Sights in Paris
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Eiffel Tower
When it was built for the 1889 Exposition Universelle (World Fair), marking the centenary of the Revolution, the Tour Eiffel faced massive opposition from Paris’ artistic and literary elite. The ‘metal asparagus’, as some Parisians snidely called it, was almost torn down in 1909 but was spared because it proved an ideal platform for the transmitting antennas needed for the new science of radiotelegraphy. Named after its designer, Gustave Eiffel, the tower is 324m high, including the TV antenna at the tip. This figure can vary by as much as 15cm, however, as the tower’s 7300 tonnes of iron, held together by 2.5 million rivets, expand in warm weather and contract when it’s …
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Musée du Louvre
The vast Palais du Louvre was constructed as a fortress by Philippe-Auguste in the early 13th century and rebuilt in the mid-16th century for use as a royal residence. In 1793 the Revolutionary Convention turned it into the nation’s first national museum.
The paintings, sculptures and artefacts on display in the Louvre Museum have been assembled by French governments over the past five centuries. Among them are works of art and artisanship from all over Europe and important collections of Assyrian, Etruscan, Greek, Coptic and Islamic art and antiquities. Traditionally the Louvre’s raison d’être is to present Western art from the Middle Ages to about the year 1848 (at wh…
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Musée d’Orsay
Facing the Seine from quai Anatole France, the Musée d’Orsay is housed in a former train station (1900). It displays France’s national collection of paintings, sculptures, objets d’art and other works produced between the 1840s and 1914, including the fruits of the Impressionist, post-Impressionist and art nouveau movements.
Many visitors to the museum go straight to the upper level (lit by a skylight) to see the famous Impressionist paintings by Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley, Degas and Manet and the post-Impressionist works by Cézanne, Van Gogh, Seurat and Matisse, but there’s also lots to see on the ground floor, including some early works by Manet, Monet, Reno…
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Jardin du Luxembourg
When the weather is fine, Parisians of all ages come flocking to the formal terraces and chestnut groves of the 23-hectare Jardin du Luxembourg to read, relax and sunbathe. There are a number of activities for children here, and in the southern part of the garden you’ll find urban orchards as well as the honey-producing Rucher du Luxembourg (Luxembourg Apiary).
The Palais du Luxembourg, at the northern end of the garden, was built for Marie de Médicis, Henri IV’s consort; it has housed the Sénat (Senate), the upper house of the French parliament, since 1958. There are guided tours of the interior, usually at 10.30am one Saturday a month; advance reservations obligat…
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Basilique du Sacré Cœur
Perched at the very top of the Butte de Montmartre, the Basilica of the Sacred Heart was built from contributions pledged by Parisian Catholics as an act of contrition after the humiliating Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. Construction began in 1873, but the basilica was not consecrated until 1919.
Some 234 spiralling steps lead you to the basilica’s dome, which affords one of Paris’ most spectacular panoramas; they say you can see for 30km on a clear day.
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Centre Pompidou
This centre has amazed and delighted visitors since it was inaugurated in 1977, not just for its outstanding collection of modern art, but also for its radical architectural statement.
The open space at ground level has temporary exhibitions and information desks, while the 4th and 5th floors house the Musée National d’Art Moderne, France’s national collection of art dating from 1905 onwards. About a third of the 50,000-plus works, including the work of the surrealists and cubists, as well as pop art and contemporary works, are on display.
West of the Pompidou, place Georges Pompidou and nearby pedestrian streets attract buskers, musicians, jugglers and mime artists,…
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Cathédrale de Notre Dame de Paris
Cathédrale de Notre Dame de Paris is the true heart of Paris; in fact, distances from Paris to all parts of metropolitan France are measured from place du Parvis Notre Dame, the square in front of Notre Dame. A bronze star, set in the pavement across from the main entrance, marks the exact location of point zéro des routes de France (point zero of French roads).
Notre Dame, the most visited site in Paris, with 10 million people crossing its threshold each year, is not just a masterpiece of French Gothic architecture but has also been the focus of Catholic Paris for seven centuries. Constructed on a site occupied by earlier churches – and, a millennium before that, a Gal…
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Sainte Chapelle
The place to visit on a sunny day! Security checks make it long and snail-slow to get into this gemlike Holy Chapel, the most exquisite of Paris’ Gothic monuments, tucked away within the walls of the Palais de Justice (Law Courts). But once in, be dazzled by Paris’ oldest and finest stained glass – the light on sunny days is extraordinary.
