1.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
2.
Art museum
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An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art. Museums can be public or private, but what distinguishes a museum is the ownership of a collection, the term is used for both public galleries, which are non-profit or publicly owned museums that display selected collections of art. On the other hand, private galleries refers to the commercial enterprises for the sale of art, however, both types of gallery may host traveling exhibits or temporary exhibitions including art borrowed from elsewhere. In broad terms, in North American usage, the word gallery alone often implies a private gallery, the term contemporary art gallery refers usually to a privately owned for-profit commercial gallery. These galleries are found clustered together in large urban centers. Smaller cities are home to at least one gallery, but they may also be found in towns or villages. Contemporary art galleries are open to the general public without charge, however. They usually profit by taking a portion of art sales, from 25% to 50% is typical, there are also many non-profit or collective galleries. Some galleries in cities like Tokyo charge the artists a flat rate per day, curators often create group shows that say something about a certain theme, trend in art, or group of associated artists. Galleries sometimes choose to represent artists exclusively, giving them the opportunity to show regularly, a gallerys definition can also include the artist cooperative or artist-run space, which often operates as a space with a more democratic mission and selection process. A vanity gallery is an art gallery that charges fees from artists in order to show their work, the shows are not legitimately curated and will frequently or usually include as many artists as possible. Most art professionals are able to identify them on an artists resume, University art museums and galleries constitute collections of art that are developed, owned, and maintained by all kinds of schools, community colleges, colleges, and universities. This phenomenon exists in both the West and East, making it a global practice, although largely overlooked, there are over 700 university art museums in America alone. This number, in comparison to other kinds of art museums, throughout history, large and expensive works of art have generally been commissioned by religious institutions and monarchs and been displayed in temples, churches, and palaces. Although these collections of art were private, they were made available for viewing for a portion of the public. In classical times, religious institutions began to function as a form of art gallery. Wealthy Roman collectors of engraved gems and other precious objects often donated their collections to temples and it is unclear how easy it was in practice for the public to view these items. At the Palace of Versailles, entrance was restricted to wearing the proper apparel – the appropriate accessories could be hired from shops outside
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3rd arrondissement of Paris
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The 3rd arrondissement of Paris, situated on the right bank of the River Seine, is the smallest in area after the 2nd arrondissement. The arrondissement contains the northern, quieter part of the district of Le Marais. The oldest surviving house of Paris, built in 1407, is to be found in the 3rd arrondissement. The ancient Jewish quarter, the Pletzel which dates from the 13th century begins in the part of the 3rd arrondissement. It is home to the Musée dart et dhistoire du judaïsme, although trendy boutiques are now taking up many of the storefronts, there are still landmark stores selling traditional Jewish foods. With a land area of 1.171 km2, the 3rd arrondissement is the second smallest arrondissement in the city, the area now occupied by the third arrondissement attained its peak population in the period preceding the re-organization of Paris in 1860. In 1999, the population was 34,248, while the arrondissement hosted a total of 29,723 jobs, ¹The peak of population actually occurred before 1861, but the arrondissement was created in 1860, so we do not have figures before 1861
4.
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
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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
6.
La Samaritaine
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La Samaritaine was a large department store in Paris, France, located in the first arrondissement. The nearest métro station is Pont-Neuf, directly in front at the quai du Louvre and it is currently owned by LVMH, a luxury-goods maker. The store, which had been operating at a loss since the 1970s, was closed in 2005 purportedly because the building did not meet safety codes. In 2010 it was announced that a Japanese firm had been chosen to redesign the building as a combination hotel/apartments/offices. The store was first opened in 1869 by Ernest Cognacq and Marie-Louise Jaÿ, his wife and incidentally the first clothing vendor at Le Bon Marché, a rival department store. Cognacq began his trade selling ties under an umbrella on the Pont Neuf, then took a space on the rue de la Monnaie, starting out on a small scale with a very small boutique. By 1900, the couple had decided to expand their enterprise, giving birth to the edifice seen today. Inspired by the methods of Aristide Boucicaut to those of Le Bon Marché. Cognacq arranged La Samaritaine as a collection of individually owned stores, through the steady acquisition of neighboring buildings, Ernest Cognacq regularly expanded what could no longer be called a boutique. The surrounding city blocks were entirely reworked and reconstructed progressively from 1883 to 1933, further structural changes were successfully completed in 1933 by Henri Sauvage who, in his turn, reworked the architecture to reflect the aesthetic principles of Art Déco. The result was a department store, one that is today considered a historical monument. La Samaritaine was bought in 2001 by LVMH, the company that had just previously purchased Le Bon Marché. On 15 June 2005, in order to update the 19th-century building to modern standards of security, or for purposes of restructuring, as the labor unions believe, LVMH selected the Japanese architectural firm SANAA to renovate the building. The name La Samaritaine comes from a used to draw river water for public use, adjacent to the Pont Neuf. On the front of the pump was a gilded bas-relief of the Samaritan Woman drawing water for Jesus as described in the Fourth Chapter of Johns Gospel. Cognacq began operating under a canopy in a stand he set up in one of the bridges characteristic corbeilles or semi-circular balconies, La Samaritaine was well known in the 20th century for its rooftop café, which afforded excellent views of the city. La Samaritaine featured in the 1991 film Les Amants du Pont-Neuf and part of the 2012 film Holy Motors is set in and around the shell of the building, both directed by Leos Carax. The rooftop café of La Samaritaine and a clip of Pont Neuf also feature in the 2002 movie The Bourne Identity, directed by Doug Liman
7.
Le Marais
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Le Marais is a historic district in Paris, France. Long the aristocratic district of Paris, it hosts many outstanding buildings of historic and it spreads across parts of the 3rd and 4th arrondissements in Paris. In 1240 the Order of the Temple built its fortified church just outside the walls of Paris, in the northern part of the Marais. During the mid-13th century, Charles I of Anjou, King of Naples and Sicily, in 1361 the King Charles V built a mansion known as the Hôtel Saint-Pol in which the Royal Court settled during his reign as well as his sons. From that time to the 17th century and especially after the Royal Square was designed under King Henri IV in 1605, the Marais was the French nobilitys favorite place of residence. During the late 18th century, the district was no longer the most fashionable district for the nobility, by that time, only minor nobles and a few more powerful nobles, such as the Prince de Soubise, lived there. The Place des Vosges remained a place for nobles to meet, the district fell into despair after the Revolution, and was therefore abandoned by the nobility completely, and would stay that way for ever. After the French Revolution, the district was no more the aristocratic district it once was during the 17th and 18th centuries, because of this, the district became a popular and active commercial area, hosting one of Paris main Jewish communities. During World War II the Jewish community was targeted by the Nazis who were occupying France, as of today the rue des Rosiers remains a major centre of the Paris Jewish community, which has made a comeback since the 1990s. Public notices announce Jewish events, bookshops specialize in Jewish books, the synagogue on 10 rue Pavée is adjacent to the rue des Rosiers. It was designed in 1913 by Art Nouveau architect Hector Guimard, Le Marais houses the Museum of Jewish Art and History, the largest French museum of Jewish art and history. The museum conveys the history and culture of Jews in Europe. In 1982, Palestinan terrorists murdered 6 people and injured 22 at a Jewish restaurant in Le Marais, Chez Jo Goldenberg, by the 1950s, the district had become a working-class area and most of its architectural masterpieces were in a bad state of repair. In 1964, General de Gaulles Culture Minister Andre Malraux made the Marais the first secteur sauvegardé and these were meant to protect and conserve places of special cultural significance. In the following decades the government and the Parisian municipality led a restoration and Rehabilitation Policy. The site of Beaubourg, the part of Marais, was chosen for the Centre Georges Pompidou, Frances national Museum of Modern Art. The building was completed in 1977 with revolutionary architecture by Renzo Piano, the Marais is now one of Paris main localities for art galleries. Following its rehabilitation, the Marais has become a district, home to many trendy restaurants, fashion houses
8.
