Considering all the cities in the world, only a small percentage of them have museums large enough that a repeat visit is a necessity to take in every piece of distinguished art. Paris tops them all, as it is said it would take the average person three months to thoughtfully consider each piece of art on view at the Louvre for four seconds. And who could possibly spend only four seconds with the Mona Lisa or the Winged Victory? The 60,000 square meters of exhibition space within the museum houses 35,000 works of art, and the curatorial staff is constantly adding new masterpieces to its collection. Most recently, “The Denial of St Peter” by one of the Le Nain brothers was donated to the museum.
History permeates almost every cobblestone and cornerstone in this City that is said to date back to 250 BC. Though its “banks” get most of the attention, a visit to two natural islands within Paris’ city limits will have you pondering the mists of time. On the Ile de la Cité, the Sainte-Chapelle was built by Louis IX to house relics of the Passion of Christ, which he purchased from Byzantine emperor Baldwin II in 1239. The Ile Saint Louis is home to Notre Dame with its flying buttresses and gargoyles keeping watch above the city’s skyline. Built between 1163 and 1345, the Notre Dame de Paris is awe-inspiring considering the construction methods of the time. The bells that toll from the massive steeples fingering into the sky can be heard from the entire island and much of the Left Bank, evoking the mournful unrequited love of Quasimodo and Esmeralda in Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame. These dollops of land set into the Seine like jewels in a crown evoke history with a capital “H.”
If there is a city forever linked to couture, it is Paris, and the addresses where fashion resides are the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré and the nearby Avenue Montaigne where nearly every major global fashion house has a boutique opening onto its sidewalks. Only a handful of storefronts are not dedicated solely to high-style fashion brands and couture, and when the semi-annual fashion weeks debut autumn and winter collections in January, and spring and summer collections in September, these streets are alive with decked-out devotees of all things fashion. Anyone whose heart palpitates when thinking of the elite designers of the world and their impact on the style-consciousness of today’s global culture will want to stroll along these thoroughfares, even if the order of a bit of window shopping.