Yesterday, today and tomorrow from 5:30-9:30pm, Paris hosts city-wide heures heureses (French for Happy Hours) with 2€ gourmet bites. There’s a wide range of participating bistros, bars, restaurants and gourmet food stores. Pick up your heures heureuses passport at the Hôtel de Ville and get tasting! (more…)
We usually go to the cinema and let a film transport us into another world and time. But at The Grand Rex, simply entering its doors is a trip back to history in itself.
Mythical and extravagant, this huge Art Deco cinema was conceived by Jacques Haik, a Tunisian-born film producer and one of the pioneers of French cinema, known to have introduced Charlie Chaplin to the French film audience. Already the owner of the Olympia music hall, he had something grander in mind: a cinema that could seat thousands, in a space spanning 2,000 square meters. With the help of French architect Auguste Bluysen and engineer John Eberson, famous for his North American “atmospheric theaters”, The Grand Rex opened to the public in December 8, 1932. (more…)
Last week’s popular Google Keyword was “Slums of Paris.” Did you know there were even slums in Paris? We previously showed one such prominent informal settlement along the RER B train line from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport to the center of Paris, visible to many visitors to Paris. Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was notorious for his push to clear out slums and illegal residents (mostly Roma gypsy populations). Photographer Steven Wassenaar has been photographing the Parisian gypsy populations since 2005 and told us, “I have met many Roma that just go from campsite to campsite in Greater Paris. Sarkozys eviction policy was very limited, mostly a communication action and it did not change anything.”
Get in touch with the author @untappedmich. Untapped also previously reported on the ongoing urban renewal of Roma gypsy populations in Istanbul.
You arrive in the city center just as night is falling, turn the corner in a little cobblestoned street and enter an unmarked door to an underground cocktail bar. Inside, the lights are dim, the atmosphere is chic and the cocktails are the very best. As music plays, you are drawn closer to it. You follow the sounds to a hidden back room, where people are dancing in rhythm to the music. (more…)
Wearing sunglasses can be a militant act. Seriously. Especially when spring is slow to set in and Paris is too cold and grey in May.
As soon as the first rays of sun come out, Parisians proudly wear their shades, as a challenge to God and to the weatherman. France is a country of rebels- never forget it, and nobody will prevent us from being in summer if we have decided so! (more…)
Grand Gallery of the Louvre by Thomas Allom c. 1844
Did you know that the encyclopedists wanted to open up the gardens and galleries of the Louvre Palace to the public long before it was slated to become a museum? The Palais du Louvre was constructed in 1190 by Philippe Auguste as a fortress to protect against Norman invasions. It was home to François Ier during the Renaissance. Henri IV built the Grand Gallery connecting the royal apartments in the Louvre to the Tuileries palace. The Louvre as it appears today was completed under Louis XIV, with additions by Louis XV. But it was only after the French Revolution that the Louvre was finally converted from a royal residence to the museum we know and love today. But over a decade before the Revolution, when Diderot and D’Alembert were compiling the Encyclopedia, their entry for the Louvre not only tells the palace’s history but makes some suggestions for its use that were rather advanced at the time: (more…)
