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The idea of mounting wooden horses on a rotating frame dates to the 17th century; the word "carrousel" (the French spelling of "carousel"), if not the actual invention, dates to an immense equestrian festival Louis XIV held in the courtyard -- the Place du Carrousel -- of the Louvre. Partly to entertain 15,000 cooped-up nobles when he moved his court from Paris to Versailles, the Sun King had his engineers design the first documented rotating merry-go-round, a four-seater with gilded chairs for ladies and horses or swans for the men. Indeed, Versailles, with its fireworks, dancing fountains and other royal amusements, was the Sun King's private Coney Island: The world's first roller-coaster, a huge, gilded chariot pulled along a rail, made its appearance there, as did the gondola swing sets called Bateaux des Pirates that are still found in many Parisian parks today.

By the end of the 18th century there were merry-go-rounds in at least three public gardens in the capital; in the wake of the French Revolution, the merry-go-round, like other aristocractic entertainments, was finally becoming accessible to the masses. According to Gourarier, the current plethora of permanent carousel emplacements stems from the Second Empire and Baron Haussmann's green campaign (he added 24 squares and three large parks to the city), as well as from the traditional sites of "fête foraines," seasonal carnivals that originally sprouted up across the city during the Middle Ages but reached the height of their popularity at the end of the 19th century.

"Of course no one today remembers any of this," Gourarier sighs as we pour over engravings of the Sun King's contraptions in his office. "France is a hierarchical society, which values the fine arts in museums like the Louvre. Our children ride them every day without realizing that carousels also represent a valuable and interesting part of our patrimony."

Interest is so lacking that the Museum of the Fête Foraine, at Bercy, which houses one of the world's best collections of merry-go-rounds, does not receive enough vistors to justify daily opening hours. It's worth a visit by private appointment to see the many examples of the different styles of merry-go-round animals that developed throughout Europe and to experience 30 rare but still-working 19th century amusement park attractions, including 14 carousels, one of which is made entirely of wooden bicyles.

In between curating duties, Gourarier spends much of his time trying to convince the French government to block the export of dismantled carousels to private collectors in the United States. When I hand him a map of Paris, he points out surviving public merry-go-rounds of museum quality: a cavalcade of horses at the Forum des Halles hand-carved in 1900 by the Limonaire brothers, also known as manufacturers of carnival organs; a carousel in the Bois de Vincennes whose every animal (mainly pigs) is the work of Gustave Bayol, the French merry-go-round master, active in Angers from 1887 to 1909; and the merry-go-round in the Square de Batignolles built by Bayol's successor, Henri Devos. Originally a glove-maker from Belgium, Devos worked in Bayol's atelier but was also influenced by 20th century popular culture, particularly early animated Disney films. The Batignolles carousel is a strange but charming amalgam, with a canopy hand-painted with roses and portraits of Belle Epoque children and a menagerie of scraggly 1920s Plutos and Mickey Mouses.

On a recent summer Sunday we embarked on a mission to see how many carousels we could ride in a single afternoon. We started in the 16th arrondissement on a Bayol carousel in the Jardin de Ranelagh, and then headed for the Tuileries, where a pink and white wedding cake carousel recalled the animated one ridden by Julie Andrews in "Mary Poppins." In the Place de la République, another double-decker merry-go-round displayed a fin de siècle fantasy of charging black bulls and twin-tailed mermaids (though its more recent sound system blared the Macarena). After lunch we crossed to the left bank of the Seine to check out carousels by the Gare Montparnasse and in the Parc Montsouris. The Metro journeys between each carousel took an average of 15 minutes, far shorter, we noted, than the wait for most rides at Disneyland Paris.

Our last stop was the merry-go-round in the Parc des Buttes Chaumont, Baron Haussmann's eccentric landscape of grottoes and waterfalls carved from an old rock quarry in the 19th arrondissement. The carousel, which according to the gray-haired attendant has been in the same spot for more than 50 years, features oversized versions of small animals -- rabbits, cats and foxes -- and fraying strings for tying toddlers to their backs.

Until this point I had been focusing on differences in canopy styles, music and menageries. But as we joined the neighborhood's immigrant Muslim and Orthodox Jewish families watching smiling children spin past us in the late afternoon sun, I was struck by my own powerful nostalgia. From the tourist quarters and the bastions of the French elite, to the Place d'Italie, where Vietnamese and Chinese families had gathered near a 1950s-era merry-go-round of helicopters and flying space ships, different communities had been sharing this same pleasure. The carousel is one of the many miracles of Paris: a royal toy transmuted not just into a democratic symbol, but into one of the most enchanting and enduring of our common childhood memories.

Sophie's legs almost reached the ground when it was finally her turn to mount a red-ribboned black kitten. She can always go to the Louvre on a rainy day, I thought. Thanks to this city of carousels, she's learning that culture and history are living entities, and that in Paris children have their own moveable feast.
salon.com | Aug. 31, 1999

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