1.
Agde
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Agde is a commune in the Hérault department in southern France. It is the Mediterranean port of the Canal du Midi, Agde is located on the River Hérault,4 kilometres from the Mediterranean Sea, and 750 kilometres from Paris. The Canal du Midi connects to the Hérault at the Agde Round Lock just above Agde, Agde is one of the oldest towns in France, right behind Béziers and Marseilles. Greek colony settled by Phocaeans from Massilia, in the history of Roman Catholicism in France, the Council of Agde was held 10 September 506 at Agde, under the presidency of Caesarius of Arles. It was attended by bishops, and its forty-seven genuine canons dealt with ecclesiastical discipline. One of its canons, forbidding ecclesiastics to sell or alienate the property of the church from which derived their living. Bishop Guillaume fortified the cathedrals precincts and provided it with a 35-metre donjon, the Romanesque cloister of the cathedral was demolished in 1857. It is assumed that a Jewish community was established in the town around the sixth century AD, during the council of Agde, assembled by the Catholic church in 506 AD, Christian laymen and ecclesiastics were prohibited from eating with Jews or hosting them. This prohibition suggests that the town Jews held good relations with their town neighbours and it is also assumed that the Jewish community was never large, since it did not own a cemetery and buried their dead in Béziers, three miles away. The Jewish name of the city was Agdi, or Akdi, during World War II, about two thousand Jews from Germany and Austria were sent to a labour camp near the town, most were deported on 24 August 1942. Agde has a football club RCO Agde who play at the Stade Louis Sanguin and they currently play in the Championnat de France amateur 2. Agde also has a club, Rugby Olympique Agathois, who play in the French Federale 1 competition. Princeton Encyclopædia of Classical Sites,1976, Agatha Hérault, France Recent undersea find of bronzes
2.
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
3.
Robert de Cotte
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Robert de Cotte was a French architect-administrator, under whose design control of the royal buildings of France from 1699, the earliest notes presaging the Rococo style were introduced. First a pupil of Jules Hardouin-Mansart, he became his brother-in-law. After Hardouin-Mansarts death, de Cotte completed his projects, notably the royal chapel at Versailles. Fiske Kimball, the chronicler of the Rococo, notes that there are no surviving drawings by de Cotte from this period, from 1708, Robert de Cotte was Premier architecte du Roi and director of the Académie royale darchitecture. De Cotte, with ever-widening responsibilities at Court, was occupied with projects in Paris. His name is inscribed on the first draft for the project for Place Vendôme. Mariette attributed its design to François-Antoine Vassé, and Fiske Kimball, on the basis of surviving preparatory drawings, no new architects were added to the rolls of the Bâtiments du Roi. Balthasar Neumann, in Paris to consult him over the operations at Würzburg, found him. At this period, de Cotte was responsible for the Hôtel de Conti, rue de Bourbon, outside France, de Cottes team was commissioned for projects to be completed on site by local craftsmen. In Bonn, his team was employed by the Elector of Cologne, for the design of his rural Poppelsdorf Palace. The decoration of the Cabinet des Glâces in the palace followed designs by Oppenord that featured reverse curves and garlands applied to mirror surfaces. A new wing called the Buen Retiro was commissioned in the autumn of 1717, from newly-Bourbon Spain, the princesse des Ursins required his advice on the queens apartments of the royal palace in Madrid. An octagonal room was fabricated in Paris under de Cottes eye, 1713–1715, at La Granja, an assistant from de Cottes office, René Carlier, was employed in the designs for the parterres. For the cardinal de Rohan, de Cotte provided decors for the Château de Saverne in Alsace, Robert Neuman, Robert de Cotte and the Perfection of Architecture in Eighteenth-Century France, University of Chicago Press,1994. ISBN 0-226-57437-7 Robert de Cotte at the archINFORM database
4.
