According to the Official Korean Tourism Board:

After travelling 10 km along the lakeside road from Cheongpyeong Dam, in the direction of Namiseom Island, you will come across a cluster of white, exotic buildings on the left-hand hillside. From its outward appearance, it would appear to be a village that belongs on the Mediterranean coast or in a pastoral area of the Piedmont Alps. This is Petite France, a French cultural village set in the Korean countryside! Petite France serves as both a French cultural village and a youth training facility (Goseong Youth Training Center), and consists of 16 French-style buildings where visitors can lodge and experience French food, clothing, and household culture.

The concept of Petite France encapsulates ‘flowers, stars, and the Little Prince.’ The village contains a memorial hall dedicated to Saint-Exupery, the author of the celebrated French novel, Le Petit Prince (1943) and as such it is called the Little Prince theme park. It also has a gallery displaying sculptures and paintings of le coq gaulois (the Gallic rooster), the national symbol of France; Orgel House where a 200-year-old music box plays a sweet melody; a shop that sells herbal and aromatic products; a souvenir shop; and many other locales where you can experience French culture. The village can accommodate up to 200 visitors with 34 guest rooms that hold four to ten people each. Enjoy the marionette experience and hear percussion instruments from around the world, and also enjoy soap bubble experience.

Soap bubbles?

The exhibition at Sao Paulo’s OCA museum highlights the voyages and lessons learnt by the character dreamed up by Antoine de Saint-Exupery in 1942, two years before his death at age 44.

Displays include a full-scale mock-up of the author’s plane crashed in the Libyan desert, and a reconstruction of part of the Little Prince’s tiny planet, complete with his rose companion and, overhead, spinning 3-D planetoids featured in the famous book.

The OCA is located in Parque Ibirapuera, in a space age building designed by Oscar Niemeyer and is a must see, even if you don’t want to go inside.

According to the Associated Press, “Brazil’s affection for the naive character who discovered human frailties and values was evident in the crowds who came out in force for the show.”

“I saw his heart, his drawings,” said a wide-eyed two-year-old, Eduardo Carnaval, as he enthused to his mother about one computerized attraction where digitized birds flocked around him as he walked.

“I’m 39 and I’m here again to see that all again, that magic,” said another, older fan, Fabio Seelig, visiting with his girlfriend.

Mariangela Nicolellis, having a look with other friends aged in their 40s, added that it was a tradition for Brazil’s innumerable beauty queens to cite “The Little Prince” as their favorite book, to show their culture, their curiosity and their connection to their inner child.

But the exhibition had echoes in South America as well.

Apart from being one of the prime events of the Year of France in Brazil cultural festival now winding down, the show — put together with input from Saint-Exupery’s estate — also shone the spotlight on the aviator-author who created such an enduring character.

Apart from his literary works, Saint-Exupery has been lionized in Brazil for his part in pioneering Aeropostale — the region’s first air postal network — for which he flew.

Archive footage showed the biplanes used back then: flimsy contraptions barely clearing the snowcapped Andes, reminders of a time when pilots regularly risked their lives to maintain contact between Europe and South America.

“Brazilians remain very impressed by Saint-Exupery, as if he were a hero — or even a superhero,” explained the exhibition’s curator, Sheila Dryzun.

Among the fictional creations and real-life artifacts making up the collection is Saint-Exupery’s bracelet, recovered in 1998 in waters off southern France.

France’s most famed aviator-writer perished there when his plane went down while on a World War II reconnaissance mission.

His legacy, though, lives on in the wonderment and imagination of children around the planet who have read his book, and seen themselves reflected in the ever-questioning altruism of The Little Prince.

One

(Media-Newswire.com) – Paris – To mark the 50th anniversary of Asterix & Obelix, Gameloft®, a world leader in downloadable video games, presents a mobile adaptation of the famous comic book created by Goscinny and Uderzo with the launch of the game Asterix & Obelix Encounter Cleopatra.

Asterix & Obelix Encounter Cleopatra is a platforming adventure game inspired by one of the most memorable stories of the comic.

All the ingredients that made the comic a success!

You’ll join the two Gauls in the land of the pharaohs for their most dangerous adventures. Edifis, an old friend of the druid Getafix, needs help. Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt, is in one of her legendary foul moods. Julius Caesar keeps provoking her. According to him, the glory of the Romans is greater than that of the Egyptians, who haven’t built anything since the Pyramids!

Irked by his arrogance, Cleopatra decides to prove to Julius Caesar that the Egyptian civilization has not lost its greatness by building him the world’s most beautiful palace in only three months! To do this, she calls upon the architect Edifis. Worried about the short time frame, Edifis counts on the help of his friends from Gaul, and especially their magic potion! If Edifis cannot complete his work on schedule, he will be thrown to the sacred crocodiles! To make matters worse, the royal architect Artifis, none too happy about the queen’s choice, schemes against Edifis. Jealous that he wasn’t chosen to complete the project, he plans to do everything in his power to stop Edifis at the hands of the Romans.

An action-adventure game spanning 11 levels

It’s your turn to play! Switch between Asterix and Obelix to overcome various challenges throughout all 11 levels in this platforming adventure game. But be careful, this dynamic duo must work together on screen as they do in the comic book: make sure your two characters cooperate to the best of their abilities.

To celebrate the Gauls’ 50th anniversary, Gameloft is launching a mobile adventure worthy of their international success. The quality of the graphics faithfully reproduce the images of the Egyptian adventure. Gameloft also offers gameplay with two views: one is a side view, ideal for platforming sequences; the other is a top-down view, perfect for puzzle sequences.

This game will enchant fans of the comic book and platforming gamers alike.

