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 French newspaper Le Monde has moved four times in its seventy-eight-year history. Its latest move was in 2020, when the company’s 1,600 employees (at least those who were not working remotely because of the coronavirus pandemic) moved into this striking new building at 67-69 avenue Pierre Mendès-France, in the Read More …
This striking new footbridge, Passerelle Simone de Beauvoir, was built from 2004-2006 to connect the new National Library François Mitterrand with the new Parc du Bercy. It is a steel structure with oak planks as a deck, and it crosses the Seine in one leap, with no supports in the Read More …
Don’t worry, I’m not going to do a Skyline Countdown for Paris like the one I’m doing for Frankfurt, and even if I did, the 96-meter Chambord Tower (Tour = Tower) on Boulevard Kellermann wouldn’t make it since it is only the 39th tallest building in Paris. From the name Read More …
After forty-four years in the 9th arrondissement on rue des Italiens, seven years in the 15th (rue Falguière) and eight years in the 5th (rue Claude-Bernard), the daily newspaper Le Monde moved in 2004 to this building (photo above) in the Croulebarbe quarter of the 13th arrondissement at 80, boulevard Read More …
The street that is now called rue Corvisart, (after Jean-Nicolas Corvisart, the personal physician of Napoléon I) was formerly called rue Champ-de-l’Alouette (Street of the Field of the Lark). It is in the Croulebarbe Quarter of the 13th arrondissement. In the novel Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, Jean Valjean led Read More …
When I was staying in a studio apartment on Rue Broca, in the Croulebarbe quarter of the 13th arrondissement, I decided to take a walk up the street to see what there was to see. Rue Broca is not a very long street, only four blocks, but it used to Read More …