Palais Royal & Les Grands Boulevards

Another Paris tour this week...  

This tour started, after a coffee in Café Le Nemours of course, just opposite the Comédie Française and close to this beautiful piece of Millennium art.

The Palais-Royal, originally called the Palais-Cardinal, is a palace and an associated garden located in the 1st arrondissement of Paris. Facing the Place du Palais-Royal, it stands opposite the north wing of the Louvre, and its famous forecourt (cour d'honneur), screened with columns and, since 1986, containing Daniel Buren's site-specific artpiece, Les Deux Plateaux, known as Les Colonnes de Buren (the black & white... huge contrast with the historic building, pretty interesting to see).

Today it houses the Conseil d'État, the Constitutional Council, and the Ministry of Culture. At the rear of the garden are the older buildings of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the national library of deposit, with a collection of more than 6,000,000 books, documents, maps, and prints; most of the collections have been moved to more modern settings elsewhere.

Although it's November already, the gardens still look amazingly fresh, lots of colour and even the trees still had so many green leaves!! 

From the Palais Royal we went on to Les Grands Boulevards.

 They are built on the site of the city's old ramparts and extend in a long arc from the Église de la Madeleine in the west to the Bastille in the east. Once highly fashionable thoroughfares where 'tout' Paris would come to promenade and seek entertainment, they're still a vibrant and colourful part of the city, with their brasseries, theatres and cinemas.

The streets of the Grands Boulevards constitute the city's main commercial and financial district. Right at the heart of the area stand institutions like the Banque de France and the Bourse, while just to the north, beyond the glittering Opéra Garnier, are the large department stores Galeries Lafayette and Printemps. Rather more well-heeled shopping is concentrated on the rue St-Honoré in the west and the streets around elegant place Vendôme, lined with top couturiers, jewellers and art dealers. Scattered around the whole of the Grands Boulevards area are the delightful passages – nineteenth-century arcades with glass roofs and tiled floors that show what shopping was like in a different era.

The above statement had nothing to do with the tour, but I just liked it (it says: one should never be absent from school nor arrive late without permission), should show it to Thom, maybe it helps!! 

It was, again, a lovely tour through a part of the city I didn't know... Still so many hidden places to discover!

And YES! It's Friday again! And with this bunch of colourful flowers I'd like to wish you all a wonderful weekend! Enjoy it!

Bisous,