“I’m sorry for the rain!” is the first thing my tour guide, Doina Craciun, says when we meet just steps away from the Place de la Concorde in Paris. It’s been raining nonstop since arriving in the French capital, and I look and feel like a wet chien. However, my mood changes quickly upon meeting Craciun, who is one of the co-founders of Queer Tours France.
Originally from Romania, Craciun speaks at least five languages and is an expert in French art and history. She tells me that while there are numerous French history tours in Paris, there wasn’t one that focused on the city’s rich queer history. So she and her colleagues started their own. The company offers about a half dozen queer-focused tours, and the one I’m on is a version of the “Highlights of Paris: LGBTQ+ Perspectives Tour.”
We start at the Place de la Concorde, a famous square housing the Luxor obelisk. As Craciun tells me, this square is where French nobility and aristocracy became “shorter” during the French Revolution. (It’s the execution spot of Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI, among many others.) The obelisk, which reaches 75 feet tall in the Paris sky and looks right down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, was used in 1993 by the famed HIV/AIDS activist group ACT-UP Paris. The group covered the obelisk with a giant pink condom to mark World AIDS Day.
It’s this integration of Paris’s cultural history blended with the stories of the LGBTQ+ community that make Queer Tours France so unique. Over the next three hours and 15,000 steps, Craciun weaves a fascinating tale of Royal Gardens, where gay cruising was safe from the prying eyes of the Paris police, lavish parties thrown by queer royals and openly gay and gender nonconforming ambassadors. Of course, there’s talk of Napoleon Bonaparte, who wasn’t a fan of queer people but was even less of a fan of the Catholic Church.
We passed the apartment where Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette lived and I learned that the bisexual writer had a long relationship with Mathilde de Morny, the Marquise de Belbeuf, a masculine of center French aristocrat and actor. When the two starred in Rêve d’Égypte at the Moulin Rouge in 1907 and shared a kiss, the audience nearly caused a riot and the relationship suffered from the public attention.
These are just some of the queer stories hidden beneath Parisian history.
We stop our tour along the Seine, where it connects to Le Marais, the historically queer neighborhood in Paris. I asked Craciun about a lesbian bar I attempted to go to the evening before but couldn’t find. She lets me know it closed during the early days of the pandemic but promises to send me the addresses of queer spaces that are still open and hold their own histories. (She follows through immediately.)
If you are traveling to Paris, be sure to check out Queer Tours France. Not only will you get a detailed and fascinating look at French history and culture, but you’ll also be privy to insights and stories unavailable on other tours. For a complete list of tours offered, visit queertoursfrance.com.