The City of Lights

The City of Lights
Part 1

The first serious book I read as a youngster was Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, and it made a profound impression on me. It was because of this book that I decided that when I reached retirement age, I would go visit Paris and see the Bastille for myself. I was sure that just seeing the Bastille would allow me to re-live that fateful day when the old prison was stormed, leading up to the French Revolution that changed all of Europe so dramatically. I just knew that touching the bricks of the repressive building and seeing in my mind’s eye all those Frenchmen clamoring across the bridge into the Bastille would be quite stirring. It would be almost as if I had actually been there on that glorious day, and I knew that I would hear the ringing words Liberté!! Égalité!! Fraternité!! which is some French expression dating back to the late eighteenth century.

Now some people call Paris The City of Lights for some reason I never understood since almost every city I’ve ever seen has lights. But it’s called that by many people, so I’ll use that name as the title of this story of my trip to Paris, which took place during the summer of 2006.

You can’t imagine my excitement when my plane touched down at Orly Airport, which I had previously known only through my adventures with crossword puzzles. Most of the international flights land at Charles DeGaulle Airport nowadays, but I had made special arrangements to get a plane that would take me to Orly. I made sure my camera was loaded with film so I could capture the fervor of the moment when later that day I stood in front of the Bastille in all its glory.

At this point in my life, being no longer married and with my children all grown and out on their own, I didn’t have to scrimp when it came to finances, which is what I had always done before, so I stayed at the Hotel Ritz right in the center of the city. Money simply was no longer the dreaded problem it had always been for as far back as I could remember.

The Hotel Ritz opened in 1898, at a time called La Belle Époque, which is another French expression, this one meaning a period of time from the late nineteenth century up until the start of the Great War in 1914. I was quickly finding out that they use a lot of French expressions in Paris. Here’s what the Ritz looks like on the outside:

http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/6159/hotelritz.jpg

Believe it or not, this building was a private residence when it was built in 1854. I don’t know who would have needed such an elaborate place to live for their everyday existence. You would think that only people on vacation would come to a place like this because when you’re on vacation, splurging would be understandable. But who could live in a place like this for every day of their life?

When the place was turned into a hotel, it came to be associated with opulence, and lots of famous people stayed there. Some of the former visitors of note included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Marlene Dietrich, Rudolph Valentino, and Greta Garbo. My travel agent had told me about all these people when he made the reservation, so I asked the desk clerk if any of them were also checked in at the present moment. He just looked at me kind of funny – like he didn’t understand English or something - but I’m pretty sure the desk clerks there are supposed to speak at least a little bit of English.

Here are some views of the elaborate interior. First a corner of the lobby:

http://www.wedding-queen.de/media/im...aris_lobby.jpg

And another part of the lobby:

http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/6148/ritzlobby.png

Then the dining room:

http://img93.imageshack.us/img93/190...diningroom.jpg

Then a bedroom - and they all look something like this – this isn’t the Napoleonic Suite or anything special like that:

http://image.pegs.com/content/H/H0B/...Z/H0BNZL0J.JPG

Here’s the hotel’s website, if you want to see some more of scenes of their gorgeous furnishings and decorations, or their menus, or if you want to think about checking in tonight:

http://www.ritzparis.com/home_ritz/home.asp?show_all=1

After checking into the hotel and taking a little rest, I stepped out to take a quick look at the area immediately surrounding the Ritz. The hotel is situated next to the Place Vendôme, a square featuring a massive column which was cast from 1,250 Austrian and Russian cannons captured by Napoleon’s army at the Battle of Austerlitz.

Even if you’re not a history buff, you still may remember Austerlitz as one of the grim battles that inspired these lines by Carl Sandburg:

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo,
Shovel them under and let me work.
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg,
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun …

A statue of Napoleon himself stands atop the column:

http://nomm.com/W-ParisPlaceVendome.jpg

Well, at this point I was bursting with anxiety to visit the Bastille and to hear the rallying cry of those who stormed it in A Tale of Two Cities. I had brought the following picture, which was taken by a French photographer on July 14, 1789, so I could tell when I found the right place.

https://jspivey.wikispaces.com/file/view/bastille.jpg

But when I got to where the Bastille was supposed to be, can you believe it wasn’t even there? I don’t know how this could have happened, after all my careful planning. It turns out that the prison was pretty much demolished even before the revolutionary year of 1789 ended - I guess all those screaming Frenchmen were pretty rough on buildings. Anyway, here is what’s now in the place of where the Bastille used to be before it was levelled - a square called Place de Bastille:

http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/6...labastille.jpg

This square features the July Column, which actually has a French name but I’ll just call it the July Column since that is what it means in English anyway. There was another revolution in July of 1830, which is what the column commemorates. This square is used for mass demonstrations such as the one shown in the picture above, which was a protest against cheap wine from California.

At this point, I was terribly upset to find that the Bastille wasn’t even here anymore. After all, it was the whole reason for my making this trip in the first place. I was all set to check out of the Hotel Ritz and go back home on the next plane leaving town, but the desk clerk at the hotel said that there were actually lots of other things to see in the city and that I should stay and not give up so easily.

To help me in my decision, there just happened to be some old movie from the early 1940s running on a screen in the lobby, and it just happened to be at the point where they were playing La Marseillaise, the French national anthem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iYbEPZVVIA

So based on the desk clerk’s advice and the stirring anthem, I decided to stay and check out some of the other sights that were still standing, instead of checking out of the hotel.

Next up: Eiffel Tower, Place de la Concorde, Champs-Élysées, Arc de Triomphe, and the Paris Opéra.

The City of Lights
Part 2

The Eiffel Tower is one of the most recognizable structures in the world, and even my cat Eleanor (that’s her in the upper left corner) knows what it is when she sees a picture of it. There was no great Battle of Eiffel anywhere in France’s glorious military past - its name comes from the man who designed it - Gustave Eiffel. Its height is slightly over 1,000 feet, making it about 81 stories in skyscraper terms. We’ll look at a few pictures first, and then resume discussing the Tower:

The Eiffel Tower during the day:

http://timesonline.typepad.com/photo...ffel_tower.jpg

And at dusk:

http://www.eiffel-tower.us/Eiffel-To...ance-Paris.jpg

From a neighborhood nearby, where you can see some beautiful apartment buildings:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ighborhood.jpg

And from the top of the Tower, you can see just a little of the River Seine in the foreground, and beyond the river you can see the Palais de Chaillot. We’ll discuss both of these in the next episode:

http://markswatzell.com/paris/View%2...el%20Tower.jpg

I have always been reluctant to voice my opinion that I don’t really care that much for the Eiffel Tower, because I thought that maybe I was the only one who thought like this. I was gratified to learn recently that the French novelist Guy de Maupassant said he always hated the Tower. But since he ate lunch in the Tower’s restaurant almost every day, he was asked why he spent so much time there if he loathed the structure so much. I found his answer to be inspirational - he said that eating there gave him the pleasure of being in the only place in Paris where he didn’t have to look at it. My sentiments exactly, but phrased better than I ever could.

The Tower was opened to the public in 1889, on the centennial of the French Revolution. It is said to be the most visited paid monument in the entire world. And speaking of paying to get in, when I was there in 2006, the admission cost for an elevator ride to the top was €9, but that was before Facebook had even been conceived. I hear that these days they have changed their pricing policy, recognizing the place that Facebook has now taken in our society. If you have more than 100 Facebook friends, the admission is now €13, and if you have less than 10 Facebook friends, the admission is €10. Apparently the Tower’s staff feels that people who spend inordinate and crazy amounts of time inviting new Facebook friends and confirming the invitations from others, should be duly penalized for being unable to come up with anything better to do with their time.

The Tower has its own website with lots more information and tours:

http://www.tour-eiffel.fr/teiffel/uk/

The Place de la Concorde, like all of the other places in France, is a public square, just like piazzas in Italy and plazas in Spain. This one happens to be the largest in Paris, but de la Concorde doesn’t mean largest - it’s supposed to represent the relative tranquility that followed the French Revolution. The guillotine was set up here during the Revolution, so it wasn’t until a few years later that the Place got its name. And despite the fact that Napoleon Bonaparte came along very soon after the Revolution and assured that the relative tranquility didn’t last very long, the square has kept its name nonetheless. We’ll go through just a few of the major features you see when you’re in Place de la Concorde.

