Sights in Paris
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Avenue des Champs-Élysées
If the Eiffel Tower is Paris, then the Champs-Élysées is la belle France in all its grandeur and glamour. First laid out in the 17th century, the broad avenue today is where presidents and soldiers strut their stuff on Bastille Day, the Tour de France holds its final sprint and, most importantly, where the country parties when it has a reason to celebrate.
It’s also one of the globe’s most sought-after addresses, which you’ll undoubtedly notice as you stroll down the avenue: many of the world’s biggest brands have opened up showrooms here looking to promote their prestige. Part of the axe historique, the Champs-Élysées links place de la Concorde with the Arc de…
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Basilique de St-Denis
St-Denis Basilica was the burial place for all but a handful of France’s kings and queens from Dagobert I (r 629–39) to Louis XVIII (r 1814–24), constituting one of Europe’s most important collections of funerary sculpture; today the remains of 43 kings and 32 queens repose here. The single-towered basilica, begun around 1136, was the first major structure to be built in the Gothic style, serving as a model for other 12th-century French cathedrals, including the one at Chartres. Features illustrating the transition from Romanesque to Gothic can be seen in the choir and double ambulatory, which are adorned with a number of 12th-century stained-glass windows. The …
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Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie
At the northern end of Parc de la Villette, the huge City of Science & Industry has all sorts of high-tech exhibits. Bring a picnic and spend the day here.
There are two main exhibit areas inside, in addition to a planetarium (level 1; admission €3; 10am-6pm Tue-Sat, to 7pm Sun), two cinemas, a tiny aquarium (level 2; admission free; 10am-6pm Tue-Sat, to 7pm Sun) and a 1950s French Navy submarine (€3; 10am-5.30pm Tue-Sat, to 7pm Sun) that can be visited.
On the ground floor is the brilliant Cité des Enfants, with imaginative, hands-on demonstrations of basic scientific principles in two sections: for 2- to 7-year-olds, and for 5- to 12-year-olds. In the first, kids…
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Hôtel des Invalides
Fronted by a 500m-long expanse of lawn known as the Esplanade des Invalides, the Hôtel des Invalides was built in the 1670s by Louis XIV to provide housing for 4000 invalides (disabled war veterans). On 14 July 1789, a mob forced its way into the building and, after fierce fighting, seized 32,000 rifles before heading on to the prison at Bastille and the start of the French Revolution. At the southern end of the esplanade, laid out between 1704 and 1720, is the final resting place of Napoleon.
In the Cour d’Honneur, the Musée de l’Armée holds the nation’s largest collection on the history of the French military. South is Église St-Louis des Invalides, once used…
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Palais de Chaillot & Jardins du Trocadéro
The two curved, colonnaded wings of the Palais de Chaillot, built for the 1937 World Exhibition held in Paris, and the terrace in between them afford an exceptional panorama of the Jardins du Trocadéro, the Seine and the Eiffel Tower.
The palace's western wing contains two interesting museums. The Musée de l'Homme focuses on human development, ethnology, population and population growth; it's a branch of the Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle. There are also excellent scientific and ethnographical temporary exhibits on everything from the personality and the brains to the Inuit people of Greenland.
The Musée de la Marine focuses on France's naval adventures from the…
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Jardin des Tuileries
Filled with fountains, ponds and sculptures, the formal, 28-hectare Tuileries Garden, which begins just west of the Jardin du Carrousel, was laid out in its present form, more or less, in 1664 by André Le Nôtre, who also created the gardens at Vaux-le-Vicomte and Versailles. The Tuileries soon became the most fashionable spot in Paris for parading about in one’s finery. It now forms part of the Banks of the Seine World Heritage Site listed by Unesco in 1991.
The Axe Historique (Historic Axis), the western continuation of the Tuileries’ east–west axis, follows the av des Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe and, ultimately, to the Grande Arche in the skyscraper…
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Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle
France’s National Museum of Natural History within the Jardin des Plantes incorporates the Galerie de Minéralogie et de Géologie (closed for renovation at the time of writing); the Galerie d’Anatomie Comparée et de Paléontologie, covering anatomy and fossils; and the topical Grande Galerie de l'Évolution, highlighting humanity’s effect on the planet’s ecosystems.
The National Museum of Natural History was created in 1793 and became a site of significant scientific research in the 19th century. Of its three museums, the Grande Galerie de l’Évolution is a particular winner if you’re travelling with kids: life-sized elephants, tigers and rhinos play safari and…
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Bibliothèque Nationale de France
The four glass towers of the €2 billion National Library of France – conceived as a ‘wonder of the modern world’ and opened in 1995 – were one of President Mitterand’s most ambitious and costliest grands projets. It’s well worth visiting for its excellent temporary exhibitions (entrance E) revolve around ‘the word’ – from storytelling to bookbinding and French heroes.
The national library contains around 12 million tomes stored on some 420km of shelves and can hold 2000 readers and 2000 researchers.
