In striking contrast to the nearby Sainte-Chapelle and Notre-Dame, the Evangelical Lutheran Church des Billettes is austere and undecorated, with bare walls and plain-glass windows. I went there one evening in the summer of 2008 to hear a concert of Gregorian chants from the 10th to 13th centuries, sung by Read More …
You might easily mistake this inconspicuous stairway for the entrance to an underground parking garage — which, in fact, is what it was originally meant to be. Here where the ancient Romans lived, worked and bathed from the first to the fourth centuries AD, here where tens of thousands of 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 …
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 …
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 …
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 the rental place, and would have to leave Paris the next morning. I was walking through the Place des Vosges, Read More …
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 heroine of the novel Manon Lescaut by Abbé Prévost (1697-1763) — a novel which was the inspiration for operas by Read More …
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 Hôtel in the old sense of the word, mean a stately and elaborate private residence. It is named after its Read More …
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 (known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame), as well as several volumes of poetry and plays such as Hernani Read More …