Flâneur (French: [flɑnœʁ]) is a French term popularized in the nineteenth-century for a type of urban male “stroller”, “lounger”, “saunterer”, or “loafer”. The word has some nuanced additional meanings (including as a loanword into various languages, including English). Traditionally depicted as male, a flâneur is an ambivalent figure of urban affluence and modernity, representing the ability to wander detached from society, for an entertainment from the observation of the urban life.
— from Wikipedia
Paris has a special place in my heart. I lived there for almost a year just after high school, with the blessing of good enough French to be able to converse with people and have some idea of what was going on around me. I’ve been back a few times since (and am currently planning my next trip) and one of the things I love to do is just walk the streets and byways. This is different from my hometown, where walking to get somewhere isn’t really done,2 and going on a walk for the walk’s sake is often done to be in nature,1 not the bustle of the city.
So I was rather delighted to find there was actually a word for this — flâneur — and it seems an extra delight that the word in French. In my (limited) experience in other European cities and even French ones, none of these were as so endlessly stroll-able as Paris.
So next time you make it to Paris, go for a walk, and enjoy the buildings and the streetscape and the street happenings before you!
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The flip side is nature, when you can find it in Paris, like at Le jardin du Luxembourg or at the gardens at the château de Versailles, has typically been manicured for centuries and is only “natural” in the sense that the ground cover isn’t concrete. It isn’t uncommon either to find forests in France have been purposely planted with the trees on a grid. If you want nature, plan your trip for the Canadian Rockies instead! ↩
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notwithstanding (written in my hometown):
Walking to church, listening to church bells 🔔, add a special delight to this Sunday morning!
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