1.
Paris
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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
2.
France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
3.
Neoclassical architecture
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Neoclassical architecture is an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century. In its purest form, it is a style derived from the architecture of classical antiquity, the Vitruvian principles. In form, Neoclassical architecture emphasizes the wall rather than chiaroscuro, Neoclassical architecture is still designed today, but may be labelled New Classical Architecture for contemporary buildings. In Central and Eastern Europe, the style is referred to as Classicism. Many early 19th-century neoclassical architects were influenced by the drawings and projects of Étienne-Louis Boullée, the many graphite drawings of Boullée and his students depict spare geometrical architecture that emulates the eternality of the universe. There are links between Boullées ideas and Edmund Burkes conception of the sublime, the baroque style had never truly been to the English taste. The most popular was the four-volume Vitruvius Britannicus by Colen Campbell, the book contained architectural prints of famous British buildings that had been inspired by the great architects from Vitruvius to Palladio. At first the book featured the work of Inigo Jones. Palladian architecture became well established in 18th-century Britain, at the forefront of the new school of design was the aristocratic architect earl, Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, in 1729, he and William Kent, designed Chiswick House. This House was a reinterpretation of Palladios Villa Capra, but purified of 16th century elements and this severe lack of ornamentation was to be a feature of the Palladianism. In 1734 William Kent and Lord Burlington designed one of Englands finest examples of Palladian architecture with Holkham Hall in Norfolk, the main block of this house followed Palladios dictates quite closely, but Palladios low, often detached, wings of farm buildings were elevated in significance. This classicising vein was also detectable, to a degree, in the Late Baroque architecture in Paris. This shift was even visible in Rome at the redesigned façade for S, by the mid 18th century, the movement broadened to incorporate a greater range of Classical influences, including those from Ancient Greece. The shift to neoclassical architecture is conventionally dated to the 1750s, in France, the movement was propelled by a generation of French art students trained in Rome, and was influenced by the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann. The style was adopted by progressive circles in other countries such as Sweden. A second neoclassic wave, more severe, more studied and more consciously archaeological, is associated with the height of the Napoleonic Empire, in France, the first phase of neoclassicism was expressed in the Louis XVI style, and the second in the styles called Directoire or Empire. The Scottish architect Charles Cameron created palatial Italianate interiors for the German-born Catherine II the Great in St. Petersburg, indoors, neoclassicism made a discovery of the genuine classic interior, inspired by the rediscoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum. These had begun in the late 1740s, but only achieved an audience in the 1760s
4.
Neoclassicism
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The main Neoclassical movement coincided with the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment, and continued into the early 19th century, laterally competing with Romanticism. In architecture, the style continued throughout the 19th, 20th, European Neoclassicism in the visual arts began c.1760 in opposition to the then-dominant Baroque and Rococo styles. Each neo-classicism selects some models among the range of classics that are available to it. They ignored both Archaic Greek art and the works of Late Antiquity, the Rococo art of ancient Palmyra came as a revelation, through engravings in Woods The Ruins of Palmyra. While the movement is described as the opposed counterpart of Romanticism. The case of the main champion of late Neoclassicism, Ingres, demonstrates this especially well. The revival can be traced to the establishment of formal archaeology, the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann were important in shaping this movement in both architecture and the visual arts. With the advent of the Grand Tour, a fad of collecting antiquities began that laid the foundations of many great collections spreading a Neoclassical revival throughout Europe, Neoclassicism in each art implies a particular canon of a classical model. In English, the term Neoclassicism is used primarily of the arts, the similar movement in English literature. This, which had been dominant for decades, was beginning to decline by the time Neoclassicism in the visual arts became fashionable. Though terms differ, the situation in French literature was similar, in music, the period saw the rise of classical music, and Neoclassicism is used of 20th-century developments. Ingress coronation portrait of Napoleon even borrowed from Late Antique consular diptychs and their Carolingian revival, much Neoclassical painting is more classicizing in subject matter than in anything else. A fierce, but often very badly informed, dispute raged for decades over the merits of Greek and Roman art, with Winckelmann. The work of artists, who could not easily be described as insipid, combined aspects of Romanticism with a generally Neoclassical style. Unlike Carstens unrealized schemes, the etchings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi were numerous and profitable and his main subject matter was the buildings and ruins of Rome, and he was more stimulated by the ancient than the modern. Neoclassicism in painting gained a new sense of direction with the success of Jacques-Louis Davids Oath of the Horatii at the Paris Salon of 1785. Despite its evocation of republican virtues, this was a commission by the royal government, David managed to combine an idealist style with drama and forcefulness. David rapidly became the leader of French art, and after the French Revolution became a politician with control of government patronage in art
5.
