Joan of Arc
This year France is celebrating the 600th anniversary of Jeanne d’Arc, known as the Pucelle d’Orléans, or the Maid of Orléans. So where can one learn more about this iconic French figure?
- Visit her native village, Domrémy-la-Pucelle in the region of Lorraine in Eastern France. There, you can roam through the family home where she was born in 1412 and visit the church where she was baptized. The museum in Domrémy is dedicated to her life and times.
- In the city of Orléans, where as a young girl she famously repelled English invaders during the Hundred Years War, visit the Centre Jeanne d’Arc which houses a huge collection of documents relating to her.
In the city of Rouen in Normandy, Joan of Arc was condemned for heresy and burned at the stake by the English occupiers of that city, in 1431. Here you can visit several sites commemorating the heroine: the Pucelle’s Tower where she was imprisoned before her trial, the Boideldieu Bridge where her ashes were scattered into the Seine, and the flower garden at the Place du Vieux-Marché which now marks the place where she died.
- For armchair travelers curious about the French heroine, sources abound. Just published this year is the 1,000-pageJeanne d’Arc, Histoire et Dictionnaire, as well as a fictionalized biography by well-known French author Max Gallo. Numerous biographies have been published in English as well as French, including those by Régine Pernoud, Andrew Lang and even Mark Twain.
- Joan of Arc has been the subject of many films, as well, including the 2005 documentary entitled Joan of Arc: Child of War Soldier of God, the 1948 movie about Joan of Arc starring Ingrid Bergman, and the classic silent film made in 1928 by Carl Dreyer: La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc.
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