Category Archives: Paris

Cluny La Sorbonne

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The name of this métro station on line 10 indicates two important sites it serves – the Sorbonne University and the Hôtel de Cluny which houses the Musée national du Moyen Âge, the Museum of the Middle Ages (and also Roman thermal baths).

The station was opened in 1930, initially named only Cluny. At the beginning of WWII, in September 1939, it was closed and due to its proximity to the next station on either side, was not reopened for many years, becoming a “phantom station”. (There are still a few of those in Paris today.)

Cluny was finally reopened in December 1988 to create a correspondence with the RER B and C at the nearby station Saint Michel-Notre Dame (also served by line 4). For this occasion, the station undergoes a full renovation and is renamed Cluny-La Sorbonne.

When you enter the platform, you will immediate notice the mosaics on the ceiling, called The Birds, by French painter Jean Bazaine, as well as a number of mosaic signatures of famous Sorbonne students, among them Racine, Molière, and Victor Hugo.

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20,000 Leagues Under Paris

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This métro station in the 3rd arrondissement is served by the lines 3 and 11. It takes its name from the nearby National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts (Conservatoire national des Arts et Métiers) that today houses the excellent museum of the same name (Musée des Arts et Métiers).

The station was first opened in 1904 for line 3. Today, however, we will visit the platform of line 11 which joined line 3 in 1935. When you access the platform, you will find yourself in a steampunk Nautilus-style submarine. Everything is covered in copper, including the trash cans, and some giant gears hang from the ceiling. The seats are made from wood, and no billboards ruin the atmosphere.

Ready to dive Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea Paris?

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The Arts & Crafts Museum

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The Musée des Arts et Métiers. the Museum of Arts and Crafts in the 3rd arrondissement is dedicated to science and technology.

It occupies the premises of the former Priory of Saint Martin des Champs, which was nationalized during the French Revolution. Part of the museum is even housed in the former priory church.

Even though only about 2,500 of the over 80,000 objects and 15,000 drawings are on display, there are many treasures to discover, such as an original Foucault pendulum, the official meter and kilogram, printing presses, first-generation cars and planes, the original model of the Statue of Liberty or the first mechanical calculator.

The museum was first opened in 1802, at which time the different devices were explained to the visitors by demonstrators. The collection grew also thanks to the various World Fairs held in Paris.

The Foucault pendulum
Meters

The permanent exhibition is organized into seven collections, scientific instruments, materials, energy, mechanics, construction, communication, and transport, which are again subdivided into four time periods: before 1750, 1750-1850, 1850-1950, after 1950.

An object from a very recent period
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Below the Bastille

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Below the Bastille, three metro lines meet: line 1, line 5 with remains of an outer Bastille wall on the platform, discovered during the construction of that metro line, and line 8.

The line 1 platform is above-ground and on the eastbound side allows for a view of the Arsenal harbor basin. The walls on both sides are decorated with a 180m² ceramic tile fresco of scenes from the 1789 Revolution, created in 1989 for the bicentennial of the Revolution.

Below the platform, the Canal Saint Martin ends in the Arsenal harbor basin which in turn connects with the Seine east of Saint Louis island.

The station was opened in July 1900 as part of the first section of line 1 which ran from Porte de Vincennes (east) to Porte Maillot (west). It was built above the canal in order to avoid the foundations of the July column which dominates the Place de la Bastille.

Bastille was the last station on line 1 to have automatic doors installed as line 1 was automatized due to the difficulty of the curved shape of the platform.

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Louvre Rivoli

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This station on the line 1 is the oldest existing metro station – construction started in October 1898. Its name indicates its location at the intersection of the Rue de Rivoli and the Place du Louvre.

The station foregoes commercial advertisements and instead showcases copies of exhibit items from the Louvre, from Antiquity to the Middle Ages – a foretaste of a visit to the museum above!

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A station for crossword and scrabble lovers

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Concorde métro station was part of the very first metro line, the 1, it was opened in the summer of 1900. It takes the name of the Place de la Concorde above. However, barely two months after its inauguration, Concorde is the site of the very first metro accident, with 38 injured following a collision of two metro trains.
In 1910, metro line 12 is added to the station, later line 8.

The platform of line 12 will delight solvers of crossword puzzles and players of Scrabble with its lettered ceramic tiles. Do you have the patience to read the text, namely the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789? It is spelled out without spaces, and if you are looking for punctuation marks, you can find them neatly grouped at the bottom!

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Street numbers follow the river

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Did you know there is a logic to the street numbers in Paris? There is, and it’s really quite simple and has helped me many times in pre-cell phone days or when I am on a bike and my phone is in my pocket.

The rule is very simple and distinguishes streets running (roughly) perpendicular to the river and streets running (again, roughly) parallel to the river.

For the perpendicular streets, numbering starts on the end closest to the river. Uneven numbers are on the left, even numbers on the right. So if you’re looking for a number higher than the one in front of you, go away from the river.

For the parallel streets, numbering starts upriver. The south side of the street will have the uneven numbers, the north side the even numbers. So if you’re looking for a number higher than the one in front of you, go downriver.

Easy-peasy, right?

A street running parallel to the river – numbering starts upriver
A street running perpendicular to the river – numbering starts near the river
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A little bit of Magic in Paris

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Visiting Paris and your children need a break from Champs-Élysées and Louvre, Musée d’Orsay and Boulevard Saint Michel?

In the 4th arrondissement, between the Rue de Rivoli and the Seine, nestled in between storefronts of the Rue Saint Paul, hides one of Paris’ smaller and less-well-known museums – the Musée de la Magie.

Enter and immediately descend a flight of stairs into the underground realm of Magic and Automatons. A hundred automatons await you and your children, wind-up toys, optical illusions, magic mirrors and more. And of course, a magic show.

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Beavers, chameleons, and an unlucky bunny

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If you come to Paris at a certain time of the year, or stay for a while and use public transport on a regular basis, you might come across some animals.

First up: Serge le lapin, the official Paris metro bunny and quite probably the stupidest and/or unluckiest bunny in France.
Serge has been around for 45 years, getting his paws stuck in the sliding metro doors. I’ve also spotted him getting hurt on the escalator.

So far so good, but what are the chameleon and the beaver doing on Paris transport? I’ll let you make a guess first, just for fun.

I’m sure you didn’t get it, it’s very far-fetched.

Caméléon (chameleon) and castor (beaver) are the names of two different replacement services. Caméléon busses jump into action when one of the RATP’s ten tram lines is interrupted for one hour or more.

Castor (beaver) is the name of the replacement bus service for the central Paris section of the RER C train that runs along the Seine river through aging tunnels . The almost two decade long “Beaver works” project takes place every summer when the section is closed down entirely for a month or longer, and the “beaver buses” take over.  Since this is high tourist season, and the closed section of the RER train includes Notre Dame, Musée d’Orsay, Invalides and the Eiffel Tower, it might actually be useful to know.

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La Grande Arche

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La Grande Arche, the Great Arch, is the western end point of the axe historique. It was one of French president François Mitterrand’s “grands projets”, inaugurated in 1989 at the bicentennial of the French Revolution. A 110m high cube, it houses government offices and a viewing platform.

As with the Louvre, the Grande Arche is not centered on the axis but at a 6.5° angle. The reason for this is technical: below the parvis run a highway, the metro and the RER train, and the foundations would have stood right in the way of those. As it is, the shift shows off the depth of the monument.

La Grande Arche was initially known as La Grande Arche de la Fraternité  (The Great Arch of Fraternity) but is referred to as La Grande Arche de la Défense or simply La Grande Arche.

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