This morning I stumbled upon this photo of the Front de Seine from a different viewpoint. I took it from the top of the Eiffel Tower in September 2007. I think I've figured out that I have been up there only once since moving to France in 2003.
And what better symbolizes modern Paris than the Centre Beaubourg? It's also known as the Centre Pompidou. When it was built in the 1970s people called it la raffinerie. I don't think I have to translate that. Here are some photos.
In the foreground, you see part of the Latin Quarter and then the Palais de Justice on the Île de la Cité. The old tower right in front of the Pompidou Center is the Tour Saint-Jacques, built in the early 1500s and 54 meters (177 ft.) tall. I went up to the top of that tower a few years ago. Three hundred steps and of course no elevator.
The most striking thing about the Pompidou Center is how huge it is. Not to mention the bright colors. Another thing to notice is how many high-rise buildings there are in the Paris neighborhoods north of it.
Below is a photo I found on the internet showing what the site looked like
before the Pompidou Center was built.
before the Pompidou Center was built.
I like the building a lot. The homes and businesses that surrounded it won the lottery when they built Beaubourg. Like the Eiffel Tower, it's a city icon with a steel frame.
ReplyDeleteHi, David. does a structure need to be ugly to get to be an icon. As for the Eiffel tower, just as la Raffinerie, I rest my case.
DeleteIn life, our friends are C and D — Change and Diversity. Better to have them as friends than as enemies. Especially since the only thing constant is change. It's diversity vs. monotony.
DeleteIf I'm not mistaken, the convex building at the bottom of the first photo is the Australian embassy.
ReplyDeleteAs for the Rafinnerie (Centre Pompidou), I rest my case!
I’ve always liked that little island in the Seine, it’s a lovely walk from one end to the other. Very nice aerial view, Ken. I’m sure that after the Pompidou was built, many people wished it were still a parking lot. We used to be able to take the escalators to the top for a good, free, view but now there’s a charge.
ReplyDeleteI'm enjoying these photos so much. And I'm also trudging, mostly daily, through Duolingo in an effort to improve my French. As a result, I probably would have written La Paris moderne. Why is it Le?
ReplyDeleteI'm enjoying these photos so much. And I'm also trudging, mostly daily, through Duolingo in an effort to improve my French. As a result, I probably would have written La Paris moderne. Why is it Le?
ReplyDeleteIn general, the name of a town or city that ends in a consonant, like Paris, is treated as masculine. I think you could say something like Le Paris de mon enfance n'existe plus. But there are a lot of exceptions. I guess when I wrote Le Paris I was thinking of the expression le Tout-Paris (meaning "the in crowd" or "the smart set", "celebrities" — what they have taken to calling les people [pee-'puhl], with no final S, for the past 10 or 15 years). Maybe CHM will have something to say about this.
ReplyDeleteI see this sentence in Fr. Wikipédia: Le Grand Paris est un projet visant à transformer l’agglomération parisienne en une grande métropole mondiale du XXIe siècle...
DeleteInteresting question concerning the article in front of towns' names. Well, in my opinion and my usage, it is always LE. It doesn't matter if the name of a town ends with a consonant or a vowel. I'd say, le Nice et le Strasbourg de mon enfance. Ce n'est plus le Lille que j'ai connu. I have no idea why it is so.
DeleteOn dit le Vieux Nice, n'est-ce pas?. Mais Toulouse, Marseille, Rennes... Il paraît qu'il y a autant d'exceptions que de noms qui suivent la règle. C'est ce que dit Grevisse, en donnant beaucoup d'exemples.
DeleteComme d'habitude, il y a du flou dans les règles et les exceptions. Évidemment, s'il y a déjà un article dans le nom, il faut suivre son genre. Il serait idiot de dire La Rochelle est beau ou Le Havre est belle. Mais je crois que dans l'incertitude il y a tendance à masculiniser ou à dire la ville de ... est belle. La ville du Havre a été reconstruite.
DeleteThank you. I think what triggered my question was nothing so learned. Just that I saw the "e" on moderne and thought, "Aha, feminine." LOL. Also a certain amount of D'uh.
ReplyDeleteI spy the little Statue of Liberty in the first photo. If I make it to Paris in 2021 I may try staying in that neighborhood for a change. The cars in the pre Pompidou parking lot remind me of the cars I remember from the 60s. At that time American cars were huge- their size shocked me we I got back to the states and saw them again after a summer of seeing smaller cars.
ReplyDeleteI had that experience in the 70s, E. At some point when I was in Paris my N.C. driver's license expired. Or maybe it was when I exchanged it for a French license. So when I went back to N.C. I had to take the written and driving tests again so that I'd have a U.S. license. And guess what car I had to take the driving test in after tooliing around in Paris and all over France in tiny French Simcas, Renaults, and Citroëns. It was my father's big boat of an Oldsmobile! The examiner told me I had to do a three-point turn on a fairly narrow street, without letting the car's tires touch the curb. That was a disaster. Luckily, the examiner was a distant cousin (or at least had the same last name as my grandmother) who took pity on me and gave me my license anyway.
DeleteMy parents always drove Oldsmobiles. I still can do a three point turn, but my parallel parking is iffy.
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