The Historic Heart of Paris

Another sun scorched day in Paris – apparently bad weather is coming but we’ve yet to see a hint of it. Took advantage of the sun and did a historic walk through the very centre of Paris, using Rick Steves’ excellent audio tour. This area of town had a lot more pedestrian streets and a surprising abundance of parks – an excellent place to stay especially if in town for only a few days.

First stop – the Cathedral of Notre Dame. What the building lacked in hunchbacks it made up for in definitive Gothic architecture – this is the building that started the movement and it did it with style!

We then left the small island that houses the cathedral, an island that has been at the very centre of Paris for over 2000 years, and headed to the left bank to see remnants of Medieval architecture, some interesting cultural icons like a famous bookshop that houses aspiring writers and first published James Joyce’s Ulysses (Shakespeare and Co), and explored the Latin Quarter, named after its roots in University culture, not a tendency towards all things Latino. In the same quarter we ate our very first French crepes (delicious!! Marthese opted for Nutella Crepe for desert, of course.)

We returned to the island to visit St Chappelle – a medieval church we hadn’t heard of but an absolute must-visit! The place felt so warm compared to Notre Dame, with its remarkably huge stained glass window panels. A real marvel.

Right next door to St Chappelle is Paris’ major courthouse which is still in use, and was used to pass down fatal rulings following the French Revolution.

And right next door to that is the Conciergerie, one of the older palaces in Paris that was converted into a prison during the reign of the major kings and then used to imprison kings and nobility following the revolution. There is a reconstruction of Marie-Antoinette’s cell, a stark contrast to her gardens of fantasy that we visited yesterday.

Finally we ended the tour on the Pont Neuf, France’s oldest standing bridge, and a great place to sit and watch the river Seine and ponder Paris’ vast history. Or just sit in the sun with your new wife.

Tez and I then parted ways – she to H & M, where she had much shopping success, and me to a couple of extra museums.

The Cluny Museum is a medieval building that displays a bunch of medieval artefacts – lots of Christian art and such. Some of the notable items were original stained-glass pieces from St Chappelle that you could look at up close, the decapitated heads of biblical kings from the Notre Dame cathedral following the rampage of some over-enthusiastic revolutionaries, and some very fancy tapestry work that seem to imply that Unicorns are real and they’re French. I enjoyed the visit, but I would not call it an essential destination.

The Pompidou, however, was awesome. A strange inside-out building that features Paris’ Museum of Modern Art, I’m glad I found time to squeeze it in. The modern art exhibition was extensive – hundreds of epic 20th century artworks spanning multiple art movements and art-forms on a single level. Works by Picasso, Kandinsky, Bacon, Duchamp, Dali, Pollock are exhibited alongside works of far lesser known artists, even literally unknown artists, but all form a strong impression of a period or movement. It was totally engrossing and overwhelming at the same time. I found some surprising and inspiring works by people I’d not heard of before (like Matta and Kertesz) that I’m keen to follow up on.