Savvy Sightseer - tips and insights for seasoned travelers!
Once a rail station, the museum's 1900 building is as much a work of art as the extensive collection it houses.
France's patron saint and most famous woman warrior is immortalized throughout the city.
Tributes, photos and flowers recall and honor the young princess who died in a tunnel underneath the flame in 1997.
Paris - A Capital with Class and Culture
The very name of France's capital city conjures images of sophistication, intrigue, romance, history, fashion and fine food. The city delivers that and so much more!
Bridges of Distinction
A great introduction to Paris and its endless diversity is on a Seine river cruise. Most of the city’s iconic sights can be seen without the bustle and traffic of its busy streets. Over 30 pedestrian/transit bridges (ponts) span the historic waterway; cruising under them is tantamount to a trip through an outdoor sculpture museum. One of the most photographed bridge sculptures in June 2016 was the Pont de l’Alma, near the impressive Eiffel Tower. Standing on the bridge’s only pier, a 17-foot statue of a soldier called the Zouave, is used to gauge the river’s height. During relentless storms of 2016, the river rose over the pier on which it stands and came nearly waist-high. While not quite as dangerous as the 1910 floods, when the Seine reached a historic high at more than 28 feet above its norm, and the soldier barely kept its head above the water line, the June surge wreaked havoc: banks flooded, and all river traffic, as well as museums flanking it, closed. Even days after the rains stopped, the soldier’s feet just barely rose above the water line.
A scaled down 35-foot version of the Statue of Liberty is just to the west of the Eiffel Tower at Pont de Grenelle on a man-made island called the Île des Cygnes. While many know that France gave the U.S. the Statue of Liberty in 1886; few know Americans reciprocated by giving Paris a smaller version of the same statue in 1889.
At the other end of the island is the Pont de Bir-Hakeim. Built in 1902, the two-tier bridge – cars and pedestrians cross on the lower level, a railway passes overhead – was the result of competition by the Metropolitan railway and Seine Navigation departments to replace an old metal footbridge. It sports a variety of large iron sculptures and statues: one group represents ironsmith riveters, on the other side of the bridge the boatmen are represented; the central arch has four huge statues representing Science and Labor, and Electricity and Commerce.
Sculpture Locations on the River Seine
He's the high water mark tracking the Seine during storms, but he also represents one of France's highest decorated army units.
A 35-foot replica of America's famous gift from France is located just next to the Pont de Grenelle in Paris. The whole statue is roughly the size of the waistline of the one in New York's harbor!
Sculptures on this bridge pay homage to Science, Labor, Electricity and Commerce.
Click on the images above or below for an expanded slide-show view and additional information.
In the mid-section of the Seine as it goes through Paris, the Pont des Invalides offers intriguing works of art. Constructed on the piers of a former bridge in 1854 as Paris prepared for the 1855 World's Fair, this crossing is the lowest over the Seine. It fittingly showcases military motifs – the bridge leads the way to the Hôtel des Invalides, commissioned by Louis XIV as Europe’s first veteran’s hospital for wounded soldiers. Today the complex also houses France’s largest military museum, considered one of the finest in the world, and Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte’s remains.
Military motifs fittingly grace the bridge leading toward Paris's military museum.
Golden statues and elaborate ironwork lampposts make this one of the most recognizable bridges in Paris.
New artwork replaced 45 tons of locks, and a new nickname came with it - the Enchanted Bridge.
Its name may mean New Bridge, but it is the oldest still standing in Paris on the River Seine.
Farther east is arguably the most exquisite Seine bridge: the Pont Alexandre III. The unique, gleaming white and gold span is lined with elaborate ironwork lamps and adorned on each end with 55-foot pillars topped with gilded winged horses. Named for Russian Tsar Alexander III, it was built to commemorate the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1891.
Closer to the Île de la Cité, an island in the Seine home to the famous Notre Dame Cathedral, is the Pont des Arts. Until recently, this was the destination bridge for lovers, who cemented their love with clasping a lock etched with their initials on the bridge’s railings. The ritual became so popular it endangered the pedestrian bridge and was stopped by French officials, who removed the railings, and 45 tons of locks, and carted them off for disposal. Officials tried to keep the love by substituting artistic sculptures and nicknaming it The Enchanted Bridge. The correlation may be lost, though, when viewing the replacement artwork: large, steel tree sculptures with bronze sculptures of human beings “struggling and twisting in moments of extreme pain and joy.”