The Obelisk of Luxor used to mark the entrance to the Luxor Temple, but that was when it was in Egypt. Since it’s now in Paris, it doesn’t mark any temple entrances anymore. However, apparently the Egyptian viceroy gave the obelisk to France in 1829, so it wasn’t like a theft or anything like that. The obelisk is 75 feet high and is made of red granite. A gold-leaf cap was added in 1998, but as far as I’m concerned, they should have found somewhere else to put this gold:

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/678972.jpg

The Hôtel de Crillon and the French Naval Ministry share a prominent portion of the Place, sitting side by side. The hotel still operates today, and the hotel staff points out that Marie Antoinette used to spend many of her afternoons there, and even took piano lessons in this hotel. When the Nazis occupied Paris in World War II, this was where they made their headquarters, so the building still retains the stench some 65 years later. This photo shows the hotel on the left and the naval ministry on the right – I hope you haven't already forgotten about the obelisk:

http://cliophoto.clionautes.org/gall...s/concorde.jpg

And a little closer, from a different angle, so you can see one of the many fountains:

http://www.astro.umd.edu/~avondale/e...3/ADSC0032.JPG

The Palais Bourbon is the home of the French National Assembly, which is like the House of Representatives in the United States. This of course means there is considerable confusion here, and lots of the people who “work” in the building don’t know if they are coming or going. Nonetheless, just like their counterparts in the USA, at least they have a beautiful building in which to spout their nonsense:

http://www.adam-carr.net/mainphotofo.../concorde1.jpg

Avenue des Champs-Élysées is one of the premier streets of the world, and the French call it the most beautiful avenue on the planet. It connects the Place de la Concorde, which we just looked at above, with the Arc de Triomphe, which we’ll check out in a minute. Some of the avenue is bordered by gardens, and other parts by tasteful buildings. It seems that keeping the avenue from being overrun by tacky merchants is becoming quite a battle these days, and I hope the merchants who find it necessary to display their utter lack of taste, can find some other street on which to do just that.

Le Fouquet’s, a restaurant and one of the more dignified establishments:

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/925700.jpg

The avenue as seen from the top of the Arc de Triomphe:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3225/...2702c6b2_b.jpg

The view toward the Arc:

http://www.bigfoto.com/europe/paris/...sees_paris.jpg

And in contrast to the scenes above, an interesting and less cluttered view before the arrival of the automobile:

http://www.runela.net/books/WLRG/_im...%20Elysees.jpg

A painting by Antoine Blanchard entitled Champs-Élysées:

http://paris.bypainters.com/8eme/pic...ps_elysees.jpg

The Arc de Triomphe was built to commemorate all who served in French military campaigns, but especially those who fought under Napoleon Bonaparte in ravaging most of Europe for about sixteen years. It was commissioned to begin in 1806, but it wasn’t completed until thirty years later. The arch is modeled after the Arch of Titus in Rome, and is 162 feet high, 150 feet wide. It is large enough that a Great War vintage biplane could fly through the arch.

http://members.shaw.ca/mloukko2/images/109-0948_CRW.jpg

Here it is the Arc as seen from the top of the Eiffel Tower, a few miles away:

http://freelargephotos.com/000190_l.jpg

And a little closer, but still from an elevated position:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...riomphe001.jpg

The Paris Opéra is also known as the Palais Garnier, or as the Opéra de Paris, or as the Opéra Garnier, or as the Académie Nationale de Musique, so it ranks high in the list of structures with multiple names. It’s built in the Beaux-Arts style, and is regarded as one of the architectural masterpieces of its time. I personally don’t know why that can’t be extended to a masterpiece of all time. It opened in 1875 as part of the reconstruction of the Second Empire by Emperor Napoleon III. This building was the inspiration for the novel The Phantom of the Opera, upon which a few musicals have been based.

The magnificent exterior, first in 1900, from a postcard:

http://smarthistory.org/assets/image...circa_1900.jpg

And in our time:

http://www.earthscene.com/images/paris-opera1.jpg

And a little closer:

http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~haakon/...-%20opera5.jpg

A side view of the exterior – and note that very few buildings have fronts that look this good:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/132/3...c57911ec_o.jpg

And it gets even better when you go inside. First the Grand Foyer:

http://freelargephotos.com/000242_l.jpg

http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/5...parisopera.jpg

The ceiling of the Grand Foyer:

http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/6232/23131442.jpg

Note that the Grand Foyer is actually much larger than you can tell from the previous picture, as evidenced by the fact that it’s sometimes used as a ballroom, as shown in this watercolor from Luigi Loir:

http://trinityhousefineart.net/artim..._l%27opera.jpg

And the Grand Escalier, or Grand Staircase:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...d_Escalier.jpg

http://myvalleychurch.org/files/Wors...ra%20house.jpg

A detail of the railing and artwork above the Grand Escalier:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...scalier_01.jpg

And the performance hall itself – with all the magnificence leading into the hall, it’s almost hard to remember that this building’s purpose is to put on performances of operas and ballets:

http://mikebm.files.wordpress.com/20...nier-paris.jpg

http://www.andreas-praefcke.de/carth...s_opera_32.jpg

A closer view at some balcony sections:

http://freelargephotos.com/000241_l.jpg

And here’s a clip of Luciano Pavarotti in Paris, although this peformance is outdoors, rather than inside the opera house. After his last Vincerò!!, you can see the lit-up Eiffel Tower in the background:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUKgN-nC93c

Here’s a link to the English translation of the Paris Opéra’s website:

http://translate.google.com/translat...z%3D1W1ADRA_en

The Thomas Jefferson Building of the U.S. Library of Congress is patterned after the Paris Opéra, particularly its façade and Great Hall. This Library of Congress building is described in my piece about Washington, DC, called A Capital Tour, which is also in this forum. Just as a sample, here’s the Great Hall in the Thomas Jefferson Building:

http://myloc.gov/_assets/ExhibitSpac..._East_725.Jpeg

Next up: the River Seine, Cathédrale de Notre Dame, Palais de Chaillot, and Jardin des Tuileries.

Here’s a suggestion for getting the maximum effect from the pictures – none of which I took – they’re all on the internet. You have to read the entire suggestion before you start doing anything, or you’ll get yourself stuck and won’t know how to get out of it. The F11 key at the top of your keyboard is a toggle switch that will bounce you back and forth between full screen and normal view. If you hit it once, while viewing a picture, it will give you a full screen display, which makes the pictures much better. But you have to hit F11 a second time to return to a normal display, so you can then close the current picture and return to the story. Don’t hit F11 until you understand that you will have to hit F11 a second time to get out of the full screen display mode. Try that approach – again, hit F11 once for full screen, and then hit F11 a second time to return to normal display.

Or even better, but it might depend on your computer’s operating system and your browser, so keep the above method in mind, just in case this doesn’t work on your computer. After hitting F11 the first time and going to full screen, when you’re ready to close the full screen picture, move your cursor to the top right corner of your screen. The top toolbar should re-appear – at least it does on my machine – and you can close the picture by clicking on the X in the top right corner. In this way, you don’t even have to bother with hitting F11 every time – at least until you’re finished with the part of the story you’ve been reading. You keep getting full screen displays, which you can close by positioning your cursor to the top of your screen and making the toolbar re-appear.

Sometimes it takes a few seconds for the toolbar to re-appear, so don't give up too quickly. But if you wait a while and the toolbar doesn't re-appear, just hit F11 again.

The City of Lights
Part 3

The River Seine runs right through Paris, and offers some inspiring scenery. There are 37 bridges over the Seine just within Paris itself, adding to the delight of many of the sights. Let’s look at a few scenes of the Seine. Here’s one right next to the Eiffel Tower, but you will note a tourist cruise boat cluttering up the scene:

http://spaceboyz.net/~astro/astroblo...-1/paris-3.jpg

Here is the Pont Neuf (New Bridge), which was completed in 1607. This is in contrast with the Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge) in Florence from my story A Grand Tour, if you ever looked at that, or if you can remember that far back:

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/5304704.jpg

And a little closer:

http://www.bigfoto.com/europe/paris/pont-neuf.jpg

The Pont Neuf at night:

http://www.spirit-of-paris.com/wp-co...t_of_paris.jpg

Another beautiful bridge is the Pont Alexandre III, named for Tsar Alexander III of Russia who helped finalize the Franco-Russian Alliance in 1892. It was completed in 1900, with the Tsar’s son Nicholas II having laid the foundation stone in 1896. Nicholas II would go on to be the Tsar who led Russia into the Great War in 1914 and later abdicated during the early stages of the Russian Revolution.

