Paris 2017, part 4
Coming back to the world of the living, I went for a very nice walk around Montmartre. Wherever you go across this hill, you will soon come to some place where this or that artist used to live and create or just loved to come and enjoy himself. Such a trend started somewhere around the beginning of the 19th century, but already after WWI, the artists moved to flatter areas, such as Montparnasse. You are not going to encounter large palaces here, but there are some beautiful places worth the visit.
Other than Moulin Rouge, i.e., the Red Mill, there are two other windmills that have survived in Montmartre and these are Moulin de la Galette and Moulin Radet. A little confusing, but this second one is on top of the restaurant named as the first one, although this first one is often called Blute-fin, while the name Moulin de la Galette is used to describe the two since at one point in time they both belonged to the same family. Or perhaps this is all so only in order to confuse unsuspecting tourists. Be as it may, the name of one of the mills has been made immortal on the famous painting of Renoir, Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette, that can be seen at the Musée d’Orsay, since this used to be a popular place for dancing at the beginning of the 20th century.
My further stroll took me across a children playground and a small park, beside an unusual statue of St Denis holding his decapitated head in his hands, and then to the small square dedicated to Dalida, the famous singer whose bust is placed here. From here, there is a picturesque view at the church of Sacre-Coeur which adorns the top of Montmartre.
Still, I did not go straight to the church, but rather made a small circle in order to get first to Lapin Agile, a famous place of gathering of artists at the beginning of the 20th century (I actually wonder if there is any place in Montmartre where artists did not use to gather) and to the famous Montmartre vineyard. Yes, right there, in the middle of an urban area, there is a small vineyard and each autumn, at the beginning of October, there is a grape harvest to which everybody is invited. I’m sure that information about the exact time and other details may be found on the internet.
I leisurely climbed beside the vineyard and entered a completely touristy area with cafes, restaurants and souvenir shops, thus getting to the Sacre-Coeur Basilica. From the plateau in front of the church there is a stunning view of Paris.
The church of Sacre-Coeur, meaning Sacred Heart, was built at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, and it was consecrated in 1919. It is not allowed to take photos and film inside, but I can report that it is very beautiful and impressive, while the main ornaments inside come in the form of mosaics. It is also possible to climb up to the dome, if the view of Paris from the plateau and the large flight of stairs in front of the church does not suffice. Near the church of Sacre-Coeur, there is the church of St. Peter, which is one of the oldest churches in Paris built in the 12th century, but it was closed when I got there.
Practically across the street from the church of St. Peter, there is the famous Place du Tertre, which is one of the symbols of painters’ Montmartre. There are always artists there who offer their already made paintings and drawings, as well as a possibility to make a quick caricature or a portrait of tourists who can be found in abundance here. Around the edges of the square plaza, there is a myriad of cafes and restaurants. Although this is one of the famous sights, I still didn’t want to make a coffee break there, but rather did it a little later when I got to the lower sections of Montmartre.
Still, before the coffee I walked for a while yet around Montmartre which is truly picturesque and that walk was most enjoyable. Along the way, I kept coming across sights of the “This is where Picasso used to live when he painted Demoiselles d’Avignon” type, but I also visited a very unusual church of St. John the Evangelist which was built in 1904. The church is remarkable because it was the first church built using reinforced concrete, but I particularly liked its architecture which was very interesting and atypical.
Then I finally sat at a café enjoying a hot beverage and hot heaters that allowed visitors to sit outside although it was rather chilly. There I also decided to walk to the Opera and farther to the Seine, but before that I went to the large section with stairs descending down from the plateau in front of the Sacre-Coeur and there I parted from Montmartre.
My further walking took me through different streets and beside the Trinity church, but I didn’t stop there. When I got to the Opera building itself, which is officially called the Palais Garnier after its architect, I also didn’t stay there for long and in fact I only took a few photos and looked around me. The Garnier Palace started to work in 1875, although the idea to have a new opera building appeared at the beginning of the 19th century. The town plan created by Haussmann (more about him in a little while) envisaged its location in the space called the Place de l’Opera. The Opera building is very impressive from the outside and it is said that it is even more impressive from the inside. With its 11,000 square metres, it used to be the largest theatre building in the world. Nowadays it is mostly used for ballet performances.
