Paris – A, B, C
Prepared and
photographed
by
Patricia Barry
© 2006
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
An ABC guide to Paris
 This is all about Paris and Parisian things!
 The well-known and the little known.
Click below to go to a particular page. Enjoy!
A B C D E F G H I J K LM
N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
A – Arc de Triomphe
 The Emperor Napoleon wanted a
special arch to celebrate the
victories of his “Grande Armée”.
 It took 30 years to build, so
Napoleon never saw it.
 The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
is located below it.
 The names of his officers are
carved into the roof arch.
 There are sculptures of his most
famous battles on the exterior.
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
B – Beaubourg
 This is the name Parisians give to the
Pompidou Centre
 It is the Museum of Modern Art – and
one of the biggest in the world.
 It was built in 1977, and is named after
the President who was a fan of modern
art and who commissioned it – Georges
Pompidou.
 It is an “inside-out” building with all its
infrastructure on the outside in colour
coded pipes.
 Yellow = electricity, green = water, blue =
air conditioning and heating, and brown
= access ways for people.
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
C – Place de la Concorde.
 This was where executions took
place using the guillotine during the
Revolution. King Louis XVI and his
Queen, Marie Antoinette lost their
heads here.
 The obelisk is more than 3000 years
old and comes from the Temple of
Amon, of Luxor in Egypt. It was a
gift to France from the Egyptian
government in 1836.
 The tip of the obelisk is covered in
gold and the story of how it was
conveyed to France is sculpted on
its plinth in gold.
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
D – La Défense
 Named from the fierce
defence put up by the
Parisians here against the
Prussians during the FrancoPrussian war in 1870.
 It is the modern CBD of Paris
and opened in 1989 - covering
some 2 million m2, with
hundreds of thousands
accessing the area each day.
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
It’s a big multi-level station with
RER, metro and railway systems, a,
big shopping centre called “Quatre
Temps”, a hypermarket and
hundreds of shops
•You can access the roof of its huge
towers
See the huge sculpture of the
thumb!
It’s the end of the royal triumphal
way.
La Défense
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
E – La Tour Eiffel.
 Eiffel designed this for the World
Expo of 1889 celebrating the
centenary of the Revolution.
 Eiffel was also involved in
designing the Statue of Liberty
 The tower was the tallest building
in the world when it was first built.
The Parisians hated it and wanted
it demolished.
 In huge wind gusts, the top can
move up to 7 cm!
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
F – Franco Prussian War 1870
 The Prussian Army advanced
deep into France and laid siege
to Paris in 1870
 The city was shelled and
starved – the only way in or out
was by hot air balloon.
 Micro film was invented to
enable important documents to
be ferried out in the hot air
balloons.
 It was the first time war had
been carried into the air.
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
G – Gargoyles
 Climb the bell tower of Notre
Dame to see the gargoyles
 It was originally thought that
they were built to scare away
demons.
 Their design ranges from
birds to beasts, but none of
them exist in real life,
thankfully!
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
H – Baron Haussmann
 Haussmann was responsible for the
modern layout of Paris.
 For 15 years from1853, he cleared
the slums and designed and oversaw
the construction of some of the most
beautiful boulevards, avenues and
streets in Paris.
 He designed the arrondissements –
the numbered suburbs, that spiral
concentrically from the first (located in
the area of the royal palace of Le
Louvre) to the 20th.
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
I – Les Invalides
 This is the military museum of France.
 The tomb of Napoleon lays under the dome.
 In the past, it was the military hospital for wounded
veterans – hence its name.
 The dome is covered in 12 kilos of gold!
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
J – le Jardin du Luxembourg
 Paris has many public
gardens like le Jardin du
Luxembourg.
 You are not allowed to walk
on the grass.
 Parisians love to walk, eat
their lunch and sail their toy
boats on the ponds in these
parks.
 Le Jardin du Luxembourg
houses the French Senate.
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
K – le kilomètre zéro
 Notre Dame still marks the
centre of Paris
 Outside in the square, is the
“Kilometre 0”, from which all
the distances in France are
measured. This was put into
place by André Michelin, the
founder of the tyre company.
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
L – le Louvre
 The biggest museum in
the world
 Started life as the Royal
palace for the Kings of
France before Versailles
was built
 Enter through the famous
pyramid to see La Joconde
(the Mona Lisa), the Venus
de Milo, Hammurabi’s code
and thousands of other
treasures.
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
M – le Métro
 No place in Paris is
further than 400m from a
Métro station.
 Trains travel under
ground and overground.
 There are 16 Métro lines
and nearly 300 stations
 A billion journeys a year
are undertaken by the
Métro.
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
N – Notre Dame de Paris
 The centre of Paris
 800 years old, took nearly 200
years to build
 It became a Temple of Reason
during the French Revolution.
