A city walk in Paris from E to W, visting the major locations and buildings

Cimetière du Père-Lachaise

20ème Arrondissement Paris

The Cimetière du Père-Lachaise is one of the famous graveyards of Paris. The graves of many famous people can be found here: Karel Appel (the Dutch painter), Honoré de Balzac (French novelist of the 19th century), Gilbert Becaud (French singer), Sarah Bernhardt (French stage and film actress), Georges Bizet (French composer and conductor), Maria Callas (Greek opera singer, only the empty urn is here, the ashes were scattered into the Aegean Sea), Frédéric Chopin (Polish composer, his heart is not here because it is entombed within a pillar at the Holy Cross Church in Warsaw), Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre (mathematician), Max Ernst 'German painter), Georges Haussmann (French civil engineer and town planner), Moliere (French playwright), Jim Morrison (American singer and songwriter with The Doors), Jean Moulin (leader of the French Resistance during World War II, but moved to the Panthéon in 1964)), Felix Nadar (French photographer), Michel Petrucciani (French Jazz pianist), Édith Piaf (French singer), Marcel Proust (French intellectual, novelist), Georges Rodenbach (Belgian poet), Edmond James de Rothschild (Baron of the Rothschild family), Simone Signoret (Academy-award winning French actress), Gerda Taro (German war photographer and the great love of Robert Capa), Claude Victor-Perrin (French military commander and Marshal of France), Louis Visconti (French architect best known for designing the modern Louvre and Napoleon's tomb at Les Invalides), Marie, Countess Walewski (Napoleon's mistress, only her heart is entombed here), Oscar Wilde (Irish novelist, poet and playwright - Wilde's admirers kiss the art-deco monument while wearing lipstick),

Grave of Jim Morrison

20ème Arrondissement Paris

Grave of Jim Morrison (the Doors)

Place des Vosges

4ème Arrondissement Paris

The Place des Vosges is the oldest square in Paris. The Place des Vosges was built by Henry IV from 1605 to 1612. It embodied the first European program of royal city planning. It was inaugurated in 1612 with a grand carrousel to celebrate the wedding of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria. It is the prototype of all the residential squares of European cities that were to come.

Bastille

4ème Arrondissement Paris

The storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789 is considered the beginning of the French Revolution.

The Bastille was built as the Bastion de Saint-Antoine during the Hundred Years' War. After the war, it was reused as a state prison. It largely held common criminals as well as people imprisoned for religious reasons and those responsible for printing or writing forbidden pamphlets. People of high rank were sometimes held there too. But the secrecy maintained around the Bastille and its prisoners gave it a sinister reputation.

The confrontation that led to the people of Paris storming the Bastille on 14 July 1789 resulted from the fact that gunpowder and arms had been stored there, and the people demanded access to these.

The French national holiday, celebrated annually on 14 July is officially the Fête Nationale, and officially commemorates the Fête de la Fédération, is also known as Bastille Day.

Colonne de Juillet

11ème Arrondissement Paris

The Colonne de Juillet commemorates the Trois Glorieuses, the "three glorious" days in July 1830 that saw the fall of Charles X of France.

On top, you see the Génie de la Liberté, showing the torch of civilisation and the remains of his broken chains.

Jardin des Plantes

5ème Arrondissement Paris

The Jardin des Plantes is the main botanical garden in France. The garden was originally planted by Guy de La Brosse, Louis XIII's physician, in 1626 as a medicinal herb garden. It was originally known as the Jardin du Roi. In 1640 it opened to the public.

The Jardin des Plantes maintains a botanical school, which trains botanists, constructs demonstration gardens, and exchanges seeds to maintain biotic diversity.

A large Art Deco wintergarden, and Mexican and Australian hothouses display regional plants, not native to France.

Le Museum d'histoire naturelle

5ème Arrondissement Paris

The Jardin des Plantes includes four galleries of Le Museum d'histoire naturelle: the Grande Galerie de l'Évolution, the Mineralogy Museum, the Paleontology Museum and the Entomology Museum.

Lycée Henri-IV

5ème Arrondissement Paris

The public secondary school Lycée Henri-IV is widely regarded as one of the most demanding in France. It has famous alumni such as the British Engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, writer Guy de Maupassant, philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, politician Maurice Schumann,... As teachers, they had zoologist Georges Cuvier and French president, Georges Pompidou on their stafflist.

Panthéon

5ème Arrondissement Paris

In 1851, physicist Léon Foucault demonstrated the rotation of the Earth by his experiment conducted in the Panthéon, by constructing a 67 meter Foucault pendulum beneath the central dome.

Cimetière du Montparnasse

14ème Arrondissement Paris

The Cimetière du Montparnasse is one of the famous cemeteries of Paris. Here you can find the tomb of Charles Baudelaire (the poet and writer), Frédéric Bartholdi (the sculptor of the Statue of Liberty), Simone de Beauvoir (philosopher & writer), Samuel Beckett (Irish author, playwright & poet) , Julio Cortázar (Argentine writer), Serge Gainsbourg (poet and singer), Eugène Ionesco (playwrighter), Guy de Maupassant (author), Jules Henri Poincaré, (mathematician and physicist), Jean-Paul Sartre (French philosopher & novelist), Paul Vidal de la Blache (geographer), Ossip Zadkine (Russian-born sculptor & artist), ...

