Paris

In which way can we introduce Paris? This city has been in fact described hundred of times!
Paris by day, Paris by night… The Ville Lumière fascinates not only because of the beauty and wealth of its monuments, but also for its particular atmosphere, the peculiar melancholy wraps the city in the evening, when the beams of the sun graze ancient stones.

Paris displays its splendid and prestigious monuments, its “bouquinistes”, its barges along the Seine. Lovers embrace themselves on the embankements, seated on a park bench, nearly melted in one block.

The Louvre and the museum of Orsay face from the opposite shores of the river, joined by the Pont des Arts.
Notre Dame Cathedral, whose ivies hang from the parapets, faces armies of tourists.

Here one of the qualities of Paris: its universality. The city belongs to the entire humanity.

Downstreem, the Eiffel tower soars towards the sky; its steel bseems embroidery during the day and a sparkling dress by night.

LAlong the wide tree-lined avenues and the public squares, people enjoy to seat at a café to have a café-crème with croissant or a beer. These wide tree-lined avenues divide the city in districts: Montmartre, dominated by the white basilica; Pigalle, with its french cancan and the sexshop; the Bastille, with the elegant Operahouse and its bars; Barbèsand its crowd as coloured as its markets; the Quartier Latin, with its memories of student fights and the haughty Sorbonne University; Montparnasse and its smell of Brittany's sea; the Champs Elysées and their high fashion boutiques.

But the city that we have described truly exists or is just a stereotype, coming from old black and white films and from Yves Montand and Edith Piaf's songs?
Paris has changed indeed, continuously. And the city has changed because of the Revolution's eccesses, because of the great nineteenth century town plans, because of the real estate speculations in the 1960 -1980s that caused spectacular destructions.

Paris is still changing, saturated with traffic. The town council is trying to organize this chaotic traffic, to chase it away outside its walls.
Paris changes in continuously. And it has been changing thoughout the centuries of its long history, from the first gallic settlement on the island of the Cité. The town has grown and has developed more and more quickly, it has become an university, artistic,commercial and political city. History has left its traces in the smallest areas of the city.

It is now your task to discover these traces during your stay in Paris.

You will notice that the town atmosphere swiftly changes, from an area to the other. Paris has a colored population, that likes to feast: on the 14 July national feast, you will be able to dance in the streets or to take part in the music festival, to the sleeplessnight festival, to Parisplages, to the gaypride, the technoparade…

In spite of all these changes, to this noise and pollution, lovers and pigeons find always a place to kiss: under the statue of a hero, in the middle of the crowd, seated on a park bench, on a metro platform.