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Two thousand years of equestrian statues, and they all show the same thing: a conqueror, a king, a general, caught in a ...
02/06/2026

Two thousand years of equestrian statues, and they all show the same thing: a conqueror, a king, a general, caught in a moment of triumph, elevated on a stone pedestal so you have to look up. The formula was invented by the Romans and nobody broke it — until recently.

This is "Horse and Rider," a ten-ton solid stainless steel sculpture by American artist Charles Ray, completed in 2014. It stands without a pedestal on the cobblestones in front of the Bourse de Commerce, the Pinault Collection's contemporary art museum near Les Halles in Paris.

The rider is Ray himself. He is slightly hunched, round-shouldered, sockless in casual shoes. His expression is blank. The horse is still. Neither of them looks like they have anywhere to be.

Paris has Henri IV on the Pont Neuf, Louis XIV at Place des Victoires, Joan of Arc on Rue de Rivoli. All of them elevated, all of them heroic, all of them frozen in the same gesture of authority.

Ray put himself at eye level and called it an equestrian statue.

"We're both exhausted," he wrote, "but instead of being stuck up in the clouds on an imposing stone pedestal, we're right on the ground, on the same level as the passers-by."

Paris is finally giving Hector Guimard his own museum. Guimard is the architect behind the green cast-iron Metro entranc...
02/06/2026

Paris is finally giving Hector Guimard his own museum.

Guimard is the architect behind the green cast-iron Metro entrances you see all over the city. Those swirling, plant-like structures are among the most photographed objects in Paris, yet most visitors have never heard his name. That is about to change.

The new museum will be housed in the Hotel Mezzara, a four-story Art Nouveau building on a quiet street in the 16th arrondissement (district). Guimard designed it in 1910 as a private home for a textile manufacturer. It is one of the very few buildings he designed that is still standing in Paris today. The French government owns the building and it has sat mostly vacant for years.

A collector named Fabien Chone has signed a 50-year lease on the property and pledged over $7 million (6 million euros) to restore it. His plans include a faithful renovation of the interiors and facade, a garden cafe, and an immersive digital experience that will recreate one of Guimard's most celebrated lost buildings, the Humbert de Romans concert hall, which was demolished in the 1960s.

The museum will display more than 100 objects from Chone's personal collection, including original Metro signage, ceramics, furniture, and architectural elements. It will also house the full archive of the organization that has spent 22 years trying to preserve Guimard's work.

Renovation begins at the end of 2026. The opening is planned for late 2027 or early 2028.

Between 85,000 and 90,000 people packed the Champ de Mars this past Sunday as Paris Saint-Germain celebrated winning the...
02/06/2026

Between 85,000 and 90,000 people packed the Champ de Mars this past Sunday as Paris Saint-Germain celebrated winning the Champions League for the second year in a row.

The players crossed a 1,480-foot (450-meter) stage built on the lawn in front of the Eiffel Tower, carrying the trophy in front of a crowd that had filled the park since early afternoon. The event was free and open to everyone.

The Champ de Mars has a long history of hosting Paris's biggest public moments. The lawn stretching from the Eiffel Tower to the École Militaire was originally a military training ground — its name means "Field of Mars," the Roman god of war. Over the centuries it became the city's go-to space for world's fairs, national celebrations, and mass gatherings. It hosted events during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the fan zone for the 2018 World Cup final, and the Bastille Day fireworks every July 14th. Sunday added another chapter to that list.

PSG had beaten Arsenal 1-1 after 120 minutes, winning 4-3 on penalties in the final played in Budapest the night before. After the Champ de Mars celebration, the squad was received at the Elysée Palace by President Emmanuel Macron, then headed to the Parc des Princes for an evening event with season-ticket holders.

Standing on the banks of the Seine, you put on a headset. The city around you disappears. What appears in its place is P...
02/06/2026

Standing on the banks of the Seine, you put on a headset. The city around you disappears. What appears in its place is Paris as it looked 2,000 years ago.

Les Origines de Paris (The Origins of Paris) is a one-hour guided outdoor experience that takes place along 1.2 kilometers of the Seine riverbank, starting under the Pont Louis-Philippe in the 4th arrondissement. At 15 stops along the route, you put on a VR headset and watch the same stretch of river transform, from the first Parisii settlements, through the Viking siege, the construction of Notre-Dame, Napoleon's Paris, and the Liberation of 1944. You are standing in the exact place where each scene actually happened.

The experience was built in collaboration with historians, with 360° images and spatial sound designed to make each era feel inhabited rather than illustrated. A guide accompanies the group throughout. No prior VR experience needed. The visit is available in French, English, and Spanish, and is open to anyone aged 8 and up.

At the height of his power, Napoleon Bonaparte had a habit that his ministers almost certainly found alarming.He would d...
01/06/2026

At the height of his power, Napoleon Bonaparte had a habit that his ministers almost certainly found alarming.