Tour Montparnasse

15ème Arrondissement Paris

Tour Montparnasse is a 210-meter (689 ft) tall office skyscraper. It is the tallest skyscraper in France.

Église Saint-Sulpice

6ème Arrondissement Paris

In 1777, Architect Jean Chalgrin, who also designed the Arc de Triomphe partly remodelled the interior of Church of Saint-Sulpice, which had been given a thoroughly neoclassical façade by Chalgrin's former master Servandoni forty years before.

Luxembourg Palace

6ème Arrondissement Paris

The Palais du Luxembourg, the seat of French Senate. To make is suitable as the seat of the Directoire, architect Jean Chalgrin, who also designed the Arc de Triomphe, made the alterations.

La Sorbonne

5ème Arrondissement Paris

In 1894 the International Olympic Committee was born in the rooms of this university.

Collège de France

5ème Arrondissement Paris

The Collège de France is a higher education and research institute, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne. The architect Jean Chalgrin extended the Collège de France. Jean Chalgrin was also the architect of the Arc de Triomphe.

Quartier latin

5ème Arrondissement Paris

The Quartier latin got its name from the Latin language, which, as the international language of learning in the Middle Ages, was once widely spoken in and around the University which is located in this area. This area is also home to the École Normale Supérieure, the École des Mines de Paris (a ParisTech institute), the Schola Cantorum, and the Jussieu university campus.

Église Saint-Séverin

5ème Arrondissement Paris

The bells of Église Saint-Séverin include the oldest one remaining in Paris, cast in 1412. Their ringing is recalled in a well known poem in praise of Paris by the American poet Alan Seeger, who died in World War I. He was killed in action at Belloy-en-Santerre. One of his more famous poems was "I Have a Rendezvous with Death". He was a friend and old classmate of T. S. Eliot at Harvard.

Point Zéro

4ème Arrondissement Paris

All road distances in France are calculated from the "zero kilometer" point located in the Place du Parvis de Notre-Dame, the square facing Notre-Dame's west end-towers.

Île de la Cité

4ème Arrondissement Paris

The Île de la Cité is one of two natural islands in the Seine. It is the centre of Paris and the location where the medieval city was refounded.

Clovis established a Merovingian palace on the island, which became the capital of Merovingian Neustria.

The Île de la Cité remains the heart of Paris. All road distances in France are calculated from the "zero kilometer" point located in the Place du Parvis de Notre-Dame, the square facing Notre-Dame's west end-towers.

Execution spot Jacques de Molay

1er Arrondissement Paris

At this location, Jacques de Molay, last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, was burned on March 18, 1314. This spot is located by the stairs from the Pont-Neuf bridge, facing the trees at the tip of the island.

Pont Neuf

1er Arrondissement Paris

The Pont Neuf is the oldest standing bridge across the river Seine in Paris. It connects the Rive Gauche of Paris with the Rive Droite.

The last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake on the Île de la Cité near the Pont Neuf, on 18 March 1314. The execution was ordered by Philippe le Bel (Philip the Fair).

At the point where the bridge crosses the Île de la Cité, there stands a bronze equestrian statue of Henri IV.

Boulevard de Strasbourg

10ème Arrondissement Paris

Georges-Eugène Haussmann, better known as Baron Haussmann was hired by Napoleon III on 22 June 1852 to "modernize" Paris. He created broad avenues linked to the main train-stations so army troops from the provinces could be operative in a short amount of time (for example, the boulevard de Strasbourg near Gare de l'Est and Gare du Nord).

Folies-Bergère

9ème Arrondissement Paris

The French painter Édouard Manet depicts a scene in the Folies Bergère nightclub in Paris and mad his famous oil on canvas "A Bar at the Foleis-Bergère. You can see it in the Courtald Institute of Art in London.

Stade de France

Saint-Denis

The Stade de France is the national stadium of France. It has an all-seater capacity of 80,000. It is is used for the French rugby union team. The French football team also use the stadium for almost every home game.

Since its opening in 1998, the Stade de France has become a popular touring venue for high-profile recording artists such as The Rolling Stones, Johnny Hallyday, Celine Dion, , Tina Turner, AC/DC, Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, U2, George Michael, The Police, Madonna, Johnny Hallyday, Depeche Mode,...

Cimetière de Montmartre

18ème Arrondissement Paris

The Cimetière de Montmartre is a famous cemetery of Paris. It contains the graves of many famous people such as André-Marie Ampère (physicist after who the unit ampere is named), Hector Berlioz (composer), Dalida (Egyptian-born singer/actress), Edgar Degas (famous painter, sculptor), Léon Foucault (French physicist best known for the invention of the Foucault pendulum), Jacques Offenbach (French composer of German descent), Adolphe Sax (Belgian instrument artisan and inventor of the saxophone),...

