Parisian Splendour: Part Trois

Sunday morning I woke up early again to arrive at the Louvre before opening hours (9:00). I knew from the line I had seen the previous day that it would get crowded fast. I took the metro to the museum and entered through the carousel, the underground entrance which also includes a shopping center. Arriving early was great as I got in without having to stand in line. The museum is massive, so I went to the most famous wing first, knowing it would fill up fast. One of the first works I came across was the Nike of Samothrace:

This Greek statue was sculpted sometime around 190 BC and originally stood in a theatre. It depicts Nike, the winged goddess of victory and thus likely symbolized some military victory. After this, I walked through a great hall of paintings. These included Renaissance works by Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, and the strange paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo in which fruit, flowers, and twigs form portraits. Off of this hall was an open room which contained one of the museums most famous possessions, da Vinci's 1506 painting, Mona Lisa. This was quite impressive to see in person and a throng of people already gathered around the portrait which was roped off so that people could not get within five feet of it, and was behind several layers of glass.

I then walked to the basement of the museum which serves as a smaller museum of the history of the Louvre as a palace. Here, the original medieval foundations are visible:

and this model of the original palace was on display:

Back upstairs I went to the hall of Greek antiquities and saw another of the museum's famous pieces, the Venus de Milo:

The sculpture is Greek and originates from around 130-100BC. The arms of the statue have never been found. It was discovered on the island of Milos and possibly depicts the Greek goddess Aphrodite (called Venus by the Romans).

I walked through more of the gallery and saw a small section of Spanish art which included paintings by El Greco, Velazquez, and Goya. I also saw some paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Rembrandt. One of my favorite rooms was the collection of French Romantic paintings by Eugène Delacroix, Jacques-Louis David, and Théodore Géricault. These included David's The Coronation of Napoleon, Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People (a patriotic depiction of the feminine spirit of France, Marianne, leading Parisians in the 'July Revolution' of 1830), and Géricault's Raft of the Medusa.

From one of the upper floors I took this picture of the courtyard and glass pyramid in front of the museum:

Underneath this great pyramid in the entrance/exit to the museum is this inverted pyramid:

I left the Louvre and met up with Melissa and Nicolas in the district known as Le Marais. We met near the Centre Pompidou, the modern art museum of Paris which has an interesting, industrial exterior. (In the second picture, see if you can find a particularly French clown):

The museum was built in the 1970s. Outside is the Stravinsky Fountain by Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint-Phalle, although in this picture, the water is not flowing:

We went inside the Centre which also features a large public library. We walked through this for a while, past several people hunched in front of video screens wathing television streamed from America, England, Spain, Germany, and Italy. Hundreds of people sat at desks studying in the large, spacious floors of the library. It featured an enormous English-language section which included several rare American books.

Outside the museum/library, stood this typically Parisian apartment complex:

We then walked to the Jewish district of the city, located within Le Marais. This was an old disctrict with narrow streets and high buildings. Several traditional Jewish restaurants lined the streets. Sundays are particularly lively in this district as things that are closed elsewhere in the city are open there (Saturday is the Sabbath in the Jewish religion and thus the businesses in the area are closed on that day). We came across a school which had this plaque beside its door:

It reads roughly: "To the memory of the little children of this elementary school who were taken between 1942 and 1944 because they were Jews. They were the innocent victims of the barbaric Nazis who were assisted by the collaborationist Vichy Government. They were exterminated in the death camps. Never forget." In 1940, early in the Second World War, France fell to Hitler's Germany. The Nazis controlled the northern portion of France (which includes Paris) and established a puppet government under the leadership of the French general Marshal Philippe Pétain. Some brave French men and women joined resistance groups to undermine the Nazi influence in several ways including smuggling Jews and escaped Allied prisoners of war out of France. After the war, Pétain stood trial and was found guilty of treason. He was sentenced to death by firing squad, but President Charles de Gaulle commuted this to a life sentence due to his advanced age. (The ring below the plaque is used for hanging flowers).

