Selected Posts

There continue to be many new visitors to this site. I thought it was a good time to bring to attention a number of posts from the past year that don’t appear in the “most popular” list, but generated interest when they came out. There is more to be discovered, either through the “category” links in the sidebar or just by going back in time through the posts…

Paris’s First Public Garden: On the square Jean XIII, the space alongside Notre-Dame is Paris’s first public garden thanks to some dramatic historical events and the vision of Prefect Rambuteau.

 

 

Passy Cemetery: Hidden away steps from the place du Trocadéro, this is not just a beautiful cemetery, but a place full of great and moving stories.

 

 

 

Victor Louis’s Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux: Located in Bordeaux, designed toward the end of the eighteenth century, this building is a masterpiece of French theater design. It influenced both Gabriel Davioud, architect of the two theaters on the Place du Châtelet, and Charles Garnier, architect of the Opéra de Paris.

 

 

Thomas Couture: A major artistic figure of his time often thought of today as a tenant of conservative tastes. In reality, Couture is a complex figure, worth being better known, who had a deep influence on the younger generation of artists.

 

 

 

The Hôtel particulier, a Parisian ambition: An exhibition at the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine that retraced that essential Parisian building type, the hôtel particulier. It is an area in which many great French architects, from Le Vau to Ledoux and beyond, left some of their most brilliant creations.

 

 

Parc des Buttes Chaumont: Paris’s most spectacular park is not part of most tourists’ itinerary in Paris. It nevertheless stands as one of the greatest triumphs of Baron Haussmann’s Paris parks department under the direction of Adolphe Alphand and as a major example of Second Empire landscape design.

 

 

Chateau de Compiègne: A favorite residence of Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie, Compiègne played host to elaborate gatherings each fall. Today it is home to the museum of the Second Empire, with many wonderful pieces.

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