The Musée Jacquemart-André is a private museum located at 158 Boulevard Haussmann in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. The museum was created from the private home of Édouard André (1833–1894) and Nélie Jacquemart (1841–1912) to display the art they collected during their lives.
Édouard André, the scion of a Protestant banking family, devoted his considerable fortune to buying works of art. He then exhibited them in his new mansion built in 1869 by the architect Henri Parent, and completed in 1875.
André married a well-known society painter, Nélie Jacquemart, who had painted his portrait ten years earlier. The couple travelled in Italy, amassing one of the finest collections of Italian art in France. When Edouard André died, Nélie Jacquemart completed the decoration of the Italian Museum and travelled in the Orient to add more precious works to the collection. Faithful to the plan agreed with her husband, she bequeathed the mansion and its collections to the Institut de France as a museum, and it opened to the public in 1913.
The Church of Saint-Sulpice is a Roman Catholic church in Paris, on the east side of Place Saint-Sulpice, in the Latin Quarter of the 6th arrondissement. It is only slightly smaller than Notre-Dame and thus the second-largest church in the city. It is dedicated to Sulpitius the Pious, a seventh century bishop and saint.
The present church is the second building on the site, erected over a Romanesque church originally constructed during the 13th century. Additions were made over the centuries, up to 1631. The current building was founded in 1646 by parish priest Jean-Jacques Olier (1608–1657) who had established the Society of Saint-Sulpice, a clerical congregation, and a seminary attached to the church.
The church is mentioned in Dan Brown’s 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code, an international bestseller that brought crowds of tourists to Saint-Sulpice.
The Marquis de Sade and Charles Baudelaire were baptized in Saint-Sulpice in 1740 and 1821, respectively. The church also saw the marriage of Victor Hugo to Adèle Foucher in 1822.
The Memorial honors Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during World War II and the 34th President of the United States.
The Memorial is across the street from the National Air and Space Museum and is surrounded by the U.S. Department of Education, the Federal Aviation Administration, Voice of America, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Southwest Washington.
Architect Frank Gehry designed the Memorial. Gehry was born in Toronto in 1929 as Frank Owen Goldberg. His father was born in Brooklyn to Russian Jewish parents, and his mother was a Polish Jewish immigrant. Gehry has won major commissions and established himself as one of the world’s most notable architects. For example, his works include the Walt Disney Concert Hall (2003) in downtown Los Angeles.
Gehry’s design features three bronze statues of Eisenhower by the Russian-born sculptor Sergey Eylanbekov, one featuring General Eisenhower with troops from the 101st Airborne the day before the invasion of Normandy, another sculpture depicting President Eisenhower in the White House surrounded by civilian and military advisors, and a third portraying “Little Ike” in his boyhood.
The Memorial highlights passages from notable Eisenhower addresses. Framing the entire memorial is a stainless steel woven tapestry by artist Tomas Osinski , who was born in Poland. The tapestry depicts the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc on the Normandy coastline. Pointe du Hoc was the highest point between the American sector landings at Utah Beach to the west and Omaha Beach to the east. On D-Day, the United States Army Ranger Assault Group attacked and captured Pointe du Hoc after scaling the cliffs.
The Hope Diamond is a 45.52-carat diamond originally extracted in the 17th century from the Kollur Mine in Guntur, India. It is blue in color due to trace amounts of boron.
The earliest records of the diamond show that French gem merchant Jean-Baptiste Tavernier purchased it in 1666 as the Tavernier Blue. The stone was cut and renamed the French Blue (Le bleu de France); Tavernier sold the stone to King Louis XIV of France in 1668.
On September 11, 1792, while Louis XVI and his family were imprisoned in the Square du Temple during the early stages of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, a group of thieves broke into the Royal Storehouse—the Hôtel du Garde-Meuble de la Couronne (now Hôtel de la Marine)—stealing most of the Crown Jewels in a five-day looting spree. While many jewels were later recovered, including other pieces of the Order of the Golden Fleece, the French Blue was not among them and it disappeared from history.
