Place : Paris - The 16th District
Date: Wednesday Oct. 16th/ 2019
I guess Paris breeds an invoking effect on people's appetite to respond, as the wave of feedback and suggestions keeps coming ashore..
Mike wrote:
"Todah rabah for sharing your picaresque adventures!
While you're into museums, please don't miss the Rodin, a very special treat. And speaking of phallic symbols, is the Egyptian obelisk still erect in the Place des Touilleries?
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Pnina sent these suggestions
• Paris’ International Art Fair “FIAC” week starts- Oct. 17-20
• The Paris Cocktail Festival, 16th & 17th November.
• A Lost Generation 1920s Immersive Party, 20th & 21st November
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A few were referring to the same subject of our energies for touring:
Sharon commented:
"Looks like you are leaving no stone of Paris unturned. Do you ever rest!"
Zehava added:
"Lili, you make me feel like tagging along in your next trip. Your endless energy is “catching”
Beverley mentioned:
"You two are amazing travellers!You have seen more of the museums and sights of Paris in two weeks than I have in several trips! What energy! Keep it up!"
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To these last three comments my reply is as follows:
Like a good Polish dripke, my answer to that is .. I will have plenty
time to rest in my grave...Until then I rather be a "Culture Vulture" as the French termed for cultural connoisseur.... Lili
*****
Visit to the 16 Distrit - Seizième
This upscale elegant neighborhood of great wealth is the third richest district for average Paris household income, and is the largest land mass district in Paris, is known for its ornate 19th c buildings, large avenues, prestigious schools, various parks, iconic landmarks and monuments including: the overcrowded and hectic-- Avenue des Champs-Elysées, or the Eiffel Tower, part of the Arc de Triomphe, and a concentration of museums between the Place du Trocadéro, and Place d'Iéna, with the added Fondation Louis Vuitton in 2014
We first headed to the less crowded part of the district where
Monet's museum- is located.
Getting off at "La Mutte" Metro Station, and walking via
Jardin du Ranelagh - A beautiful 1860 garden created by by Baron Haussman, was a good and enjoyable shortcut to start the morning of this cloudy gloomy drizzly day. This charming park in the heart of a quaint relaxed neighborhood, is decorated by statues, variety of beautiful trees, playgrounds fully used by playful school children, a puppet theater on weekends, and a carousel - the oldest of Paris.
Musée Marmottan – Monet at 2 Rue Louis Boilly
The charming mansion in this quiet street by the edge of Ranelagh park, in which one of the city's largest Impressionism and post impressionist collections is housed contains: 100 of Claude Monet's masterpieces (from Impression, Sunrise to the water lilies) and numerous works from the artist's personal collection, as well as those of Gauguin, Guillaumin, Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro, Gauguin, Paul Degas, Manet Berthe Morisot.
It is a small manageable museum which also included a temporary exhibit of the dutch painter - Piet Monderain https://www.piet-mondrian.org.
More on the Building:
Originally a hunting lodge for the Duke of Valmy, the mansion which turned to a museum, was purchased in1882 by Jules Marmottan who later left it to his son Paul Marmottan. Marmottan moved into the lodge and, with an interest in the Napoleonic era, he expanded his father's collection of paintings, furniture and bronzes. Marmottan bequeathed his home and collection to the Académie des Beaux-Arts. The Académie opened up the house and collection as the Museum Marmottan in 1934.
In 1957, Victorine Donop de Monchy gave the museum an important collection of Impressionist works that had belonged to her father, Doctor Georges de Bellio, physician to Manet, and works of Monet, Pissarro, Sisley and Renoir, and an early supporter of the Impressionist movement. In 1966, Claude Monet's second son, Michel Monet, left the museum his own collection of his father's work, thus creating the world's largest collection of Monet paintings. In 1985, Nelly Duhem, adopted daughter of the painter Henri Duhem, donated his large collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works (which included several Monets) to the museum.
Bus 32, nearby the Monet museum, transported us via Rue Pussy - a busy shopping street and rue Benjamin Franklin to the Trocadero
hill area. This site, across the Seine, is of the old 1878 Palais de Chaillot, which was demolished in 1937 and rebuilt, and from which a fantastic view of the Eiffel Tower is seen.
