Saint-Germain-des-Prés

Saint-Germain-des-Prés

We pass the north side of the church and turn left into Rue Mabillon, where a market building is on our right. From the north end of the street we walk a few meters along Rue du Four and have arrived at the famous Boulevard-Saint-Germain. We turn left and have in front of us the ancient Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

The oldest church of Paris, partly from 990-1021. For centuries it was one of the main churches of the Benedictine order. After the revolution it was for a while used as a saltpetre factory and became dilapidated.

The tower of the west front, the central nave and the north walls are still the same as almost ten centuries ago. The chancel is a little younger, from the 12th C., but the southern side, facing the boulevard, is from the 17th C. The church is one of few examples preserved in Paris of the Romanesque style, and the example that is most accessible to travellers.

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Saint-Sulpice

We leave the garden at the north western corner, cross Rue Vaugirard and walk either Rue Séminaire or Rue Férou to Saint-Sulpice.

One of the great churches of Paris, built in various styles 1655-1788. The high and wide colonnades of the west front and its two towers are the main attributes of the church. One of the biggest organs in the world, with 6588 pipes, is inside. The church is much used for concerts.

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Palais & Jardin Luxembourg

Jardin du Luxembourg

From the front of the Panthéon we walk down Rue Soufflot, cross the famous street of pavement-cafés and book shops, Boulevard Saint-Michel, and enter the Jardin du Luxembourg.

The most extensive green space on the Left bank, mainly laid out in a formal French style. The western and southern sides though are done in a relaxed English style. The centre of the garden is an octagonal pond in front of the palace. Children often play there with their boats. The garden abounds with statues and sculptures.

Palais Luxembourg

We turn our attention to Palais du Luxembourg.

Built 1615-1625 for Queen Maria dei Medici in Florentine Renaissance style. It now houses the French senate. Its president lives in the small palace, Petit Luxembourg, which adjoins the bigger one to the west. Many works of art are in the palace, including paintings by Delacroix in the library.

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Panthéon

From the place we walk west into Rue Blainville and then straight on through Rue de l’Estrapade until we reach Rue Clotilde, which we follow to the right. We almost at once to the back of the Panthéon on the summit of Montagne Sainte-Geneviève.

Built as a church 1758-1789, designed by Soufflot in Neoclassic style. Its plan is like a Greek crucifix and it has a giant dome which can be seen from many places in the city and is thus similar to the dome of Saint Paul’s in the City of London.

Soufflot gave the church a light design with very high and slender columns. The building was later made heavier and uglier by bricking up the windows. It was done when the revolutionary government changed the Panthéon into a mortuary of great Frenchmen. Voltaire, Rousseau and Victor Hugo are interred there. The interior is now cold and forbidding.

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Pont Alexander III

Esplanade des Invalides

We leave by the northern entrance to the museums.

This is the real front of the Invalides complex. In front of us is the field, Esplanade des Invalides, reaching from Invalides to the Seine. We can observe the game of pétoncle, in which the locals try to throw their ball either as near to the mark as possible or at the more successful balls of the competitors.

Pont Alexander III

We cross the Esplanade and the Quai d’Orsay and arrive at Pont Alexander III.

The most exuberant Seine bridge, built in 1896-1900 for the World Fair in 1900. It is a single-span steel bridge, heavily decorated with Art Noveau lamps and statues.

This is the end of walk no. 7. The Invalides metro station is nearby.

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Église du Dôme

We turn left along the front of École Militaire and then right around its corner into Avenue de Tourville, leading us to Église du Dôme des Invalides.

The domed church is a perfect work of art by Hardouin-Mansart, designed in the Jesuit style of the 17th C. Napoleon lies in six coffins in

the middle of the church which really is his mortuary. His brothers and some generals also have their tombs in the chapels of the church. The atmosphere is very solemn.

The architectural style has the dome as its most distinctive feature and was a mixture of the French Mannerism and the Catholic Baroque which the Jesuits were at that time trying to introduce in France. The same style is evident in the colonnades with Romanesque arches, Doric columns on the ground level and Corinthian ones above. The dome is of lead, covered with gold leaf.

In a house on the left side of the church tickets are sold for the church and the army museum behind. There is another church behind the altar of this church. It is Saint-Louis-des-Invalides. In fact the two churches share the same altar.

Invalides

Along the side of the latter church we reach an entrance to the military museums in the Invalides complex.

The Musée de l’Armée and other military museums are in the former quarters of veterans centred on a courtyard on the north side of Église du Dôme. The Musée de l’Armée is one of the biggest military museums in the world. There are also special museums of military maps, of World War II, of the French resistance and a small museum with private belongings of Napoleon.

This was first a home for old and disabled veterans, built 1671-1676. At one time it housed 6000 veterans, but none are now left. It was also a weapons’ depot which was emptied out by revolutionaries in the morning of July 17th, 1789, when they carried away 28,000 rifles.

