
And opera houses have to be equally over the top.
One of the finest houses in the world is that at Paris, built by the architect Charles Garnier, and he was employed here in Monte Carlo to build a replica in miniature.
Here have been played works by Mozart, Verdi, Rossini, Gounod.
But here the audience would have experienced an intimacy with the singers and with the players.
If there's one thing that's better than a big grand opera house, it's a small grand opera house.
Using my "Bradshaw's Guide", I've followed in the footsteps of British haw-fliers journeying across France In 1913.
It's given me a window on a society at the pinnacle of achievement in technology, cinematography and art.
And brought me hereto Monte Carlo to perceive the heights of elegance and of decadence.
That universe was about to be destroyed by war and looking back through the haze of that catastrophe, we glimpse a golden age.
My next Continental journey Waltzes into pre-war Austria-Hungary, a proud empire The Hapsburgs were one of the most dynamic and powerful European families.
pulling Middle European strings countries with surprising vistas I never expected anything as grand and magnificent as this.
and an emperor with Europe's destiny on his mind.
He knew even then that this was going to mean war.