The city of love, light and elegance enchants the world, attracting millions of visitors every year and housing millions more in its extensive suburbs. The rococo houses soar over the immaculate Parisians, the Seine sweeps through the city and the art of the hundreds of museums overflows onto the street in the form of street artists, dancers and buskers.
Paris gained its name from the Celtic people known as the Parisii who settled in the 3rd century BC, however, there is archaeological evidence of human inhabitation much earlier than this from 9800 to 7500 BC. The city was conquered by Julius Caesar in 52 BC and after the fall of the Roman Empire became the capital of King Clovis the Frank, the first king of what would become France, in 508 AD and has remained the supreme political, financial and cultural centre.
Having survived the metro with our enormous backpacks, we emerged in Montmartre under a gorgeous blue Parisian sky to be greeted by the City Hall proudly reading ‘Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.’ After freeing ourselves of luggage, we spent the afternoon shopping in Le Marais. We spent more of our time window shopping and gazing longingly rather than buying until we reached the vintage shops where you can pick up a dress for just a few euros – thank you to Flora Ogilvy for recommending it! (Have a look a her amazing website http://www.velvetwhisper.com/ if you haven’t already.)
We spent our first evening following in Flora’s footsteps with cocktails at Le Comptoir Général after another wonderful French picnic outside the Notre Dame. We chatted and laughed the night away, sitting by the Seine with the street performers and meeting and greeting in the queue to Le Comptoir Général.
We were up bright and early for our final Sandeman’s walking tour of the trip and spent three and a half hours hearing about the history and stories of the city from our fantastic guide Connor, a fellow Scot who asked us to kindly not bring up the referendum as he has been asked about it by every group for the last three months.
We began our tour in the Latin Quarter, so called as it was home to the elite classes who spoke latin. All the classes of Robert Sorbonne’s university were taught in latin but were open to all. Education was no longer reserved exclusively for the elite.
After hearing about Fountaine Saint-Michel which depicts the defeat of the devil and has more recently come to represent the victory over the nazis, we made our way over to Notre-Dame. It was begun in 1163 but took 180 years to complete partly due to the transition from Romanesque to Gothic architecture which created conflicting elements and resulted in the inclusion of flying buttresses which support the soaring towers. Victor Hugo’s ‘Hunchback of Notre Dame’ restored the people’s appreciation of its glory and beauty who’s intentions had been to destroy every sign of power after the French Revolution. The damage of 1789 was repaired and today the cathedral stands as one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture along with Saint-Chapelle, also found on the Île de la Cité.
The Île de la Cité was described as “the cradle of the city” and was where the first Celtic settlers lived. The second island is the Île de Saint-Louis and is well worth a visit if only for a luxurious ice-cream from Berthillon, making mouths water since 1928.
Holding our noses, we past under the first stone bridge to be built over the Seine, completed in 1609 by King Henry IV with money from a highly unpopular tax on wine. We crossed the river further along over the famed original ‘Lovelock Bridge,’ Le Pont des Arts. The bridge was that of the scene in the last episode of Sex and the City in which Big tells Carrie “you’re the one.” The tradition of couples putting a lock onto a bridge and throwing the key into the river as a sign of everlasting love originated in Italy but was brought to Paris at the beginning of the 21st century. There had been a man known as the ‘anticupid’ who used to cut the locks off the bridge to reduce the weight, hugely increased by the hundred of locks. The current solution is that whole panels are taken and the metal is melted down together, beautifully symbolic of a universal love.
The Pont des Arts reaches from the Academie Française to the Musée de Louvre, where we went on Monday morning. Seven hundred people, including Victor Hugo, have worked to regulate the spelling and grammar of the french language over the years and are known as ‘the immortals’ because they keep their position for life (although gives me a Twilight image of the Volturi!) Some modern emergencies have included the word ‘weekend’ which the academy attempted to replace with the word charming word ‘vacancelle.’ Like every other french speaker, I had never heard this word. Regretfully, ‘vacancelle’ was not assimilated into french society, who will be using ‘weekend’ forever more. A second dilemma was that of the gender of the iPod. After months of debate they decided that the iPod was a boy and should be masculine.
After joining the tourists posing with the pyramids, we moved past the Louvre to the Place du Carrousel, so called because of Louis XIV, who considered himself the centre of the world and was known as the ‘sun king,’ everything orbiting the absolutist king. He would spend an average of five hours a day dancing and performed to twenty thousand people, dressed as the sun with several dancers circling him in a carrousel motion.
The triumphal arch was commissioned by Napoleon after in the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805. His intentions had been for the victorious troops to march through the Arc de Triomphe crowing the Champs d’Elysées but after realising that this fifty metre arch would take thirty years to complete (which ended up being fifteen years after his death) he ordered for the comparatively modest nineteen metre Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel to be built. The Arc de Triomphe which was visited on our last morning had been the largest in the world until the title was stolen by North Korea. It’s the sort of monument that doesn’t get any closer while walking towards it until it is towering over you in all its glory. Twelve roads lead to the arch, symbolic of the twelve years of Napoleon’s rule.
Passing through the Jardins du Tuilerie, designed by the same man who created the gardens of Versailles, Connor told us about the fire which destroyed the Palace du Tuilerie and so the symmetry of the gardens leading all the way to the Place du Concorde and on to the Champs d’Elysées. You will find that in paintings and postcards, the Louvre has been moved to the right in order to complete the perfect symmetry of the gardens and arches!
We finished the tour in the Place du Concorde where Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and 80% of the nobility met their deaths at the hand of the guillotine. One of the more sinister entries for the competition for the monument to mark the centenary of the French Revolution was a giant guillotine which visitors would have to walk under to get to the other side. The entry which won was of course the Eiffel Tower. Mary just about burst with excitement when we saw it light up before going on our boat tour, unlike the Parisians who hated it, and were only pacified by the thought that it would be taken down after twenty years. However, Gustav Eiffel its creator added a lightening conductor when threatened with his work being dismantled, which made it the tallest manmade structure in the world. It was also where the first TV and radio broadcast in France took place and has become the iconic symbol of Paris.
At the centre of the Place du Concorde is the 3500 year-old Obelisk of Luxor which was given to France by the King of Egypt after a frenchman deciphered the Rosetta stone, setting in motion the art of studying hieroglyphics.
Connor’s final story was that of Dietrich von Choltitz. Knowing that the war was lost, Hitler made one final order which was to blow up Paris. Von Choltitz was to be responsible for this but in order to save his own life and the beautiful city, made a deal with Charles de Gaulle that he would arrange controlled explosions away from the ancient monuments which would be a sign for the French troops to move in and liberate the city. It is because of this man that the “city of lights” was saved.
Map Memories 