The Paris Water Pavilion is a building at 77 avenue de Versailles in the Auteuil quarter of the 16th arrondissement. It is a building from the nineteenth century that originally housed a steam-driven pump to bring up water from the Seine for the then-independent towns of Auteuil and Passy. It now Read More …
Here’s a countdown of my ten most-often-viewed blog posts in the year 2021, as tabulated by WordPress and delivered to me through the Jetpack plugin by Automattic Inc. (Five of these posts were also on my top ten list for 2020.) # 10 — Picnic by the Eiffel Tower. In September Read More …
The Wallace Fountains in Paris were named after the English philanthropist and art collector Sir Richard Wallace (1818-1890), who donated them to the city of Paris starting in 1872. Their purpose was to dispense safe drinking water, after the city’s public water system had been damaged during the Franco-Prussian war Read More …
The fresco in this photo (above) is at the north end of the Rue de la Gaîté, at the corner of Boulevard Edgar Quinet, where a popular ice cream shop attracts long lines of customers. As the name implies, the Rue de la Gaîté has always been a place of Read More …
This little park at the western (downstream) tip of the Île de la Cité in Paris was named after the French King Henri IV (1553-1610), who was known as “Le Vert Galant” because of his many mistresses that he continued consorting with at a (relatively) advanced age. Actually he only Read More …
The triumphal gate Porte Saint Denis is in a wide place on the Boulevard Saint-Denis, on the border between the 2nd and 10th districts (arrondissements) of Paris. In the 14th century this was the site of a gate in the wall of Charles V. The current gate was built in Read More …
The towns of Charenton-le-Pont (to the south) and Vincennes (to the north) both border directly on a pleasant wooded area called the Bois de Vincennes (Forest of Vincennes), which actually belongs to the city of Paris. In the 13th century this patch of woods was used as a royal hunting Read More …
The Carrousel du Louvre is an underground shopping center directly adjoining the Louvre Museum in Paris. It was built from 1991 to 1993 as part of the second phase of the Grand Louvre project, and includes an entrance to the museum itself, which is open “at peak times” (according to Read More …
The Louvre in Paris began as a fortress, built starting in 1190 at the behest of King Philippe Auguste (1165-1223). The fortress was at one end of Philippe Auguste’s wall, a system of city fortifications that he ordered built because he didn’t want the city to be left undefended while Read More …
Lieutenant Nissim de Camondo (1892-1917) was a French military pilot in the First World War. He died in aerial combat in 1917 and was later buried in the Montmartre Cemetery in Paris. His grieving father, the banker and art collector Count Moïse de Camondo (1860-1935), determined in his will that Read More …