In 1812, a deep blue diamond described by John Francillion as weighing 177 grains (4 grains = 1 carat) was documented as being in the possession of London diamond merchant, Daniel Eliason. Strong evidence indicates that the stone was the recut French Blue and the same stone known today as the Hope Diamond.
Several references suggest that it was acquired by King George IV of the United Kingdom. At his death, in 1830, the king’s debts were so enormous that the blue diamond was likely sold through private channels.
The first reference to the diamond’s next owner is found in the 1839 entry of the gem collection catalog of the well-known Henry Philip Hope, the man from whom the diamond takes its name. Unfortunately, the catalog does not reveal where or from whom Hope acquired the diamond or how much he paid for it.
Following the death of Henry Philip Hope in 1839, and after much litigation, the diamond passed to his nephew Henry Thomas Hope and ultimately to the nephew’s grandson Lord Francis Hope. In 1901 Lord Francis Hope obtained permission from the Court of Chancery and his sisters to sell the stone to help pay off his debts. It was sold to a London dealer who quickly sold it to Joseph Frankels and Sons of New York City, who retained the stone in New York until they, in turn, needed cash. The diamond was next sold to Selim Habib who put it up for auction in Paris in 1909. It did not sell at the auction but was sold soon after to C.H. Rosenau and then resold to Pierre Cartier that same year.
In 1910 the Hope Diamond was shown to Mrs. Evalyn Walsh McLean, of Washington D.C., at Cartier’s in Paris, but she did not like the setting. Cartier had the diamond reset and took it to the U.S. where he left it with Mrs. McLean for a weekend. This strategy was successful. The sale was made in 1911 with the diamond mounted as a headpiece on a three-tiered circlet of large white diamonds. Sometime later it became the pendant on a diamond necklace as we know it today. Mrs. McLean’s flamboyant ownership of the stone lasted until her death in 1947.
Harry Winston Inc. of New York City purchased Mrs. McLean’s entire jewelry collection, including the Hope Diamond, from her estate in 1949.
For the next 10 years the Hope Diamond was shown at many exhibits and charitable events world wide by Harry Winston Inc., including as the central attraction of their Court of Jewels exhibition. On November 10, 1958, they donated the Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian Institution, and almost immediately the great blue stone became its premier attraction. It’s on display at the National Museum of Natural History.
The American Red Cross National Headquarters in Washington, D.C was built between 1915 and 1917. It serves both as a memorial to women who served in the American Civil War and as the headquarters building for the American Red Cross. The building was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965.
The American Red Cross was founded in 1881 in the aftermath of the American Civil War as a public-private partnership to provide disaster relief and medical support for military forces.
Free, guided tours are offered Wednesdays and Fridays at 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. by reservation only.
The hôtel de la Marine (also known as the hôtel du Garde-Meuble) is an historic building located on Place de la Concorde in Paris, to the east of rue Royale. It was designed and built between 1757 and 1774 by the architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel, on the newly created square first called Place Louis XV. The identical building to its west, constructed at the same time, now houses the hôtel de Crillon and the Automobile Club of France.
The hôtel de la Marine was originally the home of the royal Garde-Mobile, the office managing the furnishing of all royal properties. Following the French Revolution it became the Ministry of the French Navy, which occupied it until 2015. It was entirely renovated between 2015 and 2021. It now displays the restored 18th century apartments of Marc-Antoine Thierry de Ville-d’Avray, the King’s Intendant of the Garde-Meuble, as well the salons and chambers later used by the French Navy.
Major historical events have taken place in the hôtel de la Marine:
On 16 September 1792, the Crown Jewels were stolen at the Hôtel de la Marine. At night, around forty people got inside the reception room where the jewels were displayed and stole goods worth around 30 million French francs. Most of the jewels were found again two years later. However, The French Blue (Le bleu de France) was not recovered. It reappeared 20 years later in England, completely recut with the largest section of the diamond appearing under the Hope name in an 1839 gem catalog from the Hope banking family. The Hope Diamond is now in the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
In a room overlooking Place de la Concorde Marie Antoinette’s death warrant was signed. She was guillotined on 16 October 1793 on Place de la Concorde. She was 37 years old.