Canaletto
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Giovanni Antonio Canal, better known as Canaletto, was an Italian painter of city views or vedute, of Venice. He also painted views, although the demarcation in his works between the real and the imaginary is never quite clearcut. He was further an important printmaker using the etching technique, in the period from 1746 to 1756 he worked in England where he created many sights of London. He was highly successful in England, thanks to the British merchant and connoisseur Joseph Smith and he was born in Venice as the son of the painter Bernardo Canal, hence his mononym Canaletto, and Artemisia Barbieri. Canaletto served his apprenticeship with his father and his brother and he began in his fathers occupation, that of a theatrical scene painter. Canaletto was inspired by the Roman vedutista Giovanni Paolo Pannini, and started painting the life of the city. After returning from Rome in 1719, he began painting in his topographical style and his first known signed and dated work is Architectural Capriccio. Studying with the older Luca Carlevarijs, a painter of urban cityscapes. It is like Carlevaris, but you can see the sun shining in it, much of Canalettos early artwork was painted from nature, differing from the then customary practice of completing paintings in the studio. However, his paintings are notable for their accuracy, he recorded the seasonal submerging of Venice in water. Canalettos early works remain his most coveted and, according to many authorities, one of his early pieces is The Stonemasons Yard which depicts a humble working area of the city. It is regarded one of his finest works and was presented by Sir George Beaumont in 1823/8, later Canaletto painted grand scenes of the canals of Venice and the Doges Palace. His large-scale landscapes portrayed the citys pageantry and waning traditions, making use of atmospheric effects. For these qualities, his works may be said to have anticipated Impressionism and his graphic print S. A Giustina in Prà della Vale was found in the 2012 Nazi loot discovery. Many of his pictures were sold to Englishmen on their Grand Tour and it was Smith who acted as an agent for Canaletto, first in requesting paintings of Venice from the painter in the early 1720s and helping him to sell his paintings to other Englishmen. In the 1740s Canalettos market was disrupted when the War of the Austrian Succession led to a reduction in the number of British visitors to Venice and he remained in England until 1755, producing views of London and of his patrons castles and houses. His 1754 painting of Old Walton Bridge includes an image of Canaletto himself and he was often expected to paint England in the fashion with which he had painted his native city. Historian Michael Levey described his work from this period as inhibited, the artist was compelled to give public painting demonstrations in order to refute this claim, however, his reputation never fully recovered in his lifetime
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Jean-Baptiste Greuze
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Jean-Baptiste Greuze was a French painter of portraits, genre scenes, and history painting. Greuze was born at Tournus, a town in Burgundy. In 1755 Greuze exhibited his Aveugle trompé, upon which, presented by Pigalle the sculptor, towards the close of the same year he left France for Italy, in company with the Abbé Louis Gougenot. In 1759,1761 and 1763 Greuze exhibited with ever-increasing success, in 1765 he reached the zenith of his powers, Greuze wished to be received as a historical painter, and produced a work which he intended to vindicate his right to despise his qualifications as a genre artist. This unfortunate canvas was exhibited in 1769 side by side with Greuzes portrait of Jeaurat, Greuze, greatly incensed, quarrelled with his confreres, and ceased to exhibit until, in 1804, the Revolution had thrown open the doors of the Academy to all the world. In the following year, on 4 March 1805, he died in the Louvre in great poverty, around the stem was a paper inscribed, These flowers offered by the most grateful of his students are emblems of his glory. It was Mlle Mayer, later the friend of Prudhon and that return to nature which inspired Rousseaus attacks upon an artificial civilization demanded expression in art. La Jeune Fille à lagneau fetched, indeed, at the Pourtals sale in 1865, one of Greuzes pupils, Madame Le Doux, imitated with success the manner of her master, his daughter and granddaughter, Madame de Valory, also inherited some traditions of his talent. Were the real subject of the picture, in the sixteenth chapter of E. M. Chinese author Xiao Yi mentions Greuzes work The Broken Pitcher throughout the first half of her novel Blue Nails. The Broken Pitcher is also mentioned in the first scene of the Jean-Paul Sartre play, / We like Beardsley and Green Chartreuse. / Faded boys, jaded boys, come what may, / Art is our inspiration / And as we are the reason for the “Nineties” being gay, edgar Munhall organized the first major exhibition devoted to the artist, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, 1725-1805. The exhibition opened at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford and then traveled to the California Legion of Honor in San Francisco, in 2002, the first exhibition of Greuzes drawings was held at The Frick Collection in New York. It was also organized by Munhall, who wrote the catalog, Jean-Baptiste Greuzes works Les Neuf Sœurs References Sources Normand, J. B. Emma Barker, Greuze and the Painting of Sentiment and this article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Greuze, Jean Baptiste. Works and literature at PubHist Europe in the age of enlightenment and revolution, a catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries, which contains material on Greuze
10.
Maurice Quentin de La Tour
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Maurice Quentin de La Tour was a French Rococo portraitist who worked primarily with pastels. Among his most famous subjects were Voltaire, Rousseau, Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour. He was born in Saint-Quentin, Aisne, the son of a musician, François de La Tour, a Laonnois. François de La Tour apparently was successively a trumpet-player for the regiment of the duc du Maine. He is popularly said to have disapproved of his son taking up the arts, according to François Marandet in 2002, an apprenticeship was arranged for La Tour with a painter named Dupouch from 12 October 1719, but it is not known when this contract was terminated. After travelling briefly to England in 1725, he returned to Paris in 1727 and his earliest known portrait, of which only an engraving by Langlois of 1731 is testament, was that of Voltaire. Nevertheless, the painter Joseph Ducreux claimed to be his only student, on 25 May 1737 La Tour was officially recognised by the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, and soon attracted the attention of the French court. According to Jeffares, he had an apartment in the palais du Louvre in 1745, contemporary accounts describe Quentin de La Tours nature as lively, good-humoured, but eccentric. However, of a nervous disposition, and an exacting practitioner, he has also been accused of over-engineering his work. He was also advisor and benefactor to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris, jean-François de La Tour, chevalier de lordre royal militaire de Saint-Louis, was the natural heir to his estate. Issue of regular 50 Francs French Banknotes during the years 1976 to 1992 with de La Tours portrait, mariette et autres notes inédites de cet amateur sur les arts et les artistes. III, 1854–56, pp. 66–78. de Goncourt, Edmond and Jules
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Thomas Lawrence
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Sir Thomas Lawrence PRA FRS was a leading English portrait painter and the fourth president of the Royal Academy. He was born in Bristol and began drawing in Devizes, where his father was an innkeeper, at the age of ten, having moved to Bath, he was supporting his family with his pastel portraits. At eighteen he went to London and soon established his reputation as a painter in oils, receiving his first royal commission. He stayed at the top of his profession until his death, aged 60, self-taught, he was a brilliant draughtsman and known for his gift of capturing a likeness, as well as his virtuoso handling of paint. He became an associate of the Royal Academy in 1791, a member in 1794. Lawrences love affairs were not happy and, in spite of his success, at his death, Lawrence was the most fashionable portrait painter in Europe. His reputation waned during Victorian times, but has since been partially restored, Thomas Lawrence was born at 6 Redcross Street, Bristol, the youngest surviving child of Thomas Lawrence, a supervisor of excise, and Lucy Read, the daughter of a clergyman. The couple had 16 children but only five survived infancy, Lawrences brother Andrew became a clergyman, William had a career in the army, sisters Lucy and Anne married a solicitor and a clergyman. Soon after Thomas was born his father decided to become an innkeeper and took over the White Lion Inn and next-door American Coffee House in Broad Street, Bristol. It was during the familys stay at the Black Bear Inn that Lawrence senior began to make use of his sons precocious talents for drawing and reciting poetry. Visitors would be greeted with the words Gentlemen, heres my son – will you have him recite from the poets, among those who listened to a recitation from Tom, or Tommy as he was called, was the actor David Garrick. Lawrences formal schooling was limited to two years at The Fort, a school in Bristol, when he was aged six to eight, and he also became accomplished in dancing, fencing, boxing and billiards. But once again Lawrence senior failed as a landlord and, in 1779, he was declared bankrupt, from now on, Lawrence was to support his parents with the money he earned from his portraits. The family settled at 2 Alfred Street in Bath, and the young Lawrence established himself as a portraitist in pastels, the oval portraits, for which he was soon charging three guineas, were about 12 inches by 10 inches, and usually portrayed a half-length. His sitters included the Duchess of Devonshire, Sarah Siddons, Sir Henry Harpur, Warren Hastings, sometime before his eighteenth birthday in 1787 Lawrence arrived in London, taking lodgings in Leicester Square, near to Joshua Reynolds studio. He was introduced to Reynolds, who advised him to study nature, Lawrence set up a studio at 41 Jermyn Street and installed his parents in a house in Greek Street. In the Royal Academy exhibition of 1788 Lawrence was represented by five portraits in pastels and one in oils, a medium he quickly mastered. Between 1787 and his death in 1830 he would miss two of the annual exhibitions, once,1809, in protest about the way his paintings had been displayed and once, in 1819