You can appreciate the beauty of this bridge in the following two views:

http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/562...ridgeparis.jpg

http://freepages.family.rootsweb.anc...is/024_21a.jpg

Here is the Seine at night, with a former palace called La Conciergerie in the background:

http://img129.imageshack.us/img129/5629/dsc03548rg9.jpg

Here’s another nighttime view of La Conciergerie with the Seine – it’s best viewed with a widescreen monitor, but of course it will show on a regular monitor – just not quite as dramatically:

http://www.naturepixel.com/conciergerie_panoramique.jpg

Here’s a view of the river with Cathédrale de Notre Dame in background – we’ll see Notre Dame in more detail after we finish our discussion of the Seine.

http://www.spirit-of-paris.com/wp-co...ur%20seine.jpg

A view from atop Notre Dame above the river shows beautiful old Paris, the river and some of its bridges, as well as a cluster of modern structures in the distant background:

http://www.spirit-of-paris.com/wp-co...%20defense.jpg

We’ll just take a brief sidetrack from our visit to focus momentarily on a few of the modern buildings that appear in the distance in the picture above:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ense_Paris.jpg

In the closeup just above, taken in a district called La Défense, the more prominent building on the right has the distinction of being patterned after a tin can, probably from a Chef Boyardee product. This makes the building about as disgustingly tasteless as you can get - in more ways than one.

And in what is supposed to be the twentieth century counterpart of the Arc de Triomphe, we have this oh-so-creative atrocity which must be someone’s idea of a practical joke:

http://www.summitcds.org/moneta/imag...ande_Arche.jpg

But enough of the modern architecture - let’s get back to what makes Paris what it is - and what makes visitors swarm to this city.

The Cathédrale de Notre Dame is one of the most famous churches in the world. It is situated on an island in the Seine - an island called Île de la Cité. It is the headquarters of the Archbishop of Paris. It’s built in the Gothic style of architecture, and you may have heard of it in connection with Victor Hugo’s great novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Construction began in 1163 and most of the major structural elements were completed by 1345. There are five bells, with the largest weighing over 13 tons. While these bells used to be rung manually, now they are rung by electric motors. Hence it is unlikely that anyone will ever take Quasimodo’s place in the history of this institution - electric motors somehow lack the passion of human beings. Well, at least some human beings - of course there are lots of human beings that have considerably less passion than electric motors.

The cathedral was badly desecrated during the wild times of the French Revolution, along with lots of other institutions of Paris, but all of that damage has since been repaired. The cathedral has been the site of many historical moments, such as the coronation of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1804 - shown in this oil painting by Jacques-Louis David:

http://www.wga.hu/art/d/david_j/4/405david.jpg

We’ll now take a look at some of the sights. First, the southern side, which you see from the river:

http://shakunharris.files.wordpress....2/j0400445.jpg

The eastern side:

http://www.tomsguidetoparis.com/TGTP.../notredame.jpg

And a little closer:

http://www.sightseeingtours.co.uk/im...e_de_Paris.jpg

The western façade - note the three portals providing access to the building, at the bottom of the picture:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ame-facade.jpg

Here’s a beautiful detail showing the statues of saints on the western façade:

http://freelargephotos.com/000208_l.jpg

A nice view from the east on the river at night:

http://www.wg3too.net/Scenic/1280x10...,%20France.jpg

This gargoyle scared me so much I almost fell off the building, which would have been a disaster - for me at least - because you can see it is pretty high in the air:

http://www.bigfoto.com/europe/paris/...e-dame-9iw.jpg

An interior view of the main sanctuary:

http://www.freewebs.com/keping/KPA/A...or1-Mass-W.jpg

Here’s a magnificent stained glass - called The Rose Window:

http://freelargephotos.com/100713_l.jpg

The part of the cathedral’s website dealing with its art and history, where you can get a lot more information on Notre Dame if you wish:

http://www.notredamedeparis.fr/-Cath...t-and-history-

If you have a good memory, you will recall that Palais de Chaillot was one of the buildings we saw in Part 2 from the top of the Eiffel Tower. Well, actually, even if you don’t have a good memory, it’s still one of the beautiful structures we saw from way up there. It was designed for the 1937 World Exhibition, the last occasion for which Paris showcased the French colonies overseas. At that point in time, France was second only to England in colonial holdings. The building houses several museums and is an architectural masterpiece. To refresh your memory, here’s what it looks like from a little closer than our previous sighting from the top of the Eiffel Tower - note that being of 1937 vintage, its architecture is a lot more modern than most of what we’ll be seeing in Paris - in fact, this is the most modern thing we’ll visit. If you want to see newer stuff, you’ll have to find it on your own.

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/1693360.jpg

Here’s what it looked like all decked out for the 150th anniversary of of the French Revolution:

http://accel7.mettre-put-idata.over-...--Keystone.jpg

And a view of the fountain during what must be a solar eclipse:

http://www.alipfrance.com/img/Trocadero.jpg

Jardin des Tuileries means Garden of Tuileries, and this lovely garden stands between the Seine, the Place de la Concorde, both of which we’ve already touched on, and the Louvre, which we’ll visit in the next episode. There used to be a palace with this same name – Tuileries – but it was demolished in 1871. There is talk of rebuilding it some day, but this hasn’t happened yet, so we’ll concentrate on the garden part of this area.

Here’s a view in which you might recognize a couple of sights we’ve already discussed elsewhere:

http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/8...stuileries.jpg

And another familiar sight in the background:

http://www.gardenvisit.com/assets/ma...eries_600x.jpg

The garden adjoining the Colbert Wing of the Louvre:

http://www.luggagecake.com/wp-conten...the_louvre.jpg

A painting by Camille Pissaro, entitled Tuileries on a Rainy Day:

http://cotswoldbookseller.files.word...ather-1899.jpg

Next up: The Louvre, Les Invalides, the Grand Palais, and the Petit Palais.

The City of Lights
Part 4

The official name of the most famous and most visited museum in the world is Musée du Louvre but everyone seems to shorten this to simply the Louvre. It is not, however, the largest museum in the world, as that distinction belongs to the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The Louvre opened as a museum in 1793, shortly after the French Revolution.

The museum is housed in a complex of magnificent buildings near the Seine. These buildings are divided into what’s called the Old Louvre and the New Louvre, each of which has several wings. The New Louvre isn’t all that new, as it dates from the nineteenth century, so the Old Louvre came long even before that. We’ll go over some of this briefly but we won’t get too bogged down in the names of all the wings because that can quickly become quite tedious in itself. At the end of this overview on the Louvre, I’ll point out the museum’s website. If you’re interested in more information on the individual buildings, you can explore all that on your own, and you can take several virtual tours of the museum’s displays. I think it’s quite interesting, but not everybody would agree.

We’ll look at the Cour Carrée, which dates back to Louis XIV’s time, as he lived in the Louvre Palace until he departed in 1678 for even nicer quarters in Versailles. Here’s a great view of the façade looking west:

http://gainey23.googlepages.com/Louv...600_x_1200.jpg

And at night, from a point a little more distant from the building:

http://wraptnotes.com/img/Louvre%20m...seum%20(3).jpg

And what is actually considered the main entrance, a view looking east, which has been ‘enhanced’ by adding a modernistic glass pyramid in 1988 – with some difficulty, I was able to find a picture that didn’t have the pyramid dominating the entire scene. There was considerable controversy over the addition of the pyramid, with many of the ‘old-fashioned’ people - such as me - saying it didn’t fit with the architectural scheme of the buildings:

http://www.daniellacour.org/images/_ce68%20louvre.jpg

This next shot shows the pyramid in its full glory, so you can judge for yourself whether it belongs here or if it just clutters up the view with an inappropriate obstruction:

http://www.cis.nctu.edu.tw/~whtsai/W...in%20Paris.jpg

There are many thousands of art works on display here, but we’ll focus this discussion on what most people consider to be the big three, and you can explore others at your will using the museum’s website. These three are Mona Lisa, Winged Victory of Samothrace, and Venus di Milo.

While Mona Lisa has come to be the more popular name of this sixteenth century oil painting by Leonardo da Vinci, its actual name is La Giocanda. Here’s what it looks like:

http://dismanibus156.files.wordpress.../monalisa1.jpg

And a closer view:

http://www.liako.gr/news/images/stories/mona-lisa.jpg

The painting was stolen in 1911 and was thought to have been lost forever, but it was found two years later. It had been taken by an Italian patriot who thought it rightly belonged to Italy, and the thief was caught when he tried to sell the painting to the Uffizzi Gallery in Florence.

The Winged Victory of Samothrace is also called the Nike of Samothrace, and was carved of marble in the third century BC. It represents the Greek goddess Nike, or at least what’s left of the goddess, and is thought to commemorate a great victory in a naval battle.

http://markswatzell.com/paris/Inside%20the%20Louvre.jpg

http://www.el-granada.com/france2007...ctoryright.jpg

http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/mp...Samothrace.JPG

The statue was found in Greece by a French archaeologist in 1863, and was somehow gotten out of Greece and into France. This was more than 60 years after the Elgin Marbles had been moved from Athens to London, so the smuggling of national treasures from Greece was still in full swing. The statue’s right arm (or maybe I should say wing) was eventually found – surprisingly in 1950 – you have to wonder what took so long. But at least that part remains in Greece, although a few fragments from the missing arm were permitted to make the trip to Paris to be reunited with the body.

