Wednesday: June 15

A Collection of Things (and places)

Today I'm going to offload some of the odds and ends I've been collecting. It doesn't mean they aren't important or not worth seeing; indeed, many are very much worth seeing. It's just I am running out of time and will not be able to get indepth with everything. So here are a few places and things that I have seen along the way, but will not get to report on in depth. Enjoy them....they are worth your attention.

Click on the picture to get a larger view!

Montparnasse

The 56th observation floor of the Tour Montparnasse offers visitors stunning views of Paris in all directions. It is an experience getting up there as Tour Montparnasse has Europe's fastest elevator. The elevator will take you to a height of 196 meters (over 640 ft) in just 38 seconds.

From the top of the Montparnasse Tower you can spot Paris's landmarks and major attractions, including the Eiffel Tower, Les Invalides, Sacré Coeur, Musée d'Orsay, the Arc de Triomphe, the Panthéon, the Louvre or the Luxembourg gardens.

The outdoor observatory, accessible from the 59th floor through a flight of stairs, offers a totally different viewing experience.

        

Fashion Museum

As everybody knows, Paris is the fashion capital of the world. The Musée Galliera, or the Paris Fashion Museum, has a passion for fashion. The museum contains 90,000 pieces of fashion memorabilia spanning over three hundred years of ever changing style, grace and lace.

The Paris Fashion Museum is an important and interesting centre, as well as one of those rare museums which exerts a considerable influence over contemporary culture.

     

Old Fountain Saved

I don’t know if it has a name or a history. But someone had the foresight to save this fountain and build around it rather than tear it down. That’s what makes cities like Paris great…they don’t just trash everything in the name of progress.


Hotel du Louvre

What a pretty building. Stand alone, right on one of my favorite plazas directly across the street from the Louvre museum. The café on the bottom is also quite nice. Amatuer musicians sometimes play for coins on the plaza; and blade and skateboarders are quite active.  I love these old places.

The Metro

The metro is remarkable. That someone had the insight to build this so many years ago. You can literally walk to everything in Paris, but if your feet get tired or the rain comes, the metro will get you to you next stop. It crisscrosses Paris and stops a few blocks from everywhere. Musicians congregate in the metro playing for coins and there are lots of cafes and shoppes throughout. Quick, efficient and safe….it’s great. And the entrances are sometimes quite unique!


        

Rue Francois 1er

This is actually where several prominent streets meet in the Golden Triangle. The square or place is beautiful with the center fountain/monument forcing the roundabout. The building around the place are all curved to match the overall structure. Just beautiful.

Mazarin Library

This beautiful building is curved and structured just wonderfully.  Just beautiful.

Alfred Dreyfus

A nice statue with attribution…..

Bon Marche

This is a really famous shopping store….it is actually a very large building with lots of consignment areas in it. But you can get everything except a good deal here….and many many people come here. It is very famous and has a nice park next to it where all the husbands wait!

  

Statue of Charlemagne

A beautiful statue of Charlemagne.

  

Cercle Militaire

A beautiful building with offices for all branches of service. They wouldn’t let me in but there is no way the inside is a great as the outside. A really nice building.

Hotel Scribe

Another beautiful building. This “hotel” is really a hotel. I don’t know how you know the difference except by looking at them. But it sure looks nice.

Fountain of the Continents

A wonderfulfountain. The four females at the top represent the four continents. The sculptors were Carpeaux and two others. The fountain is located on the meridian line, and just outside there is a brass plate on the line with th e name of Arago, who was the director of the Paris Observatory (below left). This meridian is the famous "rose line" mentioned in Dan Brown's book The da Vinci Code in connection with St. Sulpice.Beautiful…

        

Bernanos

A statue of Bernanos

  

Pelletier et Cavendou

Chemestry and Pharmacies…early 1800s   No Smoking

Ministre d’Interior

This is their main office. They have facilities all over the city. It doesn’t look like much, but they own the entire block and have a massive building inside those gates. It is diagonal to the Presidential Palace. The Elysee Palace.

  

Monument to Steinlen

Sequioa Gift

This Sequioa was given to France from California. It is planted near Concord in front of the US Consulate.

  

Place Dauphine

The Place Dauphine, laid out in 1609 while the Place des Vosges was still under construction and named for the Dauphin of France, the future Louis XIII,[3] was among the earliest city-planning projects of Henry IV. The space, a rectangle with two canted ends, was made over to Achille du Harlay to construct thirty-two houses of regular plan. It is approached through a kind of gateway centred on the "downstream" end, formed by paired pavilions facing the equestrian statue of Henry IV on the far side of the Pont Neuf. They are built of brick with limestone quoins supported on arcaded stone ground floors and capped by steep slate roofs with dormers, very like the contemporaneous facades of Place des Vosges.

     

Chinese Pagoda

In the heart of the Monceau plain, next to traditionnal Haussmanian buildings, stands an amazing mandarin pagoda. It was builted in 1926 by the french architect Fernand Bloch for the chinese antics dealer Ching-Tsai Loo. Ching Tsai Loo was the preeminent dealer of Chinese art and artifacts for the first half of the twentieth century.

Built over an ancient Louis-Philippe townhouse, the gallerie C.T. Loo & Cie remains up to date the oldest asian art gallerie in Paris , and the only genuine chinese house in the capital. With its 600m² and its six levels, it offers a unique architectural framework with an internal decors astoundingly refined: an original moon door, 16th and 17th century lacquered woodworks, an art deco glass ceiling, a superb 18th and 19th century sculpted wood galleria, a lacquered and wood elevator... and a delightfull zen atmosphere, where time seemed to have left its fingerprints.

  

Hotel Lutetia

Just another beautiful building that is a real hotel. Named after “old” Paris.

  

Statue of Danton

Fountain Moliere

Fountain "Molière" 1st arrd. was built in 1844 - the bronze statue of Molière is by Bernard-Gabriel Seure, and the two stone figures of Light Comedy and Serious Comedy are by James Pradier

     

L'Hotel Salomon de Rothschild

Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild at 11. rue Berryer in the 8th arrondissement in Paris, France, is a former residence of Adèle Hannah Charlotte Rothschild (1843–1922), the widow of Salomon James de Rothschild of the Rothschild banking family of France. Designed by Leon Ohnet and constructed between 1872 and 1878, it is located in the heart of Paris, near the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

On her death in 1922, the Jewish Adèle Rothschild bequeathed the property to the French government fine arts administration rather than to her only child, Hélène de Rothschild whom she had disinherited for marrying a Roman Catholic.

Today the building is home to Centre National de la Photographie and its renowned garden is open to the public.