L'Hôtel et l'Église des Invalides

Here's a short slideshow made up of photos I've taken around and in the Invalides over the past 20 years. Hope you enjoy some more armchair tourism (thanks, Mary, for the expression) the way I've been enjoying it.

We are having what might be our last hot day of the summer here in Saint-Aignan. Temperatures predicted to hit the upper 80s in ºF — around 30ºC. It'll be grilled vealburgers for lunch.

L'Hôtel des Invalides à Paris

This is a veterans' hospital in Paris. It was built under the reign of Louis XIV—  "the Sun King" — over the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th centuries. The church with the gold dome was for the royalty to use, not the veterans, they say. The veterans had their own chapel.

From the little bit of reading I've done, the Invalides complex has two the big claims to fame.

Besides its obvious magnificence, of course.

1. It was where the French Revolution started in 1789 when revolutionaries pillaged the arms supplies in the basement of the hospital on July 14 and headed off toward the Bastille with them.

2. The emperor Napoléon Ier's tomb is on perpetual display under the gilded dome of the Invalides church.

I know this is true because I've seen it. I didn't witness the pillaging in 1789... I've also seen the

Musée des Plans-Reliefs inside the building — it features scale models of French towns and their fortifications.

 

Napoleon's tomb stands on a pedestal under a dome like the one above, if I remember correctly.

It may even be imder this very dome. Here's what the tomb looks like:

 

I took the first picture and the last two in 2007 — the first from the top of the Eiffel Tower. The second and third photos are part of a set I took in 2015 from the top of the Tour Montparnasse.

Le Paris des gratte-ciel

For many days now, I've been posting photos of Paris that I've taken over the past 20 years from the top of the endlessly controversial Tour Montparnasse (une tour is a tower, as in la tour Eiffel). Just to make sure you know what building I'm talking about, here's a photo of the Tour Montparnasse (officially, in French, la tour Maine-Montparnasse — l'avenue du Maine is a main street in the area). A skyscraper is called un gratte-ciel in French.

Below is a panoramic photo showing where the Tour Montparnasse is located in relation to the Tour Eiffel. The two "towers" are nearly three kilometers (1.67 mi.) from each other. The Tour Eiffel is 300 meters tall — 984 ft. — and was completed in 1889. The Tour Montparnasse is 210 meters tall — 58 stories, 689 ft. — and was completed in the early 1970s. (I took this photo from the top of the Tour Saint-Jacques — 56 meters, or 185 ft., built built between 1508 and 1523 — which is on the Right Bank not far from Notre-Dame cathedral.)

The Hyatt Regency hotel on the western edge of Paris is 137 meters tall — 450 ft. — and was also built in the early 1970s. 
It's part of the Palais des Congrès (convention center/theatres) complex.

The tower below is called the Tour Zamansky or the Tour de Jussieu — 90 meters, nearly 300 ft.,

24 stories — and is part of the Pierre-et-Marie-Curie university campus
in the Latin Quarter, near the Panthéon. It was built in 1970.

These are some of the tall buildings out west of Paris in the area called La Défense. It's tallest buildings rise to a height of 320 meters.
The Wikipéda article  about La Défense lists 50 buildings that are taller than 95 meters.

On the eastern side of Paris stands the 1990s-era Bibliothèque François-Mitterrand (also called le site de Tolbiac after the surrounding neighborhood). It's is part of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (the French national library). Books are kept int four high-rise buildings that themselves resemble open books standing at its four corners. It was built in the 1980s and 1990s.

Le Paris moderne

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.