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Hubert Robert
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Hubert Robert was a French painter, noted for his landscape paintings and capriccio, or semi-fictitious picturesque depictions of ruins in Italy and of France. Hubert Robert was born in Paris in 1733 and his father, Nicolas Robert, was in the service of François-Joseph de Choiseul, marquis de Stainville a leading diplomat from Lorraine. The contrast between the ruins of ancient Rome and the life of his time excited his keenest interest and he worked for a time in the studio of Pannini, whose influence can be seen in the Vue imaginaire de la galerie du Louvre en ruine. The albums of sketches and drawings he assembled in Rome supplied him with motifs that he worked into paintings throughout his career. Roberts first exhibition at the Salon of 1767, consisting of thirteen paintings, Robert subsequently showed work at every Salon until 1802. He was successively appointed Designer of the Kings Gardens, Keeper of the Kings Pictures and Keeper of the Museum, Robert was arrested in October 1793, during the French Revolution. During the ten months of his detention at Sainte-Pélagie and Saint-Lazare he made drawings, painted at least 53 canvases. He was freed one week after the fall of Robespierre, Robert narrowly escaped the guillotine when through error another prisoner died in his place. Subsequently he was placed on the committee of five in charge of the new museum at the Palais du Louvre. The Revolution also resulted in the destruction of some of Roberts work, Robert had designed the decorations for a little theatre in the new wing at the location of the current staircase Gabriel in the Palace of Versailles. Designed to seat about 500, this theatre was built from the summer of 1785 and it was intended to serve as an ordinary court theatre, replacing the Theatre of the Princes Court which was too old and too small, but was destroyed during the time of Louis Philippe. A watercolour of Roberts design is in the National Archives in Paris, Robert died of a stroke on 15 April 1808. The quantity of his work is immense, comprising one thousand paintings. The Louvre alone contains nine paintings by his hand and specimens are frequently to be met with in provincial museums, Roberts work has more or less of that scenic character which justified his selection by Voltaire to paint the decorations of his theatre at Ferney. He is noted for the liveliness and point with which he treated the subjects he painted, along with this incessant activity as an artist, his daring character and many adventures attracted general admiration and sympathy. In the fourth canto of his LImagination Jacques Delille celebrated Roberts miraculous escape when lost in the catacombs, Roberts contribution to garden design was not in making practical ground plans for improvements but in providing atmospheric inspiration for the proposed effect. Huberts paintings of the Moulin Joly of his friend Claude-Henri Watelet render the fully-grown atmosphere of a garden that had been under way since 1754, references and notes Sources Adams, William Howard, The French Garden 1500–18001979. Huisman, Philippe, French Watercolours of the 18th Century London, Thames and Hudson ISBN 978-0-500-23105-0 Wiebenson and this article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. article name needed
13.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
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Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, also known as Gianbattista or Giambattista Tiepolo, was an Italian painter and printmaker from the Republic of Venice. He was prolific, and worked not only in Italy, but also in Germany, Giovan Battista Tiepolo, together with Giambattista Pittoni, Canaletto, Giovan Battista Piazzetta, Giuseppe Maria Crespi and Francesco Guardi forms the traditional great Old Masters of that period. Successful from the beginning of his career, he has described by Michael Levey as the greatest decorative painter of eighteenth-century Europe. Born in Venice, he was the youngest of six children of Domenico and his father was a small shipping merchant who belonged to a family that bore the prestigious patrician name of Tiepolo without claiming any noble descent. Some of the children acquired noble godparents, and Giambattista was originally named after his godfather and he was baptised on 16 April 1696 in the local church, San Pietro di Castello. His father died about a later, leaving his mother to bring up a family of young children. In 1710 he became a pupil of Gregorio Lazzarini, a painter with an eclectic style. A biography of his teacher, published in 1732, says that Tiepolo departed from studied manner of painting and his earliest known works are depictions of the apostles, painted in spandrels as part of the decoration of the church of the Ospedoletto in Venice in 1715–6. He painted his first fresco in 1716, on the ceiling of a church at Biadene and he probably left Lazzarinis studio in 1717, the year he was received into the Fraglia or guild of painters. In around 1719–20 he painted a scheme of frescoes for the wealthy, Tiepolo depicted the Triumph of Aurora on the ceiling, and the Myth of Phaethon on the walls, creating the kind of fluid spatial illusion which was to become a recurring theme in his work. In 1722 he was one of twelve artists commissioned to contribute a painting on canvas of one of the apostles as part of a scheme for the nave of San Stae in Venice. The other artists involved included Ricci, Piazetta, and Pellegrini, in 1719, Tiepolo married noblewoman Maria Cecilia Guardi, sister of two contemporary Venetian painters Francesco and Giovanni Antonio Guardi. Together, Tiepolo and his wife had nine children, four daughters and three sons survived childhood. Two of his sons, Domenico and Lorenzo, painted with him as his assistants and his children painted figures with a design similar to that of their father, but with distinctive, including genre, styles. His third son became a priest, fabio Canal, Francesco Lorenzi, Domenico Pasquini were among his pupils. Some major commissions came from the patrician Dolfin family, Tiepolo used a much cooler palette than previous Venetian painters, in order to create a convincing effect of daylight. These early masterpieces, innovative amongst Venetian frescoes for their luminosity, dominic Instituting the Rosary, Palazzo Clerici, Milan, decorations for Villa Cordellini at Montecchio Maggiore and for the ballroom of the Palazzo Labia in Venice, showing the Story of Cleopatra. Tiepolo produced two sets of etchings, the Capricci and the Scherzi di fantasia, the ten capricci were first published by Anton Maria Zanetti, incorporated into the third edition of a compilation of woodcuts after Parmigiano
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Jean-Antoine Watteau
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Jean-Antoine Watteau, better known as Antoine Watteau, was a French painter whose brief career spurred the revival of interest in colour and movement, as seen in the tradition of Correggio and Rubens. He revitalized the waning Baroque style, shifting it to the severe, more naturalistic. Watteau is credited with inventing the genre of fêtes galantes, scenes of bucolic and idyllic charm, some of his best known subjects were drawn from the world of Italian comedy and ballet. Watteau was born in October 1684 in the town of Valenciennes which had passed from the Spanish Netherlands to France. His father, Jean-Philippe Watteau, was a given to brawling. Showing an early interest in painting, Jean-Antoine may have been apprenticed to Jacques-Albert Gérin, jean-Antoines first artistic subjects were charlatans selling quack remedies on the streets of Valenciennes. Watteau left for Paris in 1702, by 1705 he was employed as an assistant by the painter Claude Gillot, whose work represented a reaction against the turgid official art of Louis XIVs reign. In Gillots studio Watteau became acquainted with the characters of the commedia dellarte, afterward he moved to the workshop of Claude Audran III, an interior decorator, under whose influence he began to make drawings admired for their consummate elegance. Audran was the curator of the Palais du Luxembourg, where Watteau was able to see the magnificent series of canvases painted by Peter Paul Rubens for Queen Marie de Medici. The Flemish painter would become one of his influences, together with the Venetian masters he would later study in the collection of his patron and friend. In 1709 Watteau tried to obtain the Prix de Rome and was rejected by the Academy. In 1712 he tried again and was considered so good that, rather than receiving the one-year stay in Rome for which he had applied, he was accepted as a full member of the Academy. He took five years to deliver the required reception piece, but it was one of his masterpieces, Watteau lacked aristocratic patrons, his buyers were bourgeois such as bankers and dealers. The subject of his painting, Pierrot, is an actor in a white satin costume who stands isolated from his four companions. Watteaus final masterpiece, the Shop-sign of Gersaint, exits the pastoral forest locale for an urban set of encounters. Painted at Watteaus own insistence, in eight days, working only in the mornings, in order to warm up his fingers, this sign for the shop in Paris of the paintings dealer Edme François Gersaint is effectively the final curtain of Watteaus theatre. It has been compared with Las Meninas as a meditation on art, the scene is an art gallery where the façade has magically vanished, and the gallery and street in the canvas are fused into one contiguous drama. Watteau alarmed his friends by a carelessness about his future and financial security, in fact he had been sickly and physically fragile since childhood
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Jean-Antoine Houdon