Built in just under three years (compared with nearly 200 for Notre Dame), Ste-Chapelle was consecrated in 1248. The chapel was conceived by Louis IX to house his personal collection of holy relics (including the Holy Crown now kept in the treasury at Notre Dame). The chapel’s exterior can be viewed from across the street from th…
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Musée de l'Orangerie
Located in the southwestern corner of the Jardin des Tuileries, this museum, with the Jeu de Paume, is all that remains of the once palatial Palais des Tuileries, which was razed during the Paris Commune in 1871. It exhibits important Impressionist works, including a series of Monet's Decorations des Nymphéas (Water Lilies) in two huge oval rooms purpose-built in 1927 on the artist's instructions, as well as works by Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, Renoir, Sisley, Soutine and Utrillo. An audioguide costs €5.
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Arc de Triomphe
Located 2km northwest of place de la Concorde in the middle of place Charles de Gaulle (or place de l’Étoile), Paris’ Triumphal Arch is the world’s largest traffic roundabout. It was commissioned by Napoléon in 1806 to commemorate his imperial victories but remained unfinished when he started losing battles and then entire wars. It was not completed until 1836. Since 1920, the body of an Unknown Soldier from WWI, taken from Verdun in Lorraine, has lain beneath the arch; his fate and that of countless others is commemorated by a memorial flame that is rekindled each evening around 6.30pm.
From the viewing platform atop the arch (50m up via 284 steps and well worth …
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La Seine
In the city of romance, the Seine River is its lifeblood. Formerly a major trade route, today the river's islands, bridges and quays evoke the most romantic visions of Paris. This nostalgia is heightened after dark when the Seine shimmers with the watery reflections of floodlit monuments and bridges. C'est magnifique!
A stroll along the Seine is a quintessential Parisian experience.
The attractions along the river's main island, Île de la Cité, read like a who's-who of Paris' finery; from Notre Dame to Sainte Chapelle, the Conciergerie and the flower market. By contrast, Île St-Louis has a village-like, provincial calm. The area's charming 17th-century stone houses, teaho…
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Musée National du Moyen Âge
The National Museum of the Middle Ages is housed in two structures: the frigidarium (cooling room) and other remains of Gallo-Roman baths dating from around AD 200, and the late-15th-century Hôtel de Cluny, considered the finest example of medieval civil architecture in Paris.
The spectacular displays at the museum include statuary, illuminated manuscripts, weapons, furnishings, and objets d’art made of gold, ivory and enamel. But nothing compares with La Dame à la Licorne (The Lady with the Unicorn), a sublime series of late-15th-century tapestries from the southern Netherlands now hung in circular room 13 on the 1st floor. Five of them are devoted to the senses, whi…
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Grande Arche de la Défense
La Défense’s draw card is the Grande Arche (Great Arch) – a remarkable, cube-like structure, 110m square, of white Carrara marble, grey granite and glass. It’s constructed out of 3600 prefabricated cases, each 2.8m square and 800g in weight, and the entire construction rests on a dozen 30m-tall underground pillars. Scale the cigarette-butt-littered steps to the foot of this incredible arch free of charge and ponder its meaning as ‘a window to the world, a symbol of hope for the future; that all men can meet freely’. Or pay to travel 1.6m per second to the ‘roof’ on the 35th floor, where temporary art exhibitions hang out alongside scaled models of the arch, a video sho…
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Gare Montparnasse
Brittany and places en route from Paris (eg Chartres, Angers, Nantes); TGV Atlantique Ouest and TGV Atlantique Sud-Ouest trains to Tours, Nantes, Bordeaux and other destinations in southwestern France.
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Musée Rodin
One of our favourite cultural attractions, the Rodin Museum is both a sublime museum and one of the city’s most relaxing green spots with its lovely garden sprinkled with sculptures and shade trees. Rooms on two floors of this 18th-century residence display extraordinarily vital bronze and marble sculptures by Rodin, including casts of some of his most celebrated works: The Hand of God,The Burghers of Calais (Les Bourgeois de Calais),Cathedral, that perennial crowd-pleaser The Thinker (Le Penseur) and the incomparable The Kiss (Le Baiser). There are also some 15 works by Camille Claudel (1864–1943), sister of the writer Paul Claudel and Rodin’s mistress.
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Institut du Monde Arabe
Set up by France and 20 Arab countries to promote cultural contacts between the Arab world and the West, the Institute of the Arab World is housed in a critically praised building (1987) that successfully mixes modern and traditional Arab and Western elements.
