In the late 1920s, the cities of Frankfurt and Paris both hired prominent architects and engineers to build innovative railway freight stations. Both these stations remained in use for over seven decades for unloading and sorting merchandise that had been brought in by rail. Both stations were later designated as Read More …
The word parvis, in Italian, French, English and related languages, means a forecourt in front of a large public building, typically a cathedral or basilica. In French, the -s at the end of parvis is (usually) silent. The world’s first and most famous parvis is the one in front of Read More …
Station F in Paris is 310 meters long (slightly over 1000 feet), and is divided into three sections: the SHARE zone, the CREATE zone and the CHILL zone. Between the zones, there are two public passageways, Passage Louise and Passage Antoine, connecting Rue Eugène Freyssinet on the south side of Read More …
Station F, the world’s largest start-up campus, includes an Italian-themed 24/7 restaurant called La Felicità (which means happiness in Italian). With five kitchens and a thousand indoor seats (plus another five hundred outdoor seats on the terrace), La Felicità claims to be the largest restaurant in Europe, which certainly seems Read More …
The Villlemin Garden (Jardin Villemin) is a public park in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, between the East Station (Gare de l’Est) and the Canal Saint Martin. It is named after Jean-Antoine Villemin (1827–1892), a French army physician who was the first to demonstrate that tuberculosis is an infectious disease. Read More …
Désamiantage is a new French word I learned recently. It means asbestos removal, and is one of the reasons the Centre Pompidou aka Beaubourg will be closed for five years, from 2025 to 2030. Originally the closure was scheduled for 2023 to 2027, but it has been postponed because of Read More …
In October 2013 the Rodin Museum presented an exhibition of twenty-two sculptures of Camille Claudel (1864-1943), including some that had not been on display for several years during the ongoing renovation of the museum. The exposition’s introductory brochure said that Camille Claudel “has become an almost too familiar figure today: Read More …
The Domaine de Montaigu is a large park which straddles the boundary between the towns of Jarville-la-Malgrange and Laneuveville-devant-Nancy. It includes the Museum of the History of Iron aka Le Féru des sciences at the Jarville end (northwest), and the Château de Montaigu at the Laneuveville end (southeast). The Château Read More …
The name of this town means, literally, “the new city in front of Nancy”. This is certainly an accurate description if you are approaching from the south, not so much if you are coming from some other direction. The expanse of water in my lead photo is part of the Read More …
Jarville-la-Malgrange is a suburb that borders directly on the southern edge of Nancy, in the Grand Est region of France. Like most European towns, Jarville-la-Malgrange has a monument listing the men who were senselessly massacred (this is not the way it is worded on the monument) in the two ‘World Read More …