Just beyond the Pont des Arts is one of Paris’s better-known bridges, the Pont Neuf. Although its name translates to the New Bridge, it is now the oldest remaining of the river’s spans, opened in 1607. Reminiscent of the gargoyles adorning nearby Notre Dame, this bridge is peppered with over 380 grotesque stone heads exhibiting all forms of human emotion.
Versailles
On the surface, the Palace and estate of Versailles may be considered just another royal residence of French kings in the 17th-18th centuries. In reality it was a city, housing at its height tens of thousands of residents. The brainchild of King Louis XIV, also known as The Sun King, the entire estate comprises over 30,000 acres and took thousands of workers to develop over almost 50 years, at a cost estimated to be the equivalent of 2 billion or more US dollars today. Cost, though, was never an issue; Louis simply opened the country’s treasury to fund the transformation of his royal hunting lodge into one of the largest complexes in Europe. Plowing through about half of France’s annual GNP, the end result was an astounding one-of-a-kind cultural and political center of France.
The Golden Gates of Versailles
Mark Twain visited the estate in 1869, and proclaimed: “… your brain grows giddy, stupefied by the world of beauty around you.” That was Louis’s goal; to demonstrate the Sun King’s power and influence as a divine ruler; intimidating anyone who did business with him at the palace. Statistics demonstrate the estate’s excesses: there are 700 rooms, 67 staircases and over 2000 windows. The 250-acre formal gardens include 200,000 trees, hundreds of fountainheads, and about 210,000 flowers are still planted every year. More than 2000 sculptures dot the buildings and grounds, and gold or gold leaf is in ample supply. The main entry gate, a replica of the original destroyed during the French Revolution, shines with a total of 100,000 gold leaves. It doesn’t take a major leap of understanding to see why the bankrupted populace rose up against the monarchy and initiated the French Revolution in 1789 against then-King Louis XVI.
One of the most famous and awe-inspiring rooms of the château is the Hall of Mirrors, another show of power and extreme wealth. At almost 250 feet long, lit by 24 gilded candelabra and thousands of candles with their light reflecting off 357 mirrors in 17 arches – exorbitantly expensive at the time – the Hall was, and still is, a crowning jewel in the masterpiece of Versailles. The room has continued to hold an impressive place in history long after the last Louis’s demise: in 1919, the Treaty of Versailles ending the first World War was signed under the magnificent painted ceiling, which contains over 100 scenes woven together to laud France’s, and Louis’s, economic and military achievements. The artwork drives home Louis’s holy right to rule by portraying him as a godlike ruler.
While many visit and marvel at the palace, some tourists are surprised to learn there are two sub-estates on the grounds. When life got too hectic, the king could retire to his private residence at the Grand Trianon, adjacent to Marie Antoinette’s Petit Trianon, a gift from her husband Louis XVI that’s tucked away about one mile from the château. She turned it into a little fantasy world of escape, modeled after an English hamlet, complete with lake, water mill and a dairy farm.
Over 7 million visitors tour Versailles annually, an easy day trip from Paris. As measured from Paris Point Zéro, the estate is only 12 miles from the country’s capital.
Louis XIV at Versailles.
Inner courtyard of the mammoth château
Louis XIV at Versailles.
Click on King Louis XIV on the left, or the Petit Trianon on the right to launch slide shows for these sights.
Click on the War Room below for a walk into the famed Hall of Mirrors.
Built in the mid-1700s, the Petit Trianon provided a relaxing reprieve from the hectic life at the Château Versailles.
Marie Antoinette craved a quiet, peasant-like escape, but wanted to do it in style.
Built in the mid-1700s, the Petit Trianon provided a relaxing reprieve from the hectic life at the Château Versailles.
Icons and Oddities
Not only is the little star-shaped marker imbedded in the cobblestones in front of Notre Dame Cathedral the place from which all distances in France are measured, it’s also one of the city’s many odd wishing points. On the Île de la Cité, the small island in the Seine river where Paris was founded, Point Zéro is the official historic and geographical center of Paris. But for some, it has a greater significance – a talisman for luck and love. Spinning or even just touching the marker with a hope in your heart or a sweetheart in hand is believed to ensure lifelong love or a guarantee to return to Paris.
