Paris - sightseeing

Paris has a huge number of Museums the most famous of which, that is the ones you should not really miss even if you stop for just a few days, are the Louvre, the Orsay museum, the Picasso Museum, and the Contemporary Art Gallery at the Centre Pompidou.

The Louvre

The Louvre is one of the oldest museums in Europe, having been established in 1793 by the French Republic. It used to be a medieval fortress, and then one of the palaces of the kings of France. Its collection is huge, and is divided into several departments: which include Oriental Antiquities, Islamic Art, Egyptian Antiquities, Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities, Sculptures, Paintings, Prints and Drawings, and several others. The Louvre collections incorporate works dating from the times of the most important antique civilisations right up to the first half of the XIX century, with a real encyclopedic vocation. Just to make a few examples, its painting collection includes works by Leonardo da Vinci (the famous "Gioconda", which must really be seen live to fully appreciate its magnificence), Carpaccio, Perugino, Raphael, Correggio, Titian, Veronese, Caravaggio, Goya, Rubens, Van Dyck, Vermeer, just to name a few. For further information, you can visit the museum’s site at www.louvre.fr.

The Orsay Museum

Located in a beautiful former art nouveau train station, which was saved from a likely demolition when it was first included in the Inventory of Historical Monuments in 1973, and then chosen as the museum’s site in 1977. The museum opened in 1986, and is the ideal complement to the Louvre, in that its collection follow chronologically where the Louvre’s stops, with artists active from 1848 to 1914. In the Orsay Museum you can find works by artists like Degas, Manet, Renoir, Pissarro Cézanne, Van Gogh and Sisley. To learn more, visit the Orsay Museum website.

Contemporary art

The most interesting museum about so-called "contemporary" art are two: one is the Picasso Museum, devoted only to the famous painter, with a huge collection of works from every period of the artistic development of the most famous painter of the 20th century. The museum’s site is beautiful, but, alas, it’s only in French: www.musee-picasso.fr. The other museum is the collection at the Centre Pompidou, which includes works by Joan Mirò, Henri Matisse, Vassily Kandinsky, the Bauhaus movement, Piet Mondrian, Alberto Giacometti, Francis Bacon, Jackson Pollock, as well as more recent movements such as Fluxus. It is divided into two floors, and hosts several exhibitions. The website is www.cnac-gp.fr.

The Centre Pompidou (also known as Beaubourg, which is the name of the district it’s in) is one of the true marvels of Paris.

It has been designed by the architects R. Rogers, G. Franchini and Renzo Piano as a building without barriers, completely open on the city (the huge glass doors in the front can be opened completely to sort of join the square outside with its great hall inside) it is a symbol, with its architectural structure itself, the idea of making culture accessible to anyone. It contains a huge public library, which is completely free and rich in material, be it books, magazines from all over the world, videos etc. The Pompidou also hosts the Modern Art Gallery, which is located in the top floors.

Paris is usually widely known as the town of the Tour Eiffel, of the Triumph Arch and of the baguette; these stereotypes, however grounded in reality, do not represent the city’s complexities and varied atmospheres at all.

The most authentic Paris, the most coloured and lively, is the North-Eastern area, from the Abbesses district fown to the marché d’Aligre (which takes place in the eponymous square every morning apart from Mondays), which includes the multi-ethnic African district of Barbès and the Arabic one of the Goutte d’Or, the open-air cinemas and the concerts at the Villette, the romantic atmosphere of the Canal Saint Martin, the quiet atmosphere of the Buttes de Chaumont, the chaotic Belleville, the noisy clubs between Oberkampf and Ménilmontant, the quiet peace of the Père Lachaise gardens and cemetery, and the ant-like activity of the various flea markets (in French, "Marchés aux puces", including the St-Ouen Flea Market, open on Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays from 9.30 am to 6.00 pm, the market at. Porte de Clignancourt, with a huge variety of stuff, and the less touristic one at Montreuil, Rue Lemière, every Saturday, Sunday and Monday from 7.00 am to 7.30 pm, nearest Underground station: Porte de Montreuil).

All of these areas are very lively and not without social conflicts and issues, and maybe constitute the toughest side of Paris, but every Parisian with some sense of adventure and some curiosity for different cultures would choose another area of the city to live in. If you come to Paris for a few days, you’d better find an excuse (a restaurant, a round of drinks, a market) to visit these districts, maybe just to see views of Paris that rarely come out in postcards.