The Venus de Milo is one of the most famous Greek works of marble sculpture. It is believed to have been carved between 130 and 100 BC, and portrays Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty. The statue, like the Winged Victory of Samothrace, is best known for the three-diminsional drapery effect of the robe she wears. But the most distinguishing feature is the lack of arms – it is thought that when intact, the left arm was holding up an apple to look at.

From the front, and showing how the statue is displayed:

http://amyandkelly.com/albums/paris_...us_de_Milo.jpg

From the right side:

http://www.arvindswarup.com/devils_w...us_de_milo.JPG

And from the left:

http://www.cmap.polytechnique.fr/~yu...s/P1040083.jpg

The statue was discovered by a Greek peasant in 1820, in a buried niche on the Aegean island of Milos. It was in two pieces, with the upper torso having been separated from the lower body with the legs, but both arms were still in place. French naval officers were there at the time of the discovery, and immediately recognized the value of the piece. Greece at the time was under the control of the Ottoman Empire, and the French paid for the statue. However, they had to drag the work across rocks to reach their ship while they were fighting off Greek brigands who also wanted it. In this process, the arms were lost, and were never found. When the statue arrived at the Louvre, the upper and lower parts were reassembled, and the statue has remained in Paris ever since.

Here’s an example of a virtual tour – an expanded description of the Winged Victory of Samothrace in a narrated video that explains all kinds of things about the statue, and this is just one of many such tours available on the Louvre’s website. Note the two groups of explanations at the left after you enter the website – Analysis and Context. Click on the individual elements in each of these two groups to see and hear the explanations:

http://www.louvre.fr/llv/dossiers/vi...41&bmLocale=en

The museum’s website, for those who would like to explore it more deeply, is shown below. There’s a lot more material on this incredible set of buildings and the treasures they hold, and the website includes several virtual tours just like the example above, that you might enjoy. Or if you would prefer to spend your time texting your friends to tell them what you’re going to have for lunch because they are such dullards they would actually be interested in that since they can’t come up with anything else that’s more worthwhile, then do that instead.

http://www.louvre.fr/llv/commun/home.jsp?bmLocale=en

Les Invalides is a building complex with museums and monuments relating to France’s military history, along with a hospital and retirement home for war veterans. Actually, the complex started out as a hospital and retirement home in 1676, when Louis XIV was still shining like the sun. In fact, the full official name is Hôpital des Invalides. The complex was expanded to include the museums and monuments after Napoleon Bonaparte had substantially added to the military exploits of France from 1799 to 1815.

The centerpiece of the building complex is a chapel called Eglise Saint-Louis des Invalides:

http://www.enweirdenment.org/pics/Eu...6-0650_IMG.JPG

The complex as a whole:

http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/7397/invilades1.jpg

And a little closer:

http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/2650/invilades2.jpg

San Francisco’s City Hall is modeled after the domed chapel. If you don’t recall this building from my story The City by the Bay, here’s what it looks like:

http://pics4.city-data.com/cpicv/vfiles4635.jpg

The hospital was in constant overtime mode during the Great War from 1914 to 1918:

http://www.firstworldwar.com/photos/...esparis_01.jpg

Napoleon was buried here in 1840, 19 years after he died, since he was initially buried on Saint Helena. Here is his sarcophagus, in the rotunda of the chapel we viewed from the outside just a moment ago:

http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/610...usnapoleon.jpg

Several of the French generals from the Napoleonic Wars and from the Great War are buried here. It is noteworthy that Charles de Gaulle is is not here alongside them. He is buried off by himself in Colombey-les-Deux Eglises, the village to which he retired after leaving the presidency in 1969.

Here’s the English portion of the Invalides website, but at the time I’m writing this, the site is in the process of being updated:

http://www.invalides.org/pages/anglais/menu_ang.html

The Grand Palais is a large exhibition hall built for the Paris World's Fair of 1900. Most would probably say its distinguishing feature is its steel and glass roof - from a distance it could pass as the world’s most exquisite greenhouse. This palace was built at the same time as the Pont Alexandre III, which we discussed earlier, and the Petit Palais, which we’ll discuss in a moment. Here’s what it looked like around the time of its opening in 1900:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2202/...40d1827d_o.jpg

Here’s what it looks like now:

http://www.sinsitio.es/albums/userpi...and_Palais.jpg

And if you were a bird flying high above the city, here’s what you would see - and note the Petit Palais just beyond the Grand Palais:

http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/2636/gppalais.jpg

And a closeup of the main façade of the Grand Palais:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2347/...814dc5ff_o.jpg

A couple of interior views taken during the 1900 opening:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2323/...3ae5f7e6_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2110/...02cc6aaf_o.jpg

Here’s a website that will give you more information on the Grand Palais:

http://www.grandpalais.fr/visite/en/

Now I would have guessed that the Petit Palais would be some small and hardly noticeable former residence of a semi-important bigwig who didn’t actually quite reach the pinnacle of glory. But it’s actually a lot grander than you might expect if you tend to picture something before you see it, based on its name. With all things being relative, this building is called Petit Palais simply because it’s smaller than its neighbor across the street.

Here’s what it looked like when it opened:

http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fna...ir/paris09.jpg

And here it is now:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3272/...7873eb8c_b.jpg

And here’s a closeup of the magnificent entrance:

http://blog.photos-libres.fr/wp-cont...0a%20paris.jpg

And an interior view during the opening in 1900:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2246/...42998f98_o.jpg

Another interior view with ornate furniture during the opening:

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/openco...03i2146l01.jpg

The Petit Palais now houses the Museum of Fine Arts for the City of Paris, and its exhibits at present include Medieval and Renaissance paintings and drawings, as well as eighteenth century furniture.

Next up: Place du Carrousel, the Palais du Luxembourg with its adjoining gardens, Île de la Cité, and the Palais de la Légion d'Honneur.

The City of Lights
Part 5

Place du Carrousel is a public square adjacent to the Louvre, and was commissioned in 1806 to commemorate Napoleon’s recent victories on the battlefields of Europe. The highlight of this square is the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, not to be confused with the much larger Arc de Triomphe that we checked out earlier at one end of the Champs-Élysées.

Here’s what it looks like from the front, where where you can see the figures atop the arch:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...usel-paris.jpg

And from the other side, where you can see the arch in conjunction with the Louvre and its lovely glass pyramid which could be made even more of a distraction if only it were made of bright purple plastic with some lime green and mustard yellow stars scattered around:

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/o...l/16183106.jpg

Here’s a beautiful view showing the arch and the Louvre - without the ridiculous pyramid:

http://www.speacock.net/albums/album..._Carrousel.jpg

This smaller arch is 63 feet high (compared to 162 in the larger version) and 75 feet wide (compared to 150), but it’s still a very impressive structure. It was based on the Arch of Constantine in Rome, which I show and discuss in my story called A Grand Tour elsewhere in this forum.

The Palais Luxembourg is where the French Senate meets. It was patterned after the Palazzo Pitti in Florence and was completed in 1615. Over the years it has served as a residence, as a museum, and even as a prison for a short while during the French Revolution probably until someone decided that prisoners should not be housed in such lavish quarters. Napoleon even lived here for a while. It has been in the Senate’s hands since Napoleon’s day.

Here’s the palace, but be careful not to fall in the water:

http://freelargephotos.com/000203_l.jpg

The palace is adjacent to a lovely public park called Jardin du Luxembourg, which is in Paris despite the deceiving nature of its name. Besides the lovely greenery, there are large basins of water for sailing model boats and ships, and there’s lots of statuary as well. A puppet theater puts on performances for children of all ages using marionettes.

Here’s the palace at some distance, so you can see some features of the garden:

http://www.subwayhotels.com/blog/wp-...luxembourg.jpg

And a place just for taking it easy and hanging out:

http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/2...rgexterior.jpg

And here’s one room in the Palais that was not used for holding prisoners – it’s as nice as the Grand Foyer in the Paris Opéra:

http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/8...rginterior.jpg

I’m pretty sure most of you remember the Île de la Cité, because that’s where we looked at Notre Dame a while back. Well, it turns out that there are more things on this little island than just Notre Dame.

