The next morning I wandered back into the centre of Paris, more-or-less following the well-worn track along the Champs-Elysees past the Place de la Concorde, through the Tuilieres and on to the Louvre. Arguably the most touristed track in the world, it was busy.
To get there I crossed the extravagant Pont Alexandre III bridge, built in 1900.
It had statues…
…but they weren’t hearing anything from me.
The Louvre is the Louvre is the Louvre, the most famous museum in the world, it’s got the Mona Lisa. A simply enormous and grandiose building it was originally a royal palace then a home for the royal collection, and then the Revolution of 1789 came along and it became the open facility it is today. I’d visited it on previous trips and the queues were long so I contented myself with admiring the architecture from the outside.
And that’s when I noticed all the statues, and my resolve melted.
High on the walls there are about fifty statues memorialising great figures in French history, from politics, the arts and sciences, you name they’re here. Paris, France, revels in its freedom to celebrate the sensuality of the female form, so as you can imagine all the people they seem to value here, the ones that matter, are men. But still, a statue is a statue, and here are the ones I picked out for special measures.
So with that I said goodbye to the great ones and got myself something to eat and drink.
Afterwards I went down to have a look at the renovated Notre Dame.
From the outside you would think that all was well after the devastating fire of 2019. There was still work being done on the collapsed spire…
…but Paris was still glorious.
The following day I took up a friend’s recommendation and headed to one of the Galaries Lafayette, Paris’s most stylish shopping mall chain.
Your eyes are just drawn upwards, glistening with astonishment at how high it is! Just – so – extravagantly – opulently – high! I mean, €18000 for a watch!
A quick pass by the storied Paris Opera, still the biggest in the world…
…and this increasingly random tour found itself at the Madeleine, a strangely Neoclassical church that once served as Napoleon’s memorial to his soldiers.
The memorial to Cure Deguerry, a victim of the Paris Commune of 1871 (don’t worry, the anti-Commune forces created plenty of victims themselves when they repressed the revolution).
Then up the Champs to the Arc de Triomphe, which is even more monumental in real life than on film.
It’s easy to assume everyone reading this is already familiar with Paris, so just in case; it’s another monument to Napoleon’s wars. Amidst all the battle scenes and the names of battles won and generals lost, there are four great sculptures on the main faces, two of which we can see here. On the left (feel free to zoom in) goddesses are crowning old Bonaparte with the wreaths of victory and glory, while he stands there looking quite nonchalant as if this sort of thing happens to him all the time. In the piece on the right, France herself leads the flower of the nation (all naked, not sure if flowers go that far) into war against the German enemy. It is said that that black sword that the Republic is holding broke off one day. The day the Battle of Verdun began in 1916.
And it looks like my series of Paris photos has broken as well. Just as well because – lo and behold! – the light at the end of the Channel Tunnel has also broken through and I’m back home in Blighty. Just managed to complete my Paris blog while still in France!
orwellianTwo 