We stopped at a restaurant and got a falafel and a Coke, then walked around the area some more. Here are some pictures of the Jewish district:

We left the Jewish District and walked around the Place des Vosges, the oldest square in Paris. It was constructed under Henri IV (who was involved in the French Religious Wars between Calvinists and Catholics and was assassinated) between 1605-1612. The place was used in the 1600s for military parades and royal cermonies. The houses along the place were some of the wealthiest places of residence and housed many famous Parisians, most notably Victor Hugo. Here are some photos. Notice the unevenness of the windows, which is mostly evident in the second picture:

We walked past this Medieval tower that was meant to be a church, but was never completed:

We then went to Les Halles, a shopping center. Mostly everything was closed because it was Sunday, but the area is significant because it was once the central market of Paris. It originated in the 1100s and merchants would come from all over selling their goods which included artisan products, food, and the exotic spices which once fueled the exploration of the world and produced wars. The markets closed in 1971 and were replaced with modernist architecture. The early 20th century iron shelters are the only relic of the once bustling center of the city:

Here is a modernist apartment complex (which I often associate with the Paris of the late 1960s) that stands on the edge of Les Halles:

Many Parisians (Nicolas included) hate the modernist architecture around Les Halles only because it obscures the splendor of the nearby Church of Saint-Eustache, a church named for the Roman martyr who claimed to have had a vision of the crucifixion appear to him between the antlers of a stag (this is the explanation for the symbol on bottles of the German liquer, Jaegermeister).

The church was constructed from 1532-1637. It was a famous site for baptisms with both the powerful (and corrupt) Cardinal Richelieu and the comedic playwright Molière being baptised here before its completion.

We walked through the adjacent neighborhood and came across a restaurant whose specialty was easily perceived:

From here we took the metro to the Eiffel Tower:

The Eiffel Tower is a 1,063 foot tall iron structure built between 1887 to 1889 for the 1889 World's Fair. At the time of its construction it was the tallest man-made structure in the world. It was designed by the French engineer Gustave Eiffel. Eiffel also helped construct the Statue of Liberty. Today it serves as a radio and television transmission tower and has become the most popular symbol of the city. (In 1912, the Austrian tailor Franz Reichelt fell to his death from the tower while attempting to demonstrate his haplessly-designed parachute suit).

After this, it was time for me to head back to the airport. Melissa and Nicolas rode with me on the metro until I got to the train which took me to the airport. We said our goodbyes there. I am truly grateful to them for acting as hosts and guides to their city.

When I got to the airport I learned my flight had been delayed, as it had been in Rome. I walked around the duty-free shop and perused French wines and cheeses. I picked up a copy of the free airport magazine and read an interview with Audrey Tatou as a collection of Parisians and Madrileños slept in their chairs around me.

The flight seemed much longer than the one into Paris. When I arrived in Madrid, the metro and train stations were closed, so I had to take a couple of buses to reach Alcalá de Henares. I arrived at my apartment somewhere around 4:30 in the morning. The next day of work was rough, but I caught up on my sleep during the rest of the week.

More to come soon as Cody and I moved to a new apartment and I discovered a very cool Madrid neighborhood.

Parisian Splendour: Part Deux

The next day I woke up early to visit the Musée d'Orsay. I first went to a boulangerie and bought some pastries for breakfast, including this chocolate éclair:

After breakfast I used the two-day metro pass I bought the night before to travel to the museum. The Musée d'Orsay houses many famous artworks from the impressionists and post-impressionists, focusing on mainly the French artists such as Renoir, Degas, Monet, Manet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Cezanne (including his painting featured at the head of my blog), and Gaugin. The museum also had a large collection of the Dutch Vincent van Gogh including many of his self-portraits. A special exhibition of the strange Belgian artist, James Ensor was also at the museum. The building of the museum itself is interesting, as it was originally a train station built in 1900:

I also crossed the Seine to take some pictures of the outside of the Musée du Louvre:

The Louvre was originally the palace of the French monarchs since its original construction in the 1100s under King Philip II. The original medieval structure is no longer present as Francis I had the palace renovated in 1546. Once Louis XIV moved his court away from the intrigues of Paris to the new palace at Versailles, the former palace became a sort of storehouse for royal art collections. In 1791, during the French Revolution, with the overthrow of the monarchy and everything that tasted of the nobility, the National Assembly opened the Louvre to public viewings in the hope it would serve as a symbol of egalitarianism. The glass pyramids outside were constructed in 1988 by the architect I.M. Pei.

Here is a picture from a bridge on the Seine, near the Louvre:

I then met up with Melissa in the area of Montmartre. We walked past the famous cabaret, the Moulin Rouge, which originated in 1889 and was where the can-can and the striptease were born:

I stopped at a street stand and bought a crêpe with egg and diced ham. The stand served several different types of crêpes, with sweet and savory varieties. We then walked to the highest hill in the city (from which Montmartre gets its name) upon which rests the beautiful Basilique Sacré-Cœur (or Basilica of the Sacred Heart):

The Byzantine-style basilica was constructed from 1875 to 1914 and was meant to be in honor of those killed in the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune uprising (both from 1870-1871). The uprising, a working-class uprising which attempted to establish a Communist system, was just one of many political revolts Paris has known since the original French Revolution.