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Jean-Antoine Houdon was a French neoclassical sculptor. Houdon is famous for his busts and statues of philosophers, inventors. Houdons subjects include Denis Diderot, Benjamin Franklin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Molière, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Louis XVI, Robert Fulton and he was born in Versailles, on 25 March 1741. In 1752, he entered the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, where he studied with René-Michel Slodtz, Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, from 1761 to 1764, he studied at the École royale des élèves protégés. Houdon won the Prix de Rome in 1761, but was not greatly influenced by ancient, after ten years stay in Italy, Houdon returned to Paris. He submitted Morpheus to the Salon of 1771 and he developed his practise of portrait busts. He became a member of the Académie de peinture et de sculpture in 1771, in 1778, he modeled Voltaire, producing a portrait bust with wig for the Comédie-Française, one for the Palace of Versailles, and one for Catherine the Great. In 1778, he joined the masonic lodge Les Neuf Sœurs, where he later met Benjamin Franklin, for Salon of 1781, he submitted a Diana which was refused without drapery. Washington sat for wet clay life models and a life mask. These models served for many commissions of Washington, including the standing figure commissioned by the Virginia General Assembly, a cast of the latter is located in the Vermont State House. Perceived as bourgeois for his connections to the court of Louis XVI, he out of favour during the French Revolution. Houdon returned to favor during the French Consulate and Empire, being taken on as one of the artistic team for what became the Column of the Grande Armée at Wimille. He was made a Chevalier de la Légion dhonneur, on 17 December 1804, Houdon died in Paris on 15 July 1828, and was interred at the Cimetière du Montparnasse. On 1 July 1786, he married Marie-Ange-Cecile Langlois, they had three daughters, Sabine, Anne-Ange, and Claudine. Houdons sculptures were used as models for the used on various U. S. Postage stamps of the late 19th. US Presidents on US postage stamps Washington-Franklin Issues Arnason H. Harvard, chisholm, Hugh, ed. Houdon, Jean Antoine. Christopher John Murray, ed. Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760–1850, poulet, Ann L. Jean-Antoine Houdon, Sculptor of the Enlightenment. Memoirs of the Life and Works of Jean Antoine Houdon, The Sculptor of Voltaire, kessinger Publishing,2006, ISBN9781425499891 Marshall, Bill, Kaufman, Will, Johnston, Cristina, eds
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Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne
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Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne was a French sculptor and among the greatest French portraitists. He was the pupil of his father, Jean-Louis Lemoyne, and he is commonly referred to as Jean-Baptiste II Lemoyne or the younger to distinguish him from his uncle of the same name, the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne the Elder. He received the prix de Rome awarded by the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, lemoynes more important works have for the most part been destroyed or have disappeared. The equestrian statue of Louis XV for the school. The bas-relief panels only have been preserved, in his portrait busts we have a remarkable series of important portraits, of which those of women are perhaps the best. Of Pompadour he also executed a statue in the costume of a nymph, very delicate, Lemoyne was perhaps most successful in his training of pupils, among them Étienne Maurice Falconet Pigalle, Caffiéri, and Augustin Pajou. This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Lemoyne. Media related to Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne the Younger at Wikimedia Commons Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne in American public collections, on the French Sculpture Census website
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Roger Vandercruse Lacroix
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His sister, Oebens widow, then married the foreman Jean-Henri Riesener, royal cabinet-maker to Louis XVI. A good deal of R. V. L. C. s work seems to have been for Parisian marchands-merciers, for such decorator-dealers as Simon-Philippe Poirier he provided furniture mounted with Sèvres porcelain plaques, a luxury decor that Poirier had invented. A mechanical table with a nest of drawers that rise from the top on release of a spring bears R. V. L. C. s stamp and Poiriers name written in a drawer. Figure in all the collections of decorative arts, and qusi-national ones like that at Waddesdon Manor, or the Musée Nissim de Camondo, Paris. Furniture by Bernard II van Risamburgh in the Royal Collection, Burlington Magazine 104, pp 340–344
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Rembrandt
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Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was a Dutch draughtsman, painter, and printmaker. A prolific and versatile master across three media, he is considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art. Having achieved youthful success as a painter, Rembrandts later years were marked by personal tragedy. Yet his etchings and paintings were popular throughout his lifetime, his reputation as an artist remained high, Rembrandts portraits of his contemporaries, self-portraits and illustrations of scenes from the Bible are regarded as his greatest creative triumphs. His self-portraits form a unique and intimate biography, in which the artist surveyed himself without vanity and his reputation as the greatest etcher in the history of the medium was established in his lifetime, and never questioned since. Few of his paintings left the Dutch Republic whilst he lived, but his prints were circulated throughout Europe, because of his empathy for the human condition, he has been called one of the great prophets of civilization. Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born on 15 July 1606 in Leiden, in the Dutch Republic and he was the ninth child born to Harmen Gerritszoon van Rijn and Neeltgen Willemsdochter van Zuijtbrouck. His family was quite well-to-do, his father was a miller, religion is a central theme in Rembrandts paintings and the religiously fraught period in which he lived makes his faith a matter of interest. His mother was Roman Catholic, and his father belonged to the Dutch Reformed Church, unlike many of his contemporaries who traveled to Italy as part of their artistic training, Rembrandt never left the Dutch Republic during his lifetime. He opened a studio in Leiden in 1624 or 1625, which he shared with friend, in 1627, Rembrandt began to accept students, among them Gerrit Dou in 1628. In 1629, Rembrandt was discovered by the statesman Constantijn Huygens, as a result of this connection, Prince Frederik Hendrik continued to purchase paintings from Rembrandt until 1646. He initially stayed with an art dealer, Hendrick van Uylenburgh, Saskia came from a good family, her father had been a lawyer and the burgemeester of Leeuwarden. When Saskia, as the youngest daughter, became an orphan, Rembrandt and Saskia were married in the local church of St. Annaparochie without the presence of Rembrandts relatives. In the same year, Rembrandt became a burgess of Amsterdam and he also acquired a number of students, among them Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck. In 1635 Rembrandt and Saskia moved into their own house, renting in fashionable Nieuwe Doelenstraat, in 1639 they moved to a prominent newly built house in the upscale Breestraat, today known as Jodenbreestraat in what was becoming the Jewish quarter, then a young upcoming neighborhood. The mortgage to finance the 13,000 guilder purchase would be a cause for later financial difficulties. Rembrandt should easily have been able to pay the house off with his income, but it appears his spending always kept pace with his income. It was there that Rembrandt frequently sought his Jewish neighbors to model for his Old Testament scenes, in 1640, they had a second daughter, also named Cornelia, who died after living barely over a month
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Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
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Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot was a French landscape and portrait painter as well as a printmaker in etching. He is a figure in landscape painting and his vast output simultaneously references the Neo-Classical tradition. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot was born in Paris on July 16,1796, in a house at 125 Rue du Bac, now demolished. After his parents married, they bought the shop where his mother had worked. The store was a destination for fashionable Parisians and earned the family an excellent income. Corot was the second of three born to the family, who lived above their shop during those years. Corot received a scholarship to study at the Lycée Pierre-Corneille in Rouen and he was not a brilliant student, and throughout his entire school career he did not get a single nomination for a prize, not even for the drawing classes. Unlike many masters who demonstrated early talent and inclinations toward art, during those years he lived with the Sennegon family, whose patriarch was a friend of Corots father and who spent much time with young Corot on nature walks. It was in this region that Corot made his first paintings after nature, at nineteen, Corot was a big child, shy and awkward. Before the beautiful ladies who frequented his mothers salon, he was embarrassed and fled like a wild thing, emotionally, he was an affectionate and well-behaved son, who adored his mother and trembled when his father spoke. When Corots parents moved into a new residence in 1817, the 21-year-old Corot moved into the room on the third floor. Later Corot stated, I told my father that business and I were simply incompatible, the business experience proved beneficial, however, by helping him develop an aesthetic sense through his exposure to the colors and textures of the fabrics. Perhaps out of boredom, he turned to oil painting around 1821 and he immediately rented a studio on quai Voltaire. In both approaches, landscape artists would typically begin with outdoor sketching and preliminary painting, with finishing work done indoors, michallon had a great influence on Corots career. Though this school was on the decline, it held sway in the Salon. Corot later stated, I made my first landscape from nature. under the eye of this painter, the lesson worked, since then I have always treasured precision. Though holding Neoclassicists in the highest regard, Corot did not limit his training to their tradition of allegory set in imagined nature and his notebooks reveal precise renderings of tree trunks, rocks, and plants which show the influence of Northern realism. Throughout his career, Corot demonstrated an inclination to apply both traditions in his work, sometimes combining the two, a condition by his parents before leaving was that he paint a self-portrait for them, his first
20.