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Champs-de-Mars & Ecole Militaire

Champs-de-Mars

After a lunch in the tower restaurant Jules Verne we walk through Champs-de-Mars.

The formal French garden in very big and so formal that policemen blow whistles every time someone steps outside the paths. This was initially the training and parade ground of the military school. It has repeatedly been the location of world fairs. The present appearance dates from 1908-1928.

École Militaire

At the far end of the garden we reach École Militaire.

Built in 1769-1772 with Neoclassic elements blending into the French style, as is evident from the Corinthian columns at the entrance. The school is best known for cadet Bonaparte who later became Napoleon.

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Tour Eiffel

We cross the river by the Iéna bridge and walk under the most famous Paris landmark, Tour Eiffel.

The engineer Eiffel built the featherweight Tour Eiffel as an emblem of the World Fair of 1889. At that time it was the highest construction in the world, 300 meters. Now it is 320.75 meters, including an aerial. It weighs only 7000 tons, or four kilograms per square centimetre, or the weight of a chair and a man.

The height can vary about 15 centimetres due to changes in temperature and the swing at the top can reach 12 centimetres in storms. The tower has three floors, the lowest one in the height of 57 meters, the second in the height of 115 meters and the highest in the height of 274 meters. Elevators run between storeys and we can also take to the stairs up to the second floor.

French intellectuals hated the tower when it was being built. It was to have been razed after the fair. By that time it had become necessary for telegraphic purposes. And now many consider Tour Eiffel to be one of the major and most beautiful works of art in the world.

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Saint-Germain-l‘Auxerrois

Tour Saint Jacques

We leave the museum, have a look at its colonnaded eastern front and turn our attention to the church on the other side of Place de Louvre, Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois.

Tour Saint Jacques stands between the church and the city hall of the 1st district of Paris. The oldest parts of the church are from the 12th C. and the youngest from the 17th C. The front is in late Gothic flamboyant style from 1435.

This walk is over and here we have the Louvre metro station

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Louvre: Mona Lisa

Museum de Louvre

We enter the museum itself, through the Pyramide.

Louvre: Venus frá Milo

This is with the National Gallery in London one of the two greatest museums of art in the world. The second row is reserved for the Uffizi in Florence, Prado in Madrid and the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. It is estimated that there are now about 500,000 objects owned by the museum. It will take three months to inspect the exhibits by spending 30 seconds on each item.

Most French kings collected works of art, all the way back to Francis I who owned works by Titian, Rafaelo and Leonardo da Vinci, including the Mona Lisa. Formally the palace was converted into a museum in 1793, shortly after the great Revolution.

From the underground entrance corridors lead to different wings of the museum. Some of the most interesting works are on the ground and first floors of the southern Denon wing.

Mona Lisa

We go into the Denon wing.

Louvre: Samothrake

If we go directly into Salle Daru and then turn left we should find Mona Lisa by Leonardo behind security glass. This southern wing has many exhibition halls. We can se works by the Italians Angelico, Mantegna, Tintoretto, Titian and Veronese; the French Rigaud, Delacroix, David and Géricault; the Benelux van Eyck, Breugel and Rembrandt; and the English Gainsborough and Constable.

We go down the stairs past the Hellenistic 3rd C. B.C. Goddess of Victory from Samothrace. On the left is the Caryatides hall. In its middle stands the famous sculpture from the 2nd C. B.C, Venus from Milo. In this western corner of the floor there are Greek and Roman antiques. Egyptian antiques are in the southern corner and Middle Eastern ones in the other half.

Among famous items in the Louvre is the Egyptian Scribe and the bust of Amenofis IV, the statue of King Gudea and the Laws of Hammurabi. The museum is divided into three sections of antiques, according to geographic areas, and sections of painting, sculpture and applied arts. It is wise to buy a special guide-book for the museum, but the position of works can be changed.

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Louvre to the left, Pyramide to the right

Pyramide

We enter the inner courtyard of the Louvre where a pyramid of glass dominates the scene.

The glass pyramid by Chinese architect Pei is the new entrance to the Louvre, which has been enlarged underground and into the northern wing of the Palais de Louvre. Being of glass the pyramid allows us to see the surrounding palace and brings light into the museum entrance below.

This building was very controversial as many avant-garde buildings have been in Paris, but the commotion has settled down. Most people seem to like it, just as they like the Beaubourg, which also was controversial in the beginning. The French have a knack for adventure in modern architecture.

Palais de Louvre

Before we enter the Louvre museum we have a look at the Palais de Louvre.

The building history of the Louvre is long and complicated. In the beginning there was Philippe Auguste’s castle from around 1200. In the latter half of the 14th C. the castle was temporarily the residence and royal palace of Charles V. The oldest existing part was built in the 16th C., the south western corner of the part which surrounds Cour Carrée.