Seine
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The Seine is a 777-kilometre-long river and an important commercial waterway within the Paris Basin in the north of France. It rises at Source-Seine,30 kilometres northwest of Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plateau, flowing through Paris and it is navigable by ocean-going vessels as far as Rouen,120 kilometres from the sea. There are 37 bridges within Paris and dozens more spanning the river outside the city, examples in Paris include the Pont Alexandre III and Pont Neuf, the latter of which dates back to 1607. Outside the city, examples include the Pont de Normandie, one of the longest cable-stayed bridges in the world, the Seine rises in the commune of Source-Seine, about 30 kilometres northwest of Dijon. The source has been owned by the city of Paris since 1864, a number of closely associated small ditches or depressions provide the source waters, with an artificial grotto laid out to highlight and contain a deemed main source. The grotto includes a statue of a nymph, on the same site are the buried remains of a Gallo-Roman temple. Small statues of the dea Sequana Seine goddess and other ex voti found at the place are now exhibited in the Dijon archeological museum. The Seine is dredged and oceangoing vessels can dock at Rouen,120 kilometres from the sea, commercial riverboats can use the river from Bar-sur-Seine,560 kilometres to its mouth. At Paris, there are 37 bridges, the river is only 24 metres above sea level 446 kilometres from its mouth, making it slow flowing and thus easily navigable. The Seine Maritime,105.7 kilometres from the English Channel at Le Havre to Rouen, is the portion of the Seine used by ocean-going craft. The tidal section of the Seine Maritime is followed by a section with four large multiple locks until the mouth of the Oise at Conflans-Sainte-Honorine. Multiple locks at Bougival / Chatou and at Suresnes lift the vessels to the level of the river in Paris, upstream from Paris seven locks ensure navigation to Saint Mammès, where the Loing mouth is situated. Through an eighth lock the river Yonne is reached at Montereau-Fault-Yonne, from the mouth of the Yonne, larger ships can continue upstream to Nogent-sur-Seine. From there on, the river is only by small craft. All navigation ends abruptly at Marcilly-sur-Seine, where the ancient Canal de la Haute-Seine used to allow vessels to continue all the way to Troyes and this canal has been abandoned for many years. The average depth of the Seine today at Paris is about 9.5 metres. Until locks were installed to raise the level in the 1800s, the river was much shallower within the city most of the time, today the depth is tightly controlled and the entire width of the river between the built-up banks on either side is normally filled with water. The average flow of the river is low, only a few cubic metres per second
5.
Pierre-Louis Moreau-Desproux
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Pierre-Louis Moreau-Desproux was a pioneering French neoclassical architect. Though he did not gain the Prix de Rome that was the gateway to a prominent French career in architecture. A colossal order of Ionic pilasters distinguished its façade, where the two floors were articulated by a banding of Greek key fret. Officially Moreau-Desproux was appointed architect-in-charge to the city of Paris in 1763 and his great-uncle Jean-Baptiste-Augustin Beausire had formerly held the position. His position enabled him to influence the appointment of Jean Chalgrin to a place in the office of works. Among his private commissions was the distinctly Neo-Palladian pavilion erected for M. Nicholas Carré de Baudouin on the heights of Ménilmontant in 1770, for the auditorium of the theatre he used an oval plan and introduced structural iron. He also designed new façades for the Palais-Royal on the rue Saint-Honoré, the novel entrance screen incorporated arcades which recapitulated those of the opera house facade. Moreau-Desprouxs theatre was destroyed by a fire on 8 June 1781, one of his sisters married the architect Marie-Joseph Peyre. Moreau-Desproux met his end under the guillotine during the Terror, louis-Philippe-Joseph dOrléans, du Palais-Royal à lhôtel de Montesson, pp. 123–143, in Le Palais Royal, catalog of the exhibition held from 9 May to 4 September 1988
6.
Charles de Wailly
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Charles de Wailly was a French architect and urbanist, and furniture designer, one of the principals in the Neoclassical revival of the Antique. His major work was the Théâtre de lOdéon for the Comédie-Française, in his designs, de Wailly showed a predilection for the perfect figure, the circle. De Wailly was born in Paris, after having obtained the Prix de Rome for architecture in 1752 he went to the French Academy in Rome for three years until 1755, sharing his prize with his friend Pierre-Louis Moreau-Desproux. Both participated in the excavations at the Baths of Diocletian. In Rome, de Wailly founded a friendship with the sculptor Augustin Pajou, who was to carve his bust, henceforth de Wailly regularly exhibited at the Paris Salons his renderings, designs and models. He gained wider publicity when two of his designs were engraved for the Encyclopédie and two more for the monumental Description de la france of the 1780s, catherine the Great offered him a high post in the Imperial Academy of Arts, St Petersburg, which he refused. In 1772, he was named architect of the Château de Fontainebleau. He was to return on several occasions to work in Italy, in 1779, de Wailly and Peyre built their most famous work, the theatre of Odéon in Paris. De Wailly also designed a project for the Opéra-Comique, in 1795, he was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts – 3rd section, fauteuil V. With his death, Jean Chalgrin succeeded to his seat and he became conservator of the museum of painting in 1795 and was sent to the Netherlands and Belgium to select works of art after the annexation of these countries. He married Adélaïde Flore Belleville who, after his death, remarried in 1800 to the chemist Antoine François and he was the brother of lexicographer Noël François de Wailly. De Wailly died in Paris in 1798, hôtel dArgenson, near the Palais Royal in Paris, interior installations carried out for the Comte d Argenson. Transformation of the Château des Ormes in Les Ormes for the comte dArgenson, Château de Montmusard near Dijon, main architectural work of the Goût Grec in France, unfortunately mainly destroyed as of 1795. Maison 57 rue La Boétie in Paris, constructed by de Wailly for himself, maison 87 rue de la Pépinière, today rue La Boétie, for the sculptor Augustin Pajou. Decoration of the chapel of the Virgin in Saint-Sulpice, Temple des Arts at the Château de Menars for the marquis de Marigny. De Wailly also provided and project for a Temple du Repos for the park at Ménars, Théâtre de lOdéon, From 1767, on commission from Marigny, Directeur des Bâtiments du Roi, Marie-Joseph Peyre and de Wailly designed the new theatre of the Comédie-Française. De Wailly was the protégé of Marigny and Peyre the architect of the Condé, in the outcome, and thanks to the protection of Monsieur, brother of the King, the plans of Peyre and de Wailly finally won the day in the autumn of 1778. Peyre would be responsible for the exterior and de Wailly for the interiors
7.
