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Paris History One Translate App Away
The upside down paddles on the sidewalks around Paris are history markers of the city. The Philippe Starck-designed paddles are in French. When walking and not speaking French you can read them. Shocking? No. Simply install the Google Translate application on your smartphone. How to do it follows this short story. Background story The paddles first appeared in 1992, the year I moved to Paris. The city of Paris contracted with JCDecaux to install the “pelles Starck” to inform the strolling passer-by about a monument, an event, an historical moment, a theater, a passage, etc. Jacques Chirac, then mayor of Paris, initiated the project. For me the shape of the…
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Paris Art Déco with Walk My Steps
The design style of Art Déco is a hobby for some Paris visitors. This modern style was a focus for a Chicago couple one Saturday afternoon on a tour with Walk My Steps. Our guide, Andrea, introduced us to one neighborhood of Paris in the sixteenth arrondissement that traces the eclectic, ....
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Angels of Paris Tour Marais
Scattered around the third and fourth arrondissements of Paris are sculpted angels on buildings. The buildings range in century ages from 1400s to 1600s to 1700s to 1800s to the early 1900s. After 1914, the angels become living relics of the past yet still enjoyable...
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Inspiring Comtesse Greffulhe at Galliera
The Comtesse Greffulhe did not follow fashion, she dictated fashion for all in Paris society to follow. She inspired Marcel Proust and fashion designers. Until March 20, 2016, Palais Galliera, Musée de la Mode, is displaying Comtesse Greffulhe's wardrobe collection "La Mode retrouvée" (Finding lost fashion). The collection moves to New York's Museum at FIT in September 2016 under the title "Proust's Muse". As with most women who are "clothes horses" ....
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Artist, Beauford Delaney Exhibit in Paris
The works of Beauford Delaney, a figurative, abstract expressionist, i.e., modernist painter, are being shown in the first solo exhibition since 1992. The exhibit, Beauford Delaney: Resonance of Form and Vibration of Color, opens February 3 with a Vernissage in Paris in the Grande Salle at Columbia Global Centers Europe at Reid Hall (Columbia University’s Paris facility), 4 Rue de Chevreuse, 75006 Paris, Metro: Vavin line 4. Any questions or want an invitation to the vernissage......
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Rosemary Flannery’s Angels of Paris
How do you view Paris? With an angel on her shoulder, Rosemary Flannery views Paris through angel eyes. Rosemary is the author of the book, "Angels of Paris, an Architectural Tour through the History of Paris". Rosemary wrote the text and took the photos, even if it included carrying a ladder around to get the best angle of an angel. I only recently discovered this book, a little slow on my part, but that shows the timelessness of a subject that dates back....
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Roaring Twenties Paris with Edith
Often it is the Expats who write Paris blogs. Now you can get the true French stories directly from a Parisienne's pen. Her pen name "Edith" comes from Edith Piaf. Both women were born on the same rue de Belleville street, although as Edith says on her Edith's Paris blog, they are not of the same vintage....
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Paris Parks begin Winter Hours
Walking through Square Louis XIII (also known as Place des Vosges), my short cut route was cut short. The route became the long way around! The corner where I usually exit was already locked! And then I heard a hint of why."Le square ferme. Mesdames, Messieurs et Mesdemoiselles*, le square ferme," he called out. To my surprise the 7:30 pm closing time was no longer; it was now 5:45 pm! The majority of Paris park changed to winter time when the clocks fell back an hour. ...
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Exhibit: Viollet-le-Duc, Visions of an Architect
Viollet-le-Duc renovated the crumbling walls and put his imprint on about one hundred French monuments, including Vézelay, Pierrefonds, Notre-Dame de Paris, Carcassonne, Saint-Sernin. At la Cité de l’architecture & du patrimoine until March 9, 2015, all of the signage and labels are in French and English. An opportunity for the public to see for the first time a considerable quantity of newly acquired graphic drawings and writing and relate to the public the various facets of this temperamental artist. This retrospective exhibit celebrates the two hundredth anniversary of his birth.