No expense was spared to carry out the library’s grand design, which many claimed defied logic. While books and historical documents are shelved in the…
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Chapelle Notre Dame de la Medaille Miraculeuse
Tucked away at the end of a courtyard across from Le Bon Marché department store, this extraordinary chapel is where, in 1830, the Virgin Mary spoke to 24-year-old Catherine Labouré. In a series of three miraculous apparitions that took place here, the young novice seminary sister was told to have a medal made that would protect and grace those who wore it.
The first Miraculous Medals were made in 1832 – the same year a cholera epidemic plagued Paris – and their popularity spread rapidly as wearers of the medal found themselves miraculously cured or protected from the deadly disease. Devout Roman Catholics around the world still wear the medal today.
Catherine…
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Cathédrale St-Pierre
Beauvais’ unfinished Cathédrale St-Pierre is to church architecture what the Venus de Milo is to sculpture: a fantastically beautiful work with certain key extremities missing – in this case, the nave. When the town’s Carolingian cathedral was partly destroyed by fire in 1225, a series of ambitious local bishops and noblemen decided that its replacement should surpass anything ever built. Unfortunately, their soaring and richly adorned creation surpassed not only its rivals but the limits of the technology of the time, and in 1272 and again in 1284 the 48m-high vaults collapsed. Inside, at the end of the north transept, the oldest chiming clock in the world (1303)…
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Grande Pyramide
Almost as dazzling as the masterpieces inside is the 21m-high glass pyramid designed by Chinese-born American architect IM Pei that bedecks the main entrance to the Louvre in a dazzling crown of shimmering sunbeams and glass.
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Quartier Latin
Known as the Quartier Latin because students and professors communicated in Latin here until the Revolution, the 5e arrondissement has been the centre of Parisian higher education since the Middle Ages. It still has a large population of students and academics, which gives it a lively, sparky vibe.
The Latin Quarter was the centre of the Roman town of Letitia over 1800 years ago. The only surviving remains of the town are Gallo-Roman baths near the Hôtel de Cluny and the Arènes de Lutèce theatre, unearthed in 1869. The imposing Panthéon dominates the highest point on the Left Bank and gives super views over central and eastern Paris. Across the way is the beautiful…
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Conciergerie
Built as a royal palace in the 14th century for the concierge of the Palais de la Cité, the Conciergerie was the main prison during the Reign of Terror (1793–94) and was used to incarcerate alleged enemies of the Revolution before they were brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal in the Palais de Justice next door. Among the 2700 prisoners held in the cachots (dungeons) here before being sent in tumbrels to the guillotine were Queen Marie-Antoinette and, as the Revolution began to turn on its own, the radicals Danton, Robespierre and, finally, the judges of the Tribunal themselves.
The Gothic 14th-century Salle des Gens d’Armes (Cavalrymen’s Hall) is a fine example…
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Place de la Concorde
With is majestic vistas in just about every direction – the Arc de Triomphe, the Assemblée Nationale (the lower house of Parliament) and even a rare swath of open sky above – place de la Concorde is one of Paris’ most impressive squares. It was first laid out in 1755 and originally named after King Louis XV; however, its associations with royalty meant that it would eventually go on to take centre stage during the Revolution.
Louis XVI was the first to be guillotined here in 1793; during the next two years, 1343 more people, including Marie Antoinette, Danton and Robespierre, all lost their heads here as well. The square was given its present name after the Reign…
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Place de la Bastille
The Bastille, a 14th-century fortress built to protect the city gates, is the most famous monument in Paris that no longer exists. Transformed into a dreaded state prison under Cardinal Richelieu, it was demolished shortly after a mob stormed it on 14 July 1789 and freed a total of just seven prisoners.
The place still resonates with the French as a symbol of revolutionary change, but first impressions of today’s busy traffic circle can be a bit underwhelming. The most obvious monument is the lone bronze column topped with the gilded Spirit of Liberty, but upon closer inspection you’ll notice that the column has little to do with the famous storming of the prison; it…
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Flame of Liberty Memorial
This bronze sculpture, a replica of the one topping the Statue of Liberty, was placed here in 1987 on the centenary of the launch of the International Herald Tribune, as a symbol of friendship between France and the USA. On 31 August 1997 in the place d’Alma underpass, Diana, Princess of Wales, was killed in a devastating car accident along with her companion, Dodi Fayed, and their chauffeur, Henri Paul. The sculpture is located on the place de l'Alma, near the end of the Pont de l'Alma bridge.
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Jardin des Plantes
Founded in 1626 as a medicinal herb garden for Louis XIII, Paris’ 24-hectare botanical gardens are a serious institute rather than a leisure destination, but fascinating all the same, and idyllic to stroll or jog around.
