Carving Paris: How limestone built this city
The Earful Tower: Paris
Oliver Gee
4.8 • 749 Ratings
🗓️ 10 March 2025
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week we chat to stonemason Grégory Philippe in his atelier in the Marais. He reveals the world of limestone, the most important stone in the city.
If you want to find his studio and book one of his stone-carving sessions, you can find it in the heart of the Marais or online here (Address: 12 Rue du Prévôt, 75004).
At the end of the episode, Marie Segura from My Private Paris is in the studio discussing how best to visit her favourite Paris flea market, the Saint Ouen.
In fact, this whole season of The Earful Tower is brought to you by My Private Paris, which is an award-winning travel company creating deluxe itineraries for Paris and beyond. See what they offer here and be sure to let them know that you came from The Earful Tower.
Enjoying what we’re doing here at The Earful Tower and keen to see more? Become a Patreon member here to support it and to discover our exciting extras.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everybody. My name is Oliver G. This is the Earful Tower podcast and today I'm going to |
| 0:05.9 | introduce you to a stone mason. He gives classes on how to carve stone. He's built or at least |
| 0:13.5 | worked on churches. He's worked on buildings in Paris and beyond. And he's a really interesting |
| 0:19.1 | guy. His atelier, his workshop is in a little medieval |
| 0:24.2 | passage, Rue du Privo, in the fourth hour on this one. And we have a chat about how Paris was built, |
| 0:32.8 | his classes, and stone in general. One thing I want to point out is that somewhere in the middle there, we get stuck on the word |
| 0:41.7 | ipasseur, which is just thickness. |
| 0:44.1 | He's talking about the outer wall of something. |
| 0:45.8 | I didn't know what the word was. |
| 0:46.7 | It is thickness or the outer wall in this case. |
| 0:50.2 | But enjoyed the chat. |
| 0:51.2 | This whole episode, in fact, this whole season is brought to you by |
| 0:54.5 | My Private Paris, who do tours of Paris and beyond. And at the end of this episode, you'll hear |
| 1:00.4 | from one of the two founders, Marie Segura, talking specifically about flea markets. So I asked |
| 1:09.2 | her, which she prefers out of Vonv and Santon, the two big flea markets of Paris, |
| 1:14.6 | and she takes a deep dive into one of them and how to visit it. So if you're thinking about |
| 1:19.1 | visiting a flea market next time you're in Paris, the second part of this episode is for |
| 1:24.8 | you. My Private Paris and Gregory Philippe both are linked in the show notes below |
| 1:31.6 | and I hope you visit both of them on your next trip to Paris. Let's get into it. You're listening to |
| 1:36.7 | the Eiffel Tower. My name's Oliver G and here we go. Greg Philippe, Stone Mason, Extraordinaire, welcome to the Earful Tower podcast. |
| 1:49.0 | Thank you very much, Oliver. |
| 1:51.0 | It's a treat to be in here surrounded by limestone and it's already on my fingers and on my clothes. |
... |
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