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The Mona Lisa is not painted on canvas. It is painted on wood.Leonardo da Vinci painted it in oil on a thin panel of pop...
11/10/2026

The Mona Lisa is not painted on canvas. It is painted on wood.

Leonardo da Vinci painted it in oil on a thin panel of poplar, in the early 1500s. It is also smaller than most visitors expect: 77 by 53 centimeters (about 30 by 21 inches).

Wood reacts to its environment in a way canvas does not. Over five centuries, the panel has curved slightly, and there is a crack visible on the back. To keep it from spreading, the reverse side is held by two butterfly-shaped braces and a crossbar.

That is why the painting lives in a sealed, climate-controlled case. Sensors hidden behind the panel constantly monitor temperature and humidity so that neither changes. Once a year, the case is opened so the equipment can be checked, then sealed again.

It is also why the Mona Lisa almost never leaves the Louvre. When an Italian group asked to borrow it in 2011, the museum called it "extremely fragile" and said moving it was out of the question.

The most famous painting in the world is a plank of poplar.

Fall in Paris does not need a big monument. A small circle of trees on a quiet street is enough.This is Rue de Furstembe...
11/10/2026

Fall in Paris does not need a big monument. A small circle of trees on a quiet street is enough.

This is Rue de Furstemberg, in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, in the 6th arrondissement. Café de Flore and Les Deux Magots are a short walk away, but the noise stops here. No tour groups, just old buildings, small galleries, and a lamp with five glass globes.

The painter Eugène Delacroix chose this street for his last home. His apartment and garden studio are now a small museum at number 6.

Photoi:

The owners of the Montparnasse Tower voted last month to reject the first phase of its renovation, ending a plan that ha...
11/10/2026

The owners of the Montparnasse Tower voted last month to reject the first phase of its renovation, ending a plan that had been in the works since 2015.

More than 76% of the co-owners voted no.

The project was worth about €800 million. It would have given the tower a new glass facade, garden terraces, a hotel and a greenhouse on the roof. At 59 stories and 686 feet (209 meters), it is the tallest skyscraper inside the city limits of Paris. It opened in 1973 on the Left Bank, right above Montparnasse train station.

The building has been empty since the last tenants left at the end of March. The permit for the big renovation expires at the end of November, so the window to start is closing.

Four of the co-owners, including billionaire Xavier Niel, said they do not want to give up on the tower. They asked all the owners, investors and city officials to sit down soon and look for other solutions. A smaller project, which would include asbestos removal, could now be the next step.

11/10/2026

True or false: Parisians are nicer than their reputation

When Notre-Dame's roof frame was rebuilt, the carpenters put the machines aside and picked up axes.The medieval frame th...
11/10/2026

When Notre-Dame's roof frame was rebuilt, the carpenters put the machines aside and picked up axes.

The medieval frame that burned in 2019 was nicknamed "the forest." It had taken around 1,000 oak trees, and its beams had been squared by hand with axes. The decision was made to rebuild it as it was: in oak, with the same methods.

About 1,000 oaks were needed for the frame alone, and around 2,000 including the spire. The first step was squaring them, turning some 20 kilometers of oak into beams with a doloire, a type of axe used in the Middle Ages.

Why not a saw? Hand-hewing works with the natural shape and grain of each tree, and the project team saw it as the best way to make the beams last for centuries. Most of the carpenters had never worked this way before.

Before the real work began, the method was put to the test. In July 2020, 25 carpenters from eight countries rebuilt one of the original trusses by hand in Normandy. That September, the 3.3-ton truss was raised by hand on the square in front of the cathedral.

Notre-Dame's new forest was cut the same way as the old one.

In March 1871, about 170 cannons stood lined up on top of the Butte Montmartre.Paris had just come out of a long siege b...
11/10/2026

In March 1871, about 170 cannons stood lined up on top of the Butte Montmartre.

Paris had just come out of a long siege by the Prussian army. Parisians had paid for many of these cannons through a public subscription, and the National Guard had hauled them up the hills of Montmartre and Belleville to keep them out of reach of German troops entering the city. Many Parisians saw them as their own.

