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 …
Blanche, meaning White, was a popular name for aristocratic ladies in the Middle Ages. There were several queens and princesses named Blanche in various centuries. No one is quite sure which of them this castle was named after, but some think it might have been Blanche de France, a daughter Read More …
This ‘Convent of the Ropes’ was founded towards the end of the 13th century by Marguerite de Provence, the widow of the French King Louis IX, who is now better known as ‘Saint Louis’ because he was canonized twenty-seven years after his death. Marguerite was nearly fifty when her husband Read More …
In the front building of the Gobelin manufactory in Paris there is a large exhibition hall, on two floors, displaying some of their more recent tapestries and carpets. The first time I went through this exhibition hall I was mildly impressed. Then I took a tour of the manufactory to see how Read More …