Palais Rohan, Strasbourg
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The Palais Rohan in Strasbourg is the former residence of the prince-bishops and cardinals of the House of Rohan, an ancient French noble family originally from Brittany. It is an architectural, historical, and cultural landmark in the city. It was built next to Strasbourg Cathedral in the 1730s, from designs by Robert de Cotte, since its completion in 1742, the palace has hosted a number of French monarchs such as Louis XV, Marie Antoinette, Napoleon and Joséphine, and Charles X. Reflecting the history of Strasbourg and of France, the palace has been owned successively by the nobility, the municipality, the monarchy, the state, the university, and the municipality again. Its architectural conception and its iconography were intended to indicate the return of Roman Catholicism to the city, thus the prelates apartments face the cathedral, to the north, and many of the statues, reliefs and paintings reflect the Catholic dogma. Since the end of the 19th century the palace has been home to three of Strasbourgs most important museums, the Archaeological Museum, the Museum of Decorative Arts and the Museum of Fine Arts. The municipal art gallery, Galerie Robert Heitz, in a wing of the palace, is used for temporary exhibitions. The Palais Rohan has been listed since 1920 as a Monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture. Seven years prior, in 1720, Cardinal de Rohan had already charged de Cotte with renovation and embellishment works on his castle in Saverne, de Cotte had also previously designed the Hôtel du grand Doyenné, the first hôtel particulier in Louis Quinze style built in Strasbourg. The Palais Rohan was built on the site of the residence of the bishop, the bishops demesne. The area itself is near the heart of the ancient Argentoratum, diverse archaeological excavations on Place du Château, the square facing the palace, have unearthed many remains of the Roman camp. Massol was assisted by the architects Laurent Gourlade and Étienne Le Chevalier, the palace is mostly built in yellow sandstone from Wasselonne, with pink sandstone for the less visible parts. The House of Rohan owned the palace until the French Revolution, when it was confiscated, declared bien national, bought by the municipality, it became the new town hall the same year, succeeding the Neubau. Much of the furniture and many of the works of art in the Palais were sold and they were replaced in 1796 by allegories of civic virtues painted by Joseph Melling. Only the portrait of Armand Gaston, the builder of the palace, was restored to its original place with a 1982 replica of Hyacinthe Rigauds lost painting. Melling also replaced the portraits of kings of France, decorating the same room with paintings of vases. The Palais Rohan remained the hôtel de ville until 1805 and that year, the municipality presented it to Napoleon, who returned the Hôtel de Hanau in exchange. Like the palace, the hôtel had been state-owned since the Revolution, the 1805 arrangement proved favourable for the municipality, the maintenance of the Hôtel de Hanau was less costly than that of the larger Palais Rohan
8.
