City of the future on the banks of the Garonne

The fast TGV train from Paris covered exactly 500 kilometers in just over two hours and brought us to Bordeaux, to the Saint-Jean station. The metal viaduct over which trains cross the Garonne River, built in 1860, is the work of, you guessed it, Gustave Eiffel. Towards the end of the century, the current luxurious station building was built with an impressive metal canopy over the platform that covers as much as 17.000 m2, making it the largest in Europe. Also, the work of Gustave Eiffel.

The program of the French Institute in which I participated included a tour of the cultural sights of Bordeaux, a port city that some consider to be the wine capital of the world.

As we walk through the streets in the city center, I notice that there are almost no new buildings at all, everything is from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. There is hardly any art deco or secession, mostly villas on the outskirts. They were lucky to avoid the destruction in the Second World War, while the other reason is not in the domain of luck but in the well-thought-out French policy of preserving cultural heritage. The old is repaired, renewed, adapted and given a new purpose - it is not destroyed.

An example of such finding a new purpose is the building of the Museum of Contemporary Art. It is a bulky building that used to be a warehouse for colonial goods, which was turned into a museum in 1973. Where sacks of sugar, coffee and cocoa, bales of cotton and barrels of oil were once stored, today are valuable works by contemporary artists.

The warehouse was built in 1824 during the golden age of colonial expansion, when goods arrived in Bordeaux from numerous French overseas possessions from Martinique in the Caribbean through Madagascar and Mauritius in the Indian Ocean to Tahiti in the Pacific. The interior looks more like a Romanesque basilica than a warehouse.

The next example is the Urban Eco-System "Darwin" located in the former military barracks Niel built in 1874 on the banks of the Garonne River. After the barracks were closed, the barracks were turned into a "Darwin ecosystem" in 2011, which its creators call the City of the Future. It is a unique sociological experiment that gathers the most diverse content in one place. That's where skateboarders found their place, street art artists, producers and consumers of organic food, craft beer and organic wine, fans of electronic music, but also migrants who are offered accommodation and free medical care. Its founder, Philippe Barre, worked in the marketing industry for years, and at the end of his career, he decided to leave a mark that has a deeper meaning.

Such ambitious projects, in addition to the personal initiative of enthusiasts, always require the vision and support of political leaders, so "Darwin" was created with the help of one such person - the then mayor of Bordeaux, Alain Gippe.

Barre first bought 10.000 m2 of military barracks and later leased as much. Alain Gippe was the Prime Minister of France and Mayor of Bordeaux for 21 years, and from both positions he supported the "Darwin" project.

"Darwin" also offers its visitors concerts, exhibitions, plays and sports competitions. The season of cultural programs starts in the spring with "Happy Hour". after-work with an event where free beer is poured and music is played, and it ends with a Christmas market in December where numerous local producers and artists exhibit. One of the most important is the "Climax Festival", which for the past five years every September represents a mixture of culture, concerts, conferences, arts and urban sports activities. A little trivia is that the Indoor skatepark has more than 300 members who pay an annual membership fee of only 40 euros, which is ten times less than the prices in similar spaces in Berlin or Amsterdam.

At the end of the visit we toured co-working a space where numerous startups and independent entrepreneurs work, as well as a small winery located in one of the barracks. While we were tasting the wines, the lady who was our guide through "Darwin" told us that despite the large number of locals, tourists and migrants who meet in this area every day, they haven't had a single incident in all these years.

On the program of the second day were wineries. Château Malartic-Lagravière is located on the outskirts of Bordeaux. Pierre de Malartic bought the Lagravière estate in 1803. Since 1997, the estate has been owned by the Bonnie family, which annually produces 16.000 cases of red and 2.500 cases of white wine. We start the tour according to the rules of such tours - in the vineyard, where the owners explain to us the way of growing the vines and show the vineyard horses that they have used in recent years to maintain the vines in order to reduce their "carbon footprint" as much as possible.

photo: r. shepherd

The logical continuation of the tour was a visit to the "Cité du Vin", one of the largest thematic museums dedicated to wine in the world. It was opened in 2017, and in 2022, as many as two million visitors passed through it. Its construction cost 81,1 million euros. The museum is not only concerned with wines from the Bordeaux region, but with the history of wine throughout the world. Numerous maps, photographs, video installations and artefacts, including a tasting on the top floor - make it a unique place.

Finally - a story about another space in Bordeaux that changed its original purpose. BETASOM (acronym in Italian for - Bordeaux Sommergibile) is a former base for Italian and German submarines that participated in the Battle of the Atlantic between 1940 and 1943. It is a massive concrete structure with an area of ​​42.000 m2, more than a third of which is open to visitors for various artistic events - exhibitions, concerts and performances.

I believe that some future leaders of our cities, full of neglected and unused spaces - barracks, factories and warehouses, should organize a visit to Bordeaux. Of course, with the obligation that, in addition to enjoying French specialties and wines - some of what the French Institute showed us - they also visit and apply those experiences in our country.