PARIS ITINERARIES III

FROM BERCY TO THE LOUVRE - FEBRUARY 2006

AFTERNOON AND NIGHT!


"RUE CREMIEUX - The Street, opened in 1865, was named Millaud Avenue until 1897. Its current name comes from Isaac Moïse Crémieux, better known as Adolphe Crémieux, a French statesman, lawyer and politician, author of the 1870 Decret Crémieux, which secured French citizenship for the Jews in French-ruled Algeria. Quite close to the Gare de Lyon, Crémieux is a pedestrian street, paved since 1993, and bordered with two floor houses with coloured façades"


"GARE DE LYON - The railway station was built initially in 1852 and reconstructed for the World Exposition of 1900 It shows a clock tower, similar to the one of the London Houses of Parliament, home to the Big Ben. But the best treat (further to the TGV) is the Le Train Bleu restaurant, a fabulous setting (classified historic monument) for an acceptable meal"


"BERCY - In 1981, François Mitterrand decided to create a new building for the Ministry of Finance and for the successors of Jean-Baptiste Colbert and his tax collectors. Actually the Ministry had been for the previous 100 years located in one wing of the Louvre Palace and it was time to return it back to history, Mitterand dixit. Paul Chemetov and Borja Huidobro won Mitterrand's international design competition and created the aqueduct shaped building with two 72 meter arches - one plunging in the Seine, the other above the street of Bercy"


"THE CINEMATHÈQUE, due to Henri Langlois, moved from Chaillot to the Frank O. Gehry building (erected in 1994 for the American centre, but which had had to close its doors two years later because of its budget deficit) in the autumn of 2005. Gehry’s idea was to create an image of the US while taking into account the context. Thus, the white stone building (unusual material for Gehry) respected the alignment of the Bercy Street and the traditional measure of Haussmann, but on the side of the Bercy Park, the architect gave free course to its «Californian» inspiration, with a profusion of tilted sides and overlapping volumes. The building was named «la danseuse relevant son tutu» by its creator"



"BERCY PARK - In August, Peter made a quite nice post on Bercy. There you have a quite interesting view of the area, including the Park. Here it's just an aperitif to get back to Peter's photos"


"THE COUR ST. EMILION is named after the French wine Saint-Émilion and was built at the old railway station of Bercy where wine from south of France arrived in Paris. The metro station opens onto Bercy Village, a commercial area that replaced the old wine warehouses"


"METRO BIBLIOTHÈQUE was the terminal station of line 14, inaugurated in October 1998 by François Mitterrand and running from Madeleine to Bibliothèque. Line 14 was the second automated line after Orlyval, but the first fully integrated into the Paris metro network. On June 26, 2007 line 14 that was already running from St. Lazare, was extended beyond Bibliothèque to Olympiades..."


"SAINT SULPICE is 113 meters long, 58 meters wide and 34 meters tall, only slightly smaller than Notre-Dame. It was always famous, but now also appears in the Da Vinci Code"


"SAINT GERMAIN DES PRÉS is a Benedictine Abbey built in the 6th century in the fields just beyond the outskirts of early medieval Paris. It was the burial place of Merovingian kings of Neustria. After many incidents, it's still there, a reference near the Quartier Latin"


"NOTRE-DAME - This time it seems to be a decent night photo..."



"THE CONCIERGERIE, a former royal palace and prison, located on the west of the Île de la Cité, near the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, is part of the Palais de Justice. The first picture shows a fast boat speedin in the Seine River, the second seems quite acceptable to me..."


"PALAIS ROYAL - An amazing entrance to the metro station. Peter had already shown it at PHO"