Here’s a view from the air:

http://users.telenet.be/parijs5ecwi/IledelaCite.jpg

And here it is from water level in the Seine - note the now-familiar Pont Neuf on the right side of the photo:

http://www.solutionvaleur.com/Ile_de_la_Cite.jpg

Just so you don’t forget Notre Dame altogether, here’s another view:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._July_2006.jpg

Besides Notre Dame, other noteworthy island buildings include the Palais de Justice and La Conciegerie. This Palais de Justice holds a few courts of different levels, and looks a lot better than most of the courthouses with which I’ve had dealings.

I’ll bet there aren’t too many LitNetters who have been dragged into courthouses like this, as we almost exclusively find ourselves in seedier places:

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/5364960.jpg

The court is the building to the right in the photo above - the structure on the left is Sainte-Chappelle which dates back to 1245. This Roman Catholic church constructed in the Gothic style holds the crown of thorns worn by Jesus, as well as other sacred relics of Christianity. Here are some marvelous interior views:

http://www.sacred-destinations.com/f...cc-Feuillu.jpg

http://ha216c.files.wordpress.com/20...per-chapel.jpg

http://templars.files.wordpress.com/...pelleparis.jpg

We already looked at La Conciergerie, which has served both as a palace and as a prison, during our earlier cruise down the River Seine. If you’ve forgotten that we saw it already, here’s a repeat view, but this is the last one you’re going to see, so try not to forget it again:

http://www.lesitedelevenementiel.com...anoramique.jpg

By the way, I should mention that La Conciergerie was where Marie Antoinette was held prior to her execution in 1793.

The Palais de la Légion d'Honneur is on the west bank of the Seine, and honors those who won the military decoration of that same name fighting for the glory of France. It opened in 1787 as a private residence, but was taken over by Napoleon in 1804 to serve in its current function. It was destroyed by fire in 1871, however, so it had to be rebuilt with support of funds from many who had received the award for which the building is named. Here it is:

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/6621083.jpg

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/6620922.jpg

And from the other side:

http://www.musee-legiondhonneur.fr/m...rieu_grand.jpg

An interior view:

http://iguide.travel/photos/Paris/7t...issement-4.jpg

Here’s the imitation building that was constructed in San Francisco and which is named the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. Now I had previously been to the San Francisco building, as I described in my story The City by the Bay, so when I came out of the Palais in Paris, I thought I was back in San Francisco, and it took me a few hours to get re-oriented to being in the French capital city instead of in California. I don’t know how many Frenchmen I ticked off by asking them where I could catch the cable car to Chinatown.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...n_Honor_SF.jpg

Next up: Musee d’Orsay, Sacré-Cœur Basilica, Montmartre, Moulin Rouge, and the Place du Tertre.

The City of Lights
Part 6

From 1900 until 1939, Gare d’Orsay was a major station in the French railroad network, as it was situated on the banks of the Seine in the middle of Paris. But by 1939, it could no longer function as a railroad station because the electrified trains that were emerging at that time were too long for the station.

What this fact tells me that the train station in the movie Casablanca was not Gare d’Orsay, since Rick watched the ink run from Ilsa’s note while the rain fell onto it as the Nazis were occupying Paris in 1940, a year after the station had already closed. However, I cannot find out which station was in the movie - Paris has several railroad stations, and I haven’t found any mention in the many Casablanca articles posted on the web, of which train station was used in the movie.

Here’s what the station looks like on the outside:

http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/1971/orsay.jpg

https://academics.skidmore.edu/weblo...aris%20002.jpg

It took a long time to make the decision to convert the station to a museum, and then to actually implement this change - the building opened as Musee d’Orsay in 1986. Here’s where the Main Concourse used to be, which is now displaying works of art instead of accommocating the movement of passengers to and from their trains:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi.../b7/Orsay3.jpg

https://academics.skidmore.edu/weblo...aris%20001.jpg

The museum’s lunch room - somehow the tables and chairs don’t seem to match up with the rest of the décor, but I’m just thankful that the walls and ceilings from the train station have been preserved:

http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/9...useedorsay.jpg

Here’s the museum’s English-language website if you want to continue your explorations:

http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/home.html

To transition to our next site, here is a view from the Musee d’Orsay towards the Sacré-Cœur Basilica. This Roman Catholic basilica is situated atop the Butte Montmartre, which is the highest point in Paris. In the distance, you can make out the dome and a spire of the basilica in this view from one of the clocks at d’Orsay:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._d%27Orsay.jpg

Compared to so many of the churches throughout Europe, this one is almost a brand-new infant. Construction was begun in 1875, with the church intended to honor those who lost their lives during the Franco-Prussion War of 1870-71. There were lots of politics that went on during the building of this church, but we won’t get bogged down in all that. The basilica opened for services in 1891, but wasn’t officially consecrated until 1919 - after the Great War.

The building’s exterior:

http://markswatzell.com/Paris-06/IMG...tom)%20(2).JPG

There are elevated statues of Joan of Arc (the farther one) and King Saint Louis XIV on their horses, flanking the main entrance:

http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/9...coeurparis.jpg

A mosaic in the apse, entitled Christ in Majesty, is among the largest in the world.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...r-interior.jpg

Montmartre is a hill that is the highest point in the city. Its chief highlight is the basilica we just looked at, but it is also a nightclub district. Several movies have been filmed here, including the classic Moulin Rouge of 1952 which stars Jose Ferrer as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in late nineteenth century Paris. Montmartre is outside the city limits and is excused from the high taxes of Paris, so nightclubs flourished here.

Moulin Rouge is the best known of the nightclubs – the name means red windmill, which explains why the club’s exterior features a red windmill. Here’s a postcard from many years ago:

http://www.desertdreameronline.com/i...ulin_rouge.jpg

It was best known for its can-can dancers, as shown here in a Toulouse-Lautrec painting:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...1889-90-VR.jpg

Here’s a brief clip from the 1952 movie I mentioned a few paragraphs above, which will give you a feel for the Moulin Rouge and its can-can dancing, if you don’t already have one:

http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/index/?cid=2936

Here’s what it looks like now – much less classy than it was in Toulouse-Lautrec’s day, but at least you can see the red windmill:

http://freelargephotos.com/000271_l.jpg

The famous French chanteuse Edith Piaf started her career in Montmartre. Here is a clip of my favorite Piaf song - Non Je Ne Regrette Rien, although she was far from Montmartre and quite a success by the time she was singing this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YGXsw3XK9I

The favorite nightclub of my cat Eleanor is Le Chat Noir, which means black cat, but Eleanor has never set a paw inside the joint since the real one only operated from 1884 to 1897. However, it has since been revived but those who frequented both the original and the copycat say that the original was much better. Jane Avril performed here, as well as at the nearby Moulin Rouge, where she was made famous by Toulouse-Lautrec. Here is a poster that became quite well known for publicizing Le Chat Noir:

http://juriusz.w.interia.pl/chatnoir.jpg

Aspiring artists work just below the basilica, which crowns the hill, in the Place du Tertre, and of course you still remember from before that place means a public square. Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, and Amedeo Modigliani got their artistic careers started here.

Also nearby is the area called Pigalle, which provides a work environment for ladies of the night, as depicted in the 1963 film Irma La Douce. Here’s a place in Pigalle where you can have more fun than a barrel of monkeys:

http://phlog.flaneganb.net/wp-conten...1/img_8598.jpg

Am I ever glad that I’m now old enough not to go to places like these anymore.

Here are some contemporary scenes in Montmartre:

http://blog.ikasi.eu/disney/media/Im...tmartre3_1.jpg

http://gainey23.googlepages.com/Mont...600_x_1200.jpg

Next up: the Rodin Museum, the Church of Saint-Sulpice, the Métro, and the Place des Victoires.

The City of Lights
Part 7

Auguste Rodin is one of the very few sculptors since the time of Michelangelo whose name is a household word all over the world. His works are certainly spread around - there are at least twenty copies of his famous statue The Thinker in various museums all over the world.

The Rodin Museum in Paris is a tribute to this great sculptor. The Paris version is much more elaborate than the smaller Philadelphia museum which also honors Rodin. I described the Philadelphia museum in my story The City of Brotherly Love which is also in this forum.

Here are a couple of views of the front exterior of the Rodin Museum in Paris:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...din_Museum.JPG

https://academics.skidmore.edu/weblo...aris%20009.jpg

This view from the museum toward the city shows that the museum is not out in the country somewhere, which you might gather from the previous two views, but rather is right in the middle of all the city’s action:

http://www.sobi.org/photos/places/Pa...din/mr0002.jpg

Rodin’s best-known work - The Thinker - which rivals Michelangelo’s David as the most famous sculpture in the world:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...TheThinker.jpg

Some of Rodin’s other works include The Burghers of Calais, his most heroic and moving historical tribute; Eternal Springtime, one of the most powerful works dealing with human love; and monuments to leading French intellectuals such as Apotheosis of Victor Hugo.

