1st arr

The 1st arr is one of the most interesting, both in terms of history and present day.  It takes up a small area of the right bank and about half of the Ile de la Cite, one of the small islands in the Seine. 

It is the least populated, most visited, and most number of Parisian commuters per day.  This is because is has a huge amount of tourist attractions, tourist shops, restaurants, and businesses - and not a lot of residences.  Wikipedia tells me the 1st arr only has a total of one middle school and one high school.  Things you can find in the 1st arr: the Louvre museum; the Palais Royal (royal palace); the Tuileries gardens, which have the Orangerie and Jeu de Paume art museums; the churches of Ste Chapelle and St Eustache (my commentary on that one here); the Chatelet/Les Halles shopping district and commuter area; Place Vendome shopping area, which has many of the most exclusive jewelers and fashion designers; the "old" Bourse, the previous economic center of France, which is still very active in the government's economy; the headquarters of the Paris police; the Conciergerie, a huge former prison.

Essentially, you can't walk a couple of blocks in the 1st arr without finding another landmark.

I can't take credit for any of these pictures except the last one.

The old Bourse.  I guess was kind of the equivalent of the NY Stock Exchange.

The Place Vendome - the column is modeled on Trajan's column but describes Napoleon's exploits.  This one is a copy of the original, which was destroyed in the Commune uprising in 1871.

Inside Ste Chapelle.  The walls of this little church are almost entirely made of breathtaking 17th century stained glass.

The Tuileries gardens, just beyond the Louvre palace.  That ferris wheel is there seasonally but I'm not exactly sure when, as I don't think it was there this past summer.

St Eustache, next to Les Halles.

It's pretty easy to see why the 1st is the most visited arr in Paris, especially frequented by tourists and those who serve tourists.

As I mentioned in the last post, the 1st arr is considered the oldest area of Paris.  It's really not, as other areas were inhabited by the Gauls and Romans first, but the city of Paris as "Paris" was indeed more or less founded on the Ile de la Cite.  The government was set up just across the river, and from the fall of the Roman Empire until approximately the mid 17th century this tiny area of Paris ruled all of France.  The monarchs lived in the Louvre Palace (and its earlier incarnations) from early medieval times until the reign of Louis XIII (early 1600s), when they moved across the street to the Palais Royal.  They lived there for about 50 years until Louis XIV (mid-late 1600s) moved everyone to Versailles.  Almost the entirety of the French court - meaning all the nobles who made up the king's counsel and the minsters who ran the judicial system, the economy, the military, etc - had to live within an easy distance of the king, so most lived at least part of the time there, too.  For this reason the Bourse, which was the center of the economy until the 20th century and the central office of the police and military, were set up in the area, and the most important churches were there as well.

So this tiny area, not even one mile square, was the headquarters of France for almost one thousand years - and during much of that time France was the preeminent country in Western Europe.  It governed and created the culture and fashion for half a continent.

However, when Louis XIV moved the court outside Paris the two royal palaces were more or less abandoned and the nobles moved their homes away from the center of the city.  Members of the emerging middle class - so, bankers, merchants, etc - moved into the area and over the next century it had a strange dichotomy between these wealthy, business-minded bourgeois, and starving, homeless artists and vagabonds who squatted in the abandoned palaces and their grounds.

The Louvre itself was in such disrepair and provided shelter to so many homeless that the government considered demolishing it before the Revolution in the late 1700s.  This didn't happen in time, though, and when the revolutionaries took over the government they again made their headquarters in the Louvre and Palais Royal.  They destroyed the third royal palace, the Tuileries, during the Revolution, and all that remains of that today is the garden.

When Napoleon came to power he, too, decided to live for a time in the Louvre.  He was the one who started the art gallery in the palace that is now the most famous museum in the world.  He and his descendant Napoleon III built up their collections, which were seized but kept in the palace after the fall of the 2nd Empire in the mid 1800s.  From that point on the Louvre has only been a museum.

Two lesser-known museums are close by, as well: the Orangerie and the Jeu de Paume.  The Orangerie takes up an area that was dedicated to growing orange trees during the monarchy's tenure in the Tuilerie palace.  The museum was built specifically to house the large collection of Monets that the artist gave to the French government towards the end of his life.  He also gave instruction on how the building should be set up to display his paintings.  Today it has possibly the best collection of Impressionist paintings outside of the Musee d'Orsay, just across the river.  The Jeu de Paume is also a small museum, and it generally has rotating exhibits of lesser known, more modern artists.

Today, as you might imagine, it has a rather busy, impersonal atmosphere.  The architecture is gorgeous and the whole arr is nice to look at, but everything is very sterile, carefully set up to be a tourist trap.  I always like the idea of visiting the 1st arr but when I get there I'm generally frustrated by the hordes of slow-moving, lost tourists and the overpriced tourist shops that always seem to ooze out onto the sidewalks.  The restaurants aren't great (although it does contain Hemingway's favorite spot, which is kind of a cool, but way overpriced, bar) but not terrible, and generally cost too much for their quality.  If you've never been to Paris it's definitely worth a visit but unless you're in one of the many museums there is no reason to stay very long.

Best spots in the 1st arr: the Louvre (duh); the Orangerie; Ste Chapelle (and generally the Ile de la Cite); Angelina's, a cafe with the best hot chocolate ever; the little walking area right next to Les Halles; Bar Hemingway.