Episode Notes
Enlightenment: Besançon, 1740–1788
Besançon feels in many ways like an eighteenth-century city. In this second episode of “Sister Revolutions,” historian Benjamin Bernard and producer Sage Tanguay explore the intellectual and architectural efflorescence of the Enlightenment in Franche-Comté through interviews with historians—and a visit to Claude Nicolas Ledoux’s imaginative Saline Royale (royal salt works) in the nearby village of Arc-et-Senans.
Sister Revolutions is a limited-run documentary series made possible by the Charlottesville Sister Cities Commission, Brown Residential College at the University of Virginia, and America 2026. You can learn more about each of these organizations on their websites: www.cvillesistercities.org (http://www.cvillesistercities.org/) , https://browncollege.virginia.edu/ and www.america2026.eu (http://www.america2026.eu/)
Sister Revolutions is produced and hosted by Benjamin Bernard and Sage Tanguay
With production assistance from Sophia Moore
French Transcription and Translation by Oriane Guiziou-Lamour
And English voiceover by Lewis Reining and Nathan Moore
The music in this episode was provided by Blue Dot Sessions
This episode featured the voices of:
• Andre Ferrer from the Societe d’emulation du Doubs and Professor Emeritus at the University of Burgundy Franche-Comte
• Pascal Brunet public architectural historian
• Gregory Le Moing at the Royal Salt Works of Arc-et-Senans
• Sarah MacDonald and Yves al-Ghazi
Special thanks to
• Elizabeth Smiley of the Charlottesville Sister Cities Commission
• Bertrand Van Ruymbeke of America 2026
• Prof. Ari Blatt, Chair of the University of Virginia French Department
• Florent Werguet, Head of international relations for the City of Besancon
• Hugo Toudic Associate director of the University of Chicago center in Paris
Sister Revolutions is hosted by Symposia: a production of Brown Residential College at the University of Virginia and the Virginia Audio Collective at WTJU 91.1 FM.
from the Virginia audio Collective at wtju 91.1 FM and Brown College at the University of Virginia this is symposia in cooperation with the Charlottesville sister cities commission and America 2026 symposia is proud to present sister revolutions the architect Claude Nikola Leu called b s a provincial City modeling itself on a capital city I love it do you think that’s fair I think it’s fair it also reminds me a lot of Charlottesville a little harsh though right yes yeah you know I I think there’s a little bit of uh judgment in that yeah I think so too I mean we have to remember he wasn’t from bizon but he was certainly doing some high-profile work there instead of viewing bizon as a failed capital I think we can note how ambitious its aspirations were how much did develop over the 18th century and how important it became and the period between the conquest of Louis the 14th that is in 1674 and the French Revolution in 1789 is known often as the grak the great century and this was the theme of that wildly successful exhibition last year at the Muse de bzar Ari the Fine Arts Museum of B and I think there are good reasons to consider the period in in this light in our last episode we talked about how the nation of France came to be and a little bit about like what it means to even have a nation what is nationality like right now in this period in history what exactly were the changes that took place over the 18th century that have shaped bonsal in this episode we’ll look at national identity social integration and the enlightenment period of our French sister city my name is Pascal Brun I in charge of the University of Fran con’s historic Library collections I’m also a teacher at the Center for Applied Linguistics and a tour guide lecturer I wear several professional hats as we say in French my name is Andre ferer I was a university Professor more specifically a university lecturer in modern history from the 16th to the 18th century and an 18th century specialist I’m now retired I have been part of an association for the promotion of the D region of France the societ for many years now I am the general secretary and the honorary president of this Association EXC Andre in order to meet with some local historian Ians we went to this beautiful 18th century academic building well we were basically meeting with them in the humanities and social sciences building of the University of burgundy franch con but this building isn’t just you know some Administrative Building it actually has a little bit of historic significance we’re here in a building built by a man Claud and who was a student at the masarin college and who owed his upward Mobility to Louis the 14th to the Regent to Louis the 15th for my dissertation in history I wrote a chapter about a school for Elites in Paris that was created in 1688 called the K maeran the to serve the young Nobles from newly acquired vinces through Louis the 14th’s wars of conquest and as you remember uh one of the places that he conquered was FR con and Biz so the school was created and I I I knew this already that it was created for the purpose of serving Elites from these schools but I’d always wondered like was the purpose of that school actually fulfilled like were these young men actually integrating into the French monarchy and into like the French Kingdom like in in the state Administration you know as I’m talking talking about this with Andre Andre kind of looks at Pascal and they start laughing and Andre says to me well you’re actually in the perfect place for this because we’re sitting in theel so the the University campus Building which was built in the 1740s uh was owned by one of these families that had been uh Elites in in Fran B went off to study in Paris and then ended up serving the state well today bizon is so clearly undisputably part of France and one of the local historians whom we met actually we read one of his texts where he says well finally bizon was conquered by the French King and could feel like herself and it’s so wonderful and you know I just wondered like how plausible that actually was like whether people in B were really so happy to be conquered by this foreign King and if that was true what were they really resisting for right and and so the first thing I really wanted to know from Pascal and Andre was well how did people in Bon feel about being [Music] conquered the name of the exhibition that ended earlier this year the beautiful century is a good indication of what happened