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Paris is considered by many one of the greates cities. But what makes it so interesting and enjoyable to visit? It's classicity, or it's modernity? Well, it's neither one or another. It's the combination of both. And particularly, Paris' beauty lays in places that make both the future and the past come together.
Eiffel Tower
Buildings, Monuments and Palaces built for this duque or by this monarch– We have seen thousands in our lives and in different places of the world. But have you ever seen a great landmark named after the architect and engineer who build it? The giant tower that greeted visitors to the Paris Universal Exposition of 1889 was planned only to exist for a limited amount of time. Perhaps it's for this reason that it was named with the name of it's engineer, Gustav Eiffel. Or perhaps at the time of it's creation it was considered to be so ugly by the Parisians that they did not want to name it with any national symbols.
Whichever the reason is, this monument is a great combination of the modern and the antigue. ‘Gustave Eiffel knew how to master the most advanced technology of the time,’ Stéphane Dieu, who looks after the tower’s heritage, says. ‘For a start, the foundations of the tower’s four pillars had to be built in damp soil close to the river. Above all, it was his faith and love of science that guided him – you can see that from the frieze around the first floor, which gives the names of 72 French scientists.’ The touristic success of this tower was only possible an appreciable amount of time after it's building, thanks to the invention of the elevator.
Eiffel’s most decent achievement, however, was meant to be destroyed absolutely by 1909. It was only saved thanks to his character and continuous insistence that it could serve as a testing ground for scientific experiments and later as a radio transmitter. Bridges and buildings by Eiffel survive from Hungary to Bolivia. He even designed the internal framework for the Statue of Liberty. But if it hadn’t been for Eiffel’s determination, Eiffels name would be absolutely unknown nowadays.
Notre-Dame
The marker in the cobblestones near this impressive church, denoting “point zero”, is the spot from whcih all French road distances are measured. Notre-Dame is, thus, considered by many the centre of France.
This cathedral, placed on an island surrounded by the Seine river, was one of earliest parts of Paris to be settled in the neutral ground dividing the city’s Left Bank and Right Bank. A lot of what appears medieval is really not so much medieval, it is in fact of a relatively modern style called “neo-medieval”.
During one of the points of French Revolution, the population took an anti-clerical turn, and the cathedral was damaged by it. Most of its bells were melted down and in 1793 the 28 royal statues on the main façade were vandalised, their heads hacked off – the crowd had allegedly mistaken these Biblical rulers for kings of France.
By 1831, when Victor Hugo wrote his famous The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, the cathedral had become a complete embarrassment for the French. The architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was brought in to bring Notre-Dame back to glory in the 1840s – less than two centuries ago. This architect, however, was keen of introducing innovation to this restoration projects, and he did so in the case of Notre-Dame, taking some freedom to introduce his own, original elements to it. These elements include Notre-Dame’s famous “grotesques” – not properly gargoyles, as the only use they have is of decoration, unlike the others that act as waterspouts. Stairs in form of spiral lead you to the Galerie des Chimères, with grotesques placed all around this walway between the west towers They weren’t on the original blueprints, but then again Notre-Dame never got the spires that were meant to top its twin square towers. Perhaps a great cathedral is always a work in progress (and Notre-Dame is not a unique case – just look at Gaudi's Sagrada Familia).
Louvre
The largest painting you can find in Louvre is The Wedding Feast at Cana, painted by Paolo Veronese in 1563. It covers a whole wall of the Salle des États, and in any other room it would be the focus of attention. On the wall just next to it, however is a modest small portrait in smoky colours of a woman smiling in a strange, mysterious way. Thanks to the Mona Lisa, known in France as La Joconde, the figures in Veronese’s masterpiece spend most of their time looking out onto a throng of people with their backs turned. The world’s most visited museum has plenty of similar treasures hiding in plain sight, beginning with the earliest work on display – a 9000-year old human figure in ghostly white plaster from Ain Ghazal in Jordan. Tutankhamun of Egypt lived closer in time to us than to the people who made this statue – a whisper from a nameless past. ‘We almost don’t want to say which rooms are less visited than they should be – we would like to keep them quiet!’ says Daniel Soulié, who has written several books on the Louvre. ‘The whole Richelieu wing and the second floor, the galleries of French sculpture and objets d’art, the paintings of the Northern European schools – these are fabulous collections which don’t get so many visitors.’
Catacombs
The Paris catacombs were originally made to provide a quick solution to the problem of excessively growing population. By the late 18th century, the medieval cemeteries couldn't just keep up with the bones from new deaths. Paris already had a network of tunnels, built from Roman times onwards to quarry high-quality limestone for buildings such as Notre-Dame. From 1786, the old city-centre cemeteries were gradually emptied, and their contents brought to these tunnels with the accompanying of the priest. The last of the transfers to the catacombs was made in 1860, by which time vast suburban cemeteries such as Père Lachaise had relieved the burden on the city. The catacombs begin with a doorway over which is written: ‘Arrête! C’est içi l’empire de la mort’ (‘Stop! Here is the empire of death’). This is the first of many “philosophical” inscriptions that were designed, to ‘break the sinister and dark monotony’. The embankments of bones on either side of the passageways have signs stating the original cemeteries and dates of reburial. Even here the human urge to be decorative expresses itself in patterns of skulls and femurs. The first bones had been thrown in haphazardly, in a rationalist 18th century that just wanted these unsavoury remains put somewhere safely out of sight. But when burials resumed after a hiatus caused by the turmoil of the French Revolution, Romanticism had become the “mindset of the world”, and the catacombs were refashioned into a place where visitors could enjoy a “dignified sadness”
Written by James Crandell
Eiffel Tower
Buildings, Monuments and Palaces built for this duque or by this monarch– We have seen thousands in our lives and in different places of the world. But have you ever seen a great landmark named after the architect and engineer who build it? The giant tower that greeted visitors to the Paris Universal Exposition of 1889 was planned only to exist for a limited amount of time. Perhaps it's for this reason that it was named with the name of it's engineer, Gustav Eiffel. Or perhaps at the time of it's creation it was considered to be so ugly by the Parisians that they did not want to name it with any national symbols.