Place du Trocaderoo
The place was named in honor of the Battle of Trocadero, in which the fortified Isla del Trocadero, in southern Spain, was captured in 1823 by French forces, led by the Duc d'Angoulême, son of the future King of France, Charles X.
The (old) Chaillot magnamanus structure was first constructed for the 1867 World's Expo Fairgrounds. The old (1878-1936) palace - a mixture of exotic Moorish with some Byzantine style elements of a large concert hall, with two wide ark wings, and two towers, was built by architect Gabriel Davioud., where meetings of international organizations could be held during the fair.
Below the palace building, in the space left by former underground quarries, a large aquarium was built (and renovated since then few times) to contain fish of French rivers.
The space between the palais and the Seine called Jardins du Trocadéro (Gardens of the Trocadero)
It is an open space which slopes down to the river by terraces, and an array of fountains and beautiful gardens, It is lined up with Caucasian walnut trees and hazel trees, and decorated with gilded bronze statues. The main feature, called the "Fountain of Warsaw", is a long basin, or water mirror, with twelve fountains creating columns of water 12 metres high with its 20 water cannons, offers, when operating, a remarkable water display. Unfortunately, it was not when we were walking by.
The 1937 Palais de Chaillot rebuilt in modern style for the international Expo . The expanded 2 wings are independent buildings and there is no central element to connect them: instead, a wide esplanade leaves an open view to the Eiffel Tower and beyond. The 8t gilded figures on the terrace of the "Rights of Man-Human Rights" are attributed to several known sculptors. The Palais de Chaillot was also the initial headquarters of NATO. And prior to that, from the palace's front terrace the iconic image of Adolf Hitler was pictured, during his short tour of the city in 1940 Second World War, with the Eiffel Tower in the background. . It is in the Palais de Chaillot that the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Thanks to that, the terrace is now loaded with tourists, asserting their human entitlement to frequent the terrace, and have the best admiring glance of the Eiffel Tower, and the view below, regardless of the weather -(the constant harsh element nowadays). Children are freely running on the open air terrace, and street's vendors, vigorously pushing to the tourists an Eiffel Tower with reduced replicas with blinking lights. We, being suckers as the rest, also made sure to get one, for our grandson..
The wing buildings on top of the terrace house now a number of museums:
the Musée national de la Marine (naval museum) and the Musée de l'Homme (ethnology) in the southern (Passy) wing.
the Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, including the Musée national des Monuments Français, in the eastern (Paris) wing, from which one also enters the Théâtre national de Chaillot, a theater below the esplanade.
A Walk From Trocadero Hill to Ecole Militaire
Not to diminish from the most famous view seen from the Arc de Triumph down the Champs Elysee to the Concord, the breathtaking view we experienced, on the walk we took, under the irritating drizzle, from the Right Bank's Trocadéro hill, all the way down the slopes below it, definitely equals to it. Then we crossed the Seine to the Left Bank on Pont d'l'ena/Jena bridge, (In 1807, Napoleon I ordered, by an imperial decree issued in Warsaw, the construction of a bridge overlooking the Military School, and named the bridge after his victory in 1806 at the Battle of Jena)
And continued under the imposing Eiffel Tower, all the way throughout the lovely tower's gardens , leading us all the way, also throughout the Champ-de-Mars park (opend in 1780 and is hotspot for national events), extending all the way from the the Eiffel Tower to École Militaire.
The Ecole Militare impressive building was built in 1750 during the reign of Louis XV. and today houses a training school for French army officers.
Just in front of the École Militaire there is Monument of Peace
Mur pour la Paix - Wall for Peace,- The Jewish connection
This wall constellation was constructed in 2000 in the spirit of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, by artist Clara Halter and put in place by architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte. It is 16.40m long, 13.80m wide and 9m high a metal stainless steel and glass structure. The word "PEACE" is engraved on it in 49 languages in 14 alphabets. It symbolises the continuance of time across the centuries; its letter boxes collect the wishes of their senders, as in the Jewish tradition. A video wall is linked to the Internet and a cyma emphasises the work of the artist Clara Halter. Reproductions of the designs of Clara Halter, composed of letters from different alphabets, act as a support to the messages of the visitors, who place them in the slots of the wall before taking a message, from here, that will become their property. This act by the visitor will be filmed on a huge screen, so testifying to their part in the tradition of people posting messages across the generations.
Chag Sukkot Sameach
To be continued....