PARIS ITINERARIES - I

FROM THE GRAND HOTEL TO THE EIFFEL TOWER - FEBRUARY 2006

With this post, my delay in posting on Blogtrotter runs the risk of being reduced to only 21 months... Most of the pictures are similar to others taken previously in the seventies and eighties, the nineties and already in the 21st century!


"THE GRAND HOTEL is a great place to stay and after the renovation works is much more comfortable. Furthermore, breakfast is taken at the Cafe de la Paix..."


"PLACE DE L’OPERA - Always busy, anytime of the day..."



"THE OPERA DE PARIS, the most important symbol of the Second Empire baroque style, was designed by Charles Garnier for Emperor Napoleon III. Its construction lasted from 1862 through 1875, partly because an underground lake was then discovered. It was the hiding place of the «Phantom of the Opera» in Paul Leroux's famous play, and still exists under the building"


"AU GAGNE PETIT - An old shopping, before the shopping malls!"


"HOTEL DU LOUVRE - Another nice place to stay, close to the Louvre Museum, the Palais Royale and the Comédie Française"


"THE TUILERIES GARDEN - Catherine de Medicis, who owned this ground in the 16th Century, asked Le Notre to make a French garden out of it. It became one of the first European gardens to be opened to the public"


"MADELEINE CHURCH seen from the Concorde Place. The construction started three times, but only the 1806 version, commissioned by Napoleon to Pierre-Alexandre Vignon as the Temple to the Glory of the Great Army, was actually built. With completion of the Triumph Arch in 1808, the original role for the temple was blunted, and later King Louis XVIII determined that the structure would be used as a church"


"OBELISK - The 3,300-year-old, 23 metres high, 250 tonnes Egyptian Obelisk is one of three Cleopatra's Needles (the other two are in New York and London) and was offered to France in 1831 by the viceroy of Egypt, Mehemet Ali. The obelisk once marked the entrance to the Luxor Temple and is decorated with hieroglyphics exalting the reign of the pharaoh Ramses II. The obelisk arrived in Paris in 1833 and was placed in the centre of Place de la Concorde in 1836"


"BOURBON PALACE - The French National Assembly, a Republican institution, bears the family name of the Royal French family overthrown by the French republican revolutionaries"




"THE PETIT PALAIS was built by the City of Paris for the Universal Exhibition in 1900 and it now houses the Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris. Façade, Sculpture and Courtyard may be seen here"


"PONT ALEXANDRE III AND INVALIDES in the mist. Also in Paris..."


"TRIUMPH ARCH"


"BUILDING at the President Wilson Avenue. Peter was kind enough to add that this is the Galliera Palace, home to a Fashion Museum. Actually, the Palace was built in the 19th-century for Duchess de Galliera and hosts the Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris, inaugurated in 1977, and with more than 90,000 pieces in its collection"


"EIFFEL TOWER"