Paris_ City Guide (Lonely Planet, 7th Edition) - Lonely Planet [71]
Ste-Geneviève, the patroness of Paris, was born at Nanterre in AD 422 and turned Attila the Hun away from the city in AD 451. Now she stands, ghostly pale and turning her back on Paris, high above the Pont de la Tournelle (Map), just south of Île St Louis in the 5e. Plucky Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc) tried unsuccessfully to wrest Paris from the English almost a millennium later; her gilded likeness now stands in place des Pyramides (Map), next to 192 rue de Rivoli, 1er.
Henri IV, known as the Vert Galant (‘jolly rogue’ or ‘dirty old man’, depending on your perspective), sits astride his white stallion on the Pont Neuf (Map) in the 1er, exactly as he did when he inaugurated the ‘New Bridge’ in 1607. Charlemagne, emperor of the Franks, rides his steed under the trees in front of Cathédrale de Notre Dame (Map), while a poor imitation of the Sun King, Louis XIV, prances in place des Victoires (Map) in the 2e. Georges Danton, a leader of the Revolution and later one of its guillotined victims, stands with his head very much intact near the site of his house at carrefour de l’Odéon (Map) in the 6e.
Napoleon, horseless and in Roman drag, stands atop the column in place Vendôme (Map) in the 1er. The latest addition is a 3.6m-tall bronze of General Charles de Gaulle in full military regalia at the bottom of av des Champs-Élysées (Map), ready to march down to the Arc de Triomphe in a liberated Paris on 26 August 1944.
But it’s not just people who are immortalised. An illuminated bronze replica of New York’s Statue of Liberty (Map) faces the Big Apple from a long and narrow artificial island in the Seine. And have a look at the impressive Centaur statue in the centre of carrefour de la Croix Rouge (Map) in the 6e, which was sculpted by César Baldaccini. Impossible to miss, the statue of the mythological half-horse, half-man has disproportionate gonads the size of grapefruits. Now that’s what we call larger than life.
* * *
MUSÉE ERNEST HÉBERT Map
01 42 22 23 82; 85 rue du Cherche Midi, 6e; 12.30-6pm Mon & Wed-Fri, 2-6pm Sat & Sun; St-Placide
Portrait painter Ernest Hébert (1817–1908) did likenesses of society people of the Second Empire and the belle époque and was thus not short of a sou or two. The artist’s wonderful 18th-century townhouse and its baubles – not his saccharine, almost cloying portraits – is the draw here, though. The museum was closed for renovations at research time but should be open by the time you read this.
MUSÉE NATIONAL EUGÈNE DELACROIX Map
01 44 41 86 50; www.musee-delacroix.fr; 6 rue de Furstemberg, 6e; adult/under 18yr €5/free, 1st Sun of the month free; 9.30am-5pm Wed-Mon; Mabillon or St-Germain des Prés
The Eugène Delacroix Museum, in a courtyard off a leafy ‘square’, was the romantic artist’s home and studio when he died in 1863, and contains many of his oils, watercolours, pastels and drawings. If you want to see his major works, such as Liberty Leading the People, visit the Musée du Louvre or the Musée d’Orsay; here you’ll find many of his more intimate works (eg An Unmade Bed, 1828) and his paintings of Morocco.
MUSÉE ATELIER ZADKINE Map
01 55 42 77 20; www.zadkine.paris.fr, in French; 100bis rue d’Assas, 6e; admission free; 10am-6pm Tue-Sun
This museum covers the life and work of Russian cubist sculptor Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967), who arrived in Paris in 1908, and lived and worked in this cottage for almost 40 years. Zadkine produced an enormous catalogue of clay, stone, bronze and wood sculptures: one room displays figures he sculpted in contrasting walnut, pear, ebony, acacia, elm and oak. The occasional temporary exhibition commands a token admission fee.
Return to beginning of chapter
MONTPARNASSE
Drinking; Eating; Shopping; Sleeping
Less flamboyant than the Latin Quarter, less hip than Bastille and less audacious than Bercy, the unpretentious 14e arrondissement strikes a better balance than some perhaps: buzzing cafés, brasseries where Picasso and his mates put 1930s Paris