Rodin was a big fan of Dante and The Divine Comedy. The culminating creation of his career was The Gates of Hell, on which he worked from 1880 until his death in 1917. This artwork intended to represent the entrance to the underworld as described in Dante’s Inferno.

https://academics.skidmore.edu/weblo...aris%20012.jpg

And The Kiss, another of Rodin’s statues, represents Francesca da Rimini and her lover, who happened to also be the brother of her husband. Well, Francesca and her brother-in-law Paolo Malatesta are immortalized in Dante’s Inferno, representing the sin of Lust. The hauntingly memorable lines describing their plight are:

Nessun maggior dolore,
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria.

What this means, and as is almost always the case, it loses something in translation:

There is no greater agony,
Than remembering times of ecstasy
When later locked in total misery.

The original of The Kiss is located at the Tate Museum in London, which rivals only Madrid’s Prado in the minds of crossword puzzlers. While it’s possible you will be able to tell when you look at this statue that it is called The Kiss, especially if you are an armchair detective, I should still tell you that rather than just let you figure it out all by yourself:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...eum,_Paris.jpg

The museum maintains its own website, if you’d care to explore any further:

http://www.musee-rodin.fr/welcome.htm

The Église Saint-Sulpice is an historical and lovely building, and it sits in some great surroundings. We won’t go into the long history of the church, which involved building on top of older structures dating back to the tenth century. What we see today was begun in 1646, but wasn’t finished until 1870. And such perfect timing – it would sustain considerable battle damage from the Franco-Prussian War in 1871.

A lovely fountain sits directly in front of the church - it depicts four bishops from the days of Louis XIV:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...008-03-14_.jpg

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/4764902.jpg

I can’t find any large pictures that show the entire façade, so here is a small one:

http://www.astro.ulg.ac.be/RPub/Coll...pice_Paris.jpg

Here’s a much larger photo, but unfortunately, part of the church is obscured by some ongoing renovation to one of the two towers in this view:

http://www.fotothing.com/photos/1da/...51073a_487.jpg

The church and the fountain together, with the renovation work cleverly masked by the fountain:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/133/4...1bb0054d_o.jpg

The church has a beautiful pipe organ:

http://www.sacred-destinations.com/f...c-claudecf.jpg

And here’s what is said to be a pulpit, but I don’t understand why all the chairs seem to be pointing in another direction - of course it might just be because I’m Jewish and don’t understand how Catholic services work. I’ve asked a few Catholics, but so far, nobody has come up with an explanation.

http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/650...picepulpit.jpg

There are lots of beautiful art works in the church - here’s just one typical painting, which is entitled Saint Michael Defeats the Devil:

http://www.wga.hu/art/d/delacroi/5/505delac.jpg

The Paris Métro has given its name to many other subway systems around the world. Living in the Washington, DC area, I always thought our Metro came before anyone else’s, because our first segment here started so long ago - in 1976. But I later learned that the Paris Métro was a little bit older, since it opened in 1900 for use in the Paris World’s Fair.

I’m sure you remember that several other things opened in 1900 along with the Paris World’s Fair – namely the Grand Palais, the Petit Palais, and the Pont Alexandre III. The Paris subway system is the second busiest in Europe (behind only Moscow) and carries 4.5 million passengers a day.

Here’s an example of why it’s wise to take the Métro if at all possible:

http://philip.greenspun.com/images/2...affic.half.jpg

Here’s how they mark the stations at street level so even someone like me can figure out where to go:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...tro_Sign_2.jpg

They post maps like this so you know where to get on the train, and where to get off:

http://www.ideamerge.com/motorhomes/...aris_metro.gif

However, I had so much trouble reading this tiny-print map that I wound up taking cabs everywhere I went.

The world’s largest underground station is Châtelet-Les Halles:

http://img357.imageshack.us/img357/1428/img03807nx.jpg

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/o...l/12771428.jpg

And here’s a typical train in the very modern system:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...-_Becon_01.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...59-Ligne-4.jpg

The Place des Victoires is a public square, but it’s shaped like a circle. I found this to be very confusing since I learned in school that previous attempts to square the circle had always failed, even going all the way back to those old Greek mathematicians like Archimedes. The focal point of this circular square is a statue of King Louis XIV riding a horse, which I learned is called an equestrian statue. I guess people consider you much classier if you say equestrian rather than the less-educated riding a horse, so I’ll stick to equestrian from now on.

The architecturally-pleasing buildings which circle the statue are private homes on the upper floors, with commercial establishments on the street level.

Here’s what the square looked like in a nineteenth century postcard:

http://www.bellecpa.com/slides/big/Jul28594.JPG

And here is what it looks like today:

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/4222999.jpg

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/o...l/21158943.jpg

It turns out that there was actually another statue of Louis XIV here before, but like so many other features of the city, it became a casualty of the French Revolution and was torn down in 1792. The current statue was commissioned in 1828 by the restored Bourbon King Charles X - remember that the Bourbons came back for a while after Napoleon’s fall.

Next up: the Latin Quarter and its magnificent Panthéon, as well as La Bourse, Hôtel de Ville, and Palais de l’Élysées.

The City of Lights
Part 8

The Latin Quarter is on the left bank of the Seine. Now I had always heard about the terms left and right banks, but I didn’t really know what they meant. But right there in the Latin Quarter I met a native Parisian named Lucky Pierre, who told me that if I were to jump into the river and face in the direction that the current would carry me, then the left bank would be the one on my left hand as I floated downstream. Needless to say, I didn’t jump into the river because I wasn’t about to give Lucky Pierre the satisfaction. So I still don’t know the difference between the two banks.

I asked him if he was by any chance that same world-famous Lucky Pierre I had first heard of fifty years ago, but he just gave a wry smile and walked off without answering my question.

The focal point of the Latin Quarter is the Sorbonne University, but there are a few more institutions of higher learning here as well. I had actually heard of the Sorbonne before I even arrived in Paris because I remember hearing as a child about some relative of ours who had gone there just to spite his parents even though they had devoted their entire lives to him and running off was what he did in gratitude for everything they sacrificed for him over all those years.

Here is what the façade of the Sorbonne’s main building looks like:

http://www.mathrix.org/La-Sorbonne-univ.JPG

And they have a beautiful library, except that almost all the books are written in French:

http://www.spirit-of-paris.com/wp-co...o_sorbonne.jpg

And some of the other buildings on the Sorbonne campus:

http://www.freewebs.com/keping/KPA/A...eParis)1-W.jpg

And here is a nice view taken from the top of Notre Dame, but we have to see another one of those scary gargoyles:

http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~bump/fr/Sorbonne/NDview.jpg

Sunsets seem to be quite breathtaking here – and I have to thank the Seigle family for posting this magnificent picture on the internet. My daughter is married to a Seigel, so I’m sure they’re not related to my son-in-law since this picture-taking family spells it Seigle. But they sure take some great photos:

http://seiglefamily.com/2006france/l...ter_sunset.jpg

Here’s a picture of the Boulevard Saint Michel in the Latin Quarter, which I’m guessing was taken sometime shortly before Great War:

http://www.joyceimages.com/media/ji/...20StMichel.JPG

There is a Panthéon in the Latin Quarter of Paris, but it is a different Pantheon from the one in Rome since you can’t have the same building in two different cities at the same time. I discussed Rome’s Pantheon in my story A Grand Tour.

Then I learned that the one in Paris is patterned after the one in Rome, but is an entirely different structure. The one in Paris was completed in 1789, just in time for the French Revolution. After the Revolution, it was decided to make it the burial place for esteemed personages of the nation. Those who are buried here include Voltaire, Rousseau, Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Émile Zola, Marie Curie, and Louis Braille. And from 1906 until 1922, Rodin’s statue The Thinker was displayed here, but then it was moved to the Rodin Museum that we’ve already discussed.