During the night of March 17 to 18, Adolphe Thiers, head of the new government, ordered the army to take them back. Several thousand soldiers climbed the butte before dawn.

Montmartre woke up. Residents, many of them women, surrounded the troops and blocked the way. General Claude Lecomte ordered his men to fire on the crowd. They refused, and many sided with the people instead.

By the end of the day, Lecomte and another general, Clément-Thomas, had been executed on rue des Rosiers. Thiers pulled the government out to Versailles, and the National Guard took over the empty Hôtel de Ville.

It was the first day of the Paris Commune. It ended just over two months later, in the Bloody Week of May 1871.

For several winters, you could go ice-skating on the Eiffel Tower.The first rink opened on December 10, 2004, on the fir...
10/10/2026

For several winters, you could go ice-skating on the Eiffel Tower.

The first rink opened on December 10, 2004, on the first floor, 57 meters (187 feet) above the Champ-de-Mars. It covered 200 square meters, held up to 80 skaters at once, and was lit by spotlights that kept changing the color of the ice. It was even vanilla-scented.

Access was free for anyone with a tower ticket, and skates were lent on site.

The rink came back for later winters. In 2014, after two years of renovation work on the first floor, it returned at 190 square meters, next to a 6-meter red mini Eiffel Tower. In the winter of 2016–2017, ahead of the Ice Hockey World Championship in Paris, it even hosted hockey lessons.

And 2004 was not the first time. In 1969, the tower had already hosted an ice surface, inaugurated by a bear from the Moscow Circus.

Saint-Eustache took 105 years to build, from 1532 to 1637. Fixing the neighborhood around it took more than ten.This is ...
10/10/2026

Saint-Eustache took 105 years to build, from 1532 to 1637. Fixing the neighborhood around it took more than ten.

This is Les Halles, the old central food market of Paris. The market moved out to Rungis in 1969. The iron pavilions designed by Baltard were torn down in 1971. In their place came the Forum des Halles, a mostly underground shopping mall that opened in 1979. It was widely seen as a failure, and the garden above it, cut into pieces and cut off from the mall below, did not help.

Paris picked a new plan in 2004. The glass roof called the Canopée (the canopy) opened in April 2016. The whole project cost close to 1 billion euros, roughly $1 billion.

The church got its own work too. Between 2016 and 2018, crews restored its stonework, sculptures, metalwork, roof framing and lead roofing.

The garden came last. The Jardin Nelson Mandela opened in 2018 on 10.6 acres (4.3 hectares), for 40 million euros.

Today you can walk straight through it, from the glass roof to the church doors. Inside, the organ has about 8,000 pipes, the largest in France, and concerts are frequent. Mozart held his mother's funeral here in 1778.

No month in Paris is perfect, and every one has a catch.July trades crowds and heat for sunsets after 10 pm. February tr...
10/10/2026

No month in Paris is perfect, and every one has a catch.

July trades crowds and heat for sunsets after 10 pm. February trades sunshine for nearly empty museums.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗟𝗶𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘁𝘆 𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝗶𝘀 𝗿𝗼𝗼𝗳𝘁𝗼𝗽𝘀.Before it stood in New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty stood a...
10/10/2026

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗟𝗶𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘁𝘆 𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝗶𝘀 𝗿𝗼𝗼𝗳𝘁𝗼𝗽𝘀.

Before it stood in New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty stood above the rooftops of Paris.

It was assembled between 1881 and 1884 in the workshops of Gaget, Gauthier & Cie, at 25 rue de Chazelles, near Parc Monceau in the 17th arrondissement. Her torch and crown rose above the apartment buildings of a quiet residential street.

The sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi designed her. The iron skeleton holding her up was engineered by Gustave Eiffel, a few years before his famous tower.

On July 4, 1884, American Independence Day, the statue was officially presented to the United States minister in Paris, Levi P. Morton.

Then she was taken apart again. In 1885, she was dismantled into about 350 pieces, packed into more than 200 crates, and loaded at Rouen onto the French frigate Isère. She reached New York on June 17, 1885.

On October 28, 1886, she was inaugurated on what was then called Bedloe's Island. This month marks 140 years.

Her first home was a Paris side street.

Note: this photo has been colorized with AI. The original is black and white.

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