ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a number of distinctively French expressions of place and space, using the sites to illuminate cultural practices which help define the evolving nature of the national identity. Each French city, town and village has basic topographical features which are also cultural sites: church, town hall, war memorial, public park or garden. Physical place and imaginative space are closely related, and Pierre Nora’s concept of sites of memory neatly encapsulates their proximity. Place de la Bastille and Place de la Republique, to take an obvious double-example, are clearly more than just the starting and finishing points of left-wing marches in Paris since the Popular Front and before. Public culture does not mean collective cultural activities such as concert-going, gallery-gazing, football playing or taking part in political demonstrations but rather the public spaces and places where such activities might be carried out.