Here’s what the one in Paris looks like:

https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/sengul/www...0037%20(2).jpg

http://philippe.gambette.free.fr/Pho.../Pantheon2.jpg

Here are a couple more exterior shots from different angles – it’s a great building:

http://www.tunliweb.no/Bilder_SM/_al..._1024pixel.jpg

http://www.simonho.org/images/photog...s_Pantheon.jpg

It’s marvelous inside also, but I don’t know what that thing is on the floor, except that it seems to be made of glass and merely reflects all the artistic elements, so maybe it’s somehow related to that silly pyramid that sits in front of the Louvre:

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/1693299.jpg

The Monument to the National Convention - which was the legislative assembly that sat from 1792-1795 following the French Revolution:

http://www.freewebs.com/keping/KPA/A...nvention-W.jpg

And just how great is this next panoramic view of the interior, courtesy of Wikimedia? If you haven’t been using the F11 full screen display option that I explained after Part 2 for all the pictures here, you might want to consider using it at least for this next one. And if you have a widescreen monitor, it’s even better. In fact, I’m now using this one as a desktop wallpaper for my widescreen monitor, alternating it with the Grand Escalier from the Paris Opéra and also with the Horse Guards Parade in London:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...r_centered.jpg

If you are into Puccini operas, you will recall that La Bohème took place right here in the Latin Quarter sometime around 1830. Mimi and Rodolfo lived somewhere in this area, but I couldn’t find the exact apartment since nobody from that time period is still around to ask. Here is a clip from the opera, the aria Si, mi chiamano Mimi, sung by Mirella Freni. You will note that Rodolfo is played by Luciano Pavarotti, but his part in this aria is minimal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bm29-POmIg8

I watched this performance with the intent of noting something in the scenery that would give me some sort of a clue as to which apartment Mimi and Rodolfo lived in during their time in the Latin Quarter, but I still couldn’t figure it out.

La Bourse is in France what Wall Street is in the United States, so your individual point of view on this institution will depend on your basic philosophy. Some people consider investment bankers to be those who fuel progress and help us make advances in society to improve all of our lives, while others consider them to be thieves who are all too eager to fleece the poor struggling and oppressed masses out of everything they’ve ever had.

There have been many sites where stock trading activities took place in Paris over the years, but in the early nineteenth century, they settled into Palais de la Bourse, sometimes called Palais Brongniart.

It has a classical exterior:

http://www.kastler.org/IMG/jpg/bourse.jpg

And some inspiring interior scenes:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...t_dsc07986.jpg

http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/2228/bourse1.jpg

And a room called Le Salon d’Honneur:

http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/7483/bourse2y.jpg

During my wanderings through the streets and sights of Paris, I came upon the Hôtel de Ville, and I was so impressed with this building that I decided to move here instead of staying at the very luxurious Hôtel Ritz. But when I was trying to check out of the Ritz, telling them I was relocating to the de Ville, the Ritz desk clerk tried to tell me that the Hôtel de Ville wasn’t actually a hotel for guests. I told him I thought he was just trying to make sure the Ritz wasn’t going to lose my business, but he showed me a few things in writing, and I always believe everything I see in writing.

As it turned out, the desk clerk was right and I was wrong. The Hôtel de Ville is where the city’s administrative offices are housed, including the Mayor of Paris, and they didn’t have any rooms for tourists like me. It’s a good thing the desk clerk at the Ritz stopped me before I showed up at the front door of the the Hôtel de Ville with all of my baggage.

We’ll check out a few views of the glorious exterior, and then get into just a little bit of the history of how this building came about:

http://www.bigfoto.com/europe/paris/hotel-de-ville.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/47/18...e2424c22_o.jpg

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/o...l/16631981.jpg

And at night:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...telDeVille.jpg

The Mayor of Paris bought a building called the House of Pillars on this very same site in 1357 to use for administrative functions, but that was long before the current building was even dreamed up. The old House of Pillars was torn down in 1533 when work commenced on what we have today, but it took until 1628 to finish the building. That was during the reign of King Louis XIII. Things remained relatively calm here in City Hall until the French Revolution in 1789, and Robespierre was wounded and arrested inside the building.

A few significant events took place within the Hôtel during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, one of which was the takeover by angry crowds who knew that a French surrender to Prussia was not in the best interests of France. The Paris Commune was established by anarchistic workers who knew a lot more about running the government than the professional politicians, and they took over the building. Eventually a series of armed conflicts between the Commune anarchists and the anti-Commune troops led to a major fire which destroyed all public records from the French Revolutionary period, and the Commune lost the power they had held for two months.

There are lots of magnificently decorated and furnished rooms inside, but I can’t find any pictures posted on the internet. I must be looking in the wrong place, and if I ever find the right place, I’ll come back to this point in the story and get some of these interior views into the text.

Meanwhile, you should remember that besides requiring a City Hall such as the organization headquartered in the Hôtel de Ville, Paris also serves as the capital of the entire nation. The French equivalent to our White House in the United States is the Palais de l’Élysées, which is the official residence of the President of the French Republic.

The building was completed in 1722, but it has been modified countless times over the years. It is of the classic Régence style of architecture, and Louis XV, who didn’t have to worry about housing a President of the French Republic, bought it for his totally awesome main squeeze who was known as Madame de Pompadour (even though they didn’t use such clever and highly expressive lingo like totally awesome main squeeze back in those drab olden days). But let’s take a quick peek at the building before we get too carried away with its history.

The gated entrance - cleverly sandwiched between some stores - but at least neither of the adjacent stores is a Wal-Mart or a McDonalds:

http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/2...etoelysees.jpg

And a small view of the façade, along with a couple of interior views - I can’t find any large pictures:

http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/2747/elyseemg3.jpg

A banquet for some noteworthy lady - I think her name is Sally, but I wasn’t invited so I can’t be sure:

http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/452...eesbanquet.jpg

When Madame de Pompadour eventually passed away, the palace went back to the crown and stayed there until 1773, which is coincidentally three years before the Declaration of Independence was written in what would later become the United States, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the Palais de l’Élysées so I don’t know why I even brought it up. Anyway, in 1773 it was bought by a private individual who happened to be a banker so he could afford it - even without a bailout. The banker made substantial renovations and added a lavish garden, and when he died in 1786, which was coincidentally three years before the French Revolution, the property was returned to King Louis XVI.

King Louis XVI didn’t last too much longer, becoming a victim of the Revolution in 1789, and the palace sank into disrepute by being converted to a furniture warehouse (although it stored very nice furniture), a printing shop, and then a dance hall. When the Russian Cossacks occupied Paris in 1814, they camped out here in the Palais.

After the restoration of the French Republic in 1870, the building became the Presidential Palace, and has remained so ever since.

Next up: the Tower of Saint-Jacques, the railroad stations Gare du Nord and Gare Saint-Lazare, the Restaurant Le Train Bleu, the Bois de Boulogne, and some typical cafes.

The City of Lights
Part 9

The Tower of Saint-Jacques is in the late Gothic style of architecture and was built in 1523 near the Seine. The tower is all that remains, as the rest of the church was destroyed during the upheavals of the French Revolution - as were so many other things.

This tower was used by the famous French physicist Blaise Pascal in the seventeenth century for his experiments with barometers, but that was before he was famous. I thought that maybe he threw barometers off the top of the tower and timed how long it took them to hit the ground, but I was told that that particular experiment was done by someone else and happened in Pisa, Italy, rather than here in Paris.

Here’s what the tower looks like:

http://www.casayego.com/europeanciti...is/paris-c.jpg

And in this panorama, where you can also see the river in the foreground and the Théâtre de Ville in the background:

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/o...l/21728078.jpg

Gare du Nord (North Station) is the largest train station in Paris and the busiest in Europe. It is the third busiest in the world - behind two Japanese stations and just ahead of Waterloo Station in London. This depot was completed in 1864, replacing an outdated predecessor that had sat on this same spot.

Here’s the exterior, starting with an angled view of the entire façade:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Nord_Paris.jpg

And a closer view of the entrance:

http://www.2747.com/2747/world/station/2003/paris.jpg

The statues in the picture above represent the cities served by the railroad company back in 1864, with the high central figure representing Paris.

Getting on and off the trains:

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/o...l/18605771.jpg

I checked all the train platforms to see if I could find the ink that dripped from Ilsa’s letter to Rick while he was reading it in the rain in the 1942 movie Casablanca, but I couldn’t find the stain, so I still don’t know if this was the station where that scene took place.

Gare Saint-Lazare is the second busiest railroad station in Paris, with Gare du Nord being the only depot in the city with more traffic. Here is the façade - the first is from an old postcard and the second is more modern:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2096/...eab47bb6d4.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...are_Facade.JPG

The glass bubble in the picture above is the entrance to the Métro station and is not related to the ridiculous pyramid in front of the Louvre.

Many artists lived near the station during the 1870s and ‘80s, and they worked it into many of their paintings. For example, Claude Monet had a few works that centered on Saint-Lazare, showing trains pulling into the station. Here are three of them:

http://liangb.files.wordpress.com/20...l-of-train.jpg

http://cd7.e2bn.net/e2bn/leas/c99/sc..._st-lazare.jpg

http://www.cartage.org.lb/fr/themes/...x/0011910b.GIF

On that last one, you might not have been able to recognize this as dealing with trains unless you knew about it beforehand – but after all, you have to keep in mind that this is an impressionist painting.