Edgar Degas
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Edgar Degas was a French artist famous for his paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings. He is especially identified with the subject of dance, more than half of his works depict dancers and he is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism, although he rejected the term, preferring to be called a realist. He was a draftsman, and particularly masterly in depicting movement, as can be seen in his rendition of dancers, racecourse subjects. His portraits are notable for their complexity and for their portrayal of human isolation. At the beginning of his career, Degas wanted to be a history painter, in his early thirties, he changed course, and by bringing the traditional methods of a history painter to bear on contemporary subject matter, he became a classical painter of modern life. Degas was born in Paris, France, into a wealthy family. He was the oldest of five children of Célestine Musson De Gas, a Creole from New Orleans, Louisiana, and Augustin De Gas and his maternal grandfather Germain Musson, was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti of French descent and had settled in New Orleans in 1810. Degas began his schooling at age eleven, enrolling in the Lycée Louis-le-Grand and his mother died when he was thirteen, and his father and grandfather became the main influences on him for the remainder of his youth. Degas began to paint early in life, by the time he graduated from the Lycée with a baccalauréat in literature in 1853, at age 18, he had turned a room in his home into an artists studio. Upon graduating, he registered as a copyist in The Louvre Museum, Degas duly enrolled at the Faculty of Law of the University of Paris in November 1853, but applied little effort to his studies. In April of that year Degas was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts and he studied drawing there with Louis Lamothe, under whose guidance he flourished, following the style of Ingres. In July 1856, Degas traveled to Italy, where he would remain for the three years. In 1858, while staying with his aunts family in Naples and he also began work on several history paintings, Alexander and Bucephalus and The Daughter of Jephthah in 1859–60, Sémiramis Building Babylon in 1860, and Young Spartans around 1860. In 1861 Degas visited his childhood friend Paul Valpinçon in Normandy and he exhibited at the Salon for the first time in 1865, when the jury accepted his painting Scene of War in the Middle Ages, which attracted little attention. The change in his art was influenced primarily by the example of Édouard Manet, upon the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Degas enlisted in the National Guard, where his defense of Paris left him little time for painting. During rifle training his eyesight was found to be defective, after the war, Degas began in 1872 an extended stay in New Orleans, Louisiana, where his brother René and a number of other relatives lived. Staying at the home of his Creole uncle, Michel Musson, on Esplanade Avenue, Degas produced a number of works, many depicting family members. One of Degass New Orleans works, A Cotton Office in New Orleans, garnered favorable attention back in France, Degas returned to Paris in 1873 and his father died the following year, whereupon Degas learned that his brother René had amassed enormous business debts
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Tourism in Paris
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Tourism in Paris is a major income source for Paris and the city ranks in the worlds most visited cities. In 2013, the City of Paris welcomed 15.6 million international visitors, the Paris Region received 32.3 million visitors in 2013, putting it just ahead of London as the worlds top tourist destination region, measured by hotel occupancy. In the Paris region, the largest numbers of tourists came in order from Britain. In 2012,263,212 salaried workers in the city of Paris, or 18.4 percent of the number, were engaged in tourism-related sectors, hotels, catering, transport. In 2014 visitors to Paris spent 17 billion dollars, the third highest sum globally after London, the Eiffel Tower is acknowledged as the universal symbol of Paris and France. It was originally designed by Émile Nouguier and Maurice Koechlin, in March 1885 Gustave Eiffel, known primarily as a successful iron engineer, submitted a plan for a tower to the French Ministre du Commerce et de lIndustrie. He entered a competition for students studying at the university, the winning proposal would stand as the centerpiece of the 1889 Exposition. Eiffels was one of over 100 submissions, eiffels proposal was finally chosen in June 1886. Even before its construction, the Towers uniqueness was noticed, the Eiffel Tower was finally inaugurated on March 31,1889. Currently about 6.9 million people visit the Eiffel tower each year, Centre Georges Pompidou was officially opened on January 31,1977 by President Valéry Giscard dEstaing. The designers of Pompidou are Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers, the Centre Pompidou has had over 150 million visitors since 1977. Centre Georges Pompidou is a complex in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles, rue Montorgueil, in 1997 renovations had begun to drastically change the interior spaces of the Centre Pompidou. The renovation also developed the capacity to host the performing arts. The Arc de Triomphe de lÉtoile is one of the most famous monuments in Paris and it stands in the centre of the Place Charles de Gaulle, at the western end of the Champs-Élysées. It should not be confused with an arch, the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel. Beneath its vault lies the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from World War I. The Arc de Triomphe is the linchpin of the historic axis – a sequence of monuments and grand thoroughfares on a route which goes from the courtyard of the Louvre, the Musée dOrsay is a museum in Paris, France, on the left bank of the Seine. It started to be constructed in 1897 and was designed by Gae Aulenti, Victor Laloux, the Musée dOrsay is an art museum for works from 1848 to 1914 and has an emphasis on French Impressionism artwork
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Landmarks in Paris
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This article presents the main landmarks in the City of Paris within its administrative limits divided by the 20 Arrondissements of Paris. Landmarks located in the suburbs of Paris, outside of its administrative limits, the 1st arrondissement forms much of the historic centre of Paris. The old Halles were demolished in 1971 and replaced by the Forum des Halles, the central market of Paris, the biggest wholesale food market in the world, was transferred to Rungis, in the southern suburbs. The former Conciergerie prison held some prominent Ancien Régime members before their deaths during the French Revolution, the 2nd arrondissement of Paris lies to the north of the 1st. The Boulevard des Capucines, Boulevard Montmartre, Boulevard des Italiens, Rue de Richelieu, also of note are the Académie Julian, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Café Anglais and Galerie Vivienne. The 3rd arrondissement is located to the northeast of the 1st, Le Marais is a trendy district spanning the 3rd and 4th arrondissements. It is architecturally very well preserved, and some of the oldest houses and it is a very culturally open place, known for its Chinese, Jewish and gay communities. Several hotels are located in this district including Hôtel de Guénégaud, the 4th arrondissement is located to the east of the 1st. Place de la Bastille is a district of historical significance, for not just Paris. Bibliothèque de lArsenal, La Force Prison, Centre Georges Pompidou, roads running through the 4th arrondissement include Rue Charlemagne, Rue de Rivoli, Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, and Rue des Rosiers. It is known for its atmosphere and many bistros. The Panthéon church is where many of Frances illustrious men and women are buried, the 6th arrondissement, to the south of the centre and Seine has numerous hotels and restaurants and also educational institutions. Among the museums located in the 6th arrondissement are the Musée Bible et Terre Sainte, Musée dAnatomie Delmas-Orfila-Rouvière, Musée Dupuytren, and Musée Edouard Branly. A symbol of the Revolution are the two Statues of Liberty located on the Île aux Cygnes in the Luxembourg Garden of the 6th arrondissement and on the Seine between the 15th and 16th arrondissements. A larger version of the statues was sent as a gift from France to the United States in 1886, the Odéon-Théâtre de lEurope is located in this district, as is the Luxembourg Palace. The Pont des Arts, Pont Neuf, and Pont Saint-Michel bridges lead across the Seine to the historic centre, the 7th arrondissement lies to the southwest of the centre, across the Seine. The Eiffel Tower is the most famous landmark of the 7th arrondissement and it was a temporary construction by Gustave Eiffel for the 1889 Universal Exposition, but was never dismantled and is now an enduring symbol of Paris, instantly recognized throughout the World. The Axe historique is a line of monuments, buildings, many hotels are located in this district including Hôtel Biron, Hôtel de Castries, Hôtel de Conti, Hôtel de Mademoiselle de Condé, Hôtel du Châtelet, and Hôtel Matignon
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Arc de Triomphe