In the reign of Henri IV the south western wing, Flore, was erected. In the reigns of Louis XIII and XIV the square around Cour Carrée was completed. Louis XIV lived for a while in Louvre while he waited to move to Versailles. In the reign of Napoleon the southern wing was finally completed and the northern wing in the reign of Napoleon III.

The enormous colonnade at the front of the palace, facing east, was designed by Perrault, Le Vau and Le Brun in the time of Louis XIV in the 17th C. French style. Behind it is Cour Carrée where we can on the left see the Renaissance style of the oldest part and to the right its later French evolution into the Mannerist style.

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Tuileries

We turn into the Jardin des Tuileries.

A typical formal French garden, in opposition to the English style which is free and relaxed. On both sides of Tuileries there are terraces with views, over the Seine from the southern one. The path along the middle of the garden is straight in line with Champs-‘Elysées, only broken by two ponds.

This was once a dumping ground which the renowned landscape architect Le Nôtre designed into a park in 1664, initially as the king’s private park.

A street divides the Tuileries from the garden of the Louvre. Formerly the Tuileries palace was here, built by Catherine dei Medici in the years after 1563. It burnt down in the Communards revolt in 1871.

Arc de Triomphe de Carrousel

Arc de Triomphe de Carrousel

We cross that street, go into the Louvre garden and come to the Arc de Triomphe de Carrousel.

This small arch of victory was built 1806-1809 in memory of the victories of Napoleon. Formerly it was decorated with four horses of bronze which Napoleon stole from the San Marco in Venice, but the Italians have recovered them.

Once, the arch was the entrance to the disappeared Tuileries palace. The garden is full of sculptures by Maillol.

In the western end of the northern wing of Palais de Louvre an independent museum of applied art is located, Musée des Arts Décoratifs.

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Jeu de Paume

Jeu de Paume

Before we enter Tuileries we should take note of two palaces which are on both sides of the garden at the end facing Place de la Concorde. They are Jeu de Paume to the north and left and Orangerie to the south and right.

The French museum of Impressionism, a style of painting that appeared in France about 1874 and developed into an artistic revolution that spread around the world. The French had until then been in the forefront of painting, but at that time took the absolute leadership.

This is the best Impressionist museum in the world, hung with paintings by Monet and Manet, Cézanne and Degas, Renoir and others, such as the later Gauguin and Rousseau, Seurat and Signac, van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec.

Orangerie

Jeu de Paume is on the divide of styles and times. Older art is in the Louvre and newer art in Beaubourg.

Orangerie

We turn our attention to the museum opposite, the Orangerie.

The mirror image of Jeu de Paume on the other side of the Tuileries garden. It houses amongst other works of art a series of murals by Monet and works by Cézanne and Renoir. It also has temporary exhibitions.

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Place de la Concorde

Place de la Concorde

Champs-Élysées ends as an avenue at Place de la Concorde.

A giant sea of asphalt with 84000 square meters of automotive traffic, laid out in 1755-1775. In its north eastern corner Louis XVI was guillotined. 1343 other victims of the Revolution were beheaded at the present entrance to the Tuileries garden.

The obelisk in the middle of the square is a gift from the viceroy of Egypt. It is 3300 years old and comes from Luxor in the Nile valley. It was re-erected here in 1836, weighs 220 tons and has a height of 23 meters, all of one single stone, three meters higher than Cleopatra’s needle on the Thames banks in London.

From the island in the middle of the square there are views to all directions. To the west along the axis of Champs-Élysées to Arc de Triomphe. To the south over Pont de la Concorde to French parliament in Palais Bourbon. To the north along Rue Royale to the Madeleine, with the Crillon hotel on the left side at the square. To the east through Tuileries to Palais du Louvre.

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Grand Palais

We continue along the Champs-Élysées. To our right we see the Grand Palais.

Grand Palais and Petit Palais were built to house the World Fair of 1900. Their structure is of steel and glass, but the exteriors are in the heaviest of the Historical style of architecture, popular at the end of the last century. The fronts of Grand Palais are for example completely lined with Ionic columns.

The part of Grand Palais facing west, to Avenue Franklin D. Roosevelt, houses the French museum of inventions, Palais de la Découverte. It is an ode to French achievements in technology and science, open 10-18, closed Monday.

The other part, facing east, to Avenue Winston Churchill, is the venue of yearly fairs, such as automobile fairs, and also of specialized exhibitions of art.

Petit Palais

Opposite Grand Palais there is the Petit Palais.

It houses one of the biggest museums of art in the city. It covers most epochs in history, ancient and recent. There are also monumental exhibitions, some of them so difficult to assemble that it will not be tried again.

From Avenue Winston Churchill we can see directly over Pont Alexander III all the way to Invalides. The bridge was built in 1900 in the ornamental style of that period.

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