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By Bob Pratt, Class of 2019
Photographs by the author unless noted

A successful Olympics now over, Paris has returned from crowded to merely bustling, as my wife Cathy and I discovered during an eight-day stay in mid November. Olympic improvements remain: not just athletic venues, but freshly decorated, glistening Metro stations with new glass safety doors separating platform from train, new street signage, and scrubbed bridges.

The Old
French President Macron’s goal of restoring the fire-ravaged Notre Dame de Paris in time for the Olympics was not achieved. Massive cranes remain an inescapable part of any view of the 12th century cathedral. Times Square-like stadium seating accommodates those wishing to take in all the activity. The current plan is to reopen for visitors on December 8, but not all of the work will be done by then.

While waiting for Notre Dame to reopen, there is no shortage of impressive cathedrals and churches to visit. Not far from Notre Dame, and only slightly smaller, is the brooding and mysterious Church of Saint Sulpice, whose contemporary fame was enhanced by its role in Dan Brown’s 2003 novel The DaVinci Code, followed by the Ron Howard-directed movie of the same name in 2006. Saint Sulpice was begun in the seventeenth century, originally designed by Christophe Gamard. It is also undergoing restoration and change, including art restoration and required maintenance and freshening.

Somewhat smaller but strikingly beautiful is the Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, only a few blocks from Saint Sulpice. It is built upon a site once occupied by a Roman temple, and its history traces back some fifteen centuries. It’s one of the oldest Romanesque churches in France, constructed from the late tenth through the thirteenth centuries. While the Abbey near the church was destroyed during the French Revolution, the church remains. Its colorful interior is striking, and the church is a focal point for the left bank’s Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood. Right across the street is the Cafe Les Deux Magots, the favorite haunt of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and American expats including Ernest Hemingway.

Recreational shopping is said to have originated in Paris, so it isn’t surprising that Paris claims the first department store in the world. Bon Marché, located also in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, was founded by a milliner’s son, Aristide Boucicaut, and his wife Marguerite. The store first opened in 1852. It now occupies two blocks, with the oldest portion of the first block dating to 1869-72. Multiple architects played a role in designing parts of the buildings and then integrating them. But recognizably, the interior design of the oldest section is the work of the Moisant and Gustave Eiffel studios, who used their industrial metal expertise to design the interior and in particular the atrium area pictured. The store today is a gleaming retail palace where Parisians and tourists mingle, lining up outside before the doors open.

The New (Relatively)
Crossing the Seine to the right bank, and proceeding for a few blocks, we find a large plaza in front of an imposing monument to modern art and architecture: the Pompidou Centre. Completed in 1977 and designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rodgers, this groundbreaking concept prevailed in a competition sponsored by then-President Valery Giscard d’Estaing’s administration. Named for his predecessor Georges Pompidou, the Centre is itself modern art. It’s an extreme example of visual expression of structure, including a “caterpillar” escalator staircase on one side of the building providing panoramic views of Paris’s height-restricted skyline as one ascends to the sixth floor. Major building functions, such as pedestrian flow and air conditioning, are color-coded.  Inside are standing and special art exhibits, as well as research libraries. The special exhibit during our visit was Surrealism, a comprehensive review of this fascinating movement, including many well-known works by luminaries such as Magritte, Klee, and Ernst, but also including less well-known artists.  Our timing was fortunate as the Centre will be closed for an extended period of time beginning next year for extensive renovations and asbestos abatement.

Inspired in part by the success of Pompidou Centre, France’s socialist president Francois Mitterrand embarked in 1982 on his Grands Projets program of public architectural projects in unabashedly modern styles. Among these was an 1983 commission for a new opera house, the Opera Bastille, to be built where the French Revolution began over 200 years earlier. Architect Carlos Ott, a Uruguay-born Canadian, won an international competition attracting 1700 entries, with an ultra-modern design seating over 2700. Pictured are (1) Ott with a model of the building, and (2) the interior of the theater taken during intermission at a November 12 performance of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. The Opera Bastille opened in 1989. Among Mitterand’s other Grands Projets are I.M. Pei’s pyramid at the Louvre, the National Library, and the Grande Arche in la Defense (a skyscraper refuge where heights are not restricted).

The Ever-Present
Strict height restrictions for structures in central Paris allow sweeping vistas from even modestly high vantage points. But two structures are particularly frequent visual presences for Paris pedestrians. One of them elicits delight, the other derision. They are, respectively, the Eiffel Tower (Gustave Eiffel, Stephen Sauvestre, 1889), and the 57-story Montparnasse Tower (multiple architects, 1973). Pictured are Eiffel Tower sightings from the top of the Pompidou Centre and from a high point at the Père Lachaise cemetery, home to the remains of such notables as Marcel Proust, Honore de Balzac, Edith Piaf, Georges Eugene Haussmann, and Jim Morrison.  Also pictured are visual intrusions by Montparnasse Tower from the St. Sulpice plaza and several otherwise picturesque streets in Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

Finding Profilage
Finally, I expect that at least a few of you are fans of the French police detective series Profilage, anglicized as The Paris Murders and captioned for purposes of its PBS run. We had been puzzled by the apparent location of the detectives’ police station, along the river bank right across from Notre Dame and the Isle Saint-Louis, affording wonderful shots of the river and the cathedral. Our mission was to find the location with this view and to determine whether there is actually a police station in this unlikely spot.  Pictured is what we found: a nondescript building with no front entrance on what is known as the Quai de la Tournelle. Also pictured is a screen shot of the police station as it appears in the program—false entrance and all.

Never A Bad Time to Visit
There are countless discoveries to be made in Paris, limited only by your available time, imagination, and energy.  While April in Paris has all the cachet, November works nicely, too!

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