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The Arc de Triomphe should not be confused with a smaller arch, the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, which stands west of the Louvre. Beneath its vault lies the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from World War I and it set the tone for public monuments with triumphant patriotic messages. Inspired by the Roman Arch of Titus, the Arc de Triomphe has an height of 50 metres, width of 45 m. The smaller transverse vaults are 18.68 m high and 8.44 m wide, three weeks after the Paris victory parade in 1919, Charles Godefroy flew his Nieuport biplane under the archs primary vault, with the event captured on newsreel. Pariss Arc de Triomphe was the tallest triumphal arch until the completion of the Monumento a la Revolución in Mexico City in 1938, the Arch of Triumph in Pyongyang, completed in 1982, is modelled on the Arc de Triomphe and is slightly taller at 60 m. The Arc is located on the bank of the Seine at the centre of a dodecagonal configuration of twelve radiating avenues. It was commissioned in 1806 after the victory at Austerlitz by Emperor Napoleon at the peak of his fortunes, the architect, Jean Chalgrin, died in 1811 and the work was taken over by Jean-Nicolas Huyot. On 15 December 1840, brought back to France from Saint Helena, prior to burial in the Panthéon, the body of Victor Hugo was displayed under the Arc during the night of 22 May 1885. The sword carried by the Republic in the Marseillaise relief broke off on the day, it is said, the relief was immediately hidden by tarpaulins to conceal the accident and avoid any undesired ominous interpretations. On 7 August 1919, Charles Godefroy successfully flew his biplane under the Arc, Jean Navarre was the pilot who was tasked to make the flight, but he died on 10 July 1919 when he crashed near Villacoublay while training for the flight. Following its construction, the Arc de Triomphe became the point of French troops parading after successful military campaigns. Famous victory marches around or under the Arc have included the Germans in 1871, the French in 1919, the Germans in 1940, and the French and Allies in 1944 and 1945. A United States postage stamp of 1945 shows the Arc de Triomphe in the background as victorious American troops march down the Champs-Élysées, after the interment of the Unknown Soldier, however, all military parades have avoided marching through the actual arch. The route taken is up to the arch and then around its side, out of respect for the tomb, both Hitler in 1940 and de Gaulle in 1944 observed this custom. By the early 1960s, the monument had grown very blackened from coal soot and automobile exhaust, and during 1965–1966 it was cleaned through bleaching. In the prolongation of the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, a new arch, after the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel and the Arc de Triomphe de lÉtoile, the Grande Arche is the third arch built on the same perspective. In 1995, the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria placed a bomb near the Arc de Triomphe which wounded 17 people as part of a campaign of bombings, the astylar design is by Jean Chalgrin, in the Neoclassical version of ancient Roman architecture. Major academic sculptors of France are represented in the sculpture of the Arc de Triomphe, Jean-Pierre Cortot, François Rude, Antoine Étex, James Pradier and Philippe Joseph Henri Lemaire
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Paris Bourse
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The Paris Bourse is the historical Paris stock exchange, known as Euronext Paris from 2000 onwards. The building, known as the Palais Brongniart, is located in the Place de la Bourse, in the II arrondissement, historically, stock trading took place at several spots in Paris, including rue Quincampoix, rue Vivienne, and the back of the Opéra Garnier. Brogniart had spontaneously submitted his project, which was a rectangular neoclassical Roman temple with a giant Corinthian colonnade enclosing a vaulted and arcaded central chamber and his designs were greatly admired by Napoleon and won Brogniart a major public commission at the end of his career. Initially praised, the building was attacked for academic dullness. The authorities had required Brogniart to modify his designs, and after Brogniarts death in 1813, Labarre altered them even further, from 1901 to 1905 Jean-Baptiste-Frederic Cavel designed the addition of two lateral wings, resulting in a cruciform plan with innumerable columns. According to the architectural historian Andrew Ayers, these alterations did nothing to improve the reputation of this uninspiring monument. From the second half of the 19th century, official stock markets in Paris were operated by the Compagnie des agents de change, the number of dealers in each of the different trading areas of the Bourse was limited. There were around 60 agents de change, in Paris, only agents de change could receive a commission, at a rate fixed by law, for acting as an intermediary. However, parallel arrangements were usual in order to some clients quote. The Commodities Exchange was housed in the building until 1889. Moreover, until about the middle of the 20th century, a market known as La Coulisse was in operation. Until the late 1980s, the market operated as an open outcry exchange, in 1986, the Paris Bourse started to implement an electronic trading system. This was known generically as CATS, but the Paris version was called CAC, by 1989, quotations were fully automated. The Palais Brongniart hosted the French financial derivatives exchanges MATIF and MONEP, in the late 1990s, the Paris Bourse launched the Euronext initiative, an alliance of several European stock exchanges. List of works by James Pradier External sculpture Lehmann, P. -J,1991 La Bourse de Paris, Paris, Dunod. 1997 Histoire de la Bourse de Paris, Paris, PUF, muniesa, F.2005 Contenir le marché, la transition de la criée à la cotation électronique à la Bourse de Paris, Sociologie du Travail 47, 485-501. Walker, D. A.2001 A factual account of the functioning of the nineteenth-century Paris Bourse, European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 8, 186-207. Foucault, T. and Hillion, P.1997 Microstructure des marchés financiers, institutions, modèles et tests empiriques, Paris, hamon, J.1995 Marché dactions, architecture et microstructure, Paris, Economica
25.
Catacombs of Paris
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The Catacombs of Paris are underground ossuaries in Paris, France, which hold the remains of more than six million people in a small part of the ancient Mines of Paris tunnel network. Nightly processions of bones from 1786 to 1788 transferred remains from cemeteries to the reinforced tunnels, the Catacombs are among the 14 City of Paris Museums managed by Paris Musées since January 1,2013. The catacombs are known formally as lOssuaire Municipal or Catacombes officiels and have been called The Worlds Largest Grave due to the number of remains buried. Although the ossuary comprises only a section of the underground carrières de Paris. Paris earliest burial grounds were to the outskirts of the Roman-era Left Bank city. Thus, instead of burying its dead away from inhabited areas as usual, by the end of the same century Saints Innocents was neighbour to the principal Parisan marketplace Les Halles, and already filled to overflowing. To make room for more burials, the long-dead were exhumed and their bones packed into the roofs, much of the Left Bank area rests upon rich Lutetian limestone deposits. This stone built much of the city, but it was extracted in suburban locations away from any habitation, Paris had annexed its suburbs many times over the centuries, and by the 18th century many of its arrondissements were or included previously mined territories. This resulted in the creation of the inspection Générale des Carrières service, the need to eliminate Les Innocents gained urgency from May 30,1780, when a basement wall in a property adjoining the cemetery collapsed under the weight of the mass grave behind it. The cemetery was closed to the public and all intra muros burials were forbidden after 1780, the problem of what to do with the remains crowding intra muros cemeteries was still unresolved. Lenoir endorsed the idea of moving Parisian dead to the subterranean passageways that were renovated during 1782, after deciding to further renovate the Tombe-Issoire passageways for their future role as an underground sepulchre, the idea became law during late 1785. It would take two years to empty the majority of Paris cemeteries, cemeteries whose remains were moved to the Catacombs include Saints-Innocents, Saint-Étienne-des-Grès, Madeleine Cemetery, Errancis Cemetery, and Notre-Dame-des-Blancs-Manteaux. In addition to directing the stacking of skulls and femurs into the patterns seen in the catacombs today, also created was a room dedicated to the display of the various minerals found under Paris, and another showing various skeletal deformities found during the catacombs creation and renovation. Later they opened for daily visits. After an incident of vandalism, the Catacombs were closed to the public during September 2009, the entry to the catacombs is in the western pavilion of the former Barrière dEnfer city gate. Soon after, they find themselves before a stone portal, the ossuary entry, CEST İCİ LEMPİRE DE LA MORT. Beyond begin the halls and caverns of walls of carefully arranged bones, along the way there are other monuments created in the years before catacomb renovations, such as a source-gathering fountain baptised La Samaritaine because of later-added engravings. There are also rusty gates blocking passages leading to other parts of the catacombs – many of these are either un-renovated or were too un-navigable for regular tours
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Conciergerie
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The Conciergerie is a building in Paris, France, located on the west of the Île de la Cité, formerly a prison but presently used mostly for law courts. It was part of the royal palace, the Palais de la Cité, which consisted of the Conciergerie, Palais de Justice. Hundreds of prisoners during the French Revolution were taken from the Conciergerie to be executed by guillotine at a number of locations around Paris, the west part of the island was originally the site of a Merovingian palace, and was known initially as the Palais de la Cité. From the 10th to the 14th centuries it was the palace of the medieval Kings of France. During the reigns of Louis IX and Philippe IV the Merovingian palace was extended and fortified more extensively, Louis IX added the Sainte-Chapelle and associated galleries, while Philippe IV created the towered facade on the Seine river side and a large hall. Both are excellent examples of French religious and secular architecture of the period, the Sainte-Chapelle was built in the French royal style to house the crown of thorns that was brought back from the Crusades and to serve as a royal chapel. The Grande Salle was one of the largest in Europe, and its lower story and it was used as a dining room for the 2,000 staff members who worked in the palace. It was heated with four fireplaces and lit by many windows. It was also used for banquets and judicial proceedings. The neighboring Salle des Gardes was used as an antechamber to the Great Hall immediately above, the early Valois kings continued to modify the palace during the 14th century, but Charles V abandoned the palace during 1358, relocating across the river to the Louvre Palace. The palace continued to serve a function and still included the chancellery. In the kings absence, he appointed a concierge to command of the palace, during 1391, part of the building was converted for use as a prison and took its name from the ruling office. Its prisoners were a mixture of common criminals and political prisoners, in common with other prisons of the time, the treatment of prisoners was dependent on their wealth, status and associates. Wealthy or influential prisoners usually got their own cells with a bed, desk, less-well-off prisoners could afford to pay for simply furnished cells known as pistoles, which would be equipped with a rough bed and perhaps a table. The poorest, known as the pailleux from the paille that they slept on, would be confined to dark, damp, vermin-infested cells known as oubliettes. In keeping with the name, they were left to live or die in conditions that were ideal for the plague and other infectious diseases, the building was extended during the reigns of later kings with Frances first public clocks being installed about 1370. The current clock dates from 1535, despite lasting only ten months, the Reign of Terror had a profound effect on France. More than 40,000 people died from execution and imprisonment, the National Convention enacted the Law of Suspects on September 17,1793
