France outside the box - visits, excursions & events

Proposals for private visitors & professionals

Our activities are privileged because they use exceptional personal contacts to explore legendary and contemporary France. As well, as a Franco-American social historian and long-time resident of Paris, I'd like to show you this fascinating country through my eyes.

•Version française : voir haut de page

•Special service: interpreters - or troubleshooters?

: Member, Office of Tourism

We take you beyond postcard images...

: Our programs are as original as this view.

...to present the legendary Paris with imagination...

...and reveal the little-known as well

: Guidebooks mention this poetic place, omitting to state that one needs an entry code to go in. We have it - and have promised to guard it as jealously as the inhabitants do.

"Privileged Entries into France" (or PEF) is a non-profit organization dedicated to showing

French culture's depth, uniqueness and (often) fraternity

We provide insiders' access to its celebrated aspects: the worlds of elegance, cuisine and wines, art history, châteaux, landscaping... We give fresh views of Paris's world-known monuments and explore legendary neighborhoods - as well as places that guidebooks don't know. Our excursions combine the publicized and the private. Reflecting our roots as an artists' association, we obtain visits to galleries, private collections and artists' studios and produce soirées of most kinds of music....

plus original shows through which performers look back to their heritage and renew it.

In another departure from classic tourism we delve into Paris as the starting-point of revolutions, and explore the contributions of religious, ethnic and national minorities.

We show a country whose past is remarkable and whose present is infinitely diverse.

A personal network is at these "privileged entries" core

•The artist

: Private concert in a Parisian salon, lent because we have known the hosts for years.

Our collaborators are specialists. Most work with us alone, to share their knowledge with a public with which they feel in harmony.

Another strength is presenting France's planet-shaking history

: Nine Parisian revolutions suceeded in seizing power, and riots have been innumerable.

That's my personal imput. History can gives us a grasp of the present, at least if we question a number of "official versions" of the past. We can decode as a might a detective, discovering too the drama, passion and grandeur of the past.

The excellent cost-quality ratio comes from our origins and experience

: An artist, whose drawings you will see here again, recalls our events' conviviality.

PEF was founded in 2002. But its roots go back to 1985, to an association that organized more than 800 visits, excursions, weekends and musical soirées, in Paris and elsewhere in France.

We now reach out to a wider public by a choice of those events.

Useful pages

•For more on our approach, please click here.

•If you organize for groups, here.

(Most activities work for private visitors and groups both.)

•How we began and why we're a non-profit is explained here...

•How we differ from agencies (and work with them), here...

•Our network, here, here and here...

•Our fees here, with price examples here (Franco-Americans, we're aware of the low dollar.)

We update our suggestions...

by following our artists, musicians and specialists, by seeking new talent and by continuing to explore.

Please take your time!

The packaged does not require depth. Going beyond it does. That's one reason why these pages are as detailed.

France's civilization has been cultivated, brilliant - and sometimes ferocious. Of course it is changing. But despite colossal pressures toward standardization, it is keeping its soul.

That is what this site and our activities begin to explore.