Bordeaux: a jewel of France. Just don’t mention the S-word

If close association with the slave trade was what decided the fate of cities, Bordeaux would have to be bulldozed. Black Lives Matter would have a field day. The wider world, however, would stand aghast as one of Europe’s best-known hidden secrets was air-brushed from history.

Much of its sensational architecture – a World Heritage Site that makes up the entirety of the old town – is associated with slavery. In the eighteenth century, the city’s merchant class, oblivious as yet to the Rights of Man, financed an estimated 500 expeditions to Africa, resulting in the purchase and enslavement of at least 150,000 souls whose destiny was to spend the rest of their lives working in the colonial plantations of Louisiana and the French Caribbean.

Cotton, sugar, cocoa and coffee were shipped back to France in bulk, making the port of Bordeaux the second-biggest in the world after London. For the city fathers, it was a time to think big. Money would be no object when it came to the construction of monuments to the success of their enterprise. The ensuing building boom was astonishing.

The Grand-Theatre, a magnificent, colonnaded edifice, one of whose painted allegories appears to show a local worthy displaying his slaves to a group of picnicking Greek Gods, was only one of many buildings that proclaimed the wealth and good fortune of the “Port of the Moon”.

Across the Place de la Comédie (comedy is a serious business in France), the splendidly ornate, over-the-top Grand Hotel is home to Le Pressoir d’Argent, an acclaimed two-star Michelin restaurant, with Gordon Ramsay’s name on the door. The restaurant is closed at the moment for reasons too obvious to mention, but is due to reopen on 4 September, when it will once more offer an impressively expensive “symphony of flavours,” including Gironde black truffles, foie gras from the Charente and the “iconic” Brittany Lobster à la Presse.

Next up for the BLM bulldozers, the hôtel de ville, known as the Palais Rohan, was built to reflect the wealth and power of a family who were pillars not only of the pre-revolutionary aristocracy, but of the French Catholic Church. Completed in 1784, it houses, in addition to the offices of the mayor and council, the region’s finest art gallery, the Musée des Beaux-Arts, boasting works by, among others, Veronese, Van Dyck, Corot, Delacroix, Renoir, Matisse, Picasso, and, as a bonus, England’s own Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Last month, in the French municipal elections, an anti-Macron majority was returned in many of the big cities, including Bordeaux, whose newly-elevated “Green” mayor, Pierre Hurmic, has not so far committed himself to any structural emancipation. Hurmic represents a true break with the past. Nicolas Florian, the outgoing mayor, only got the job last year, filling in for Alain Juppé, a former French prime minister, who, having presided over City Hall for a total of 23 years, left to take a seat on the irredeemably pompous Constitutional Council. Prior to Juppé, the major for a staggering 48 years was no less than Jacques Chaban-Delmas, one of the legendary founders of the Fifth Republic, whose statue (not due for removal) now stands in the Place Jean Moulin, next to the cathedral.

Chaban-Delmas, a friend and confidant of both Charles de Gaulle and François Mitterrand, died seven years before his home city got its World Heritage gong in 2007. But he would have appreciated the fact that it was lauded by UNESCO for its “unique contribution to civilisation” down the centuries.

“Bordeaux, Port of the Moon, constitutes an exceptional testimony to the exchange of human values over more than two-thousand years. These exchanges gave this cosmopolitan town, in the Age of Enlightenment, an unparalled prosperity that provided for an exceptional urban and architectural transformation throughout the nineteenth century and up to the present time.”

They do bang on, don’t you think? No doubt Frederick Douglass would have taken a different view. The former slave and untiring abolitionist spent time in Paris in 1887, but would surely have found Bordeaux more of an existential challenge.

The fact was that prior to the final abolition of slavery in France in 1848, Bordeaux derived enormous benefit from the buying and selling of Africans. Not since the 300-year occupation of Aquitaine by the English ended in the wake of the Battle of Castillon in 1453 had the city enjoyed such an uninterrupted period of prosperity.

In the Plantagenet age, wine was, of course, the secret of Bordeaux’s greatness. Henry II loved his claret and encouraged the English to follow his example. It was exported from the Gironde by the shipload, by way of another great slaving port, Bristol, and remained the favourite tipple of the nobility and professional classes almost to the present day.

Rather like Rumpole of the Bailey, the Aquitaine capital is supposed to be infused with its eponymous wine. In truth, though it is widely available and dominates the local cartes des vins, it is not the best reason for visiting the city. To appreciate the region’s grands-crus, premiers-crus and vins supérieures in their natural setting, you should venture out into the countryside, most obviously to St Emilion, Libourne or – picking a chateau at random – Frontenac.

Among the countless smaller pleasures of Bordeaux are its 5,000 mansions, or hôtels particuliers, built by “enlightened” slave owners, that line the largely traffic-free streets of the Old Town. Most these days have shops and bars built in at street level, with apartments on the upper floors. But their harmony remains essentially undisturbed. It will come as no surprise to lovers of nineteenth-century Paris that Baron Haussmann modelled his scheme for a congruous and elegant capital on Bordeaux’s Golden Age.

Have I mentioned the Garonne yet? I think not. No other French city, not excepting Paris, has so grand a river on its doorstep, providing an escape from the metropolitan hustle and a view of the elegant nineteenth century Pont de Pierre, with its seventeen arches, one for each letter of the Emperor’s name: Napoléon Bonaparte. It is here, on the rive gauche, that the Place de la Bourse, an improbably vast edifice, dominates the scene. The exchange – built to monetise the smooth operation of the slave plantations and associated shipping – was designed by Ange-Jacques Gabriel, court architect to Louis XV, between 1730 and 1775. UNESCO dubbed it an “outstanding” architectural ensemble, and there is no doubting the majesty of its appearance whether seen by passers-by as they walk along the promenade or from the far side of the bridge, a good 500 metres to the east.

It turns out that Bordeaux contains 362 protected buildings and historic monuments – second only to Paris – some of which date back to the Middle Ages and even Roman times.

Among these are a number of well-worn gothic churches, including the stunning Basilica of Saint Severinus, built over a fourth-century necropolis, and the Basilica of St Michael, with its adjacent tower and spire, the second tallest in France.

The cathedral of Saint André, surmounted by a golden statue of the Virgin, was first consecrated in 1096 but owes much to work carried out during the reign of Henry II following his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine. Though it has a pleasing exterior, it is not, you would have to say, one of the country’s finest cathedrals. It is, however, a clear point of reference, visible down all manner of streets and boulevards and easily reached by two of the four tram lines that effortlessly criss-cross the city.

Earlier, I may have referred to Bordeaux as France’s most important wine capital, which is, I suppose, obvious. But the fact of the matter is that it is bars and restaurants, along with small shops and gallerys, that hold the modern centre together. There must be a thousand small eateries and drinking dens – not all of them, it should be said, up to the standard of Gordon Ramsay. They are everywhere you look, frequented not only by tourists but by the locals, many of them students, who festoon the back streets and forgotten squares.

I know, I know. Covid-19 is now Covid-20 and will in all likelihood morph into Covid-21. C’est le nouveau normal.  Masks are the rule these days in French shops, bars, restaurants and enclosed public spaces – though the obligatoriness is often more honoured in the breach than the observance. But if you are careful and do your best to keep at least 1.5 metres between you and the city’s other 750,000 inhabitants, you will not regret it … probably. At the very least, you will, as Brits, receive a warm welcome from the city’s hard-pressed hoteliers. Go for walks, Enjoy the river. Eat outdoors. Summers in Bordeaux are hot and sunny. And while you are about it, raise a glass to the many thousands of slaves whose enforced labour built the city.