Paris CultureSome would say that the words "Paris" and "Culture" are almost synonymous. Some would add a third word, "Style". In architecture, cuisine, decorative arts, diplomacy, drama, fashion, landscape, language, literature, music, painting, politics, sculpture, urban design, Paris’s contributions and leadership in Western culture have been formidable for centuries. Its landscape, its intellectual life, its politics are suffused with and define to the world what it means to be French, and members and leaders of other societies revere Paris culture, or at least know that they must seriously reckon with it. Few in the world, in any walk of life, have to reach far to find an example of French culture that affects their lives. Regardless of the ebbs and flows of influence, it is not coincidence that French remains one of "The Official" international languages of diplomacy. It carries so much to the world.
Today, beyond its high culture and place on the world stage, Paris is a great melting-pot of ethnic communities which make its own cultural life so rich. Neighbourhoods like Belleville or La Goutte d’or will give you a North African/African feeling. You will see incredible things there: live chickens at butcher’s shops, people smoking narghile in cafés, clothes hanging out the widows… The district of Strasbourg-St Denis is “the” place to get dreadlocks. Also in this area stands the vibrant Passage Brady, a whole street exclusively dedicated to Indian cuisine. In the 13th Arrondissement you will find a kind of Chinatown (not as lively as New York City’s or San Francisco’s), with scores of Chinese restaurants and stores. In the centre of the city, Le Marais has a few Jewish streets and is also famous for being a great place of entertainment for the gay population. Hot clubs, bars, cafés, but also avant-garde clothes, gadget and furniture stores abound in this area.
Beside this extraordinary mix of population, Paris has always been a city for intellectuals, for new ideas. In the world-famous Café de Flore in Saint-Germain-des-Prés used to gather Aragon, Breton, Apollinaire… the first Surrealists; then in the 30’s, it was the meeting-point of filmmakers, painters (Picasso, Giacometti…), publishers, writers and philosophers (Sartre)… After the war, the whole district of Saint-Germain-des-Près, with its many jazz clubs, became the most fashionable place to be. Miles Davis played here, and so did Boris Vian and Juliette Gréco. At that time Paris was a warm and welcoming place for those who were not understood or accepted elsewhere, because of their race or political opinions. For instance, intellectuals who were members of the French Communist Party like Arthur Koestler, Ernest Hemingway, Truman Capote, Lawrence Durrel… found shelter in Café de Flore. Here they could express themselves freely because it was all about liberty of thought.
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Paris Architecture
Haussmann, Haussmann and again Haussmann. We owe this 19th century architect the main big boulevards of Paris, its straight avenues starting at the Place de l’Etoile, its freestone buildings with grey slate roofs. When he called him in 1853 to renovate Paris, Napoléon III hoped to better control the flow of traffic, encourage economic growth, and make the city "revolution-proof" by making it harder to build barricades. Haussmann accomplished all this by tearing up many of the old, twisting streets and dilapidated apartment houses, and replacing them with the wide, tree-lined boulevards and expansive gardens which Paris is famous for today. Haussmann was so criticized at that time that he was finally fired in 1870. The only remains of the old Paris are now concentrated in the very centre of the city: Le Marais, L’île de la cite and l’île Saint-Louis, and the Latin quarter. Also, Montmartre has preserved its old village feeling. Being on a hill, it couldn’t be destroyed by Haussmann’s straight architecture.
Interesting, as a side note, that Haussmann’s influence is still seen on the most mundane level, too. At periodic intervals each day, water gushes from manmade artesian springs to wash the gutters of Paris’s streets and boulevards -- a Haussman innovation, some would say obsession for transforming the Paris of old to a clean city... organizing not only its civil defense and its traffic flow, but also the flow of its effluent, as well.
Also interesting, as a side note, that the US would invite a Parisian, Pierre l’Enfant, to transform the urban design of Washington, DC, on the same scale.
Notwithstanding the extreme make-over, Paris edifices and monuments, pre- and post-Haussmann, are impressive and well preserved. You cannot miss the French Renaissance Louvre and its ultra-modern glass pyramid; the opulent Neo-Baroque (Napoleon III) Opéra de Paris built by Garnier in the second half of the 19th century (a good tour for those not having the time to visit Versailles); of course, the Eiffel Tower made out of iron for the Universal Exhibition of 1900; the High-tech Modern Centre Georges Pompidou with its appearing have been built "inside-out" with its external multicoloured infrastructure, built by Rogers and Piano in the 1970s.
Among monumental projects of President François Mitterrand, don’t miss the Grande Arche of the Défense (close western suburb of Paris) that stands right in the line of the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs-Elysées, the Tuileries' Carousel, and the Louvre’s pyramid; the French National Library (Bibliothèque François Mitterrand), located on the left bank of the Seine, near Bercy, with its L-shaped towers of books (symbolizing open books) arranged at the corners of a giant platform around a sunken garden.
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