Strasbourg
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Strasbourg is the capital and largest city of the Grand Est region of France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany in the region of Alsace. In 2014, the city proper had 276,170 inhabitants, Strasbourgs metropolitan area had a population of 773,347 in 2013, making it the ninth largest metro area in France and home to 13% of the Grand Est regions inhabitants. The transnational Eurodistrict Strasbourg-Ortenau had a population of 915,000 inhabitants in 2014, Strasbourg is the seat of several European institutions, such as the Council of Europe and the Eurocorps, as well as the European Parliament and the European Ombudsman of the European Union. The city is also the seat of the Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine, Strasbourgs historic city centre, the Grande Île, was classified a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1988, the first time such an honour was placed on an entire city centre. The largest Islamic place of worship in France, the Strasbourg Grand Mosque, was inaugurated by French Interior Minister Manuel Valls on 27 September 2012. Economically, Strasbourg is an important centre of manufacturing and engineering, as well as a hub of road, rail, the port of Strasbourg is the second largest on the Rhine after Duisburg, Germany. Before the 5th century, the city was known as Argantorati, a Celtic Gaulish name Latinized first as Argentorate, after the 5h century, the city became known by a completely different name Gallicized as Strasbourg. That name is of Germanic origin and means Town of roads, Strasbourg is situated on the eastern border of France with Germany. This border is formed by the River Rhine, which forms the eastern border of the modern city. The historic core of Strasbourg however lies on the Grande Île in the River Ill, which flows parallel to, and roughly 4 kilometres from. The natural courses of the two eventually join some distance downstream of Strasbourg, although several artificial waterways now connect them within the city. This section of the Rhine valley is an axis of north-south travel, with river traffic on the Rhine itself. The city is some 400 kilometres east of Paris, in spite of its position far inland, Strasbourgs climate is classified as Oceanic, with warm, relatively sunny summers and cold, overcast winters. Precipitation is elevated from mid-spring to the end of summer, but remains largely constant throughout the year, on average, snow falls 30 days per year. The highest temperature recorded was 38.5 °C in August 2003. The lowest temperature recorded was −23.4 °C in December 1938. Nonetheless, the disappearance of heavy industry on both banks of the Rhine, as well as effective measures of traffic regulation in and around the city have reduced air pollution
9.
Germain Boffrand
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Germain Boffrand was a French architect. A pupil of Jules Hardouin-Mansart, Germain Boffrand was one of the creators of the precursor to Rococo called the style Régence. His uncle, Philippe Quinault, introduced him to prospective clients among the aristocracy of Paris, in 1709, he was placed in charge of the interior apartments of the Hôtel de Soubise, where he soon succeeded the architect Pierre-Alexis Delamair. None of his early interiors survive, largely replaced by his spectacular Rococo work of the years following 1735, Boffrand was received by the Académie royale darchitecture in 1709. The following year he was among those employed in the additions to the Palais Bourbon, in 1732, he was appointed inspecteur général des ponts et chaussées and produced plans for restructuring Les Halles. He was a participant in the competition for the design of Place Louis XV, named chief architect to the hôpital général in 1724, he constructed in the Île de la Cité a foundling hospital, the Hôpital des Enfants Trouvés. Boffrand also worked for the hospitals at the Salpêtrière, at Bicêtre and he built a series of hôtels particuliers in Paris as speculative business enterprises. Boffrands pavilion of 1712-15 that inaugurated the new quarter of the Faubourg Saint-Honoré was purchased, abroad, Boffrand worked for the Duke of Lorraine, where he was appointed Premier Architecte to Duke Léopold in 1711, but little of significance remains. He also constructed a fountain and a hunt pavilion, Bouchefort, in the gardens of the schloss belonging to the Elector of Bavaria, in 1724 Boffrand worked on site at Würzburg with Balthasar Neumann, who had been consulting him in Paris, on the Prince-Bishops Residenz. His designs were carried out in the suite of rooms. Among the architects trained in his atelier were François Dominique Barreau de Chefdeville, Charles-Louis Clérisseau and Emmanuel Héré de Corny, Boffrands two sons collaborated in the office, both dying young, in 1732 and 1745. Boffrands folio, Livre darchitecture, was published in 1745, there are no surviving caches of his drawings. In January 1745 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, Germain Boffrand died in Paris in 1754 at age 86. The following commissions of Boffrand are largely taken from Fiske Kimball, Hôtel Le Brun,49 rue du Cardinal-Lemoine, for Charles II Le Brun, the nephew and heir of the premier peintre du roi Charles Le Brun and a relative of Boffrands. One of the first hôtels particuliers noted and commended by contemporary critics, remodelling of the Hôtel de Mesme. Remodelling of the Hôtel de Livry, Hôtel de Soubise,60 rue des Francs-Bourgeois, and the suite of interiors, Boffrands last major work and his masterpiece, for the prince de Rohan and his wife Marie Sophie de Courcillon. Façade of the Convent of Fathers of Mercy,45 rue des Archives, built for the prince de Soubise to provide a suitable sdtreet front opposite his new hôtel. Renovation for Anne Henriette of Bavaria, princess Palatine, widow of the Henri Jules, much of Boffrands decoration survives, including the staircase with its coved cornices filled with scrolls and foliage and rounded corners
Media related to Pierre-Alexis Delamair at Wikimedia Commons