Here’s a painting by Édouard Manet, entitled Gare Saint-Lazare, although there is no obvious indication of a railroad station that jumps out at you. The little girl is said to be looking at a train, but she must have better eyes than I do – I see some steam but that’s about it:

http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/thumb...int-Lazare.jpg

Restaurant Le Train Bleu is a national historic monument at Gare de Lyon - another train station in Paris. This restaurant is the original, as there are several namesakes all over the world. It is named for a train route - the Calais-Méditerranée Express – more commonly known as Le Train Bleu because its destination was the French Riviera on the blue Mediterranean. It had lots of esteemed riders, including Winston Churchill, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Arturo Toscanini, and Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Here’s what it looks like:

http://patandlewtravel.files.wordpre...train-bleu.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/116/2...5c5191bf_o.jpg

Paris has too many parks to discuss them all, so we’ll focus on a typical one. The Bois de Boulogne sounds like it might be in Bologna, Italy, but this one is actually on the outskirts of Paris. The history of this place goes back as far as the thirteenth century, but since I can well imagine that some eyes are rolling at the prospect of discussing 900 years of park history, we’ll make it brief.

Lots of features in the park were adapted from London’s Hyde Park, because Louis Napoleon (or Napoleon III) lived in London in the early 1840s, waiting to return triumphantly to France, and saw how much better Hyde Park was than the Bois back in Paris. Well, he made it back to France in 1848, and while he was occupied with more serious matters, he was able to begin improving the Bois. Footpaths and horseriding tracks were added, and artificial waterways were created.

Just to give some perspective to this discussion, we’ll return momentarily to the top of the Eiffel Tower – the green area in the distant background is the area we’re talking about:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ffel_Tower.jpg

Some of the water features that were added by Napoleon III:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...e_Boulogne.jpg

http://www.kidstoursfrance.com/_Media/grandecascade.jpg

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/784628.jpg

http://www.runningmaps.eu/IMG/jpg/DSCF0012.jpg

And the trees in Paris turn colors just like they do in Massachusetts:

http://www.colleensparis.com/image.d...7_download.JPG

And gardens:

http://emilezola.info/Images/Cureepi...deBoulogne.JPG

http://www.laroseraiedechataignier.c...agatelle.6.JPG

Jean Beraud’s painting of cyclists in the Bois:

http://www.histoire-image.org/photo/...eraud_001f.jpg

And one from Jacques-Émile Blanche, entitled Promenade au bois de Boulogne

http://www.aguttes-coissard.com/vo22...122008-115.jpg

Paris is well known for its unique cafés, which maybe aren’t so unique anymore because everyone has copied them. Here are several randomly-selected cafés from throughout the city.

First, the Café de Flore, and I hope Flore means flower and not floor:

http://www.thebrooklynnomad.com/wp-c...listcafe-w.jpg

The Café of the Two Magots - and I trust that whatever Magots are, they are different from Maggots:

http://www.splendorsofeurope.com/ima..._05%202001.jpg

And Café le Crystal:

http://www.slowtrav.com/blog/tuscanartist/DSC08896.JPG

And Le Fouquet’s again - remember that we first saw this during our stroll down the Champs-Élysées:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2096/...02ace675_b.jpg

Next up: Versailles.

The City of Lights
Part 10

The official name is Château de Versailles, but it is so well-known that everyone calls it simply Versailles. It’s not actually in Paris – it’s about 12 miles to the southwest of the city. Louis XIV had it built when he was at the zenith of his power and he moved into the palace in 1682, leaving his former royal residence, the Louvre. The reigning monarchs stayed at Versailles until the French Revolution moved Louix XVI and Marie Antoinette back to Paris in 1789.

Here is a remarkable panoramic view of the main buildings that must be three pictures spliced together, taken from the front :

http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/6...espanorama.jpg

A similar view, but a little closer, and which shows the number of tourists swarming the place:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...es_Front_1.JPG

An even closer view of the just main entrance:

http://artsz.org/wp-content/uploads/...versailles.jpg

And closer yet:

http://z.about.com/d/architecture/1/...51375217sm.jpg

And a view, from the side, of the equestrian statue of Louis XIV:

http://www.sobi.org/photos/places/Pa...s/Dscf0507.jpg

Believe it or not, this following picture shows the back of palace in the distance - with the fountain in the foreground:

http://msguerrer.googlepages.com/Ver...lles3-full.jpg

Here is an overview of the entire complex as shown in a painting in its early days:

http://www.wga.hu/art/m/martin_j/orangeri.jpg

We will now go visit individually the Royal Chapel, the Hall of Mirrors, and the entrance to the Apartments of Louis XIV and the Apartments of the Queen

There’s actually a lot more than just these, and it gets to be somewhat overwhelming to try to tackle all of these sights at one time. This is an unbelievable complex of buildings and it’s very easy to get sensory overload in looking at the buildings and their furnishings; Versailles rivals the Vatican City in this respect. We’ll point out what the other buildings and rooms are - along with the official website - so you can explore these more thoroughly if you wish.

The Royal Chapel was used by Louis XIV every day – probably to thank his Lord and his lucky stars for being able to live in such grandeur. We’ll start with the exterior – first from a distance, and then two closer up:

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/7271415.jpg

http://noeltaylor.com/Paris07/0278.jpg

http://www.geeksonwheels.net/P-%20St...lles.JPG_s.jpg

And the interior defies any verbal description:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/109/2...516ab0f2_o.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...lle_royale.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._2006_edit.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...l_topview.jpeg

The Hall of Mirrors is probably best known as the site for signing the Treaty of Versailles which ended the Great War, but many special occasions took place here. For example, when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visited Emperor Napoléon III and Princess Eugenie in Paris in 1855, a grand ball was held in this room.

Here’s a painting that recorded the signing of the Treaty of Versailles:

http://davidderrick.files.wordpress....orpen_001f.jpg

Now we’ll check out some photographs which better convey the magnificence of the room, even though there are no famous people depicted in these - as far as I know. First the room as a whole:

http://www.francemonthly.com/n/1003/...g1-1024768.jpg

http://www.verngator.com/images/versailles6.jpg

http://web.mit.edu/jsf/2009/IMG_1697.JPG

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2641/...8125c1f6_o.jpg

http://members.shaw.ca/mloukko2/images/108-0895_CRW.jpg

And a closer look at some of the detail on the walls:

http://julia-mathewson.com/photos/eu...rsailles07.jpg

And then a little more attention to the chandeliers and ceiling:

http://www.ody-see.com/France%20Pari...%20Mirrors.JPG

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...des_glaces.jpg

And an even closer view of the ceiling:

http://blog.photos-libres.fr/wp-cont...Versailles.jpg

The State Apartments of Louis XIV were even nicer than my room at the Ritz - by a lot. But still, I couldn’t figure out which was better in these apartments - the furniture or the decorations, so I scored them both as winners. You enter these apartments by first passing through the Hercules Drawing Room. I had never even realized that Hercules could draw so well - I had just thought he was one of those musclebound dummies that you see hanging around the beach all the time:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2365/...4c9f5bd6_o.jpg

I don’t know about your eyes, but mine start glazing over after so much of this. Rather than continue this, I’m going to list a number of additional rooms and sights if you wish to explore any further, but you would be on your own. Here are the specific places at Versailles that you can check out if you want:

Royal Opera
Crusades Museum
Hall of Battles
Mars Drawing Room
Gallery of the History of France
Guard Room
Coronation Room
1830 Room
Diana Drawing Room
Venus Drawing Room
Peace Drawing Room
Mercury Drawing Room
War Drawing Room
Apollo Drawing Rooms
Antechamber of the Grand Couvert
Grand Trianon
Petit Trianon
Public Parks

Here is a brief virtual tour of Versailles:

http://www.virtourist.com/europe/versailles/01.htm

And the official website:

http://en.chateauversailles.fr/homepage

Well, that about wraps up just about everything I know about Paris. Thanks for taking the time to come along, and for getting this far.

THE END

Quote:

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Originally Posted by love89

thanks for given the huge info related to the story about city of lights which is important for me thanks once again

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Thank you, love89, for being the only person to comment on this. I appreciate it more than you might think.

Well, here's a second comment. This particular thread has had 28,000+ viewers. That's even better than comments!

Part One is very humorous! I'm not sure if you are being funny or you didn't know the Bastille wasn't really there, but either way- the Ritz is all that!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jersea

Part One is very humorous! I'm not sure if you are being funny or you didn't know the Bastille wasn't really there, but either way- the Ritz is all that!

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Well, thanks again, jersea. I appreciate your comments more than I can express.

I hope you will read the rest of the story to see if I was trying to be funny or not.