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Eiffel Tower
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The Eiffel Tower is a wrought iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France. It is named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed, the Eiffel Tower is the most-visited paid monument in the world,6.91 million people ascended it in 2015. The tower is 324 metres tall, about the height as an 81-storey building. Its base is square, measuring 125 metres on each side, due to the addition of a broadcasting aerial at the top of the tower in 1957, it is now taller than the Chrysler Building by 5.2 metres. Excluding transmitters, the Eiffel Tower is the second-tallest structure in France after the Millau Viaduct, the tower has three levels for visitors, with restaurants on the first and second levels. The top levels upper platform is 276 m above the ground – the highest observation deck accessible to the public in the European Union, tickets can be purchased to ascend by stairs or lift to the first and second levels. The climb from ground level to the first level is over 300 steps, although there is a staircase to the top level, it is usually only accessible by lift. Eiffel openly acknowledged that inspiration for a tower came from the Latting Observatory built in New York City in 1853, sauvestre added decorative arches to the base of the tower, a glass pavilion to the first level, and other embellishments. Little progress was made until 1886, when Jules Grévy was re-elected as president of France and Édouard Lockroy was appointed as minister for trade. On 12 May, a commission was set up to examine Eiffels scheme and its rivals, which, after some debate about the exact location of the tower, a contract was signed on 8 January 1887. Eiffel was to all income from the commercial exploitation of the tower during the exhibition. He later established a company to manage the tower, putting up half the necessary capital himself. The proposed tower had been a subject of controversy, drawing criticism from those who did not believe it was feasible and these objections were an expression of a long-standing debate in France about the relationship between architecture and engineering. And for twenty years … we shall see stretching like a blot of ink the hateful shadow of the column of bolted sheet metal. Gustave Eiffel responded to criticisms by comparing his tower to the Egyptian pyramids. Will it not also be grandiose in its way, and why would something admirable in Egypt become hideous and ridiculous in Paris. Indeed, Garnier was a member of the Tower Commission that had examined the various proposals, some of the protesters changed their minds when the tower was built, others remained unconvinced. Guy de Maupassant supposedly ate lunch in the restaurant every day because it was the one place in Paris where the tower was not visible
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Flame of Liberty
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The monument, which measures approximately 3.5 metres in height, is a sculpture of a flame, executed in gilded copper, supported by a pedestal of gray-and-black marble. It is located near the end of the Pont de lAlma, on the Place de lAlma. It was offered to the city of Paris in 1989 by the International Herald Tribune on behalf of donors who had contributed approximately $400,000 for its fabrication and it represented the culmination of that newspapers 1987 celebration of its hundredth anniversary of publishing an English-language daily newspaper in Paris. This project was overseen by the director of the French craft unions at that time, Jacques Graindorge. He foresaw an installation of the Flame of Liberty in a square called Place des États-Unis in the 16th arrondissement. After a protracted period of negotiations, it was decided that the Flame would be placed in an area near the intersection of lAvenue de New-York. The monument was dedicated on May 10,1989 by Chirac, on the base of the monument, a commemorative plaque recounts the following story, The Flame of Liberty. An exact replica of the Statue of Libertys flame offered to the people of France by donors throughout the world as a symbol of the Franco-American friendship, on the occasion of the centennial of the International Herald Tribune. Anthropologist Guy Lesoeurs said, Most people who come here think this was built for her, a new Flame of Liberty, a sculpture by Jean Cardot, was unveiled on June 14,2008. It symbolizes the warm and respectful relations between the French and the Americans
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Gare d'Austerlitz
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Paris Austerlitz is one of the six large terminus railway stations in Paris. It is situated on the bank of the Seine in the southeastern part of the city. It is the start of the Paris–Bordeaux railway, the line to Toulouse is connected to this line, since the introduction of the TGV Atlantique — using Gare Montparnasse — Austerlitz has lost most of its long-distance southwestern services. It is used by some 30 million passengers annually, about half the number passing through Montparnasse, the Elipsos Train Hotels operated jointly between RENFE and SNCF operated from here to Madrid and Barcelona. They would leave in the evening and arrive next morning. With the start of a direct TGV from Paris to Barcelona, on 15 December 2013, the Gare dAusterlitz was built in 1840 in order to serve first the Paris-Corbeil then the Paris-Orleans line. The station was called the Gare dOrléans. An 1865-1868 extension was designed by architect Pierre-Louis Renaud, the station takes its name from the Czech town once known as Austerlitz. Napoleon I defeated the superior numbers of the Third Coalition on 2 December 1805 there in the Battle of Austerlitz, a large refurbishment project of the Paris Austerlitz is currently underway. Four new platforms are being constructed and all the tracks are being refurbished. The interior will be rebuilt in order to handle TGV Sud-Est and TGV Atlantique services, partially transferred from the Gare de Lyon and Gare Montparnasse, all the work is planned to be completed by 2020, and will double the activity at the station. List of stations of the Paris RER List of stations of the Paris Métro Roland, Gérard
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Gare de l'Est
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Paris Est is one of the six large SNCF termini in Paris. It is in the 10th arrondissement, not far from the Gare du Nord, facing the Boulevard de Strasbourg and it is one of the largest and the oldest railway stations in Paris, the western terminus of the Paris–Strasbourg railway and the Paris–Mulhouse railway. The Gare de lEst was opened in 1849 by the Compagnie du Chemin de Fer de Paris à Strasbourg under the name Strasbourg platform and this platform corresponds today with the hall for main-line trains, and was designed by the architect François Duquesnay. It was renamed the Gare de lEst in 1854, after the expansion of service to Mulhouse, renovations to the station followed in 1885 and 1900. In 1931 it was doubled in size, with the new part of the station built symmetrically with the old part and this transformation changed the surrounding neighborhood significantly. These two cities are important destinations serviced by Gare de lEst, on 4 October 1883, the Gare de lEst saw the first departure of the Orient Express for Istanbul. In the main-line train hall, a painting by Albert Herter, dating from 1926. SNCF started LGV Est Européenne services from the Gare de lEst on 10 June 2007, with TGV and ICE services to north-eastern France, Luxembourg, southern Germany and Switzerland. Trains are initially planned to run at 320 km/h, with the potential to run at 350 km/h, Line 7 Travelling between Gare de lEst and other Paris main line stations, Gare du Nord, Walk to the station, or take Métro Line 4 or 5. Gare Montparnasse, Take Métro Line 4, Gare de Lyon, Take Métro Line 4 to Châtelet and then Line 1,14 or RER A to Gare de Lyon, or take bus 65. Gare dAusterlitz, Take Métro Line 5, Gare Saint-Lazare, Take Métro Line 7 to Opéra and then Line 3 to Saint-Lazare, or take RER E from Magenta. Travelling to points of interest Disneyland Paris, Take Métro Line 4 to Gare de Châtelet – Les Halles then take the RER Line A to Marne-la-Vallée – Chessy, List of stations of the Paris RER List of stations of the Paris Métro TER Champagne-Ardenne Transilien Network Map Transilien
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Gare de Lyon
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Paris-Gare de Lyon is one of the six large mainline railway station termini in Paris, France. It handles about 90,000,000 passengers every year, making it the third busiest station of France and it is the northern terminus of the Paris–Marseille railway. It is named after the city of Lyon, a stop for many long-distance trains departing here, the station is located in the XIIe arrondissement, on the north bank of the river Seine, in the east of Paris. The station is served by high-speed TGV trains to south and eastern France, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, the station also hosts regional trains and the RER and also by the Gare de Lyon metro station. There are a further 4 platforms for the RER underneath the main lines, the station was built for the World Exposition of 1900. On multiple levels, it is considered an example of the architecture of its time. Most notable is the clock tower atop one corner of the station, similar in style to the clock tower of the United Kingdom Houses of Parliament. The station houses the Le Train Bleu restaurant, which has served drinks and meals to travellers, on 27 June 1988, in the Gare de Lyon train accident, a runaway train crashed into a stationary rush-hour train, killing 56 people and injuring a further 55. From Gare de Lyon train services depart to major French cities such as, Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Montpellier, Perpignan, Dijon, Besançon, Mulhouse, Grenoble and a number of destinations in the Alps. International services operate to Italy, Turin, Milan and Venice, Switzerland, Geneva, Zurich, Bern, Interlaken, Lausanne and Brig, Germany Freiburg im Breisgau and Spain, Barcelona. For the Gare de lEst, either walk to nearby Quai de la Rapée Métro station for Line 5, or take Line 1 from Lyon north to Bastille station and this is also another way to reach the Gare du Nord. For Gare Saint-Lazare, take Métro Line 14, for Gare Montparnasse, catch a 91 bus, which goes there directly. Or take the Métro Line 14 to Châtelet and then change for Line 4 to Montparnasse-Bienvenüe, for Gare dAusterlitz the 5-10mn walk south across Pont Charles de Gaulle or Pont dAusterlitz is quickest. The station has appeared in the films,1972, Travels with My Aunt, directed by George Cukor 2005, The Mystery of the Blue Train