after the conquest although indeed gation efforts were initially badly received in my opinion gas isation was much more successful at the time of the French Revolution a political success but especially an economic one gasz was a difficult and Progressive process achieved by the time the French Revolution took [Music] place 14’s portraits were rarely exhibited even though we just looked at one together because we were conquered by him and his military but in the end after those initial years of suffering bonan in particular but more generally the Fran Con region greatly benefited from entering the French Kingdom people spoke French and were catholic and bezan had been dreaming of becoming franch K’s capital for decades the French Conquest made this dream come true to the detriment of do for a city like bonon entering the French kingdom was a blessing the city became the capital of a county home to the Parliament and the University the conquest the population of bansan almost doubled the soon to follow new development in civil military and religious architecture shows that the trade was doing well in the Years following the French Conquest through its construction and setting ban was now one of the most beautiful 18th century cities in France these were also difficult times the idea of the beautiful 16th century is exaggerated there were many difficulties in the region especially for the Common People the worst for them was the century prior to the French conquest by Louis the 14th the conquest put an end to A Century of tragic events the population had declined by more than half the plague and the war ruined the country a human tragedy [Music] it is true that the French Conquest put an end to that Century of atrocities that was the 17th century in frch the French Conquest brought enduring peace because after the 1674 peace treat and until 1814 FR was protected from Invasion as Pascal said earlier the region pieced itself back together what is nationality like right now in this period in in history are these people French are they still reconciling what that means with other identities seen from a 21st century perspective we can look back and say that the conquest of ban and Fran had very positive outcomes although it was a direct product of Wars death and suffering but little by little people in franch became French their attachment to the French identity is clear during the French Revolution and the Empire period which proves they were genuine French Patriots not necessarily before the French Revolution but indisputably during and after this place illustrates what we are discussing perfectly the Corpus family entered into the parliament in 1690 thanks to Louis the 14th the family was part of the elite who joined the cause of Louis the 14th right after the conquest and who received rewards from the king in this case they received their entry to the parliament the cor family saw four generations of magistrates in the parliament until the French Revolution these families were mostly from the magistracy there were some families from the old military aristocracy but only a few of them in franch con most of these families were decimated there were never many of them but they were decimated by the numerous tragedies of the 17th century which explains why there are few members of old nobility in b a new kind of nobility the mag settled in B the coron family is one example but there are many others the beautiful 18th century private mansions that you can still see today belonged to this new nobility members of the parliament became very wealthy through the purchase of manorial Estates and so on people in franch con did not so much get rich through trade because it remained limited even though the region is ideally situated franch con was surrounded on all sides by Customs tariffs both French and foreign the region was surrounded by border crossings although it had become French but also France between franch and burgundy Customs were still present trade was rather hindered in the region as for industry forges benefited from the city’s development and became a great source of wealth for the franch con region because there are many forests here the city has such an 18th century character right oh absolutely it’s pretty undeniable when you walk through the streets well like what kinds of of buildings kind of jumped out at you um well there’s of course a lot of Domes I I find like domed archways to enter a building um in columns I also remember that a lot of these buildings of this time period were constructed out of like a special bonan stone that’s exactly right yeah so this is called the it’s from the forest that’s right outside the city um and they’re very proud of it and it’s very beautiful it’s it’s multicolored and and very striking very noticeable in addition to having a lot of good examples of 18th century architecture it’s just beautiful I think of the the tiling on top of the cathedral was was absolutely gorgeous that’s right and if you drive around FR con you’ll see this distinctive tiling especially on churches but on other kinds of buildings too we saw it on magnificent houses um they’re very proud of the conto tiling and it it’s part of what gives the local architecture a kind of distinctive sense of place when you’re walking around the city center it really feels like you’re walking around an 18th Century City like you’ve been kind of plucked back in time a little [Music] bit this impression is absolutely accurate as I said earlier bonan is one of the most beautiful 18th century cities in France because it was first transformed into a Garrison town right here we have a view of the bonan for the king’s engineer V started by fortifying the city with two citadels and two sets of City walls then the priority was to rebuild the parish churches and a few Abbey churches too finally reconstruction focused on houses apartment buildings and aristocratic tow houses they also rebuilt the hospital for the poor what became clear is that bone was going on a building spree during this period after the conquest um and I began to wonder like where did all the funding for this come from like how are they paying for it by local taxation by increasing taxation taxes were a lot higher than those during the hapsburg period for example in order to build the city’s fortification when Louis the 14th transfers the parliament to Bess the city pays for it when he transfers the university to Bess the city pays for it