Germain Boffrand
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Germain Boffrand was a French architect. A pupil of Jules Hardouin-Mansart, Germain Boffrand was one of the creators of the precursor to Rococo called the style Régence. His uncle, Philippe Quinault, introduced him to prospective clients among the aristocracy of Paris, in 1709, he was placed in charge of the interior apartments of the Hôtel de Soubise, where he soon succeeded the architect Pierre-Alexis Delamair. None of his early interiors survive, largely replaced by his spectacular Rococo work of the years following 1735, Boffrand was received by the Académie royale darchitecture in 1709. The following year he was among those employed in the additions to the Palais Bourbon, in 1732, he was appointed inspecteur général des ponts et chaussées and produced plans for restructuring Les Halles. He was a participant in the competition for the design of Place Louis XV, named chief architect to the hôpital général in 1724, he constructed in the Île de la Cité a foundling hospital, the Hôpital des Enfants Trouvés. Boffrand also worked for the hospitals at the Salpêtrière, at Bicêtre and he built a series of hôtels particuliers in Paris as speculative business enterprises. Boffrands pavilion of 1712-15 that inaugurated the new quarter of the Faubourg Saint-Honoré was purchased, abroad, Boffrand worked for the Duke of Lorraine, where he was appointed Premier Architecte to Duke Léopold in 1711, but little of significance remains. He also constructed a fountain and a hunt pavilion, Bouchefort, in the gardens of the schloss belonging to the Elector of Bavaria, in 1724 Boffrand worked on site at Würzburg with Balthasar Neumann, who had been consulting him in Paris, on the Prince-Bishops Residenz. His designs were carried out in the suite of rooms. Among the architects trained in his atelier were François Dominique Barreau de Chefdeville, Charles-Louis Clérisseau and Emmanuel Héré de Corny, Boffrands two sons collaborated in the office, both dying young, in 1732 and 1745. Boffrands folio, Livre darchitecture, was published in 1745, there are no surviving caches of his drawings. In January 1745 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, Germain Boffrand died in Paris in 1754 at age 86. The following commissions of Boffrand are largely taken from Fiske Kimball, Hôtel Le Brun,49 rue du Cardinal-Lemoine, for Charles II Le Brun, the nephew and heir of the premier peintre du roi Charles Le Brun and a relative of Boffrands. One of the first hôtels particuliers noted and commended by contemporary critics, remodelling of the Hôtel de Mesme. Remodelling of the Hôtel de Livry, Hôtel de Soubise,60 rue des Francs-Bourgeois, and the suite of interiors, Boffrands last major work and his masterpiece, for the prince de Rohan and his wife Marie Sophie de Courcillon. Façade of the Convent of Fathers of Mercy,45 rue des Archives, built for the prince de Soubise to provide a suitable sdtreet front opposite his new hôtel. Renovation for Anne Henriette of Bavaria, princess Palatine, widow of the Henri Jules, much of Boffrands decoration survives, including the staircase with its coved cornices filled with scrolls and foliage and rounded corners
6.
Classical architecture
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Different styles of classical architecture have arguably existed since the Carolingian Renaissance, and prominently since the Italian Renaissance. Although classical styles of architecture can vary greatly, they can in all be said to draw on a common vocabulary of decorative and constructive elements. The term classical architecture also applies to any mode of architecture that has evolved to a highly refined state, such as classical Chinese architecture and it can also refer to any architecture that employs classical aesthetic philosophy. The term might be used differently from traditional or vernacular architecture, for contemporary buildings following authentic classical principles, the term New Classical Architecture may be used. Classical architecture is derived from the architecture of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, with the collapse of the western part of the Roman empire, the architectural traditions of the Roman empire ceased to be practised in large parts of western Europe. In the Byzantine Empire, the ancient ways of building lived on, the first conscious efforts to bring back the disused language of form of classical antiquity into Western architecture can be traced to the Carolingian Renaissance of the late 8th and 9th centuries. In general, therefore, they are not considered classical architectural styles in a strict sense, nonetheless, the classical architecture of the Renaissance from the outset represents a highly specific interpretation of the classical ideas. Most of the styles originating in post-renaissance Europe can be described as classical architecture and this broad use of the term is employed by Sir John Summerson in The Classical Language of Architecture. The elements of architecture have been applied in radically different architectural contexts than those for which they were developed. For example, Baroque or Rococo architecture are styles which, although classical at root, during these periods, architectural theory still referred to classical ideas but rather less sincerely than during the Renaissance. Neoclassical architecture held a strong position on the architectural scene c. With the advent of Modernism during the early 20th century, classical architecture arguably almost completely ceased to be practised, as noted above, classical styles of architecture dominated Western architecture for a very long time, roughly from the Renaissance until the advent of Modernism. That is to say, that classical antiquity at least in theory was considered the source of inspiration for architectural endeavours in the West for much of Modern history. Furthermore, it can even be argued that styles of architecture not typically considered classical, like Gothic, therefore, a simple delineation of the scope of classical architecture is difficult to make. The more or less defining characteristic can still be said to be a reference to ancient Greek or Roman architecture, and the architectural rules or theories that derived from that architecture. In the grammar of architecture, the word petrification is often used when discussing the development of sacred structures, such as temples, during the Archaic and early Classical periods, the architectural forms of the earliest temples had solidified and the Doric emerged as the predominant element. And not everyone within the reach of Mediterranean civilization made this transition. Nor was it the lack of knowledge of working on their part that prevented them from making the transition from timber to dressed stone
