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CULTURE

Timid reopening for France’s Loire Valley chateaux

Staff far outnumbered visitors to the elegant Chenonceau castle in France's Loire Valley as it reopened on Saturday with meticulously prepared safeguards against the coronavirus.

Published: 31 May 2020 10:35 CEST
Timid reopening for France's Loire Valley chateaux
An aerial view of Chateau Chenonceaux on the River Cher, taken on July 16, 2017: Guillaume SOUVANT / AFP

The Renaissance jewel, which in a normal year attracts upwards of a million visitors, could not justify reopening on financial grounds until Parisians are again allowed to travel beyond a 100-kilometre (60 mile) radius from home, communications director Caroline Darrasse told AFP.

But reopening a few days early — the relaxation takes effect on Tuesday — gave the site a chance to test the precautions the staff have put in place, Darrasse noted.

A strict one-way route has been marked out inside the castle, and parts that risk crowding were either cordoned off or restricted to small numbers at a time — such as the impressive kitchens on the lower level.

“It's her first chateau,” grinned Lucile Daron Van Gennep, 32, whose eight-month-old daughter was strapped to her front.

She and her 35-year-old husband Coenraad had the castle's gallery spanning the Cher river — where Catherine de Medicis once threw sumptuous balls — all to themselves.

“It's a nice surprise,” Lucile said, speaking from behind her obligatory face mask. The couple live in Saumur, just within the 100-km limit.

Many smaller sites such as the Chateau d'Usse, famous as the purported backdrop of the Sleeping Beauty fable, reopened at the very start of France's deconfinement on May 11.

In the Renaissance town of Amboise, the Clos Luce, where Leonardo da Vinci spent the last three years of his life — the 500th anniversary of his death was last year — reopened on May 20.

'Intelligently done'

“We did all we could to reassure people” of the safety of visiting the imposing manor in the heights of the town, director Francois Saint Bris told AFP on Friday. “It's intelligently done.”

The lockdown cost the site around one million euros ($1.1 million) in lost revenues per month, with outgoings totalling around 250,000 euros, he said.

On Friday however, visitors to the site were few and far between.

Chateau Chenonceaux on the River Cher in Chenonceaux, Central France, taken on June 13, 2019.  Staff far outnumbered visitors to the elegant Chenonceau castle in France's Loire Valley as it reopened on Saturday with meticulously prepared safeguards against the coronavirus. GUILLAUME SOUVANT / AFP

Similarly, things were slow at another early bird, the royal fortress of Chinon, where the 17-year-old Joan of Arc had a pivotal meeting with Charles VII in 1429.

Marie-Eve Scheffer, the curator of the fortress, said the four-day Ascension weekend, normally the busiest of the year, drew some 450 visitors, compared with a normal flow of around 3,800.

“We expect a bigger return next weekend,” Scheffer told AFP by telephone.

Historian Stephane Bern, who spearheaded a regional pressure campaign to persuade French President Emmanuel Macron to allow the chateaus to start welcoming visitors again, urged patience.

“It will take off again,” he told AFP. “It's a matter of priming the pump, kickstarting the machine.”

Bern, a champion of France's cultural and historical heritage who is a frequent radio host and television presenter, noted that as long as the sites cannot reopen their eateries and gift shops, visiting them is “less attractive”. 

The doyen of the region that was once the playground of French kings — the sprawling Chambord castle — will not reopen until next Friday.

Tourism accounts for 15 percent of the Loire Valley region's economy, compared with nine percent nationally. The sector normally brings in some 2.9 billion euros annually.

A view of Chateau Chenonceaux from the River Cher on July 17, 2017. The castle of Chenonceau and its surroundings have been declared “World Heritage of Humanity” by UNESCO. GUILLAUME SOUVANT / AFP

The Loire Valley — collectively a World Heritage site — jostles with Paris and Provence as a top French tourist destination, and is well positioned to edge out the French capital as the country emerges from lockdown.

At Chenonceau, one attraction has remained a constant throughout the confinement: a bucolic picnic area along the castle's canal, where a couple dozen visitors were enjoying lunch on Saturday.

 

 

 

 

 

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CULTURE

Can Costner lead the revenge of France’s much-mocked Kevins?

In 1990s France, amidst the Pierres and the Jean-Claudes, a Hollywood hero with all-American good looks inspired a new name craze.

Published: 19 May 2024 16:52 CEST
Can Costner lead the revenge of France's much-mocked Kevins?

The era of the Kevin — or Kev-een as the French pronounce it — had arrived, ushered in by the passions unleashed by a moustachioed Kevin Costner in his epic directorial debut, “Dances with Wolves”.

Suddenly, little Kevins were to be found the length and breadth of France.

But it wasn’t all plain sailing for these young ambassadors of Americana.

As Kevin Costner, now aged 69, prepares for his much-anticipated comeback at the Cannes Film Festival, AFP looks at how his French namesakes went from hero to zero and back again:

Je m’appelle Kevin

Celtic in origin, hailing from the Irish name “Caoimhin” after a hermit monk who lived in a stone cell in a glacial valley, the Kevin craze was sparked by not one but two huge Hollywood films.

In 1990 two million French people flocked to see the antics of a young boy called Kevin battling to defend his family home from burglars in “Home Alone”.

A year later, “Dances with Wolves”, which scooped seven Oscars, topped the French box office, pulling in a whopping seven million viewers.

The impact on birth certificates was immediate — that year Kevin was the most popular boy’s name in France, chosen for just over 14,000 newborns, according to data compiled by AFP.

The wave continued with over 10,000 baby Kevins a year until 1995 when it dipped to some 8,000 and progressively dwindled thereafter.

Mocked and shamed 

By the time the Kevins hit adolescence in the early 2000s, Costner’s star power had faded and the name had become shrouded in stigma, associated with lower classes picking exotic-sounding names drawn from pop culture.

Sociologist Baptiste Coulmont studied the social determinism of French names by comparing the names with the childrens’ exam grades.

Between 2012-2020 four percent of Kevins received the top “very good” grade for the baccalaureate exam taken at the end of high school, compared with 18 percent for the classic bourgeois name Augustin.

For director Kevin Fafournoux, who grew up in what he calls an “ordinary” family in central France and is making a documentary called “Save the Kevins”, the name “spells redneck, illiterate, geek, annoying” for many in his country.

“All this has impacted my life and that of other Kevins, whether in terms of our self-confidence, professional credibility or in relationships,” he says in its trailer.

In Germany, which also saw a wave of Kevins in the early 1990s, the negative stereotypes conferred on parents who give children exotic-sounding names from other cultures has a name: Kevinismus.

“Kevin is not a name but a diagnosis,” said one teacher scathingly in a 2009 article by Die Zeit newspaper about little Kevins, Chantals and Angelinas being labelled problem children.

Shedding the stigma

As the years pass, Kevins have become doctors, academics, politicians and much more — and attitudes have shifted.

“There are tens of thousands of Kevins in France, they are everywhere in society and can no longer be associated with one background,” Coulmont told The Guardian newspaper in an interview in 2022.

That year, two Kevins were elected to parliament for the far-right National Rally (RN).

“Will the Kevins finally have their revenge?” asked Le Point magazine.

The RN’s president is himself a fresh-faced 28-year-old, who grew up in a high-rise housing estate on the outskirts of Paris. He also carries a name with clear American overtones: Jordan Bardella.

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