mardi 14 octobre 2014

Paris

As I told you last week, I will talk a little about my country's capital Paris. As well if you want to know more about Paris, you will enjoy this post!

So Paris, also nicknamed "The city of light", is located in the region of Ile de France. The city is built arround « La Seine » a big french river. The city is famous for its artistic life, its culture and also its romantic identity for which it was also nicknamed « The city of love ». Paris is also an important political and economical centre of France and also of the European Union.

First, the city of Paris is over 1800 historic monuments which belong to a huge diversity of historic periods. Generally, the oldest edifices are the churches with significiant ones like « La Cathédrale Notre Dame » or « La Sainte-Chapelle » which show high Gothic architecture at its best. They date from the 12th century. 

Then, the center of Paris shows an important architectural identity with 17th-19th typical buildings. As we can see in important districts like « Montmartre » buildings are built in a classical style representative of the 17th-19th centuries. They are also all aligned, with the same height, like twins. That is the result of a vast mid-19th century urban remodelling. At this time the city was a big labyrinth of narrow streets, with a lot of dark districts which were also dangerous. So Napoleon III (who was the French emperor at this time) decided to demolish streets and buildings and built two hundred kilometers of new streets and districts. As well, the emperor and his team established a lot of standards and rules of construction which gave the centre of Paris the distinct unity and look that it has today. The 19th century was also the period when a lot of significiant monuments were built like The Eiffel Tower, « L’Arc deTriomphe », « La Basilique du Sacré Cœur »…

The 20th century and specially the after-war period is the beginning of contemporary architecture, and Paris was a city affected by this style with some important structures like « Le Centre Pompidou », « La pyramide du Louvre », or also the district « La Défense » which is actually the biggest financial business district of the city, and an important economical centre.

Paris is also an important city of art, culture and sport. First the city is the center of literature, as well a lot of major authors used Paris as a dynamic and fascinating surrondings for their works. We can think about « Les Misérables » from Victor Hugo, for example. Then it’s also an important city of art, it set a lot of artistic waves of the 20th century like Impressionism, surealism or cubism. What’s more, Paris is also a city of sport with a lot of profesional team in a huge diversity of sports like the Paris Saint Germain in football, The Stade Français in rugby, the PSG Handball, The Paris-Levallois team in Basket-Ball..

Well, that the end of this first post about Paris, I hope you enjoyed the read. Don’t hesitate to comment, if you comment for my posts, I will check out your blog, I promise. Bye !

2 commentaires:

  1. Your post remind me that, in spite of many criticisms and bad reputations for some things, Paris is an important city in the worldwide. There are a lot of famous monuments that you describe. I'm looking forward to reading your posts to know which capitals you choose and if you can develop so many caracteristics of these ones .

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  2. Hello #22!

    Your blog is great! You had a good idea and I'm going to follow you because I'm also a big fan of  travels. In Europe, I have already been to England, Germany, Spain, Italy ...  But I have never been in the east part of Europe (Russia, Poland ...) That's why I'm am looking forward to your articles !

    #13

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