On 27 April 1848, in the office of minister François Arago in the Hôtel de la Marine, the decree to abolish slavery in the French colonies was signed in Paris. Victor Schœlcher, an ardent defender of human rights, was the man behind this historic decision.
The renovation is beautiful. The views of Paris monuments are exceptional.
The Sainte-Chapelle is the finest royal chapel to be built in France. The chapel is filled with 1,113 stained glass windows illustrating the Bible. Construction of the chapel began sometime after 1238 and it was consecrated on April 26, 1248. King Louis IX of France commissioned the chapel to house his collection of Passion relics, including Christ’s Crown of Thorns – one of the most important relics in medieval Christendom. This was later held in the nearby Notre-Dame Cathedral until the 2019 fire, which it survived.
Along with the Conciergerie, Sainte-Chapelle is one of the earliest surviving buildings of the Capetian royal palace on the Île de la Cité. The Capetian dynasty was the ruling house of France from 987 to 1328. Although damaged during the French Revolution and restored in the 19th century, Sainte-Chapelle has one of the most extensive 13th-century stained glass collections anywhere in the world.
Sainte-Chapelle, created so long ago, inspires awe in the modern world. You can buy timed tickets here.
The National Assembly (French: Assemblée nationale) is the lower house of the bicameral French Parliament under the Fifth Republic, the upper house being the Senate (Sénat). The National Assembly’s legislators are known as députés.
There are 577 députés, each elected by a single-member constituency (at least one per department) through a two-round system; thus, 289 seats are required for a majority. The president of the National Assembly presides over the body. The officeholder is usually a member of the largest party represented, assisted by vice presidents from across the represented political spectrum. The National Assembly’s term is five years; however, the President of France may dissolve the Assembly, thereby calling for new elections, unless it has been dissolved in the preceding twelve months. Following a tradition started by the first National Assembly during the French Revolution, the left-wing parties sit to the left as seen from the president’s seat and the right-wing parties to the right; the seating arrangement thus directly indicates the left–right political spectrum as represented in the Assembly.
The Palais Bourbon (shown here) is the official seat of the Assemblée Nationale. It is prominently located in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, on the Rive Gauche of the Seine, across from the Place de la Concorde. Since 1799, the Palais Bourbon has served as the home of all the lower houses of the French parliament. The Assembly also uses other neighboring buildings, including the Immeuble Chaban-Delmas on the Rue de l’Université, Paris. Like most institutions of importance in Paris, it is guarded by Republican Guards.
The original palace was built beginning in 1722 for Louise Françoise de Bourbon, Duchess of Bourbon, the legitimized daughter of Louis XIV and the Marquise de Montespan. Four successive architects – Lorenzo Giardini, Pierre Cailleteau, Jean Aubert and Jacques Gabriel – completed the palace in 1728. It was then nationalized during the French Revolution. From 1795 to 1799, during the period known as the Directory, it was the meeting place of the Council of Five Hundred, which served as the lower house of the legislature of France and chose the five Directors, who jointly held executive power.
Beginning in 1806, during Napoleon’s French Empire, Bernard Poyet’s Neoclassical facade was added to mirror that of the Church of the Madeleine, facing it across the Seine beyond the Place de la Concorde.
The palace complex today has a floor area of 124,000 m2 (1,330,000 sq ft), with over 9,500 rooms, in which 3,000 people work. The complex includes the Hôtel de Lassay, on the west side of the Palais Bourbon; it is the official residence of the President of the National Assembly.
The Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile stands at the western end of the Champs-Élysées at the center of Place Charles de Gaulle, formerly named Place de l’Étoile—the étoile or “star” of the juncture formed by its twelve radiating avenues. The location of the arc and the plaza is shared between three arrondissements, 16th (south and west), 17th (north), and 8th (east). The Arc de Triomphe honors those who fought and died for France in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, with the names of all French victories and generals inscribed on its inner and outer surfaces. Beneath its vault lies the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from World War I.