Hotel Ritz

1er Arrondissement Paris

The Hôtel Ritz is a hotel located at 15 Place Vendôme.

The Ritz family sold the hotel to Egyptian businessman, Mohamed Al-Fayed. On August 31, 1997, Dodi Al-Fayed and his companion, Diana, Princess of Wales, had visited the Ritz when they crashed in the nearby Pont de l'Alma road tunnel.

The hotel became a favorite of many of the world's wealthiest people, including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Marcel Proust, King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, Iranian leader Reza Shah, Rudolph Valentino, Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Maurice Chevalier, Jean-Paul Sartre, Elton John, plus couturier Coco Chanel who made the Ritz her home for more than thirty years.

Place Vendôme

1er Arrondissement Paris

Place Vendôme was laid out in 1702 as a monument to the glory of the armies of Louis XIV. The Hôtel Ritz Paris is located here.
The Place Vendôme Column at the center was erected by Napoleon to commemorate the battle of Austerlitz.

Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume

1er Arrondissement Paris

Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume was used from 1940 to 1944 to store Jewish cultural property looted by the Nazi regime in France.

The museum was visited by high ranking Nazi officials such as Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring.

Some of the art was destined for the Fuehrermuseum in Linz, while the Nazis attempted to sell so-called 'degenerate art' (modern art unworthy in the eyes of the Nazis) on the international art market. Unsold art (including works by Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali) were destroyed on a bonfire in the grounds of the Jeu de Paume on night of 27 July 1942.

There is still a memorial plaque on the wall.

Source: Wikipedia

Musée de l'Orangerie

1er Arrondissement Paris

The Musée de l'Orangerie is an art gallery of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings. It contains works by Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Rousseau, Chaim Soutine, Alfred Sisley and Maurice Utrillo among others.

The gallery is on the bank of the Seine in the old orangery of the Tuileries Palace on the Place de la Concorde near the Concorde metro station.

Place de la Concorde

8ème Arrondissement Paris

During the French Revolution, there was a statue of Louis XV. It was torn down and the area renamed "Place de la Révolution". Here, at that square, the new revolutionary government erected the guillotine here. Famous people such as King Louis XVI, Queen Marie Antoinette, Madame Élisabeth, Charlotte Corday, Madame du Barry, Danton, Desmoulins, Lavoisier, Robespierre, Louis de Saint-Just and Olympe de Gouge were killed here.

Now, the center of the Place de la Concorde is occupied by a giant Egyptian obelisk decorated with hieroglyphics exalting the reign of the pharaoh Ramses II. It is one of two the Egyptian government gave to the French in the nineteenth century. The other one stayed in Egypt, too difficult and heavy to move to France with the technology at that time. In the 1990s, President François Mitterrand gave the second obelisk back to the Egyptians.

Hôtel de Crillon

8ème Arrondissement Paris

The Hôtel de Crillon in Paris is one of the oldest luxury hotels in the world. This luxury hotel was frequented by Queen Marie Antoinette and her elite friends.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt staeyd here as he made his way on an inspection tour in 1918. President Woodrow Wilson and the entire American delegation stayed at the Crillon in 1919. Other American Presidents who called the Crillon a temporary home were Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon.

Other famous customers were Joseph P. Kennedy family , George V of the United Kingdom, Hassan II of Morocco, Japan's Emperor Hirohito, Jacqueline Onassis, Barbara Hutton, Charlie Chaplin, Porfirio Rubirosa, Orson Welles, Elizabeth Taylor, and Tyrone Power, Axl Rose, Allan Bloom, Saul Bellow, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mariah Carey, Roger Federer, Placido Domingo, Madonna, and Lance Armstrong stayed here after his Tour de France wins.

Maxim's Paris

8ème Arrondissement Paris

The restaurant Maxim's is known for its art nouveau interior decor. Maxim's was founded during the Belle Époque, on April 7, 1893. A popular Parisian urban myth has Ho Chi Minh working at Maxim's as a busboy and waiter when he was living as an exile in Paris in the early 1920s.

St. Philippe-du-Roule

8ème Arrondissement Paris

Architect Jean Chalgrin designed the Arc de Triomphe and also the his neoclassical Church of St. Philippe-du-Roule.

Arc de Triomphe

8ème Arrondissement Paris

In 1758, there was a proposal by the French architect Charles Ribart for an elephant-shaped building on the location of the current Arc de Triomphe. The French Government, however, was not amused and turned it down.

Avenue de la Grande Armée

17ème Arrondissement Paris

Avenue de la Grande Armée is one of Baron Haussmann's twelve grand avenues he designed, radiating from the Arc de Triomphe. He was asked by Napoleon to make his Paris modern.

La Défense

Courbevoie

The business district of La Défense

Grande Arche de la Fraternité

Puteaux

La Grande Arche de la Fraternité is usually known as the Arche de la Défense or simply as La Grande Arche. Danish architect Johann Otto von Spreckelsen designed the winning entry to be a 20th century version of the Arc de Triomphe. It has a prestressed concrete frame covered with glass and Carrara marble from Italy.