when he has fortifications build the city pays for it too as a matter of fact fortifications were paid mostly with the money paid by the city for the University’s relocation 150,000 lever went directly to the building of fortifications the money did not stay in Versailles it stayed here for the fortification the 18th century also see a number of really important Urban buildings like churches and convents and schools kind of of a religious nature including the Jesuit chapel and the Jesuit college um the S Pierre Church in 1784 and then of course a number of massive buildings relating to civil Administration and cultural life too so the p b the central bridge on the site of a former Roman thoroughfare we have uh hospitals we have a grain Storehouse a grain Storehouse is absolutely key not just the 18th century provisioning but to finance as well as people would kind of speculate uh around the price of of grain the Bureau of finances of the generality went up in the 18th century and of course an urban theater by Claud nikolo well the story would end here if the enlightenment were just about buildings right and of course architecture is extremely important to the cultural efflorescence of the 18th century but you have all this Capital flowing into bizon with new construction you’re going to have also a incredible growth in culture and that includes ideas so let’s talk for a minute about Enlightenment ideas a good indicator of this is the considerable success of dero and D be’s encycloped not necessarily of the official French Edition but of the pirated Edition a great number of copies were bought in b b was the city with the largest circulation of the encyclopedia printed in Switzerland so when we talk about the enlightenment are we talking about a a time period or more so like the grouping of these utopic ideas and and attempts at them well you know if you ask historians you’ll get eight different answers um the enlightenment for me is a cultural and intellectual movement maybe or vibe in the 18th century in Europe especially France uh it’s characterized by the belief and the power of human reason to solve social problems to understand how the natural world works it’s scientific and enlightened intellectuals turned to Old institutions like the church or the monarchy with a new critical eye they also believed in progress over time like over history that life is getting better and improving this is kind of a fairly new idea but the idea is that like they talked about themselves as enlightened not necessarily more reasonable than the 17th century you know thinkers that preceded them but this is a self-narrative it’s the way that they talked about themselves and these thinkers and their readers altogether developed challenges to absolutism into the church or at least what would become uh potent challenges to those institutions at the same time though Enlightenment thinkers and Enlightenment culture depended fundamentally on patrons within the monarchy and within the state and within the aristocracy so all of that sounds like kind of theoretical what does this actually look like for the people of Fran during this time period well what was so interesting to discover is that the kind of story that I just told you this kind of Bird’s eyye view of the Enlightenment and the on the ground sense of the Enlightenment actually come together really really nicely in bason let me give you an example with just one book so here’s the story of the encycloped as I learned it in graduate school from Princeton’s historian David Bell the French philosopher kind of public intellectual writer Deni dero spearheaded a massive team to create what he called the encycloped the encyclopedia I have you come across this text before no sorry I was thinking making my head yeah no the the listeners can’t see you so the first uh book deal was for 10 volumes they could be purchased for 280 lra or pounds which is a massive sum it’s like a third of the annual salary of a professor right um the final project spanned 28 volumes that cost almost ,000 which is like you know a year’s salary for a a you know a classy person and it was finished by 177 to it had almost 3,000 illustrations it sold over 4,000 copies it’s one of the biggest successes in the history of French publishing and the articles in it they’re not just factual so some of them try to explain artisanal professions like a YouTube how to kind of to try to democratize knowledge um other articles are plagiarized from other sources either in whole or in part yeah so like Wikipedia of the Enlightenment if you read stuff about you know Jimmy Wales and interviews with him I mean Wikipedia is also very inspired in some ways by this kind of a project it’s one uh example in a long long history of attempts to organize and democratize the sum total of human knowledge and like Wikipedia many of these articles are not just factual they’re argumentative and in this case they could be incisive and pical uh and very heterodox and for this reason the Royal police lieutenant in France condemned the book formally yet the head guy who’s the main censor of the book trade working for the crown called malaz supported dero and the encyclopedia project so he actually hid Dio’s unpublished manuscripts in trunks in his own Mansion very very famously where the Crown’s own police wasn’t going to go looking for them to try to protect all of this amazing work and on top of that the king’s official Royal mistress Madame de pompadour because France is a country that has an official mistress for the king um had her portrait painted by uh the artist moris kandur and in this portrait he has placed the encyclopedia along with other Enlightenment bestsellers on the table next to her so she’s at the heart of the French monarchy in some way she is the heart of it and she’s being portrayed with all these books that you’re not supposed to have or be reading [Music] and so this story shows that even though this generation of enlightenment philosophers really criticized some of these institutions like the monarchy they had actually wide support in the ranks of educated Statesmen and women so what does this have to do with bizon um the city with the most copies sold of the encyclopedia we think is bizone so why partly it’s because of an expanding upper class building not just these architecturally marvelous tow houses but also libraries filling their houses with books it’s also because of their close proximity to the Swiss border