Literally au bord de l’eau  (by the water), Bordeaux has for more than 2,000 years enriched itself thanks to maritime commerce down the Garonne River to the Gironde estuary and then out onto the wide Atlantic.  What did it do – what does it still do – with the wealth thus acquired ?  An answer is found simply by looking at what it built; and it built a lot!

If contemporary architecture is your thing, you’ll love the new quarters surrounding the older parts of the city.  I myself find the recent hotels, office blocks and administrative centers pretentious or faceless, sometimes both – so much glassy flotsam atop two millennia of much more enthralling vestiges.

So, I invite you to dive down with me to sample landmark buildings symbolizing layer after layer of human expression that, in my book, smoked glass simply doesn't have. 

First, an  overview: seen from the opposite bank of the Garonne, particularly in the evening when the whole city is illuminated, old Bordeaux offers a paradoxical view - an exceptionally low cityscape, seldom more than four stories high, is punctuated by many soaring steeples. The panorama is rather like viewing that other waterside commercial hub, St. Petersburg, from across the Neva River.

Leaving the second half of the 20th century to glint for itself, we come to a plethora of 1930s Art Déco.  Not entire buildings, but balconies, door jambs and window cornices boast motifs with typical Art Déco sunbursts and zig-zags. These are even found gracing the facades of quite modest ground-floor-only échoppes, reminiscent of provincial Argentina,  and street after street of which have been converted into cozy middle middle-class homes.

Why no important structures in Art Déco here, while that style often found monumental expression (Paris’ Palais de Chaillot, for example) elsewhere?   Bordeaux has long been the domain of a rather conservative merchant bourgeoisie, whose mores were etched in literary vitriol by writer François Mauriac, a native son. They had the money, and they commissioned the main architecture, setting the tone for pretty much everyone else.  Some decorative gew-gaws were fine in the first half of the 20th century,  but too many sunbursts and humungous zig-zags would have been … well, unseemly.

And Art Nouveau’s lop-sided whimsy? Virtually no trace to be found here.

Symbolizing the progress created by commerce, industry and transport, Bordeaux’ businesslike St-Jean train station was, on completion in 1899, the largest steel-girdered hall in the world. It is still impressive when you step off the TGV high-speed train that has just whisked you from Paris in just minutes under three hours.

Contemporary with St-Jean station is the Monument to the Girondins, so high it is visible from many parts of the city. It celebrates the locally-based liberal bourgeois political group which, during the Revolution a century earlier, opposed both the monarchy and radical social and economic reforms.

Delving back now into the 17th and 18th centuries,  we come to a neo-classical heyday.  The luckiest or craftiest (or just plain richest) merchants of the time built their townhouses in that style along the riverside Quai des Chartrons in white-gray stone still lovely today (when it's been cleaned).  It is as though the contemporary hôtels particuliers lining the streets and squares of Paris’  Le Marais quarter had been unscrolled in a single line facing the Rhine-wide Garonne. It was probably here that, when she visited Bordeaux in 1992, Queen Elizabeth II remarked that Bordeaux is "elegance personified". 

Fittingly, the Stock Exchange was nearby. It has left a semi-circular riverside place with buildings like arms outstretched towards the Garonne (to welcome or grab?) designed 1729-1755 by the Gabriel brothers, architects of the Place de la Concorde in Paris and the Petit Trianon at Versailles. One now houses the National Customs Museum.   Money hasn't always been top dog in Bordeaux. Born nearby, sixteenth century humanist Michel de Montaigne lived and worked here and was mayor of the city for four years.

The Middle Ages left their mark on the city, which grew and changed apace with improved maritime technology enabling exploitation of newly "discovered" overseas sources of produce and raw materials. That growth and change is reflected in the many churches built, re-built and re-re-built then and since.  A favorite of mine is St-André.  Its strikingly simple western facade was begun in 1096. Thereafter followed a Romanesque nave, a 13th century Royal Portal (with a really scary "Last Judgment"), a mainly 14th century transept and the free-standing Pey-Berland bell tower, topped off with a gilded statue of Our Lady of Aquitaine in 1863.
Speaking of Aquitaine, it was in the Romanesque nave that, in 1137, that local-girl-made-good, Aliénor (Eleanor) of the same name wed just-crowned French King Louis VII.  She tried in vain to bring troubadours, music and southern fun into the dour court and dark palace (now the Conciergerie) on the Île de la Cité in Paris.  That didn't work, so shortly afterwards she remarried, this time Henry II of England, with whom she gave birth to that Frog-basher Richard the Lionheart. This alliance brought Bordeaux and all of Aquitaine under the Plantagenet crown, and the English leopard still strides atop Bordeaux’ coat of arms. It also includes a crescent, which doesn’t represent Islam but the Garonne’s curve as it swings through the city.

The 15th Fort du Hâ was built at the end of the Hundred Years’ War in the 15th century by Joan of Arc’s patron (or was she his?) King Charles VII to imprison Bordelais who had remained faithful to the English crown.  It was used as a jail until 1950.

Other secular Medieval architecture still extant includes the superb Big Bell Tower, originally incorporated into the 13th century town rampart and a number of Gothic bourgeois mini-manor townhouses.

Further back now to the 4th-6th centuries A.D. -- from then date the vestiges found (June – September) in the archaeological crypt beneath St-Seurin church, itself another mix of Romanesque and Gothic.

And – bottom line of our historical dive – the Palais Gallien, an archaeological park fashioned from the remains of the 2nd (?) century Roman amphitheatre.  It's open June to September, but can be viewed year-round from two adjacent streets, and is impressive indeed. It could accommodate some 15,000 spectators, compared with about 16,000 at the contemporary Lutetia Arena in Paris.  Ravaged by 19th century urbanists, it left nevertheless vestiges in and readily visible above a number of apartment houses in the neighborhood. So when you visit it, keep looking up and around.

Why is a Roman amphitheatre called a Palace?  Well, around the year 1,000 A.D. people didn't know much – if anything – about the Roman occupation.  Seeing vast ruins they assumed that a palace had stood here, and legend had it that Charlemagne’s wife, Galiène,  had lived in the palace.  That certainly gave to the site a regally important aura.  Such legends die hard.   The Cluny Roman baths in Paris were thought until the 19th century to have been a Saracen Palace.

End of the line?  Not quite. 

Although taking its name from "water", Bordeaux is much better known for wine. The Bordelais area counts something like 4,000 recognized château vineyards, so you can take your pick for a visite with dégustation (tasting).  Off the top of my head, I’d suggest St-Emilion, as much for its architectural vestiges as for its vintages – and that isn't to cast aspersion on the latter!

Early U.S. Ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson,  would have preferred that you check out the Château d’Yquem – this was when the Bordelais numbered 110,000 while the population of the American capital, Philadelphia, was some 30,000.  Home again, he wrote (in French, if you please)  to the  Château d’Yquem’s Count: "I have persuaded President George Washington to sample your wine; he wishes to order thirty dozen bottles, Sir."  Oh, and "I wish to order ten dozen for myself. "

For more information : www.bordeaux-tourisme.com .

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