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Gare du Nord
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Paris Nord is one of the six large terminus stations of the SNCF mainline network for Paris, France. Near Gare de lEst in the 10th arrondissement, the Gare du Nord offers connections with several urban transport lines, including Paris Métro, RER and buses. By the number of travellers, at around 214 million per year, it is the busiest railway station in Europe, the 24th busiest in the world and the busiest outside Japan. The Gare du Nord is the station for trains to Northern France and to destinations in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands. The station complex was designed by the French architect Jacques Hittorff, the station was inaugurated on 14 June 1846, the same year as the launch of the Paris–Amiens–Lille rail link. Since the station was found to be too small in size, the original stations façade was removed and transferred to Lille. The chairman of the Chemin de Fer du Nord railway company, James Mayer de Rothschild, construction lasted from May 1861 to December 1865, but the new station opened for service while still under construction in 1864. The façade was designed around a triumphal arch and used many slabs of stone, the building has the usual U-shape of a terminus station. The main support beam is made out of cast iron, the support pillars inside the station were made at Alston & Gourleys ironworks in Glasgow in the United Kingdom, the only country with a foundry large enough for the task. The sculptural display represents the cities served by the company. Eight of the nine most majestic statues, crowning the building along the line, illustrate destinations outside France. Fourteen more modest statues representing northern European cities are lower on the façade, however, this was never built due to a dispute between de Rothschild and Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann during his rebuilding of Paris. Whatever the reason, the station has persistently suffered problems with a lack of space, to remedy these problems, in 2015 SNCF engaged the architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte to open the station towards the city. It is intended that the station will undergo a major refurbishment to be completed by 2024, the station will remain open during the renovations. The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has pledged to address the traffic problems in front of the station by reconfiguring its approaches. Like other Parisian railway stations, the Gare du Nord rapidly became too small to deal with the increase in railway traffic, in 1884, engineers were able to add five supplementary tracks. The interior was rebuilt in 1889 and an extension was built on the eastern side to serve suburban rail lines. More expansion work was carried out between the 1930s and the 1960s
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Gare Montparnasse
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Gare Montparnasse is one of the six large Paris railway termini, in the 14th arrondissement and 15th arrondissement of Paris. It was opened in 1840, rebuilt in 1852, and then rebuilt completely further south in 1969, a steam train crashed through the station in 1895, there is a well-known photograph of the event, and full scale reproductions outside a museum chain in South America. There is also a metro station, the station opened in 1840 as Gare de lOuest, later being renamed. A second station was built between 1848 and 1852, during the 1960s, a newer station integrated into a complex of office buildings was built. In 1969, the old station was torn down and the Tour Montparnasse built on its site, an extension was built in 1990 to host the TGV Atlantique. The Gare Montparnasse became famous for the derailment on October 22,1895, of the Granville–Paris Express, two of the 131 passengers sustained injuries, along with the fireman and two conductors. The only fatality was a woman on the street below, Marie-Augustine Aguilard and she was killed by falling masonry. The railway company paid for her funeral and provided a pension to look after her two children. The accident was caused by a faulty Westinghouse brake and the engine driver, a conductor was given a 25-franc fine and the engine driver a 50-franc fine. Replicas of the crash are recreated outside the Mundo a Vapor museum chain buildings in Brazil, in the southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul. The station is served by suburban trains heading to the west and south-west of Paris. Satellite image from Google Maps Mundo a Vapor Museum The Brazilian museum which contains the 1895 derailment accident replica
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Gare Saint-Lazare
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Paris Saint-Lazare is one of the six large terminus railway stations of Paris. It is the second busiest station in Paris, after the Gare du Nord and it handles 275,000 passengers each day. The station was designed by architect Juste Lisch, and the maître de loeuvre was Eugene Flachat, the first station at St Lazare was 200 m north-west of its current position, called Embarcadère des Batignolles. The station was opened by Marie-Amélie on 24 August 1837, the first line served was the single track line to Le Pecq. In 1843 St-Lazare was the terminus for three lines, by 1900 this number had tripled, the station had 14 platforms in 1854 after several enlargements, and now has 27 platforms sorted in six destination groups. On 27 April 1924 the inner suburban lines were electrified with 750 V third rail, the same lines were re-electrified at 25 kV overhead wires in the 1960s. On 21 March 2012, a new three levels shopping mall with 80 shops opened inside the passenger hall, the Gare Saint-Lazare is situated in the 8th arrondissement, in a very dense business and shopping area of Paris. The Gare Saint-Lazare has been represented in a number of artworks and it attracted artists during the Impressionist period and many of them lived very close to the Gare St-Lazare during the 1870s and 1880s. Édouard Manet lived close by, at 4 rue de Saint-Pétersbourg, two years after moving to the area he showed his painting The Railway, at the Paris Salon in 1874. At the time of its first exhibition it was caricatured and the subject of ridicule, gustave Caillebotte also lived just a short walk away from the station. He painted Le Pont de l’Europe in 1876 and On the Pont de lEurope in 1876-80, in 1877, painter Claude Monet rented a studio near the Gare Saint Lazare. That same year he exhibited seven paintings of the station in an impressionist painting exhibition. He completed 11 paintings of this subject, oscar-Claude Monets series of the Gare Saint-Lazare train station was one of his most famous series in his lifetime. Monet was one of the most important and influential painters in the Impressionist movement in the 19th century and he was a strong proponent of plein-air landscape painting. Artists such as Caillebotte, Degas and Morisot, do this in order to portray the scene in the moment instead of creating the painting from what they could remember. The flat, opaque circle of the largest signal, placed dead center, the Gare Saint-Lazare piece was shown at the Third Impressionist Exhibition. The Gare Saint-Lazare is far different than Monet’s previous paintings of harbors, boats, the Gare Saint-Lazare series of paintings lead the viewers through a tour of the train station in different points of the day. Everything dissipates with the steam of the train and turns into a flurry of blended colors. ”“Monet’s work on the Gare Saint-Lazare is unparalleled in its evocation of steam and the smoke-filled station
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Grand Palais
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The structure was built in the style of Beaux-Arts architecture as taught by the École des Beaux-Arts of Paris. One of its pediments calls it a “monument dedicated by the Republic to the glory of French art”, reflecting its original purpose, a monumental bronze quadriga by Georges Récipon tops each wing of the main façade. The one on the Champs-Élysées side depicts Immortality prevailing over Time, the grand inauguration took place 1 May 1900, and from the very beginning the palace was the site of different kinds of shows in addition to the intended art exhibitions. These included a competition that took place annually from 1901 to 1957, but were mainly dedicated to innovation and modernity, the automobile, aviation, household appliances. The golden age of the art exhibitions as such lasted for thirty years. The builders attempted to compensate for this subsidence, and for a tendency of the ground to shift, by sinking supporting posts down to firmer soil and these measures were only partially successful. Further damage occurred once the building was in use, additional problems due to the construction of the building itself revealed themselves over the course of time. Differential rates of expansion and contraction between cast iron and steel members, for example, allowed for water to enter, leading to corrosion and further weakening. When finally one of the ceiling panels fell in 1993, the main space had to be closed for restoration work. The Palais served as a hospital during World War I. The Nazis put the Palais to use during the Occupation of France in World War II, first used as a truck depot, the Palais then housed two Nazi propaganda exhibitions. The Parisian resistance used the Grand Palais as a headquarters during the Liberation of Paris, on 23 August 1944 an advancing German column was fired upon from a window on the Avenue de Sèlves, and the Germans responded with a tank attack upon the Palais. The attack ignited hay that was set up for a circus show, by 26 August, American jeeps were parked in the nave, followed by tanks from the French 2nd Armored Division, completing the liberation of the building. The buildings west wing contains a science museum, the Palais de la Découverte. The couture fashion house Chanel annually hosts many of its fashion shows here, setting up elaborate and expensive surroundings for its models and it was the host venue of the 2010 World Fencing Championships. This article contains material abridged and translated from the French and Spanish Wikipedia, official Grand Palais website The Grand Palais, current photographs, and photographs from the 1900s. New recent pictures and great information on the Grand Palais Paris Félix Charpentier, photos from the rooftops of the Grand Palais