 The Cathedral fell into decay
after the Revolution, and was
only rescued from demolition
because of Hugo’s story “The
Hunchback of Notre Dame”.
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
O – Le Musée d’Orsay
 Originally a train station but
the platforms were too short,
so fell into disuse
 The home to late 19th century
art, the Impressionists and
sculpture
 Here you can see works by
Van Gogh, Degas, Renoir,
Monet, Rodin and Toulouse
Lautrec.
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
P – Les ponts de Paris.
 There are 36 bridges that cross
the River Seine. Here are two of
them.
 At the top, Pont Alexandre III
(named after the Tsar of Russia),
considered by many to be the
most beautiful bridge in Paris
 Below, Pont Neuf (New Bridge) –
in fact the oldest bridge and the
first to be built of stone.
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
Q – Les quais de Paris
 On the riverside quays of Paris
are “Les Bouquinistes”
 These are sellers of books; old,
modern, new, second-hand,
rare….. Lots of bargains!
 They have been setting up shop
here for 400 years ..mostly
because they don’t have enough
money to open up a book shop!
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
R – Rue de Rivoli
 This is where you will find the Louvre
and it leads to the most “exclusive”
street in Paris, with its designer
stores and the Ritz hotel.
 In the centre is the Place Vendôme,
with its column built by Napoleon. It
is constructed from cannons
captured from his enemies in
victorious battles.
 At the top is a statue of Napoleon.
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
S – Sacré Coeur
 Started in 1870, completed in
1914.
 Situated on the top of
Montmartre – one of the only
hills in Paris which was home to
the artist community in the late
1800s.
 Behind is the Place du Tertre,
where the artists still
congregate today – the most
pick pocketed place in Paris!
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
T – Toulouse-Lautrec
 His sketches and posters mean “Paris” for
many people
 Childhood accidents caused him to
remain a dwarf.
 Rejected by mainstream society, he found
comfort in the café concerts – like the
Moulin Rouge.
 He had a new, fresh approach to graphic
art which revolutionised poster drawing.
This is one of his most famous showing
the dancer “La Golue” performing the
shocking “CanCan”.
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
eUro-Disney
 A favourite theme park for
Europeans, although it
was initially unpopular
with many French people
because of its “American”
culture.
 About one hour’s
travelling time out of Paris.
 It shares common rides
and themes with Disney
parks in the USA
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
V - Versailles
 Built in the 1600s by Louis XIV, the
Sun King. His sun symbol may be
found everywhere in the Palace.
 The biggest palace in Europe.
 Housed 30,000 people and was the
symbol of the King’s absolute power.
 The Hall of Mirrors is the most famous
room of the Palace
 Visit the little village and farm where
Queen Marie Antoinette used to play
at being a farmer’s wife.
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
W – Winter in Paris
 Skating rinks are put into
place – outside the Hotel
de Ville, and even on the
Eiffel Tower!
 In the Summer, sand and
palms are trucked into
central Paris to create a
“plage” or beach by the
River Seine!
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
X – Xtra information
 Right Bank (Rive droite) and Left Bank (Rive Gauche) – defined by
the flow of the Seine, from East to West. The Eiffel Tower and the
Latin Quarter are Rive Gauche. The Louvre and the Arc de
Triomphe are Rive Droite.
 The Musée de Cluny is built on top of a Roman Villa and you can
visit the Roman bath-house! It is the medieval museum for France.
 The Conciergerie was the Prison for those destined to be guillotined.
It housed King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette and their
children. You can visit the cells.
 The catacombs are the spooky tour, with millions of tastefully
arranged skeletons in a hundred kilometres of subterranean
passages – don’t get lost! Entry is near Metro Denfert Rochereau.
 The sewers – made famous by Hugo in his book, Les Miserables –
are a fine working example of 19th century infrastructure. Entry is
from a quai on the River Seine near Les Invalides.
 Chatelet near the Hotel de Ville is the world’s largest Metro station
covering twelve levels.
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
Y – did YOU know…?
 The word in French for “garbage bin” is “la
poubelle”. This word comes from its inventor, a
Monsieur Poubelle who was a Paris city
councillor during the time of Haussmann’s
clean up of the city.
 Haussmann had installed sewers, but what to
do with all the rubbish that people just threw
into the street?
 Poubelle organised a metal bin for each
household and started a weekly collection
system. The bin was called a “Poubelle” after
him!
(c) Patricia Barry 2007
Z - Zoo
 The Kings of France had a zoo which was
disbanded during the Revolution.
 After the Revolution, the Zoo was
restarted. The first giraffes in Europe
were kept here, after walking all the way
from Marseille where they were
disembarked from their African voyage.
 Sadly to say, all the animals were eaten
by the starving Parisians during the Siege
of Paris in the Franco-Prussian war. The
picture shows the sale of the last meat at
this time.
(c) Patricia Barry 2007