Aux Désirs de Manon
At 129 rue Saint Antoine in the Marais district of Paris there is a small bakery and pastry shop with the marvelous name Aux Désirs de Manon, referring to the Read More …
Category: _4th arrondissement
Hôtel de Sully at Place des Vosges
From the southwest corner of Place des Vosges, at house number 5, there is a small passageway leading to the back garden of the Hôtel de Sully. This is a Read More …
Victor Hugo at the Place des Vosges
Victor Hugo was 35 in the year 1837, when this bust was sculpted by his friend David d’Angers. By that time, Hugo had already published his novel Notre-Dame de Paris Read More …
Opera arias in the Place des Vosges
On my last evening in Paris in June 2006 I was walking to the Opéra Bastille, feeling somewhat sorry for myself because I had already turned in my bicycle to Read More …
Rue des Rosiers
This house in the Marais district of Paris is where I lived for two months in the autumn of 1962, and again for a month and a half in the Read More …
Saving the right bank, step by step
For nearly half a century, from 1967 to 2016, this is what the right bank of the Seine looked like in the center of Paris. An endless stream of motor Read More …
Les bagnoles
One day in 2012, I was on rue Saint-Antoine, near place de la Bastille, taking photos of the Beaumarchais statue, when I noticed this yellow sign reading “Piste cyclable neutralisée”, Read More …
Beaumarchais
This bronze statue of the playwright Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799), the author of The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro, among other plays, is on display Read More …
Louis XIII at the Place des Vosges
Louis XIII (1601-1643) has not gone down in history as one of France’s outstanding kings. He was not a popular swashbuckler like his father, Henri IV, nor was he an Read More …
Guided walking tour of Île Saint-Louis
In August 2013 I went on another guided walking tour (in French) that I found listed in the back pages of the now-defunct weekly magazine Pariscope. This was mainly a Read More …