The central cohesive element of the Axe historique (historic axis, a sequence of monuments and grand thoroughfares on a route running from the courtyard of the Louvre to the Grande Arche de la Défense), the Arc de Triomphe was designed by Jean Chalgrin in 1806; its iconographic programme pits heroically nude French youths against bearded Germanic warriors in chain mail (a type of armor). It set the tone for public monuments with triumphant patriotic messages. Inspired by the Arch of Titus in Rome, the Arc de Triomphe has an overall height of 50 m (164 ft), width of 45 m (148 ft) and depth of 22 m (72 ft), while its large vault is 29.19 m (95.8 ft) high and 14.62 m (48.0 ft) wide. The smaller transverse vaults are 18.68 m (61.3 ft) high and 8.44 m (27.7 ft) wide. Three weeks after the Paris victory parade in 1919 (marking the end of hostilities in World War I), Charles Godefroy flew his Nieuport biplane under the arch’s primary vault, with the event captured on newsreel, shown below.
Charles Godefroy flying a Nieuport 27 through the Arc de Triomphe (1919)
Paris’s Arc de Triomphe was the tallest triumphal arch until the completion of the Monumento a la Revolución in Mexico City in 1938, which is 67 m (220 ft) high. The Arch of Triumph in Pyongyang, completed in 1982, is modeled on the Arc de Triomphe and is slightly taller at 60 m (197 ft). The Grande Arche in La Défense near Paris is 110 meters high. Although it is not named an Arc de Triomphe, it has been designed on the same model and from the perspective of the Arc de Triomphe. It qualifies as the world’s tallest arch.
Beneath the Arc de Triomphe is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from World War I. Interred on Armistice Day 1920, an eternal flame burns in memory of the dead who were never identified (now in both world wars).
A ceremony is held at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier every November 11 on the anniversary of the Armistice of November 11, 1918 signed by the Entente Powers and Germany in 1918. It was originally decided on 12 November 1919 to bury the unknown soldier’s remains in the Panthéon, but a public letter-writing campaign led to the decision to bury him beneath the Arc de Triomphe. The coffin was put in the chapel on the first floor of the Arc on November 10, 1920, and put in its final resting place on January 28, 1921. The slab on top bears the inscription: Ici repose un soldat français mort pour la Patrie, 1914–1918 (“Here rests a French soldier who died for the Fatherland, 1914–1918”).
In 1961, U.S. President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy paid their respects at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, accompanied by President Charles de Gaulle. After the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy, Mrs. Kennedy remembered the eternal flame at the Arc de Triomphe and requested that an eternal flame be placed next to her husband’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
The Bibliothèque nationale de France (‘National Library of France’; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites known respectively as Richelieu and François-Mitterrand. It is the national repository of all that is published in France. Some of its extensive collections, including books and manuscripts but also precious objects and artworks, are on display at the BnF Museum (formerly known as the Cabinet des Médailles) on the Richelieu site.
The National Library of France is a public establishment under the supervision of the Ministry of Culture. Its mission is to constitute collections, especially the copies of works published in France that must, by law, be deposited there, conserve them, and make them available to the public. It produces a reference catalog, cooperates with other national and international establishments, and participates in research programs.
The Richelieu site, shown here, occupies a full city block in Paris. This site was the main location of the library for 275 years, from 1721 to 1996. It now hosts the BnF Museum as well as facilities of the BnF, the library of the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art and the library of the École Nationale des Chartes. It was comprehensively renovated in the 2010s and early 2020s on a design by architects Bruno Gaudin and Virginie Brégal.
The Mazarin Gallery (shown below, click to expand) is one of the very rare examples of a Baroque gallery that has been preserved in France. It is classified as a historical monument. A remnant of Mazarin’s palace and initially dedicated to the presentation of the jewels of his collection, the gallery has now regained its original function and is an integral part of the Library Museum. Its painted ceiling, with an area of 280 m² (3,014 square feet), is one of the jewels of the site. The entire gallery underwent a restoration in 2018-2019.