where Contraband books could be printed and then smuggled into France and business is kind of the one of the first big cities that you get to Across The Swiss Border in fact one of these publishing houses the sociographic Noel the typographical company Society of Nel in Switzerland left behind a vast Trove of tens of thousands of papers in Switzerland that the Prince and historian Robert Daron has studied for for decades and so their archive has been an important source for understanding not just the publishing business but what French people read in the 18th century the relationship between reading and Revolution and so Bon was on the front lines of these Dynamics as a major market for Contraband publishing during the Enlightenment wow um you’re you’re gonna think I’m so stupid but like when you asked me if I had heard of this book before I thought you were like I thought I it didn’t register I was like this is the first encyclopedia like period right yes and no so it’s inspired by a predecessor in England called Chambers cyclopedia okay um and in fact you know if if you were like an educated person in England or France even into the 19th century you would still have a copy of that in your library right but they take it to a scale exactly yeah when you asked like have you ever read that and I was just like no I I was like not that particular you know like I I only realized after I was like oh yeah I’ve heard of the encyclopedia sorry yeah it’s it’s interesting we actually have a a an amazing unique copy here at the University of Virginia of one of the volumes uh of the encycloped that’s a kind of Publishers correcting proof so we have the kind of manuscript annotations that they had to do before it went into press of the proofs we could see the in real time almost the changes that they’re that they have to be making oh my gosh it’s really uh important for for Scholars there were also reading rooms and obvious strong ties with parents several members of The Academy Fran came from strong ties with the French Capital were developed by other important local figures such as the Corpus family mentioned earlier but there are other families who adopt perian ideas Customs fashion Etc B s’s Elite made the connection between the City and [Music] Paris so in addition to reading clubs and libraries um a few there are a few other examples of these kinds of Enlightenment cultural institutions that became important in the 18th century that we have great examples of in bizon one of them is the shamas or the shamas the public prominade there’s actually a historian at the University of Chicago called Bill suul who’s argued with reference to promenades in Paris that these are spaces in the 18th century during the Enlightenment of Cosmopolitan exchange where people could kind of mix and mingle whether or not they were a commoner or an aristocrat um and show off these latest fashions so like the idea that we have these quick seasonal cycles of fashion is something that comes out of the consumer Revolution during this period so there’s a a massive expansion of popular luxury items and consumer goods across Europe in part coming out of the raw materials sourced from their colonies so sugar tobacco of course Indigo but also silk and coffee in addition to this um you know Fashions textiles um clothing Goods umbrellas hats canes fans housewares porcelain all this kind of stuff and a prominade is also a kind of social space where you can show off what you’re wearing right and you don’t necessarily have to be an aristocrat you just have to have money right to to to make the most of that but these are according to Bill Su important spaces for inculcating a kind of spirit of Civic egalitarianism really in practice to kind of feel with your body being in a space among equals that’s important for training people to to live in a democracy so much like Freemason lodges or salons except kind of through fashion and display and Commercial exchange these sites are really important and Buon had their own prominade here we might underestimate how important that is because the prominade doesn’t exist anymore right but it was really important at the time and it it’s as much a part of the Enlightenment as the encyclopedia so what I’m hearing is like the the beginnings of modern bureaucratic existence even though this is still happening under the monarchy we’re seeing a convergence between community and the state in these places I mean you’ve identified one of the central tensions and themes that that historians talk about and write about in in in our courses and and in our books and we see that come through in such an interesting way in Bon where on the one hand the state has an enormous institutional and financial presence and on the other hand we can see so clearly these vast transformations in lifestyle in culture sometimes in ways that are supported by the monarchy and other times somewhat outside of it the biz area actually has a fantastic example of an Enlightenment era thinker who had an enormous impact on the city and who imagined a future remade and who was also supported by the monarchy itself even at times disagreeing with the King and that man was Claude Nikola Leo the Visionary architect who created the saline Royale the Royal salt Works in Aro a big highlight I remember from from very early on in our planning was that we were going to go out and visit the Seline Royale the Royal salt works why was this on your itinerary oh I was so curious to see what it would be you know like is this a functioning salt mine is it a museum like what is going on there from the photos it looked kind of interesting and beautiful for the 18th century really cutting edge architecture the other reason is that the Seline Royal is an amazing example of institutions of social engineering during the Enlightenment so the American sociologist Irving Gman coined this term total institutions to refer to formal organizations that are geared towards the buau ocratic management of entire population so these are residential communities but they’re also like structuring the jobs and labor of the people who live there shared resources and provisioning and they’re old like some some of these institutions could go back to like the monastic world of of late Antiquity like the first monasteries but in the enlightenment a range of elite reformers within the absolutist state Administration imagined a whole range of new institutions or practices on a wide scale and