La Rotonde de la Villette was built in 1784 by the architect Claude Nicolas Ledoux (1736-1806) for use as a toll house. Anyone entering the city had to stop here and pay a tax on any merchandise they were bringing with them. If you have ever seen the opera La Read More …
Since electing its first Socialist mayor in 2001, the city of Paris has made considerable progress in re-allocating public space: widening sidewalks, narrowing streets, creating bus and bicycle lanes and reducing the space devoted to cars. But the problem is so widespread that numerous streets in Paris still have grotesquely Read More …
In the fourth arrondissement of Paris, at the corner of Quai des Célestins and Boulevard Henri IV, there is a fine example of a belle époque apartment building from the beginning of the twentieth century. It is a solid stone building with seven floors above ground level, with the traditional Read More …
Nearly a thousand musical instruments and works of art are on display at the attractive and informative music museum in the Parc de la Villette in Paris. The permanent exposition covers the two hundred years from the beginning of the 17th century to the end of the 19th. At the Read More …
The Parc de la Villette is in the far northeast corner of Paris. It is a 55-hectare park with 35 hectares of lawns and gardens, on the site of the former slaughterhouses of la Villette. They say this is now the largest green space in Paris, and also “a laboratory Read More …
This seventeenth-century building in the fourth arrondissement at the corner of Quai des Célestins and Rue du Petit-Musc is one of the 1,823 buildings in Paris that are listed as Historical Monuments, which is intended to protect them from being demolished or grossly changed. The word Hôtel is used here Read More …
The Arsenal Library (Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal) was founded by a man named René d’Argenson (1652-1721) and was declared a public library in 1797. This historical sign about the Arsenal Library says that this was the site of a royal arsenal from the fourteenth century. There was a fire here in Read More …
This “Institute of the Arab World” was built in the 1980s and was inaugurated on November 30, 1987 by the President of the French Republic, François Mitterrand. The institute is intended as a “cultural bridge” between France and twenty-two Arab countries. From the top (ninth) floor there is a fine Read More …
April 15, 2019, was a Monday, two days before I was scheduled to leave for Paris. As it was the first day of the Easter vacation in Land Hessen, I was not teaching that evening, so I was at home in Frankfurt, working at my desk, when a notice popped Read More …
Student housing in France is usually not very elegant, but the big exception is here at the Cité Universitaire at the southern edge of Paris. The Cité was founded in 1925 and was intended “to promote peace, exchanges and friendship among peoples after the trauma of the First World War.” Read More …