perfect city to be inspired by architecture, culture, shopping and fine cuisine
Disadvantages:
just too many tourists, hope this review wont bring too many extra ones
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
Writing a review of Paris requires a special approach. I would assume that 90% of Ciao readers have already been there, seen all the sights and read endlessly about it. Thus I will offer a new look at Paris: a literary review.
Paris has always been home and inspiration to famous and not so famous intellectuals, artists and writers:
Victor Hugo made Notre Dame his second home and the scene for his works. Honoré de Balzac wrote his Comédie Humaine in his sophisticated quarters at Place Vendôme. Existentialists Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Simone de Beauvoir took their coffee at the café Les Deux Magots on Boulevard Saint Germain. Françoise Sagan took her last breath in her apartment on the Seine. And Georges Simenon's famous character, Inspector Maigret, investigated murders around Place Clichy.
In the 1920s, the cream of American authors made their home in Paris, including Gertrude Stein and the group whom she called the writers of the "Lost Generation" - Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ezra Pound.
Two American authors have each written a book exclusively about Paris: "A moveable Feast" (Earnest Hemingway, 1960) and "Paris" (Julien Green, 1983). Henry Miller's "Quiet Days in Clichy", however, deals less with this Paris suburb than with his own erotic fantasies.
Let us explore Paris on the trails of these writers. Some of the texts employed in this review I have had to translate from French or German, so please excuse if they sound somewhat odd (in some cases it's the author's style, though).
In order not to make this review too long (which I am otherwise known for), I have only selected very few spots of Paris. I didn't select them by their importance but rather by random, based on the literary quotes which I found. Depending on the reception of this review, I might write further literary reviews of other Paris sights, there is still plenty of material left.
------------------------------- A VIEW FROM NOTRE DAME -------------------------------
To gain a first impression of the city layout we consult Victor Hugo's View from Notre Dame - from the Raven's Perspective: "At the centre the Isle de la Cité, which we imagine as a giant turtle: under its roof-grey carapace it stretches its paws, the scaly brick bridges. To the left the solid, thorny trapezium of the Quartier Latin, as if made of one single stone. To the right the wide semicircle of the new town, relaxed by gardens and outstanding buildings. The three districts - Cité, Quartier Latin and new town, are veined by network of alleys. And right through the middle flows the Seine [...], filled up with isles, bridges and boats."
Today Hugo would maybe compare Paris to a black whole which absorbs everything around it. Paris constantly expands, and numerous districts have been added, but his orientation still applies to the city centre. And the roof of Notre Dame is a perfect place to overlook the roofs of Paris. Other spectacular panoramic views can be enjoyed from Montmartre, Tour Montparnasse, and the roofs of the Centre Pompidou and the Musée d'Orsay.
Rather than exploring Paris from the centre, today it may be more helpful to seek orientation in an east-west axis along the Seine, reaching from La Defense in the west (built 100 years after his death) to the Bastille in the east, along the Champs Elysées and Rue de Rivoli. Then add Place Pigalle and Montmartre in the north, and Saint Germain de Près and Montparnasse in the south, and you have got the whole picture.
------------------------------------ DOWNHILL FROM MONTMARTRE ------------------------------------
In his short story The Man in the Street, Georges Simenon takes us on a tour of the northern districts which lie below Montmartre: "One detail struck Maigret: this exhausting ramble always followed the same course, through the same districts: between the Trinité and Place Clichy, between Place Clichy and Barbès by way of the Rue Caulaincourt, then from Barbès to the Gare du Nord and the Rue La Fayette."
If you follow Inspector Maigret on his pursuit, this will lead you through the centre of Paris nightlife along streets filled with pubs and discotheques. Luckily he spared us of Place Pigalle with its tourist bars, red light district and the cabarets like Folies Bergères, Moulin Rouge, and Casino de Paris which are flocked by foreigners.
Towards the end of Simenon's trail, you arrive at Rue La Fayette, which features Paris' largest shopping centre, Galleries Lafayette.
-------------------------- JARDIN DES TUILERIES --------------------------
Julien Green paints a dark picture of this part of Paris as he writes "The Tuileries have been disgraced. Carrousels, a small railway for children, a large Bavarian casino, on the terrace of which a group of countrymen in leather shorts yodel to an audience of four guests. A little further, a loudspeaker blubbers a Mozart aria. [...] The Boulevard is crowded with Sunday promenadors who apparently don't know what to do with themselves."
Indeed, the area around the Tuileries Garden, Place de la Concorde and the Avenue des Champs Elysées is crowded by tourists and those Parisians who want to see and to be seen. I have never voluntary spent much time in this part of town. A business trip to Paris once forced me to attend meetings around Champs Elysées and Arc de Triomphe, but once I got out I rushed to the nearest Metro station and headed for a more authentic place.
-------------------------------------------------- QUARTIER LATIN & SAINT GERMAIN DE PRÈS --------------------------------------------------
This place could be south of the river Seine, where Ernest Hemingway used to hang around: "I walked down past the Lycée Henri Quatre and the ancient church of Saint Etienne du Mont and the windswept Place du Panthéon and cut in for shelter to the right and finally came out on the lee side of the Boulevard Saint Michel and worked on down it past the Cluny and the Boulevard Saint Germain until I came to a good café that I knew on the Place Saint Michel." (Just why does he use "and" so often?)
Hemingway's route leads right through my favourite part of Paris, the Quartier Latin (Sorbonne university area), and the district of Saint Germain. Beside the great historical and cultural sights Hemingway mentions, this area is known for its bars, cafés, restaurants, antique shops, art galleries and small markets.
On Boulevard Saint Germain are the cafés and restaurants of the more expensive kind, drawing their image from the celebrity writers who used to frequent them. Although I usually prefer to go to less well known places, I find myself at least once every Paris trip sitting in Les Deux Magots, which used to be the favourite café of Sartre et al.
The small and cheaper restaurants can be found in the side streets, usually coming with an oyster bar. In France, oysters aren't as exclusive a meal as elsewhere in the world, they are more or less a way of life.
Place Saint Michel is great to just stroll around off-season, but a nightmare during Summer when it is as crowded by Interrail travellers as the stairs of Montmartre.
Just a few steps away is Paris' largest park, the Jardin du Luxembourg, where I like to simply sit and read, or watch the children playing on the yard. To me Paris has never been a place to rush from one sight to another, but one to relax, read, dine, and blend into the anonymity of Parisian life. The Luxembourg park is crowded, too, but mostly by Parisians, whom I prefer to the tourist folks.
------------ EPILOGUE ------------
Having finished this review makes me longing to do as Hemingway did: "I closed up the story in the notebook and put it in my inside pocket an I asked the waiter for a dozen Portugaises and a half-carafe of the dry white wine they had there. After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good until I read it over the next day."
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