this is the moment of the birth of new disciplines like economics sociology that attest to this new attention to social engineering kind of with a utopian Bend they’re trying to solve a lot of the problems of humanity through creating uh institutions designed along principles of of rationality um and so as the philosopher and historian Michelle Fuko pointed out um high-ranking powerful men of state began to think not terms of relationships between uh what we might call kind of semi-autonomous medieval corporations with guilds that have their own privileges but instead to think uh about the population or Society itself as a kind of abstract concept that can be managed and architecture is Central to the social thought of uh of the time period of these institutions um and we have a fascinating example of this in the Hinterlands of bizo and AR uh in the sine Royal the Royal salt works it’s an imaginative and radical proposal that it never really got off the ground as it was intended um and so it both represents the kind of reformist ferment within the state as well as the failures of the Enlightenment in the face of absolutist power from above revolutionary ferment from below and runaway technological changes that brought unintended consequences in the form of industrialization and so we took a train from bong out to AR this tiny little town and had the chance to meet with one of the seline’s historians Gregory I’m a Gregory L Gregory and I’m I work as a guide in the salt work of AR but also as an archist and historian to do some research this is um a place where they intend to Produce Salt built 10 years before the French Revolution made to be the central part of a new project how can the Royal salt production compete with smuggling it was difficult but um the import the this salt work was quite important also to imagine a new city the king wants to show um even in frch con far from Paris he have enough money even if France lose War MH to pay a new city and and ambitious project so it was not not also about salt it was really about French industry and the way France will will reent the the the industrial process so really the site of uh the Sal Ro the Royal salt works here at AR is more than uh a simple salt yeah it’s more than a salt work or a mine is a planned city at the same time the salt works also represent in some ways the power of the monarchy under the old regime can you tell us a little bit about the importance of salt to the French state in the late 17th and into and through the 18th centuries I know it’s a big question it’s a big question because uh they wants to they want to produce more salt here um not exactly to made to make a lot of money it’s a little bit complicated because half of the salt production here was um sell to Geneva and to pay back the debt France had people don’t have enough money I mean they have no coins oh it’s a it’s a cash poor economy there is um exactly so to pay taxes is actually very honorous because yeah yeah and this is difficult because when the soul taxes came you can’t pay with a chicken or or bread and and if you want to do so you will lose a lot of money because the salt tax agent will say okay but it will be less than the price you will sell so most of um pison don’t sell their foods and their home production they use it to live so it was quite imp poopular because especially in French con we don’t have enough coins and French coins the salt work wasn’t the only industry the only Factory they want they want to produce Canon balls Cannon um porcelain glasses and thanks to the Royal Forest of sh because this is the second biggest forest in France and there is also iron mines inside so it wasn’t um it wasn’t supposed to be just one industry exactly we learned that iron is kind of uh one of the important industries of the region in in the 18th century exactly and it it will not last during the the 19th century because they will in France we will prefer Lauren because there is some coal and some iron in F doesn’t have coal so okay so it wasn’t possible to just replace the the wood burning the fact that this place was built with the idea that wood will be the only fuel used for producing salt we use wood since 6,000 years to evaporate brains this was made just before the industrial Revolution also on on other point of view it was made to evaporate some brain with the forest but they will use some coal um three generation after so really and it wasn’t such a a good timing to to have a new project with a lot of money they lose almost everything even um the salt taxes agent were killed less than 12 years later after the the first Soul production here the state disappear the French Revolution will destroy the um the social and administrative structure still the salt work produced salt during more than one century you know the entrance to the saline it’s not totally clear what you’re looking at it’s like this classical Limestone entryway with colums but you don’t know just from this front gate that there’s an entire kind of complex behind it and when you walk through into the grounds you realize it’s actually kind of an enormous space like it’s going to take 10 minutes to walk you know oh yeah from one side of it to the other 15 it’s very massive for our listeners in the Charlottesville area it reminded me a lot of like the lawn when you’re walking there it’s even a little wider than that I think but it’s a pretty large space Green Space I I’m just fascinated by what you were telling us about the Celine Royale as a kind of flan City I mean it seems like it’s a kind of total institution that fits very well with so many other Enlightenment era projects so the panopticon and the kind of hospitals and prisons that and schools that are are being built around this time so could you tell us about um what life is like in the space who is the space intended to be built for um yeah the Soul Talk um of sh this is the real name of the Soul Talk of AR by the way is in shape of a semic cycle and the families workers live there every building of the semic cycle are organized with a central part and two Wings in the central part you have the laboratory the say and mostly the kitchen to organize meal um children education and Wings are Made for private use room for families Etc and behind the semic cycle you have a garden what is uh really um surprising is you you feel equality Garden are made with the same size they are equal all room are almost equal and even the architecture is