One morning this spring, I found myself sitting in a place where the silence seemed so extraordinary, so far from the normal riotous cacophony of Paris, that it felt like being shut away from real life.

Now and again you could hear the chime of a golden clock, a faint footstep on carpet, or a bird chirping in the perfectly-kept gardens that stretched out beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows. Whatever might be happening outside, here it felt as though one was perfectly muffled and cocooned; wrapped in several layers of metaphorical cotton wool and removed from it all.



I was sitting in the French president’s office at the Élysée palace.

That morning in the Salon Doré — the gilded “golden” study where French presidents make the finishing touches to their speeches at a huge 19th-century desk – the Socialist president François Hollande was in the final days of his term. He was taking questions about the future of the EU from me and a handful of European newspaper correspondents, sitting around a small table in the corner of the room.

The Élysee presidential palace has been described as a ‘gilded cage’. Photograph: Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images

Afterwards, in a marble corridor, I chatted about French radio stations with an adviser. I guessed the adviser would tune into France Culture, the country’s most highbrow public service station upon waking. “Oh no,” he said. “I listen to popular radio shows because it gives you an idea what people are thinking.”



The 365-room Élysée palace is twice the size of the US White House - some refer to the French president’s residence and workplace as a kind of gilded cage. How much can you really know about what people are thinking from behind its high walls, I wondered to myself.

A few weeks ago, I sat down at the Élysée palace with the new president Emmanuel Macron, the “neither right nor left” newcomer to politics who beat far-right candidate Marine Le Pen to become France’s youngest modern leader in May, promising to blow apart the old political order and “transform” the country.

Ushered onto the patio in the Élysée garden, overlooking the lawns and flowerbeds, I waited for Macron with a few other journalists from European papers. It was a scorching day, and we sat around a small table under a parasol.

The new president likes to tightly control all his communications, and it seemed telling that he chose to hold the interview – his first since the election – outside. This way, we were conveniently at arm’s length, politely kept away from his office where we would no doubt have craned our necks, trying to spot any changes from the Hollande era.

A butler in a white bow tie loudly announced: “The president of the Republic!”, advisers hastily stood up, and the 39-year-old Macron appeared – almost regally – from the patio doors. “I’d love a coffee, who else would love a coffee?” he said, for a moment slipping into the studied casual manner of his time as a candidate, before his face took on his new presidential demeanour and he solemnly answered our questions.



The challenges of covering Macron’s presidency for journalists are clear. Macron knows what it’s like to be stuck in an ivory tower — for two years, he had his own garden-facing office at the Élysée as deputy chief of staff to Hollande. “Of course power isolates,” he told an interviewer on the campaign trail, arguing that he would not let it happen to him. But he also knows how to take advantage of the isolation the Elysée offers, particularly when it comes to controlling his media image.

He does not subscribe, as other presidents have, to regular off-the-record chats with political journalists and has banned leaks from ministers. Instead, Macron relies on his own close-knit communications team – to the point where his recent guided tour of the historic military complex at Les Invalides with US president Donald Trump wasn’t covered by a TV news camera, but by his own team’s live-stream, broadcast via Facebook.



Macron seeks to style himself as a distant leader above the fray, a haughty man of few words, making the old saying that a French president is a kind of elected republican monarch, as relevant as ever. His approach contrasts with Hollande and his failed attempt to be a “Mr Normal”.

Former French president François Hollande, right, had a more informal attitude towards journalists than his successor has taken. Photograph: Bertrand Langlois/AFP/Getty Images

Hollande was constantly chatting to journalists and inviting them in but he also, paradoxically, never managed to get across a clear message about his plans for the nation. Macron wants to tie up each phrase, monitor each word; he wants no ambiguity.

When he cancelled the traditional Bastille day TV interview this month, in which presidents are questioned by journalists, one Élysée source explained that Macron’s “complex” thought processes didn’t lend themselves to that type of exercise. It’s not certain if this strategy will persist. Macron’s proposed changes to French labour laws, pensions, housing benefits, spending cuts, and the ongoing pressure to bring down France’s mass-unemployment could mean he opts for more exchanges with journalists to explain policy, particularly after his popularity dipped this month in two polls.

“He might soon find he needs to talk to us to explain his thought process,” said one political journalist, more in hope than certainty.

In the meantime, Macron prefers to make speeches. But imagery is key, and not just the “action-man” photographs such as being winched into a nuclear submarine from a helicopter.

French president, Emmanuel Macron, right, drives an electric golf car with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in the garden of the Versailles Palace. Photograph: Alexei Nikolsky/AP

Macron is also keen to use the backdrops of French palaces, the bricks and mortar that convey power. When he held talks with a Trump in his golden, gilded office at the Élysée or drove the Russian leader Vladimir Putin around the grounds of the sumptuous Palace of Versailles in an electric golf car, he was sending a message about the grandeur of France, his own leadership and his drive to boost French standing in the world.

“Beautiful building,” Trump quipped when he visited Macron at the Élysée this month. The new French president smiled, as if he wasn’t daunted by the pressures of the gilded cage.