The institute hosts some fascinating temporary exhibitions. Its permanent museum, closed for renovation since April 2010, will focus on painting a global vision of the Arab world through 19th-century to contemporary art and artisanship, instruments from astronomy and other fields of scientific endeavour in which Arab technology once led the world.
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Tour Montparnasse
A steel-and-smoked-glass eyesore built in 1974, the 210m-high Tour Montparnasse affords spectacular views over the city – a view, we might add, that does not take in this ghastly oversized lipstick tube. A lift takes you up to the 56th-floor enclosed observatory, with exhibition centre, video clips, multimedia terminals and Paris’ highest café. Finish with a hike up the stairs to the open-air terrace on the 59th floor, but arm yourself with the multilingual guide Paris Vu d’En Haut (Paris Seen from the Top; €3), available from the ticket office, to know what you’re looking at.
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Cimetière du Montparnasse
Montparnasse Cemetery received its first ‘lodger’ in 1824. It contains the tombs of such illustrious personages as the poet Charles Baudelaire, writer Guy de Maupassant, playwright Samuel Beckett, sculptor Constantin Brancusi, painter Chaim Soutine, photographer Man Ray, industrialist André Citroën, Captain Alfred Dreyfus of the infamous Dreyfus Affair, actor Jean Seberg, philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, writer Simone de Beauvoir and the crooner Serge Gainsbourg.
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Musée Picasso
One of Paris’ best-loved art museums, the Musée Picasso, housed in the mid-17th-century Hôtel Salé, includes more than 3500 of the grand maître’s engravings, paintings, ceramic works, drawings and sculptures. You can also see part of Picasso’s personal art collection, which includes works by Braque, Cézanne, Matisse, Modigliani, Degas and Rousseau. It will reopen after extensive renovations in 2012.
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Place du Tertre
Half a block west of the Église St-Pierre de Montmartre which once formed part of a 12th-century Benedictine abbey, is place du Tertre, once the main square of the village of Montmartre. These days it’s filled with cafés, restaurants, tourists and rather obstinate portrait artists and caricaturists who will gladly do your likeness. Whether it looks even remotely like you is another matter.
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Dalí Espace Montmartre
More than 300 works by Salvador Dalí (1904–89), the flamboyant Catalan surrealist printmaker, painter, sculptor and self-promoter, are on display at this surrealist-style basement museum located just west of place du Tertre. The collection includes Dalí’s strange sculptures (most in reproduction), lithographs, many of his illustrations and furniture (including the famous ‘lips’ sofa).
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Arènes de Lutèce
The 2nd-century Roman amphitheatre, Lutetia Arena, once sat around 10,000 people for gladiatorial combats and other events. Found by accident in 1869 when rue Monge was under construction, it’s now used by neighbourhood youths for playing football, and by old men for boules and pétanque (a variant on the game of bowls) .
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Mosquée de Paris
Paris’ central mosque with striking 26m-high minaret was built in 1926 in an ornate Moorish style. Visitors must be modestly dressed and remove their shoes at the entrance to the prayer hall. The complex includes a North African–style salon de thé (tearoom) and restaurant and a hammam, a traditional Turkish-style bathhouse.
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Cimetière du Père Lachaise
The world’s most visited cemetery, Père Lachaise (named after a confessor of Louis XIV) opened its one-way doors in 1804. Its 69,000 ornate, even ostentatious, tombs of the rich and/or famous form a verdant, 44-hectare sculpture garden. Among the 800,000 people buried here are: the composer Chopin; the playwright Molière; the poet Apollinaire; writers Balzac, Proust, Gertrude Stein and Colette; the actors Simone Signoret, Sarah Bernhardt and Yves Montand; the painters Pissarro, Seurat, Modigliani and Delacroix; the chanteuse Édith Piaf; the dancer Isadora Duncan; and even those immortal 12th-century lovers, Abélard and Héloïse, whose remains were disinterred and rebur…
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Avenue des Champs-Élysées
Av des Champs-Élysées (the name refers to the ‘Elysian Fields’ where happy souls dwelt in the hereafter, according to Greek myth) links place de la Concorde with the Arc de Triomphe. The avenue has symbolised the style and joie de vivre of Paris since the mid-19th century and today is most popular with international brands looking to promote their prestige. While you can safely give Gap and Benetton a miss, some of the car showrooms are somewhat off-the-wall (with racing simulators, futuristic models, éclair bars and wi-fi zones) and can be a fun, if slightly bizarre, experience.
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