Whichever the reason is, this monument is a great combination of the modern and the antigue. ‘Gustave Eiffel knew how to master the most advanced technology of the time,’ Stéphane Dieu, who looks after the tower’s heritage, says. ‘For a start, the foundations of the tower’s four pillars had to be built in damp soil close to the river. Above all, it was his faith and love of science that guided him – you can see that from the frieze around the first floor, which gives the names of 72 French scientists.’ The touristic success of this tower was only possible an appreciable amount of time after it's building, thanks to the invention of the elevator.
Eiffel’s most decent achievement, however, was meant to be destroyed absolutely by 1909. It was only saved thanks to his character and continuous insistence that it could serve as a testing ground for scientific experiments and later as a radio transmitter. Bridges and buildings by Eiffel survive from Hungary to Bolivia. He even designed the internal framework for the Statue of Liberty. But if it hadn’t been for Eiffel’s determination, Eiffels name would be absolutely unknown nowadays.
Notre-Dame
The marker in the cobblestones near this impressive church, denoting “point zero”, is the spot from whcih all French road distances are measured. Notre-Dame is, thus, considered by many the centre of France.
This cathedral, placed on an island surrounded by the Seine river, was one of earliest parts of Paris to be settled in the neutral ground dividing the city’s Left Bank and Right Bank. A lot of what appears medieval is really not so much medieval, it is in fact of a relatively modern style called “neo-medieval”.
During one of the points of French Revolution, the population took an anti-clerical turn, and the cathedral was damaged by it. Most of its bells were melted down and in 1793 the 28 royal statues on the main façade were vandalised, their heads hacked off – the crowd had allegedly mistaken these Biblical rulers for kings of France.
By 1831, when Victor Hugo wrote his famous The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, the cathedral had become a complete embarrassment for the French. The architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was brought in to bring Notre-Dame back to glory in the 1840s – less than two centuries ago. This architect, however, was keen of introducing innovation to this restoration projects, and he did so in the case of Notre-Dame, taking some freedom to introduce his own, original elements to it. These elements include Notre-Dame’s famous “grotesques” – not properly gargoyles, as the only use they have is of decoration, unlike the others that act as waterspouts. Stairs in form of spiral lead you to the Galerie des Chimères, with grotesques placed all around this walway between the west towers They weren’t on the original blueprints, but then again Notre-Dame never got the spires that were meant to top its twin square towers. Perhaps a great cathedral is always a work in progress (and Notre-Dame is not a unique case – just look at Gaudi's Sagrada Familia).
Louvre
The largest painting you can find in Louvre is The Wedding Feast at Cana, painted by Paolo Veronese in 1563. It covers a whole wall of the Salle des États, and in any other room it would be the focus of attention. On the wall just next to it, however is a modest small portrait in smoky colours of a woman smiling in a strange, mysterious way. Thanks to the Mona Lisa, known in France as La Joconde, the figures in Veronese’s masterpiece spend most of their time looking out onto a throng of people with their backs turned. The world’s most visited museum has plenty of similar treasures hiding in plain sight, beginning with the earliest work on display – a 9000-year old human figure in ghostly white plaster from Ain Ghazal in Jordan. Tutankhamun of Egypt lived closer in time to us than to the people who made this statue – a whisper from a nameless past. ‘We almost don’t want to say which rooms are less visited than they should be – we would like to keep them quiet!’ says Daniel Soulié, who has written several books on the Louvre. ‘The whole Richelieu wing and the second floor, the galleries of French sculpture and objets d’art, the paintings of the Northern European schools – these are fabulous collections which don’t get so many visitors.’
Catacombs
The Paris catacombs were originally made to provide a quick solution to the problem of excessively growing population. By the late 18th century, the medieval cemeteries couldn't just keep up with the bones from new deaths. Paris already had a network of tunnels, built from Roman times onwards to quarry high-quality limestone for buildings such as Notre-Dame. From 1786, the old city-centre cemeteries were gradually emptied, and their contents brought to these tunnels with the accompanying of the priest. The last of the transfers to the catacombs was made in 1860, by which time vast suburban cemeteries such as Père Lachaise had relieved the burden on the city. The catacombs begin with a doorway over which is written: ‘Arrête! C’est içi l’empire de la mort’ (‘Stop! Here is the empire of death’). This is the first of many “philosophical” inscriptions that were designed, to ‘break the sinister and dark monotony’. The embankments of bones on either side of the passageways have signs stating the original cemeteries and dates of reburial. Even here the human urge to be decorative expresses itself in patterns of skulls and femurs. The first bones had been thrown in haphazardly, in a rationalist 18th century that just wanted these unsavoury remains put somewhere safely out of sight. But when burials resumed after a hiatus caused by the turmoil of the French Revolution, Romanticism had become the “mindset of the world”, and the catacombs were refashioned into a place where visitors could enjoy a “dignified sadness”
Written by James Crandell
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