Sections include a winter garden, tropical greenhouses and an alpine garden with 2000 mountainous plants, as well as the gardens of the École de Botanique, used by students of the School of Botany and green-fingered Parisians studying up on horticultural techniques. It also encompasses a zoo, the Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes, and the Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle, three separate centres comprising France’s natural-history museum. A two-day pass…
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Panthéon
The domed landmark now known simply as the Panthéon was commissioned around 1750 as an abbey church dedicated to Ste Geneviève, but because of financial and structural problems it wasn’t completed until 1789 – not a good year for churches to open in France. Two years later, the Constituent Assembly converted it into a secular mausoleum for the grands hommes de l’époque de la liberté française (great men of the era of French liberty).
The Panthéon is a superb example of 18th-century neoclassicism, but its ornate marble interior is gloomy in the extreme. The 80-odd permanent residents of the crypt include Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Émile Zola,…
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Les Catacombes
Paris’ most gruesome and macabre sight is its series of underground tunnels lined with skulls and bones exhumed from the city’s overflowing cemeteries. In 1785 it was decided to solve the hygiene and aesthetic problems posed by Paris’ overflowing cemeteries by exhuming the bones and storing them in the tunnels of three disused quarries, and the Catacombes were created in 1810.
The route through the Catacombes begins at a small, dark-green belle époque building in the centre of a grassy area of av Colonel Henri Roi-Tanguy, adjacent to Place Denfert Rochereau. After descending 20m (130 steps) from street level, you follow 2km of subterranean passages where the bones…
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Place des Vosges
Inaugurated in 1612 as place Royale and thus the oldest square in Paris, place des Vosges is a strikingly elegant ensemble of 36 symmetrical houses with ground-floor arcades, steep slate roofs and large dormer windows arranged around a large and leafy square with four symmetrical fountains and an 1829 copy of a mounted statue of Louis XIII, originally placed here in 1639.
Only the earliest houses were built of brick; to save time, the rest were given timber frames and faced with plaster, which was later painted to resemble brick. The square received its present name in 1800 to honour the Vosges département (administrative division) for being the first in France to pay its…
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Musée Jacquemart-André
The Jacquemart-André Museum, founded by collector Édouard André and his portraitist wife Nélie Jacquemart, is in an opulent mid-19th-century residence on one of Paris’ posher avenues. It has furniture, tapestries and enamels, but is most noted for its paintings by Rembrandt and Van Dyck and Italian Renaissance works by Bernini, Botticelli, Carpaccio, Donatello, Mantegna, Tintoretto, Titian and Uccello. Don’t miss the Jardin d’Hiver (Winter Garden), with its marble statuary, tropical plants and double-helix marble staircase. Just off it is the delightful fumoir (the erstwhile smoking room) filled with exotic objects collected by Jacquemart during her travels. The…
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Église St-Sulpice
In 1646 work started on the twin-towered Church of St Sulpicius and took six architects 150 years to finish. What draws most people is not its striking Italianate facade with two rows of superimposed columns, Counter-Reformation-influenced neoclassical decor or even the frescoes by Delecroix, but its setting for a murderous scene in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.
Inside, the church is lined inside with 21 side chapels. The frescoes in the Chapelle des Sts-Anges (Chapel of the Holy Angels), first to the right as you enter the chapel, depict Jacob wrestling with the angel (to the left) and Michael the Archangel doing battle with Satan (to the right) and were painted by…
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Librairie les Alizés
At 74 rue du Cardinal Lemoine is the 3rd-floor apartment where Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) lived with his first wife Hadley from January 1922 until August 1923. The flat figures prominently in his book of memoirs, A Moveable Feast, from which the quotation on the wall plaque (in French) is taken: ‘This is how Paris was in our youth when we were very poor and very happy.’ Just below the flat was the Bal au Printemps, a popular bal musette (dancing club), which served as the model for the one where Jake Barnes met Brett Ashley in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. It is now the bookshop Librairie Les Alizés, specialising in new and secondhand books by American…
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Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel
This triumphal arch, erected by Napoleon to celebrate his battlefield successes of 1805, sits with aplomb in the Jardin du Carrousel, the gardens immediately next to the Louvre. The arch was once crowned by the ancient Greek sculpture called The Horses of St Mark’s, ‘borrowed’ from the portico of St Mark’s Basilica in Venice by Napoleon but returned after his defeat at Waterloo in 1815.
The quadriga (the two-wheeled chariot drawn by four horses) that replaced it was added in 1828 and celebrates the return of the Bourbons to the French throne after Napoleon’s downfall. The sides of the arch are adorned with depictions of Napoleonic victories and eight pink-marble…
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Conciergerie
The Conciergerie was built as a royal palace in the 14th century, but later lost favour with the kings of France and became a prison and torture chamber. During the Reign of Terror (1793–94) it was used to incarcerate alleged enemies of the Revolution before they were brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal, next door in the Palais de Justice.
Among the almost 2800 prisoners held in the dungeons here (in various ‘classes’ of cells, no less) before being sent in tumbrels to the guillotine were Queen Marie-Antoinette (see a reproduction of her cell) and, as the Revolution began to turn on its own, the radicals Danton, Robespierre and, finally, the judges of the Tribunal…
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