Architecture · Art · Museums · Observations · Paris

Christo's project to wrap the Arc de Triomphe in Paris is postponed to 2021

It has been announced that the artist Christo Javacheff's grandiose project to wrap the Arc de Triomphe in Paris is postponed from this autumn to 2021. The married duo of pioneering artists, Christo and Jeanne-Claude (who died in 2009), who won worldwide fame for their art projects

Archive · Books · Paris · People · Humour

Turgenev was terribly afraid of cholera and often remarked on fresh outbreaks in his letters, describing in detail the situation in Paris and other European cities, asking after affairs in Russia, noting that people were dying like flies, reflecting how f

Turgenev was terribly afraid of cholera and often remarked on fresh outbreaks in his letters, describing in detail the situation in Paris and other European cities, asking after affairs in Russia, noting that people were dying like flies, reflecting how fortunate it was that nightingales do not catch cholera and

Books · Monarchies · Observations · Paris · Nature

Long-lived fish in the ponds of Petit Trianon, Fontainebleau and Chantilly

The British writer Barbara Pym, in her ironic novel Crampton Hodnet, written in the 1930s and 1940s, observes that the fish in the ponds of the Petit Trianon are so old that they must have seen Marie Antoinette. In principle, some freshwater fish really do live for more than a

Architecture · Monarchies · Museums · Heritage · Paris

The Petit Trianon, built by Louis XV, blossomed under Louis XVI, when the palace passed into the ownership of Marie Antoinette, who made its interiors, poised between rococo and neoclassicism, her private retreat, where one could come only by her invitati

The Petit Trianon, built by Louis XV, blossomed under Louis XVI, when the palace passed into the ownership of Marie Antoinette, who made its interiors, poised in style between rococo and neoclassicism, her private retreat, where one could come only by her invitation. After the Revolution the palace was abandoned

Faith · Heritage · Paris

Today is Good Friday for Catholics, the day on which the crucifixion of Jesus is recalled, which means that in Paris one of the greatest Christian relics is venerated: the Crown of Thorns of Christ, kept since 1806 in the treasury of Notre-Dame de Paris,

Today is Good Friday for Catholics, the day on which the crucifixion of Jesus is recalled, which means that in Paris one of the greatest Christian relics is venerated: the Crown of Thorns of Christ, kept since 1806 in the treasury of Notre-Dame de Paris, and which reached France

NB! · Archive · Architecture · Heritage · Paris

The Vendôme Column before and after its destruction

Archive · Society · Paris

Boston Athenaeum publishes photographs of the 1871 Paris Commune

The Boston Athenæum has put online a collection of photographs of the Paris Commune and the fortified suburbs of Paris in 1871, as the Franco-Prussian War drew to a close. Cannon in the city, the ruined Ministry of Finance, executions in the streets, and barricades that look nothing like

Painting by Jean Dufy of the Place de la Concorde in Paris with the obelisk and fountains, the Seine with a steamboat and Sacré-Cœur in the distance.

NB! · Art · Observations · Paris

Place de la Concorde in 1950s Paris in a painting by Jean Dufy

I do so long to be in the incredible Paris of the fifties of Jean Dufy. Place de la Concorde. I wish everyone such a Chagallian-Dufyesque mood

Archive · Cinema · Paris · People

Actor Grigory Khmara and the Russian Hollywood of Paris in a film on the Kultura channel

In the 1920s the husband of the Danish-born actress Asta Nielsen, then enormously famous, in Russia at any rate, wrote to Alexandr Kamenka, producer at Paris's largest Russian film studio, Albatros, incidentally as… "My name is Grigory Mikhailovich Khmara... My wife is Asta Nielsen... I shall

Heritage · Science · Society · Paris

The Metre of the French Revolution and the Marble Standards Surviving in Paris

One of the innovations of the French Revolution that almost all of humanity uses every day is the metre. It was a truly revolutionary decision to introduce a unified unit of length at a time when France alone had tens of thousands of different ones, and it was soon adopted

Architecture · Art · Observations · Society · Paris

Studying the bas-relief of the Palais de la Porte Dorée, one notices a peculiarity shared by all the colonial figures: like the images of ancient Egypt, they face the viewer in profile, and only the allegorical figure of France, on the central axis of the

Studying the bas-relief of the Palais de la Porte Dorée, one notices a peculiarity shared by all the colonial figures: like the images of ancient Egypt, they face the viewer in profile, and only the allegorical figure of France, on the central axis of the composition above the doorway,

Architecture · Art · Observations · Paris

Whenever I recall the delightful façade of the Palais de la Porte Dorée on the edge of the Bois de Vincennes, I wonder whether mankind will ever invent anything so aesthetically flawless and inspired as the Art Deco tradition.

The building, which now houses a tropical aquarium and a museum of the history of immigration, was originally created as an exhibition space for the six-month Colonial Exhibition held in Paris in 1931. The entire façade of the Palace of the Golden Gate is covered with bas-reliefs depicting