Nous visitons Valence

Look carefully and you can see the faces in the building, although some have deteriorated through the years because they are made of limestone.

March 31 was a busy day. First, the GSE team met at a building called La Maison des Têtes, which translates The House of Heads. It is called by this name because the façade of the building has many faces carved into the stone. Our tour guide, who is fluent in English, explained some of the history of the building (put very simply: the mayor of Valence wanted to be noticed, so he decorated) and showed us many other historic and artistic places in the city. We stood in a square where a man was very cruelly executed because he stole from Louis XV, and we saw a monument that used to be a tomb and is one of only two buildings in all of France that uses a particular architectural style. The style is one in which a building begins with a square frame on the bottom and becomes a dome at the top, but the stones in the top aren’t laid in a circular fashion; they are still laid in a square. Also on the tour were two churches, one Catholic and one Protestant. The Cathedral of St. Apollinaire is the oldest monument in Valence.

After the tour, each person in our group visited a place that corresponds with the team member’s job. Kent visited a veterinarian’s office where there were several surgeries were taking place. David visited the magistrate’s office, John visited police station. I went to Le Dauphine, which is the local newspaper. Valence’s newspaper is having some of the problems that newspapers are having in the United States, but as of yet, it isn’t as serious. The director of the newspaper said many people are going online for their news there, too, but it’s impossible to get news for each small town in the region online. Therefore, the circulation for Le Dauphine is still doing well, for now. The director said the newspaper might begin putting the small-town news online but charging a subscription fee for readers who want this section of the online edition. Advertising makes up about 70 percent of the revenue in the print edition. This newspaper still uses color on many of its pages, and as yet has not had to reduce the size of the pages. However, Le Dauphine is not really in the same league with the San Antonio Express-News, so it will be interesting to see how larger newspapers fare in France.

This is the room in which the designers at Le Dauphine put together the pages.

After our professional visits, another small architectural history lesson, and then we were free for the evening. I went on a walking tour with my host dad, who explained to me (in French!) lots of the other lovely things in Valence, such as the three beautiful parks. One of these parks is near a canal of the Rhône River, and years ago some nuns had a monastery nearby to escape the busier city.

A demain !