We don’t often think of Paris as a port city. But the city handles about 20 million tons of cargo a year, and with more than 7 million people travelling on the river each year, Paris is the leading river port in Europe for passenger transportation. A hundred years ago, it was more than just [...]
The Paris metro’s Franklin D. Roosevelt stop used to be a step back in time. You got on the train in the beginning of the 21st century and got off in the middle of the 20th. The platform for the number 1 line, in dashing shades of bright orange and steely blue, was particularly evocative. You half [...]
Parc de Monceau was designed by Carrogis Carmontelle in the late 1700s with a fanciful assortment of features: a Roman colonnade, antique statues, a tatar tent, a farmhouse, an enchanted grotto, and an Egyptian pyramid.
No other part of Paris has undergone such a radical transformation as the 13th arrondissement in the last 50 years, and nowhere is this more visible than at the Olympiades development, celebrating its 40th birthday this year. But have these transformations been successful? Rarely has a shopping centre been less appropriately named than the Centre [...]
I think Galerie Véro-Dodat is one of the prettiest and well kept of the passages of Paris. It runs in between rue de Jean-Jacques Rosseau and rue de Croix-des-Petis-Champs in the first arrondissement. Built in 1826 by two charcutiers, Galerie Véro-Dodat is one of the finest examples of the covered passageways that were primarily built in the early to [...]
Aside from trying to maintain order on the streets and sidewalks of the most famous avenue in the world, the Prefecture de Police de Paris is also trying to help tourists avoid getting ripped off by fake taxis. They’re usually hovering around airports and train stations, but I’ve had clients taken for a ride by a [...]
This café terrace on Rue de Sèvres was not attracting many customers despite the rouge blankets draped across the chairs.
The bridges crossing the Seine are a major part of Paris’s beauty. Could a bridge that was never built also be an asset? Consider the magazine headline below. What does it tell us about Paris and tourism when in July 1910 the American magazine Popular Mechanics featured this story? The upbeat article begins with the [...]
If you’re using a Paris metro map printed before February, throw it out. Tear it out of the guidebook you’re using. Get a new Plan de Paris par Arrondissement. Verify that the app you’re using is using an updated map. How will you know? Easy. Just look at the southern end of Line 4, and [...]
The hideous ’70s era upper structure of the Forum des Halles is being pulled down, soon to be replaced by a futuristic “canopy” the size of a football field. From the computer drawings it looks pretty cool – I just hope it’s not really that color yellow or it’s going to look, well, weird. Weird [...]