Availability

Asterix and Obelix Encounter Cleopatra the game will be available download on October 25 from your operator’s mobile portal and on Gameloft’s Internet site at www.gameloft.com. The suggested retail price is 3 to 5 euros.

The Little Prince tells the story of a philosophical little boy who hops from planet to planet and acquires simple truths along the way. Yoshikazu Yasuhiko’s once developed the concept for a 1980s anime TV series – not the greatest work of art. I posted a “chapter” of it from YouTube below.

Let’s hope that the new attempt will offer more…

The harbour in Erquy, which claims that it is the inpsiration for the village depicted in the Asterix books, is shown next to the harbour as depicted in "Le domaine des dieux" (The Mansion of the Gods) Photo: AFP

According to a variety of online sources, the festivities around Asterix’s 50th birthday have been spoiled by sqabbling between French villages over who was the inspiration for the warrior’s hamlet of indomitable Gauls.

Asterix’s creators, the late writer Rene Goscinny and illustrator Albert Uderzo, have never given hints as to which village inspired them in the depiction of the hamlet in a forest by the sea besieged by Caesar’s legions.

But people living in Erquy on the Breton peninsula’s rocky northern coast, insist that the village on the first page of every Asterix book, focused on by a microscope, shares geographical similarities to their picturesque fishing port.

“You see these three rocks? They’re the same as those you see under the magnifying glass!” the Telegraph quoted Jean-Pierre Allain, a retired bookseller and passionate amateur archaeologist, as saying.

The other clue to support the claim is a lighthouse on the jetty which reportedly looks like the “Caeser’s camp” on page four of Asterix’s 1971 adventure “The Mansions of the Gods”.

Manuel Mendes, a stonemason whose girth apparently resembles that of Obelix, Asterix’s huge comrade, said: “Asterix’s village is here.”

Among the other villages, where people have made similar claims are the one in nearby Normandy and one 285 miles away in the Calais region.

The anniversary is expected to be hugely celebrated in France, and will be marked with the launch of the 34th book about the first century BC hero.

More details to follow.

In the meantime, we have copied in a great article on the Mighty Gaul’s birthday celebration from the Independent, a UK paper.

By Rob Sharp on October 14, 2009:

A map of France is cracked by a Roman standard driven into the ground. To one side a magnifying glass focuses on a “Gaulish village” surrounded by four Roman outposts: Aquarium, Totorum, Laudanum and Compendium. Who would have thought – given such adverse circumstances – that one of that village’s most famous denizens, namely, Asterix the Gaul, would live to reach the grand old age of 50?

But on 29 October, the tiny settlement’s shrewd, miniature protector – along with Obelix, his menhir-sized mate, and various neighbours – will celebrate their half century. To mark the occasion, the books’ publisher, Orion, is organising an exhibition showcasing some of the original Asterix artwork at the only surviving Gallo-Roman monument in the whole of France (in Bourgogne – looking at the map at the beginning of an Asterix book, that’s almost in Lutetia territory, or Luxembourg). Also celebrating the birthday is a new book of short stories, Asterix and Obelix’s Birthday: The Golden Book, published next Thursday.

Asterix began life in 1959 as a serial in the French comics periodical Pilote. The comics were written by René Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo, by that stage a veteran comic-writing partnership of seven years. When Goscinny died in 1977, Uderzo continued to write the books himself – and we’re very glad he did. His inventive, bacchanalian characterisations of gluttonous Romans and their wily opposition has managed to wow successive generations of school children (and their potion-swilling ways inspiring at least one Disney cartoon, Gummi Bears).

My own introduction to Asterix came in the late 1980s. Asterix gradually seeped, rather than crashed into my consciousness. There was always one or two of Goscinny and Uderzo’s books – Asterix and the Normans, Asterix and the Big Fight, Asterix and the Cultural Stereotype (maybe not the last one) – knocking around the school library. With the annuals’ healthy length and quirky one-liners – despite some parts being lost in translation – they were always an unusual, if fun choice. You could almost split the class into two halves, those who liked the unrelenting slapstick of Asterix, and those who liked the more intelligent, more formal plot structure of the Gaul’s Belgian competitor-with-a-quiff, Tintin.

The proof, however, is in the boar’s tripe. Asterix has now been translated into over 100 languages, sold 325 million copies of 33 books, spawned eight animated adventures and three live action films (how did Gérard Depardieu ever live his turn as Obelix down?). The unsung heroes, though, as far as British audiences are concerned, have to be Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge, who have translated the books into English. Without their work, there would be no “by the gods,” or “by toutatis”, just two of many catchphrases they have helped popularise. Altogether now: “These Romans are crazy!” Rob Sharp

The National Museum of the Middle Ages (Musée National du Moyen Âge), also known as the Cluny Museum (Musee de Cluny), is the perfect place for the opening events as it is a famous institution that displays a magnificent collection of medieval art in a 15th-century Gothic mansion. As an added bonus, underneath the museum are the ruins of ancient Roman baths.

The Musée National du Moyen Age is housed in the Hôtel de Cluny, one of only two remaining medieval homes in Paris (the other is the Hôtel de Sens in the Marais). The building was founded by the rich and powerful 15th-century abbot of Cluny Abbey, Jacques d’Amboise, who constructed his mansion over the ruins of a Roman bath.

In addition to abbots, the Hôtel de Cluny hosted other notable residents, including Mary Tudor, widow of Louis XII, beginning in 1515. Seized during the French Revolution, the Cluny was rented in 1833 to Alexandre du Sommerard, an amateur art collector who was fascinated with the Middle Ages. After his death in 1842, the government bought the building and the collection.

For more fun facts about the museum, click here.