What’s a visit to Paris without seeing the Louvre? The Louvre is essentially the most famous museum in the world and also home to the renowned Mona Lisa painting. For Da Vinci Code buffs, this is a must-see as well!...
Hakan&Cansen
Sunday, 4 January 2009
Saint ChapeLLe..
It's hard to back up and get a great view, because the chapel, formerly part of the palace, now within the precincts of the Police Department, is surrounded by buildings. A small courtyard lets you walk part way around it. It was finished in five years, as compared with most cathedrals which took 100 or more years. One reason for its rapid completion is probably that it was the royal chapel, so funding came from the king rather than from donations. King Louis IX (Saint Louis) had it built between 1243 and 1248 to house the Crown of Thorns, which he had bought in Venice in 1238. Sainte Chapelle was started and finished during the time Notre Dame was being built only a few blocks away. Both are on the Ile de la Cite -- the big island in the center of Paris where the city was born.
Hakan&Cansen
Musee D'orsay
The museum building was originally a railway station. Gare d'Orsay, constructed for the Chemin de Fer de Paris à Orléans and finished in time for the 1900 Exposition Universelle to the design of three architects:Lucien Magne, Émile Bénard and Victor Laloux. It was the terminus for the railways of southwestern France until 1939.
By 1939 the station's short platforms had become unsuitable for the longer trains that had come to be used for mainline services. After 1939 it was used for suburban services and part of it became a mailing center during World War II. It was then used as a set for several films, such as Kafka's The Trial adapted by Orson Welles, and as a haven for the Renaud-Barrault Theatre Company and for auctioneers, while the Hôtel Drouot was being rebuilt. The station's hotel closed on 1 January 1973.
*Hakan&Cansen
Seine River
According to his will, Napoleon, who died in 1821, wished to be buried on the banks of the Seine, a request that was not granted.Until the 1930s, a towing system using a chain on the bed of the river existed to facilitate movement of barges upriver.The Seine River is a very popular tourist attraction.
Some of the victims of the Paris massacre of 1961 drowned in the Seine after being thrown off from the Pont Saint-Michel and other locations in Paris.Dredging in the 1960s mostly eliminated tidal bores on the river, known as “le mascaret.”In 1991, the banks of the Seine in Paris—the Rive Gauche and Rive Droite—were added to UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in Europe.The river is a popular site for suicides and the disposal of bodies of murder victims. In 2007, 55 bodies were retrieved from its waters; in February 2008, the body of supermodel-turned-activist Katoucha Niane was found there.
Hakan&Cansen
Thursday, 1 January 2009
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