Precisely from the plateau in the middle of the square, when one turns around oneself and looks in different directions, there are beautiful views at wide Paris boulevards. The main “culprit” for those spacious boulevards is Baron Haussmann. Admittedly, he got his orders from Emperor Napoleon III, but the entire clearing of old, condensed buildings and construction of wide boulevards, parks and squares are linked precisely to Haussmann. Let there be no mistake about his name which is pronounced in French in a way that may suggest some oriental roots. If anything, the roots would be German, although the guy was French, no question about it. Although his ideas and plans were often criticized by his contemporaries, the Parisians of today are grateful for those broad boulevards, because even with them there are a lot of traffic jams and it is inconceivable what it would all look like with narrow streets.
After this rotating around me and looking at the wide boulevards, I took one of them and headed towards the church of St. Mary Magdalene which is much better known under the name of the Madeleine. The church is also known for its unusual shape and that is the shape of the Greek temple. It was built from the middle of the 18th century to the middle of the 19th century, with a lot of complications and different ideas as to what it should actually be. Finally, it was consecrated in 1842 and that put the final stop on its purpose. The central part of the church is surrounded by 52 Corinthian pillars that are 20 metres high.
When you leave the church, there is a beautiful view towards the Place de la Concorde, but I didn’t go directly there. Instead, I first went to another square that is nearby and that was the Place Vendome. The square was designed at the end of the 17th century and originally there was a statue of Louis XIV, but it was destroyed during the Revolution. Later Napoleon had an enormous Austerlitz column placed there. The 44 metre high column, made of stone, is spirally covered by bronze obtained from 1,200 cannons captured in the battle at Austerlitz. On top of the column there is a statue of Napoleon as Caesar. In the buildings surrounding the square, there is the French Ministry of Justice, Hotel Ritz and a myriad of the world’s most famous jewelleries.
Having walked around the Place Vendome, I went to the Rivoli street that goes alongside the Tuileries Gardens towards the famous Place de la Concorde. This is a huge space with a couple of fountains and an ancient Egyptian obelisk from a temple in Luxor which the French received as a gift from the Egyptian authorities in the first half of the 19th century in exchange for some support. Still, the square has been made really famous by the fact that during the Revolution this used to be the main venue for cutting heads off with a guillotine. Thus, this is where Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette finished their lives as a part of almost 1500 people who, during a period of a couple of years, had their heads chopped off precisely at this beautiful square.
From the Place de la Concorde there is a stunning view at the most famous street of Paris and this is the Champs-Elysees which stretches towards another famous square with a roundabout and that is the Place Charles-de-Gaulle or the Place de l’Etoile in the centre of which there is the Arc de Triomphe.
There, where the Place de la Concorde and the Tuileries Gardens meet, there is a large panoramic wheel. I guess it has become fashionable and now many cities have those wheels, as it seems that tourists like these things. Still, I find the one in Vienna to be the most interesting one, not because I went for a ride and had a great view (I did neither), but because of the famous novel “The Third Man” by Graham Greene and the certainly great film adaptation with Orson Welles. I recommend both.
After entering the Tuileries Gardens, I soon sat on one of the chairs arranged around the Octagonal pool. There I had lots of fun watching a couple of gulls, one of which was a true master of its bird species. Namely, it moved across the surface, then it would get into the air some metre or two above the water, hold its position for a second or two and then it would dive into the water in order to catch some of the fish that obviously live there. It didn’t succeed each time, but a few times while I was there it caught quite a fine piece.
By the way, the Tuileries Gardens stretch towards the Louvre along the axis: Arc de Triomphe, the Champs-Elysees, Place de la Concorde (across the square), the Tuileries and the Louvre. If you look around, you may also see the Eiffel Tower, as well as the Museum d’Orsay on the other side of the river. What I want to say is that the gardens are in the very centre of Paris and therefore they are unavoidable.
When you enter the grounds of the Louvre, i.e., its gardens, you come across the Carrousel Triumphal Arch. It was built at the beginning of the 19th century in order to glorify Napoleon’s victories of 1805. It even had gilded bronze horses brought from Venice adorning its top, but the French had to return the horses already in 1815. Nowadays, there are some other horses, but the arch is still very interesting not least on account of the nice views that could be seen through its construction.