in symmetric order and you have the same building for the barrel makers which which is surprising because there is a huge difference if you look at celeries for example oh interesting so and there is also a doctors which is on the ground floor of the director’s house which is in in the center of the semic cycle like that you have to to walk the same distance even if you are a poor worker or Rich uh administrators so it’s a kind of social theory that imbus the space and who is really not imagine like um the panoptical because this is not real really a prison even if Ludo consider that because of the f the the administrator of the king they imposed to to create a wall um surveillance post on the top of the building of the director’s house and to suppress to forbid every trees inside the semic Cycles so they do have a free line of sight from this surveillance post on the director’s house to everyone’s uh um house everyone’s kind of Barracks almost it’s almost a barracks exactly so it was um really like the same as a panopticon and Ludo will say that this this is really sad it doesn’t want to create a kind of a prison and and it doesn’t want that every building look the same imagine trees and apple trees precisely to um to hide according to him it’s beautiful because it creates respect for every family the Ludo Museum occupies one of the buildings in the complex of the saline Royale and it was inaugurated by some of the highest profile diplomatic and and cultural people in France so Anthony vidler an architectural historian who’s written on Leo was very instrumental in putting this together we also saw a bust of Leo that was inaugurated in the bicentenary of his death and there’s a plaque there saying that that Jean ginu the the late ambassador of France to UNESCO who’s also had a number of other diplomatic posts was was inaugurating this so you know with the the prefect of of the region so it’s it’s important to the people there this site you know it’s it’s really important I was not expecting that there would also be this kind of full-blown Museum of all of these architectural designs of of Leo to give a sense of just what kind of a radical and imaginative uh and deeply humanistic thinker he is I mean he’s not a technician of architecture he is a kind of humanist in the yeah well absolutely absolutely and we keep talking about how sort of expansive and forward thinking and Rich the intellectual production of the 18th century was specifically in architecture while he was constructing this type of building here you have a building for the same place this was real and realize and destroy this one was only imagine this is this is a building for the gagri the men who are in charge of the quality of the soil to to say it’s just like a sphere it’s clearly a sphere but that’s I’ve never seen anything like that in the 18th century and and do imagine that for the future but especially for the um the village of M which is this is the castle of both L was a theori and Rich a rich architect an architect who can discuss with the King and also spend his night by designing building for poor and strange building clearly um building which will which will be considered as architecture at the beginning of the 20th century so this is the reason why grus the will estimate that this is the first revolutionary architecture one the First on Earth CL Nicolo is a an incredible architect which was born um in 1736 and realize an incredible career by um he he was sorry he was um at the age of 20 an engraver but he never had an architecture degrees so quite quite surprising except at at the end of his life one years before he and he was he wasn’t using that when he was a builder and at the age of 28 he build he start to build his first castle for the most ancient Lord in France the Marque de Mones and why is he important to the saline and to FR con uh strangely he wasn’t born in Fr con um and he never live in in F too he was in Paris clearly but it chose FR because he made the salt work and the B Theater which was the biggest theater in France in bz 20,000 inhabitants the same size as the Odon in Paris MH maybe the first uh the first popular theater in Europe the first where farmers can go inside it was astonishing and in um in our place salt work he creates um a kind of a castle for workers with a beautiful architecture and Gardens behind families workers free to use and they are the same size for the garden the room and the kitchen that workers will use so there is a kind of um equality in this type of architecture which L do consider re tionary so he want for the future that people remember him not for the castles he made in France not for the tool Gates he made he made in Paris but for what he made in F we know a lot about L’s work because he publish one book and plans six book and engrave this type of um of plan for four books so only has the time to write one but he wants to create a lot and but he he died too soon for for that at 70 it’s it’s a philosophical book um like as I told you as I told you it was almost a an epic poetry uh for for for L it’s philosophical mystical um Visionary and he talk about architecture social aspect equality but French people consider it’s almost impossible to read it some heart historian consider that this is one of the most genus book you can find some of them consider it’s impossible to read and you say everything the contrary and and it’s impossible to follow it change subject all the time if you choose to read this book you became an apprentice and you have to work a lot and and to do your your homor to understand that so it’s a it’s a game l wants to play and before the French Revolution it wasn’t so um surprising because many philosopher called liberan write in a really complex form to be sure that censorship will not destroy their their their Masterpiece their book it was very inspiring to to walk around a museum and hear how he wanted to take architecture and sort of use it to socially engineer a better Society you know some of it it feels feels Fantastical but some of it feels achievable and I really got a sense of that inspiration of the Enlightenment this idea of like we can do better than what we’re doing and we all we need is to think about it a little more yeah we can organize a kind of total system to ex to engineer this with Precision here’s architectural historian Pascal brune n’s influence is obvious first in the city he built the counterpart to the Royal saltworks which is