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Paris Titanic exhibition opens in shadow of explorer’s sub disaster death

A major exhibition dedicated to the Titanic opened in Paris on Tuesday, with many of the objects on display brought up from the ship's wreck by a French deep-sea explorer who died in a submersible disaster last month.

Published: 18 July 2023 17:37 CEST
Paris Titanic exhibition opens in shadow of explorer's sub disaster death
A replicated model of the RMS Titanic liner is displayed on the opening day of the XXL Titanic exhibition at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles. Photo by Geoffroy VAN DER HASSELT / AFP

Henri-Paul Nargeolet, who was nicknamed “Mr Titanic”, was one of five people onboard the Titan tourist sub when it lost contact with the surface after plunging down to visit the wreck in mid-June.

An attempted rescue operation in the North Atlantic briefly captivated the world before it found evidence that the vessel had imploded underwater, killing all on board.

The Titanic exhibition which opened in the French capital was “largely the result of the work, ingenuity and passion of Henri-Paul Nargeolet,” the event’s producer Pascal Bernardin said.

Nargeolet, 77, had been expected to attend the exhibition’s opening.

The explorer helped bring up many of the 260 objects on display – which include navigation instruments and hooks from the ship as well as watches and jewellery from its passengers – from the wreck.

The exhibition, which runs from July 18th to September 10th at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre, starts off with a more than four-metre-long model of the mythic ship.

Visitors are then taken on a journey from the night the Titanic departed England for New York in April 1912, through the sinking of what was the world’s largest cruise ship after its hull was ruptured by an iceberg.

The exhibition features recreations of the ship’s cabins, grand staircase and even the oppressive atmosphere of its engine room.

A joint French-American expedition discovered the Titanic’s wreck nearly four kilometres underwater off the coast of Newfoundland in 1985.

Nargeolet directed or participated in six of the eight exploration missions to the wreck between 1987 and 2010, which brought back more than 5,000 objects to the surface.

The vessels used for those missions were quite different to the Titan.

Previously voiced concerns about the sub’s safety came to light after its implosion.

Titan’s US-based operator OceanGate, whose CEO Stockton Rush was among those killed onboard Titan, has suspended all its activities indefinitely.

It had charged $250,000 a seat on the submersible, which was about the size of an SUV car.

The US Coast Guard and Canadian authorities have launched probes into the cause of the tragedy.

Titanic l’Exposition runs at Porte de Versaille expo centre in eastern Paris from July 18th to September 10th. Tickets start at €24 – full details here 

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COST OF LIVING

What is considered a good salary in Paris?

The higher-paying jobs are heavily concentrated in the French capital, but set against that is the high cost of living - especially the cost of renting or buying a home. So what is considered a 'high-earner' in Paris?

Published: 25 June 2024 16:51 CEST
What is considered a good salary in Paris?

Centrist Renaissance candidate Sylvain Maillard, running for re-election in France’s snap parliamentary elections, was trying to highlight the high cost of living in the capital in a debate on RMC Radio 

“You have extremely expensive rents [in Paris], between €1,500 and €1,700, and then there are all the charges and taxes to pay,” he said.

But what most people seized on was his comment that anyone earning €4,000 a month after tax would not be considered rich in Paris – he predictably was accused of being out of touch with French people’s lives.

There’s no doubt that €4,000 a month is good salary that most people would be happy with – but how much do you need to earn to be considered ‘rich’ in Paris?

National averages

Earlier this year, the independent Observatoire des Inégalités calculated poverty and wealth levels in France.

READ ALSO How much money do you need to be considered rich in France?

According to its calculations, to be considered ‘rich’ in France, a single person with no dependants needs to earn more than €3,860 per month, after taxes and social charges. Around eight percent of single workers have this sum deposited into their bank balance every month, it said.

A total of 23 percent of workers take home €3,000 or more every month, while the top 10 percent clear €4,170. 

To be in the top one percent of earners in France in 2024, one person must bring in at least €10,000 per month. After taxes and social charges.

The median income – the median is the ‘middle value’ of a range of totals – of tax households in mainland France is €1,923 per month after taxes and social charges, according to INSEE 2021 data, which means that a ‘rich’ person earns about twice as much as a person on the median income, according to the Observatoire.

Paris situation

About 75 percent of people living in Paris earn less than €4,458 per month, according to Insee data – so according to those calculations, 25 percent of Parisians earn the equivalent of the top 10 percent in France. 

But that city-wide average still hides a wide degree of variation. In the sixth arrondissement, the median income is €4,358 per month, after tax. In the seventh, it’s €4,255.  Further out, those bringing home €4,600 a month in the 19th and 20th arrondissements are among the top 10 percent in wealth terms.

But still, the median income in Paris is €2,639, significantly higher than the €1,923 France-wide median.

That would mean – using the Observatoire des Inégalités’ starting point for wealth – that a Paris resident, living on their own, would have to bring home €5,278 per month to be considered ‘rich’. 

France is a heavily centralised country, with many of the highest-paying industries concentrated within the capital, meaning there is much more opportunity to secure a high-wage job if you live in Paris.

Cost of living

Even these figures should all be taken with a pinch of salt because of the relatively high cost of living in the capital, compared to elsewhere in France. Paris is objectively an expensive place to call home.

In 2023, France Stratégie published a report on the disposable income of French households, after housing, food and transport costs were deducted. It found that, on average, people living in the Paris region had more left to spend, due to higher incomes and despite the fact that housing costs more.

It’s the income paradox in action. A person with a take-home salary of €4,000 per month has more money to spend if they live and work outside Paris. But they’re much more likely to earn that much if they live and work in Paris, where it’s not as valuable. 

Someone who earns a ‘rich-level’ salary in Paris might not appear rich – because they live in an expensive area, and a surrounded by very wealthy people in property that’s out of reach all-but the fattest of wallets. But they’re still earning more than twice the median income in France.

And that’s what Sylvain Maillard was getting at, clumsily as he may have expressed it.

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