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Tag Archives: Paris
Gallagher: “If Venice Dies”
Mary Campbell Gallagher, founder of the International Coalition for the Preservation of Paris, has written a review of Salvadore Settis’s If Venice Dies for The New Criterion. Here is a direct link to her fine review, elegantly titled “La Serenissima” … Continue reading
Taking the plunge in Paris
If you have scratched your head at what looks like civic suicide in Paris, manifested by a desire to attack its beauty, an essay by Stephane Kirkland, “Paris in the Twenty-First Century,” might prove interesting. It appears that Parisian modernists, … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture
Tagged Grand Paris, Haussmann, Mary Campbell Gallagher, Modern Architecture, Paris, Reinvent Paris, SOS Paris, Stephane Kirkland
4 Comments
Riding by versus looking at
Yesterday I posted a couple of quotes from Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Of a taxi ride down the Boulevard Raspail, the author has his protagonist muse: “It is a street I do not mind walking down at all. But … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture
Tagged Alistair Horne, Haussmann, Hemingway, Le Corbusier, Paris, Streets
2 Comments
Hemingway on Paris, HLM
Before the scene shifts to Spain, Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises has some bits about Paris and Mencken, two favorites of mine in the pantheons of cities and writers. Hemingway’s protagonist, Jacob Barnes, takes a cab in Paris (circa 1925), … Continue reading
Fond adieu to Horne’s Paris
Here are several more passages lifted from the closing chapters of Alistair Horne’s engaging Seven Ages of Paris: Less felicitous were architectural scandals like the Tour Montparnasse (started in 1959, but not finished till 1973), greatest urban project since Haussmann, … Continue reading
More from ‘7 Ages of Paris’
Here are a couple more passages from Alistair Horne’s Seven Ages of Paris: The first two are from his section on the Second Empire: With so much borrowed from the past, was there (leaving aside the new apartment blocks) any … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture, Urbanism and planning
Tagged Alistair Horne, Charles Gautier, Haussmann, Paris, Paris Opera, Seven Ages of Paris
1 Comment
Is it art or art-I-choke?
Not difficult to answer that question. The victim is the Château de Rentilly, not far from Paris. The article about this transformation is “Old French Château Gets a Shiny Modern Makeover as New Art Space,” on ifitshipits- here.com (if it’s … Continue reading
London in 25 hard minutes
By hard I mean compared with the soft gray focus of the video in my last post, “Fifty soft minutes in Paris.” This is the Rick Steves tour of Britain’s capital. Steves’s voice is mellow enough, and the photography, unlike … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture, Video
Tagged Europe, Historic Architecture, London, Paris, Rick Steves, Tour, Video
3 Comments
Fifty soft minutes in Paris
Here is Paris, silent, with street noises and children noises, just shots of the City of Light for nearly an hour. Almost a little vacation there. No bad music, no irksome narrator, in any tongue. Just sit back and relax, … Continue reading