a theater a performance hall and which directly resembles the Royal salt Works through its plans its orientation especially its Perfection of sight lines and of course its beautiful and original Aesthetics was very influential on Architects such as Alexander Patron an architect from Bon who was a major figure in public and private architecture but also on places such as the Mong castle that we visited together for these reasons contrary to popular opinion Leo wasn’t a meteorite that no one saw but someone who was obviously influential although the Seline Royale no longer produces salt the space has undergone a lot of development in recent years Leo’s vision of a planned city is no more but the Seline is used for a multitude of artistic and communal activities in a way that calls back to the Enlightenment philosophies that designed it this is the first year since um the salw is a museum that we um uh we occupy every buildings oh and this is the last um part of of the working and it’s long because for us it’s five five years of of track maybe they’ll listen to the podcast and say you never know never Le do would have wanted a pool he want a pool he want a pool because he he proposed Thal buff for for the wellbe of the population for The Well of they need a theral back here that’s your territory when we first got off the train in AR sonal we came across an adorable dog just in the middle of the street and we quickly found out this dog’s name was bisque biscuit I guess one of the nice things about dogs is they’re also an excuse to meet people and in this case it was was fantastic because we were able to ask you know the owner of bisre what is it like to live in the neighborhood of the Seline Royale and that led to just an amazing conversation and of course a wonderful lunch together during our visit here’s the very hospitable Eve and his wife Sarah um so I’m Eve I was born here a while ago I won’t say so when I was a kid it was nothing like what it is now there was no Museum I don’t remember being that touristy at all because I think you could visit it in summer but I don’t think there was an entry fee was that someone had a key or something I remember coming as I said earlier with my bike and riding around inside and there was no one and it was a bit decrepit was a bit spooky versus like now it sounds like you guys as a family go to the Celine all the time right yeah yeah very often we have picnics there and look at the gardens now people know that it’s UNESCO listed now people know that there’s something there now people know that it’s always going to go up there’s going to be more and more there’s music going on there’s enormous amount of things you know like people coming from all around the world for me it expands The Village as well it brings people in from other parts of the world exactly you guys yeah it’s wonderful open we go and walk down the street and then there’s people from all around the world we can meet and talk with and yeah we never had Scholars 10 years ago coming through now never ever or music students there’s lots of music students that come yeah wonderful there’s concerts just right next door for for us as just animals living around it’s a nice place to have a picnic right it’s a nice sight but also if this thing is living is alive then every time you open your windows or your door you have this opportunity to live in a history and it’s amazing here not too much because it’s a 30 1930s building but next door is a 18th century building was there before the Sal so every time you wander around these places if you’re a bit of a you know like a dreamer it’s very easy to project yourself in the past and and hear people talking about it and and try and put yourself in the shoes of the people that were there 200 300 years ago and you will wonder every time you go through those big Gates how weird is why did they do that why did they put those Big Blocks there and why why why why so sometime you have the answers but sometime we just Ponder and that’s what I like about being here that’s what I feel being next to that is a is a opportunity to to be [Music] dreaming I imagine so many of the visitors do have experiences visiting 18th century sites but it’s visiting Chateau um and so these are um you know usually custom architected your mure by the aristocracy what do they learn at the Royal salt works that they can’t learn from these uh other historic sites that have been preserved from the 18th century this site appears like a French chatau from the the 18th century but it was clearly made for workers for families for most people which are modest quite poor if you consider the architecture so this is the um the contrast in between the uh Rich architecture and the Simplicity of people the contrast in between Rich powerful Kingdom um who create a place where families can be happy and around with a beautiful gardens and and a beautiful architecture this is a revolutionary project before the French Revolution L is considered as one of the most revolutionary Architects and this is strange because he convince people of his time to pay for that this is really uh astonishing as much as we don’t see signs of people in franch comp being really upset about the monarchy we we didn’t hear tell of a lot of stories of people saying like we got to get rid of this whole system I do think the Selene Royale is a very interesting example of uh the exorbitance of the monarchy yeah that’s a a really interesting point Sage I think you’re right that was my impression too that this is a sign of you know a monarchy that’s invested a huge amount of money in kind of a single person’s plans and designs and you know we heard from Gregory about tensions between Leo and the monarchy in some of the details for how this site was meant to be set up at the same time it does potentially indicate a monarchy that’s very out of Step with the population out of step with the changes in technology and in the structure of the economy they’re trying to force this kind of massive institution into existence but it seems a little bit disconnected from both kind of the mores of the population who would be working there as well as with you know what would be possible economically and technologically I mean I think what’s at stake is trying to understand to what extent AR on the Seline Royale is a kind of Proto Factory a site for capitalist production and to what extent it’s a community and I think for Leo these are integrated that part of