We walked up the steps which lead to the basilica. At the top, there was a good view of the city:

We went inside the basilica which had some interesting modernist stained-glass windows. Outside, I took some close-ups of the building:

We walked through the neighborhood atop the hill of Montmartre, which are some of the most expensive in Paris. In the midst of the houses sat the last vineyard in Paris. Across from it was an old cabaret called Au Lapin Agile:

Melissa says she has walked past this at night before and heard songs carrying through the windows. We then made our way toward the Arc de Triomphe. On our way there, we saw this art deco metro station:

We took this metro line to the Arc de Triomphe:

Napoleon ordered the construction of the arch in 1806, but it was not completed until 1836, well after the Emperor's final defeat. It serves as a war memorial, particularly for the Napoleonic Wars. The walls of the interior list the names of all the places Napoleon invaded. Here is a wall listing some of those places in Spain:

The tomb of the unknown soldier (from the First World War) is also located here:

From here, the area of Paris known as La Défense is visible. The area was originally named after the defenders of the city in the Franco-Prussian War and is now a modern business district. The main feature of the district is the Grande Arche, a cubed arch built in 1989 which houses business offices and an exhibition hall:

We returned to the center of the city after this and went to Place de la Concorde, which is near the Louvre. The Eiffel Tower can be seen in the background of the second picture:

The obelisk in the pictures is a real Egyptian obelisk given to France by the Egyptian government. It stands on the exact location where the guillotine chopped off the heads of the nobility (most notably Louis XV and his queen, Marie Antoinette) during the French Revolution.

The guillotine was a French invention which did away with the problem of an axeman (who was not always accurate and would sometimes only cut the head off partially or hack the condemned in the back). The guillotine was meant to be a more humane method of beheading in which the razor-sharp blade, dropped down a track, cut the head off in one fast motion. (Scientists later discovered that the head remains conscious for a few seconds after such a swift decapitation). The guillotine became a symbol of the period which directly followed the French Revolution, known as the Reign of Terror, during which the Committee of Public Safety (under the control of Maximilien Robespierre) executed thousands whom they claimed had monarchist sympathies. Estimates range from 16,000 to 40,000 beheaded during this period in which paranoia ran so high that no one was safe from the "national razor," including Robespierre himself who went under the blade in 1794. The guillotine remained a viable method of execution in France until 1981. The last public execution by this device was in 1939, and the last actual execution with it was 1977.

With that gory bit of history out of the way, here is a great view of the Eiffel Tower from the Place de la Concorde:

After this I walked along the Seine and came across this statue of my fellow countryman:

Many of the American "Founding Fathers" like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, who served as diplomats to France before and after the American Revolution, were popular among the French. They were inspired in their formation of the US government by the ideology of the French Enlightenment, that intellectual movement espoused by such philosophers as Rousseau and Voltaire, which stressed the use of reason over blind faith (faith in the authority of the noble classes as well as religious faith). The French Revolution took Enlightenment idealism too far and did away with anything that reflected the concept of a nobility or any form of religion (for example condemning the church and changing the names of the month because they were named for Roman gods and festivals, which is "just not reasonable.").

From this statue, I walked to the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. This massive cathedral, whose height is supported by a series of flying buttresses, was constructed from 1163 to the mid-1240s. It is, of course, the setting for the French writer, Victor Hugo's 1831 novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame:

Here are some of the cathedral's famous gargoyles:

Several interpretations of gargoyles exist. Some believe they were evil-spirit-deterring relics of pagan religions from the lands Christianity came in contact with; others that they were meant to frighten the commoners of the Middle Ages into repentance as a reminder of evil and eternal damnation; and still others believe they symbolized the fact that evil existed outside the church, but could not penetrate its walls.

In front of the cathedral stands this statue of Charlemagne, or Charles the Great, king of the Franks in the late 700s, early 800s who was crowned Emperor by the Pope and founded what was known as the Holy Roman Empire (which confusingly did not exist in Rome, but France, Germany, and parts of Eastern Europe). The Holy Roman Empire lasted until the 1830s, although by then it was a weak political entity and the title of Holy Roman Emperor meant nothing. Its lands too had diminished at the time to cover only the area of Austria and Hungary.

Charlemagne is also considered the first of the French kings (as Charles I). Many heroic legends were later written about him and his knights, similar to the legends of King Arthur in England.

I then retraced my footsteps along the Seine and walked by the Conciergerie:

The Conciergerie was originally a royal palace built in the 900s and heavily remodeled by successive kings until 1358. Today it is part of the Palais de Justice. It is most famous, however, as a prison. It became a prison in 1391. During the Renaissance it served as a prison for those awaiting the guillotine.

More to come soon!