Point Zéro could easily be missed, except for it shining glow, burnished by all those spinning feet. Outside of the Sorbonne, another lucky charm gleams from repeated use. The statue of Michel de Montaigne glances down on students with a look that could be considered a little bit mocking as they hopefully rub his shoe on their way to exams. Montaigne, a famous French writer and philosopher, is credited with developing the essay as a literary genre in the 1500s.
One of Paris’s more unusual sights is a unique creation that turns up at various parts of the city – and that’s because it’s mobile! The bicycle is completely functional and even has its own headlights – candles flaming behind glass.
At Place de l’Alma on the right bank (or north side) of the Seine, not far from the Eiffel Tower is a memorial doing double-duty. Here the Flame of Liberty, a full-size replica of the NYC Statue of Liberty’s flame, has saluted Franco-American friendship since 1989. But it’s taken on an all new identity and become a memorial to the late Princess Diana. The Flame marks the spot where, in the road tunnel below the square, the popular British royal died in a 1997 car accident. Tributes and photos decorate the base of the memorial.
Of course France’s capital city also boasts many instantly recognizable monuments, but these merit much more than a quick drive-by. Each has its own backstory, not quite as well known as the structures themselves. There’s the Eiffel Tower, a staple of Paris’s skyline that was never meant to be a permanent structure. It was built as a magnificent gateway to the 1889 World’s Fair and 100th anniversary celebration of the French Revolution. It was intended to be torn down after 20 years, although artists, writers and residents wanted its demise much sooner. They labeled it “a growing ink spot, the hateful shadow of the hateful column of bolted iron.” Visionary engineer Gustave Eiffel fought his detractors by making the tower indispensible as a center for meteorological and astronomical observations, physics experiments, strategic observations, communications signaling, and electric, light and wind studies. Today, more than 100 antennas top the 1,063-foot, 10,000-pound “Grand Iron Lady,” which has become the most visited fee-paying monument in the world, averaging 7 million sightseers annually. The very silhouette of the tower has become synonymous with France.
Click on any image below for an expanded slide-show view and additional information.
The point from which all distances are measured in France is also a good luck charm.
Rub the foot of the man responsible for creating the essay form of writing and your essay may get a better grade!
It's a lot easier to find where you parked your vehicle when it's this unique.
The Flame of Liberty at Place de l’Alma pulls double-duty: it's a symbol for French-American friendship as well as a marker for where Princess Diana was killed in a car crash.
Paris's most recognizable icon.
Resting place for France's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
Napoleon lies under the great dome of Europe's most impressive military museum .
A gift from Egypt, the Obelisk of Luxor once stood at the entrance to the temple of Ramses II.
The Arc de Triomphe was also commissioned in commemoration of a successful battle, and today houses the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. In 1806, France’s Emperor Napoleon I wanted to honor his army’s triumphs and domination of most of Europe by giving them a grandstand of columns through which to march when returning to Paris. Ironically, he never had the opportunity to go through it himself, alive. He did, though, in 1821, when his funeral procession crossed under the partially finished monument on its way to his final resting place at the city’s Hôtel des Invalides.
Napoleon’s first burial and grave were far less dramatic. He died in exile under British authority on the remote South Atlantic island of St. Helena in 1815. Twenty years later he was exhumed from the nondescript grave and given a hero’s welcome to Paris, and a lavish tomb under the golden dome of the Invalides’ Royal Chapel. The saga of Napoleon’s interment doesn’t end there – his remains lie nestled inside no less than six different coffins: made of varying materials: one of soft iron, another of mahogany, two others of lead, one of ebony and finally the last one of oak. His tomb is surrounded by 12 pillars symbolizing his victorious military campaigns (ignoring those not among his triumphs).
Across the river from Les Invalides and its military museum is the sight of one of the bloodiest clashes not between France and its enemies, but French against French. At the once-named Place de la Révolution, up to 1200 French lost their heads in the late 1790s to the newly designed death penalty machine – the guillotine – during the height of the French Revolution. Paris’s largest public square was reportedly so soaked in the stench of blood that a herd of cattle refused to cross it. In 1829, Egyptian authorities donated one of its 3,300-year-old, 80-foot tall obelisks from the Luxor temple in Eqypt to France; it now stands at the center of the Place de la Concorde, renamed to represent hope for a better future.
Continue your trip through France with a visit to Normandy & Brittany, the Loire Valley, France's Churches or back to the France home page.