being alive and being human is being productive but it’s being productive for a community and maybe for your king and for God but not for your capitalist overlords right right and so I I do think that is a source of tension a little bit between Leu and the monarchy who’s maybe a little bit more interested in the productivity of the site um but the question becomes you know is Leo’s Vision somehow DEC in other words is it decadent to Envision this kind of living and working Community as a place where he can also care for the well-being of workers and I think it would be really interesting to go back and look at what Leu has to say about that point in his writings uh if it’s something that he discusses I’m just curious I mean Char forier is from bizo and he he’s um done so much influential thinking around communal living um do you think he visited the salt works or other communities like it we are almost sure that he he visited the salt work and and he knows about knows a lot about Ludo um he creates Ludo create a building in in his ideal city of sh which is called the pacifer building to organize peace and and he explained to organize Justice in peace and the um suffix air in French is never used for positive word we only use it for negative Sun mortifer what’s a [Music] mortifer yes so L imagine a lot of um of new words in Greek in Latin and in French so he create pacifer and he explained that we have to create new world with air in French and Char Fier gives the name to his main project Fon and it’s not quite azard it’s really um inspired by him sh for was really um also um uh close from L if you consider Mystic point of view um and um right Civil Right for women equality for women in in cities they are both um on the same almost the same ideas so F have a lot of influence during the the the 19th century but Leo again never create a school when godan creates this incredible Factory in the north of France in giz the family stair he was inspired by F but F was inspired a little bit by but like in architecture in arts L never create a school or a style but INSP but he Inspire inspire a lot of different styles grus r m Len a lot of Architects which are really considered as a avanguard before we went to the Seline Royale I wondered how it might fit in into our story because it’s not technically in the city of bong we’re you know almost about half an hour away from it um and it occurs to me that you know because Leo also built this incredible classical theater in the enlightenment in the city of bansung they really do kind of go well together especially considering how important the forests and the cell production were to the economy of the city that this is kind of contributing to you know what the city can stand on another takeaway for me and this was something that I started feeling at the Citadel was just yeah this this idea of renewal of these old spaces they’re having a second life well I think the lawn is a really interesting parallel to what is kind of this entire planned neoc classical complex that’s supposed to be a kind of functioning living and working environment it’s another example of a kind of Enlightenment era total institution and although you know UVA is maybe a couple decades later Thomas Jefferson is really working in this kind of a paradigm this is the kind of place that that he maybe has in mind one of these total institutions that he’s modeling UVA off of I mean we think a lot about the academical part but we don’t think as much about the village part so what does it mean for UVA to be a village what are the values that it stands for but also what are the kind of institutional and political ligaments that hold it together that’s not so much a part of the conversation but maybe it could be it it reminded me a lot actually of a you know like a compound uh like a military compound where there is a building for a certain activity and and then another one that’s completely dedicated bars the canteen yeah [Music] exactly and once again here’s Pascal brune the connection between bonan and Charlottesville is neoclassicism the wish to go back to ancient architecture Thomas Jefferson was as we know the US ambassador to France he deeply admired this taste that was developing especially in Paris but more generally in France during this time here he brought back to the US this love for Architects like Andrea paladio for ancient Greece and Rome IND is monachello estate and his magnificent University the University of Virginia is also in homage to the Marley Royal Palace and its system of pavilions which were supposed to represent the solar systems so Thomas Jefferson was a man both deeply Fran ofile and Fran it really seems like the 18th century in Biz is characterized by economic growth it’s characterized by uh beautiful new architecture and works in the Arts as well as its integration into France you know Ben it occurs to me we’re only a couple of years off from a massive and bloody Revolution right how exactly does it go from being this lovely Enlightenment period to to war that’s a great question let’s go find out sister revolutions is a limited run documentary series made possible by the Charlottesville sister cities commission Brown Residential College at the University of Virginia and America 2026 you can learn more about each of these organizations on their websites cille sister cities.org Brown college. virginia.edu and america2 26. sister revolutions is produced and hosted by Dr Benjamin Bernard and Sage tangue with production assistance from Sophia Moore French transcription and translation by Oran giz LA and English voiceover by Nathan Moore and Lewis rainning the music in this episode was provided by Blue Dot sessions this episode featured interviews with Andre ferer from the societ deu professor emeritus at the University of burgundy FR con Pascal brune public architectural historian in Biz Gregory Luman at the Royal salt works of Aenon as well as Sarah McDonald and Eve algazi we’d like to extend a special thanks to Elizabeth Smiley of the Charlottesville sister City’s commission beron Von rbec of America 2026 Professor Ari blat chair of the University of Virginia French Department Floren ver head of international relations for the city of banso and youo to associate director of the University of Chicago center in Paris sister revolutions is hosted by symposia a production of brown Residential College at the University of Virginia and the Virginia audio Collective at wtju 91.1 FM