Ben was in Paris with me for my final few days before I
moved to Stuttgart, so we decided to see all the things close to home that for the past year we had said, "Oh, we should do this sometime," but never did.
Historic Montmartre
First, I took him on a tour of historic
Montmartre, my neighborhood in Paris, which is one of the most
picturesque and filled with artistic history of any in the city. The
summer is a beautiful time to visit these less cosmopolitan areas, so I hope
you enjoy this little tour of my old backyard!
Once you go up the stairs to
Sacre Coeur, if you go around
the front of the basilica and to the second street on the right, you come to
the famous
Place du Tertre. On the way, you often pass street performers, like this woman:
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| Accordion player outside Sacre Coeur |
Place du Tertre is a big square where artists sit and paint
and also sell their work. All around the square are restaurants and many street
performers. Somehow, neither Ben nor I took a picture of this, so I had to find this one on the internet:
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| Place du Tertre in Montmartre |
Behind Place du Tertre is the
Dalí museum, which I never
actually visited. The gift shop has all sort of Dalí-inspired souvenirs,
including melting clock clocks and watches, 3D postcards, and other amusing
things.
When you walk down from Place du Tertre, you eventually get
to a sculpture of a man emerging from a wall:
Apparently you’re supposed to shake his hand for good luck. :)
Around the corner from this man is La Maison Rose,
made famous in a
Utrillo painting by the same name, a very picturesque little
spot:
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| Street leading up to La Maison Rose |
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| Old building next to La Maison Rose |
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| La Maison Rose |
If you go down the hill from here, you get to the
Clos de Montmartre, the only remaining (and still functioning) vineyard in Paris. This
area used to have tons of vineyards, but this is the only one left. Despite its
small size, it produces about 1500 bottles of wine a year.
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| Clos de Montmartre |
Right next to the vineyard is another famous spot, the
Lapin Agile, the famous Montmartre cabaret where artists like Picasso used to hang out. They still have shows here, apparently.
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| Lapin Agile. Picasso wasn't there that day. |
If you continue down the road in front of the vineyard, you
eventually reach the building that
Berlioz lived in from 1834-1836. It’s
interesting to me as a violist that the two works of his printed on this plaque
are
Harold in Italy (the only viola concerto from the Romanic era) and
Benvenuto Cellini, and not
Symphonie Fantastique, which is probably the most
famous and often performed of his pieces.
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| Where Berlioz used to live |
If, at La Maison Rose, you had gone up the hill, you
would come to the
Museé de Montmartre, a very cute little building with stuff
about the history of the area:
Right next to the museum is the former residence of
Erik Satie, a famous and eccentric early 20
th century composer.
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| "Erik Satie - Composer of music lived in this house from 1890-1898." |
What do you think this is?
Looks fancy, right? It’s just a water tower. :)
To the side of Sacre Coeur (to the right if you’re standing
in front, to the left if you’re coming around the back) is a charming little
park that you might never notice unless you were looking for it:
It’s quiet and peaceful in here, quite a contrast to the
bustling tourist streets a stone’s throw away.
The Paris Opera (Palais Garnier)
One of the other things on our list was to take a tour of the Paris Opera. There are actually two Paris Operas now, the more modern
Opéra Bastille and the older and more famous
Palais Garnier. The Opéra Bastille was built to replace the Palais Garnier and it opened in 1989, on the 200th anniversary of the
storming of the Bastille at the start of the French Revolution. These days, the Palais Garnier is mainly used for ballet performances, not opera. It's incredibly ornate, both inside and outside. Here's the front:
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| Front of the Palais Garnier |
Before you even get to the famous Grand Staircase when walking from the ticket area, you are greeted by this amazing ceiling:
Standing under it on this particular day were some very distinguished looking frogs:
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| Good thing these frogs are here and not in the throats of the singers... |
As you go up the stairs to either side, if you look up, this is what you see:
Unfortunately, the Grand Staircase was under construction/maintenance while we were there and there was scaffolding everywhere, so we couldn't get a good picture. Here's a picture I found on the internet in case you haven't seen it before:
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| Grand Staircase |
As you can see from this picture, the staircase takes up the entire central part of the theater, with balconies all around it. The balconies are also amazingly ornate:
While we were there, they had an exhibition of costumes worn at the opera on display. Here are a few of the pictures we took of them:
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| Too warm to wear in the summer |
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| Close-up of a dress made out of music |
We also paid a visit to the Grand Foyer, which reminded me a lot of the Hall of Mirrors at
Versailles:
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| Grand Foyer at the Palais Garnier |
Some of the smaller foyers were considerably less ornate, but still interesting:
Finally, we went to see the inside of the theater itself. The famous (and huge) red curtain was down for cleaning that day, unfortunately. But it was still pretty magnificent! My favorite part of the whole building was the
Chagall ceiling inside the theater, which was added in 1964.
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| Chagall ceiling at the Paris Opera |
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| Paris Opera seats |
That's the end of my posts from Paris. From now on, they'll be about Germany and the other places we visit. But hopefully I'll get to take a trip back to Paris before I leave Europe for good!
Two final pictures from Paris:
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| A fire dancer outside the restaurant at the top of my street |
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| View out my window at sunset |
