Paris_ City Guide (Lonely Planet, 7th Edition) - Lonely Planet [98]
The 20-hectare Jardin d’Acclimatation ( 01 40 67 90 82; av du Mahatma Gandhi; adult/3-18yr €2.70/1.35, under 3yr free; 10am-7pm Jun-Sep, to 6pm Oct-May; Les Sablons), a kids-oriented amusement park whose name is another word for ‘zoo’ in French, includes the hi-tech Exploradôme ( 01 53 64 90 40; www.exploradome.com, in French; adult/4-18yr €5/3.50, under 4yr free), a tented structure devoted to science and the media.
The southern part of the wood takes in two horse-racing tracks, the Hippodrome de Longchamp for flat races and, for steeplechases, the Hippodrome d’Auteuil, as well as the Stade Roland Garros, home of the French Open tennis tournament Click here. Also here is the Tenniseum-Musée de Roland Garros ( 01 47 43 48 48; www.rolandgarros.com; 2 av Gordon Bennett, 16e; adult/under 18yr €7.5/4, with stadium visit €15/10; 10am-6pm Tue-Sun; Porte d’Auteuil), the world’s most extravagant tennis museum, tracing the sport’s 500-year history through paintings, sculptures and posters. Visitors to the museum can watch at least 200 hours of play from 1897 till today, including all of the French Open’s men’s singles matches since 1990 and interviews with all major players. Tours of the stadium take place at 11am in English and at 2.30pm and 4.30pm in French.
Rowing boats ( 01 42 88 04 69; per hr €10; 10am-6pm mid-Mar–mid-Oct) can be hired at Lac Inférieur (metro Av Henri Martin), the largest of the wood’s lakes and ponds. They sometimes open at the weekend in winter. Paris Cycles ( 01 47 47 76 50; per hr €5; 10am-7pm mid-Apr–mid-Oct) hires out bicycles at two locations in the Bois de Boulogne: on av du Mahatma Gandhi (metro Les Sablons), across from the Porte Sablons entrance to the Jardin d’Acclimatation amusement park, and near the Pavillon Royal (metro Av Foch) at the northern end of Lac Inférieur.
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LA DÉFENSE
It was one of the world’s most ambitious civil-engineering projects when development of Paris’ skyscraper business district, west of the 17e arrondissement, began in the 1950s. Today La Défense counts over 100 buildings, headquarters three-quarters of France’s largest 20 corporations and showcases extraordinary monumental art (Click here). By day more than 150,000 city-dwellers – mainly suits and execs – transform the oversized, nocturnal ghost town into a hive of high-flying urban activity; 20,000 people live here.
Architecture buffs will have a field day. First-generation buildings like the Centre des Nouvelles Industries et Technologies (Centre for New Industries & Technologies) – a giant ‘pregnant oyster’ inaugurated in 1958, extensively rebuilt 30 years later and revamped in 2008 as a shopping centre – feel tired. But later generations still excite: the 187m-high Total Coupole (1985) shimmers metallic blue and silver as its rises 48 floors up to the sky. The twin towers of the 161m-tall Cœur Défense (Défense Heart) stand over a light-filled atrium bigger than Notre Dame’s nave. Diagonally opposite, the elongated, oval-shaped Tour EDF (2001) – a triumphal solution to a relatively small space and as attractive a steel-and-glass skyscraper as you’ll find – almost undulates in the breeze that forever whips across place de la Défense. New for 2008 is Tour T1, a 185m-high sail in glass, and Société General’s Tour Granite, which post–September 11 was scaled down from 230m to 183m.
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WHAT’S IN A NAME
Skyscraper-camouflaged military installations, subterranean bunkers and a different James Bond gadget embedded in every mirrored window…forget it. There’s nothing militaristic about La Défense except its name, derived from a simple sculpture: La Défense de Paris was erected on place de la Défense in 1883 to commemorate the defence of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71.
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top picks
BEYOND CENTRAL PARIS
Basilique de St-Denis
Grande Arche de la Défense
Musée Marmottan-Monet
Stade de France