The Rue de Rennes is one of the long, straight streets that were cut through Paris during the Second Empire, under Napoléon III and his Prefect, Georges-Eugène Haussmann (1809-1891). Hundreds of old buildings that were in the way of the new street were expropriated and demolished. The street now runs 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 …
It only rained once during the ten days I was in Paris in June 2006, and that was — you guessed it — ten minutes before show time at an open-air opera performance in the Senate Gardens, which are in the Luxembourg Gardens right behind Luxembourg Palace. A nice announcer Read More …
In the spring of 2019 I was invited to a book-signing in a Paris bookshop, because I had once ordered a book online from the publishing house Editions Alexandrines, so I was on their mailing list. The book in question was Le Paris de Mitterrand by Michèle Cotta, the 30th Read More …
Looking through my photos of the Lucernaire from the past few years, I see that sometime between 2014 and 2019 the wording over the entrance was changed. It used to read Centre national d’art et d’essai (National center for art and experimentation), but now it just reads Théâtre Lucernaire. This Read More …
For years I was mildly puzzled about who Saint Germain was, but only mildly. Now that I have finally looked him up, it turns out he was born around the year 496 and was Bishop of Paris from 555 until his death in 576. According to a poet called Venantius Read More …
In July 2014 I took a guided walking tour (in French) of the Saint-Germain-des-Prés quarter of Paris. We met at the exit of the Métro station Mabillon, because this is a small station with only one exit, so there was no danger of anyone picking the wrong one. Our guide Read More …
Rue Jacob is a fashionable street in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés quarter of Paris, with a number of art galleries and such, but it is actually not very pleasant because of the narrow sidewalks and the parked cars on both sides of the street. As nearly everywhere in Paris, the car drivers Read More …
It was Maillol himself who first broached the idea that his model Dina Vierny should open an art gallery after his death. In her words: “Maillol had always dreamed of a gallery for me. The trouble was, I did not see myself as a business person, not at all.” After Read More …
The Pont des Arts (Bridge of the Arts) is one of the six bridges in Paris that are reserved for circulations douces, a nice French expression meaning soft or mild traffic, i.e. non-motorized. For several years the Pont des Arts was better known to tourists as the “love lock bridge”, Read More …