This métro station in the 3rdarrondissement 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?
The Musée des Arts et Métiers. the Museum of Arts and Crafts in the 3rdarrondissement 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 pendulumMeters
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.
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.
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!
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!
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 upriverA street running perpendicular to the river – numbering starts near the river
Visiting Paris and your children need a break from Champs-Élysées and Louvre, Musée d’Orsay and Boulevard Saint Michel?
In the 4tharrondissement, 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.
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.
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.
La Défense is Europe’s largest purpose-built business district with 560ha (1,400acres). It is located outside the Paris city limits in the département Hauts-de-Seine. and divided between four municipalities: Puteaux, Courbevoie, Nanterre and La Garenne-Colombes.
The name stems from a monument called La Défense de Paris honoring the soldiers defending the city of Paris during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. It was inaugurated in 1883 and has since been moved several times to accommodate the changing business district that now bears its name.
180,000 people work here, while only about 25,000 people live in the apartments that can be found in between the office towers. La Défense can be reached on public transport with the métro 1 which has two stations, one at each extremity: Esplanade de La Défense and La Défense (Grande Arche), as well as with the RER A at the La Défense station.
The axis in its extension from the Champs-Élysées was drawn under Louis XV, but it was only in the 1960s that the business district began to grow. It went through several stages until it became the collection of skyscrapers that it is today. Currently its highest tower is the Tour First at 231m, which is also France’s highest skyscraper.
Visitors to La Défense will notice the long esplanade stretching along the center of the district and culminating in the Parvis square between the CNIT, the Quatre Temps Shopping Center and the Grande Arche.
The Parvis with the CNIT on the left and the Quatre Temps shopping mall to the right – in the distance, the Arc de Triomphe
The CNIT is the oldest building of La Défense and the largest unsupported concrete span enclosed space in the world. Entry is free, you just need to look up to see the impressive roof structure.
inside the CNIT
The Quatre Temps Shopping mall was the most visited shopping mall in France in 2019.
Below the esplanade hides a network of streets, the métro, the RER train, delivery docks, service and emergency access roads, and parking garages.
