Wednesday: June 23
Memorial des Martyrs et de la
Deportation / Gaspard de DColigny / Galleries LaFayette / Little Athens / Le
Marechal Michel Ney / Memorial du Martyr Juif Inconnu
You're going to visit a few varied places. These are places I went to visit but you don't stay long....they are short visits. But well worth seeing. For example, the Cloitre des Billettes is just marvelous, but you can only spend about 30 minutes there and then your done. The same with the Place des Victoires. So take a look and see what you think. We had lunch in Little Athens and while it was fun, it's overrated. So, ENJOY!
Approximately 200,000 French men, women, and children were deported to Nazi concentration camps during World War II. This simple, yet modern memorial recognizes this tragic event with a roll-call of the names of victims, and the camps to which they were deported. Conspicuous to this site are a number of small tombs made out of earth from the camps, and concluding the memorial in dramatic fashion is a tomb dedicated to the Unknown Deporte
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Gaspard de DColigny
Lord Gaspard de Coligny (16 February 1519 – 24 August 1572), Seigneur (Lord) de Châtillon, was a French nobleman and admiral, best remembered as a disciplined Huguenot leader in the French Wars of Religion
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Galleries LaFayette
The Galeries Lafayette (French pronunciation: [ɡalʁi
lafajɛt]) is a French department store company.
The flagship store of Galeries Lafayette in Paris is
a 10-storey department store.
In 1893 Théophile Bader and his cousin Alphonse Kahn opened a fashion store in a
small haberdasher's shop at the corner of rue La Fayette and the Chaussée
d'Antin, Paris. In 1896, the company purchased the entire building at n°1 rue La
Fayette and in 1905 the buildings at n°38, 40 et 42, boulevard Haussmann and
n°15 rue de la Chaussée d'Antin.
Théophile Bader commissioned Georges Chedanne and then his pupil Ferdinand
Chanut to design the layout of the Haussmann location. A glass and steel dome,
and Art Nouveau staircases were built in 1912.
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Little Athens
Right off Saint-Michel, there is a multi-block area known as Little Athens. It is filled with little restaurants and sandwich shops, one next to the other. It used to be mostly Greek restaurants, hence the name, but since many other types of cuisine have invaded. This is especially true of the "fondu" and "raclette" places, and quite a few moules places. It is a fun area but a tourist trap where you pay a lot for mediocre food. But a great experience.
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pictures....
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Le Marechal Michel Ney
Michel Ney, 1st Duc d'Elchingen, 1st Prince de la Moskowa (10 January 1769 – 7
December 1815) was a French soldier and military commander during the French
Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. He was one of the original 18
Marshals of France created by Napoleon I. He was known as Le Rougeaud ("red
faced" or "ruddy") by his men and nicknamed le Brave des Braves ("the bravest of
the brave") by Napoleon.
When Napoleon was defeated, dethroned, and exiled for the second time in the
summer of 1815, Ney was arrested (on 3 August 1815), and tried (4 December 1815)
for treason by the Chamber of Peers. On 6 December 1815 he was condemned, and
executed by firing squad in Paris near the Luxembourg Garden on 7 December 1815
– an event that deeply divided the French public. He refused to wear a blindfold
and was allowed the right to give the order to fire, reportedly saying:
"Soldiers, when I give the command to fire, fire straight at my heart. Wait for
the order. It will be my last to you. I protest against my condemnation. I have
fought a hundred battles for France, and not one against her ... Soldiers,
Fire!"
Ney's execution was an example intended for Napoleon's other marshals and
generals, many of whom were eventually exonerated by the Bourbon monarchy. Ney
is buried in Paris at Père Lachaise Cemetery.
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Memorial du Martyr Juif Inconnu
In a small side street, not far from Métro St.-Paul is the Memorial to the
Unknown Jewish Martyr. It commemorates European Jews who died in the Holocost of
World War II. The crypt contains ashes from concentration camps, and the Warsaw
Ghetto. The Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine (The Contemporary Jewish
Documentation Center) - with more than 400,000 documents - is upstairs.
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Cloître des Billettes
The Cloître des Billettes is the only remaining medieval
cloister in Paris. It takes it name from the former convent there, which housed
the brothers of the Charité de Notre-Dame called Billettes, who later were given
the name of Carmes (Carmites). The cloister is particularly remarkable for its
very beautiful flamboyant vaults (arches).
Built in 1294, the church of billets was originally a chapel to honor a miracle which aroused great public enthusiasm. A wafer was desecrated by the Jew Jonathan , who had notched knife. She would have bled. Then thrown into boiling water, it would put to fly. Hence the name of the site: "the house where God was boiled" when the building was constructed. Jonathan was sentenced to death and burned in the Place de Greve.
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Chick here to see other pictures....
Place des Victoires
The Place des Victoires is a circular place in Paris The Place des Victoires is
at the confluence of six streets. At the center of the Place des Victoires is an
equestrian monument in honor of King Louis XIV, celebrating the Treaties of
Nijmegen concluded in 1678-79. A marshal of France, François de la Feuillade,
vicomte d'Aubusson, on his own speculative initiative, demolished the old
private mansions on the site. Feuillade's project was soon taken over by the
Bâtiments du Roi, a department attached to the king's household, and the royal
architect, Jules Hardouin Mansart, was entrusted with redesigning a grander
complex of buildings, still in the form of a ring of private houses, to
accommodate a majestic statue of the triumphant king.
Mansart's design, of 1685, articulated the square's unified façades according to
a formula utilised in some Parisian hôtels particuliers . Mansart chose colossal
pilasters linking two floors, standing on a high arcaded base with rustication
of the pilasters; the façades were capped with sloping slate "mansard roofs",
punctuated by dormer windows.
The original statue, of Louis XIV crowned by Fame and trampling the Triple
Alliance underfoot, in gilt bronze, stood on a high square pedestal with
bas-relief panels and effusively flattering inscriptions; dejected bronze
figures were seated at the corners. The sculptor was Martin Desjardins, part of
the team that was working cooperatively at the Château of Versailles and its
gardens.
Louis permanently abandoned Paris in 1682, and his imperial ambitions in Europe
were deflated by subsequent wars; the Treaty of Ryswick of 1697 was termed "a
humiliating disaster for the king". The grandiose memorial that had begun to
embarrass Louis XIV himself would eventually be destroyed in 1792, during the
French Revolution.
In 1793, the place was renamed Place des Victoires-Nationaux (National Victories
Square), and a wooden pyramid was erected on the site of the destroyed statue.
In 1810, under the rule of Napoléon Bonaparte, a nude statue of the General
Louis Desaix replaced the pyramid. However, following the abdication of Napoléon,
the statue was taken down and its metal was used to create a new statue of Henry
IV on the nearby Pont Neuf.
In 1828, the restored Bourbon king, Charles X, commissioned the current
equestrian statue, which was sculpted by François Joseph Bosio. Louis XIV,
dressed as a Roman emperor, sits on a proud horse rearing on its hind legs. An
iron fence encircles the twelve-meter-high statue.
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