In 2014, I stayed for several nights at the Hôtel Stanislas. Since I had never stayed in the 6th arrondissement before, I entered that as a search criterion in booking.com and came up with this small hotel on Rue du Montparnasse — a street I was slightly familiar with because 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 …
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 …
Montparnasse Cemetery, with a surface area of 19 hectares, is the second largest cemetery in Paris. It is located in southern Paris and was opened in 1924. When you come in at the main entrance, at 3 Boulevard Edgar Quinet, there are some laminated cemetery maps hanging by strings on 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 …
Looking back, I think the first time I ever even read about the Paris quarter of Auteuil was in a short story by Marcel Aymé (1902–1967) called Le décret (The Decree), a story about going backwards and forwards in time in which the narrator says: “During these famous seventeen years Read More …
The Richelieu-Louvois Library is one of four Paris locations of the National Library of France, which in French is called the Bibliothèque nationale de France, abbreviated BnF. The other three Paris sites of the BnF are: The François Mitterrand Library (13th arrondissement) The Arsenal Library (4th arrondissement) The Library-Museum of the Read More …
After checking into a new hotel in a new neighborhood (or a new city) I like to take a walk around the block and see what there is in the immediate vicinity. I did this after checking in to the Hipotel Paris Belleville at 21 Rue Vicq d’Azir. When I Read More …
Student housing in France is usually not very elegant, but the big exception is here at the Cité Universitaire at the southern edge of Paris. The Cité was founded in 1925 and was intended “to promote peace, exchanges and friendship among peoples after the trauma of the First World War.” Read More …
This monument to the philosopher Auguste Comte (1798-1857), by the sculptor Jean-Antonin Injalbert (1845-1933), is on the Place de la Sorbonne, close to Boulevard Saint Michel in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Comte was the founder of a new science, sociology, which attempted to use the same scientific methods as Read More …