He would dress in plain, unremarkable clothes, the coat and trousers of a lower-class Parisian, and slip out into the streets alone to find out what people really thought of him.

He was not subtle about it. Accounts describe him stopping strangers, striking up conversations, and asking directly whether they approved of the Emperor's decisions. He reportedly found the exercise genuinely entertaining. The answers, presumably, were not always what he wanted to hear.

The habit says something interesting about the man. Napoleon was one of the most obsessive consumers of information in the history of modern statecraft, he read dispatches voraciously, interrogated returning generals, and built one of the most sophisticated intelligence networks in Europe.

His secret police, under Joseph Fouché, monitored newspapers, cafés, and private correspondence across the empire. He understood that controlling the narrative was as important as winning battles.

And yet none of it told him what a stranger on the Rue Saint-Honoré actually thought when the subject of Napoleon came up. For that, apparently, you had to ask in person.

Whether every detail of the story is precisely accurate is difficult to verify, Napoleon's legend attracted embellishments almost from the day he became famous. But the habit itself is consistent with what historians know about him : a man of extraordinary ambition and considerable vanity, who cared deeply about how posterity would judge him, and who understood that the gap between official opinion and real opinion is always wider than it looks.

You read that right : in 1920s Paris, a woman walking into a bar unaccompanied was not simply unusual. It was socially u...
01/06/2026

You read that right : in 1920s Paris, a woman walking into a bar unaccompanied was not simply unusual. It was socially unacceptable. Bars were male territory, and a woman arriving alone would be refused entry or assumed to be a pr******te.

The Ritz changed that.

Tucked at the end of a long corridor on the Rue Cambon side of the hotel, Le Petit Bar opened in the 1920s as the first upscale bar in Paris where women could walk in alone and be served without question. It seated just 25 people. The décor was dark wood, leather chairs, intimate lighting. It was, by design, a room where women could simply exist in a bar and drink in peace.

Over the years, as social norms shifted, men began drinking there too. The bar became a gathering place for writers, journalists, and artists (among them Ernest Hemingway), who made it his Paris headquarters from the 1920s onwards. He befriended the bartenders, spent hours there with F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and famously declared: "When I dream of afterlife in heaven, the action always takes place in the Paris Ritz."

The legend grew in August 1944, when Hemingway arrived at the Ritz at the Liberation of Paris and, according to the story, ordered champagne for everyone in the bar.

In 1994, Le Petit Bar was renamed Bar Hemingway in his memory. The décor has barely changed since the 1920s. The walls are lined with his photographs, handwritten letters, and fishing rods.

One detail survived from the original ethos : today, every woman's drink is served with a single rose.

French director Romain Gavras is developing a feature film about the Louvre jewelry heist — the brazen October 2025 robb...
01/06/2026

French director Romain Gavras is developing a feature film about the Louvre jewelry heist — the brazen October 2025 robbery that shocked France and left investigators with a $100 million mystery that still hasn't been solved.

Gavras has acquired the film rights to a new book about the case, and is now developing a feature film based on it. The book, titled Main basse sur le Louvre ("A Grab at the Louvre"), was written by three journalists from Le Parisien, Le Monde, and Paris Match, and published last week in France.

Gavras is not a household name in the US yet, but he directed Athena (2022), a raw and visually powerful French film that premiered at the Venice Film Festival. His production company, Iconoclast, is also behind Spring Breakers. A documentary series on the heist is also in development, with rights sold separately to a British producer.

No cast or release date has been announced. According to the French film trade press, shooting could begin next year, with the film potentially arriving in theaters in 2028.

The stolen jewelry included items tied to some of the most famous names in French royal history. During the robbery, the crown that belonged to Empress Eugénie fell to the ground and was found damaged. The rest of the collection remains missing.

01/06/2026

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For most of Paris's history, the Seine was where you learned to swim.Traces of bathing facilities in the river date back...
01/06/2026

For most of Paris's history, the Seine was where you learned to swim.

Traces of bathing facilities in the river date back to the 13th century. By the 17th century, swimming had become fashionable along the Quai Sully, though authorities quickly imposed rules, first against nudity, then to separate men and women.

From the late 18th century onward, floating swimming schools appeared on the river, moored to the banks, where Parisians of all ages learned to swim in the current. The French diving championships were held in the Seine as recently as June 22, 1913.

Ten years later, it was over. In 1923, swimming in the Seine was made illegal, banned by city authorities citing two reasons: the dangers posed by river navigation and rapidly worsening water quality. Paris's combined sewer system, built during Haussmann's 19th-century renovations, channeled stormwater and household waste through the same pipes. During heavy rainfall, it overflowed directly into the river. The water turned murky and foul. The floating schools closed. For 102 years, Parisians walked beside the Seine, painted it, and crossed it, but did not touch it.

In July 2025, the ban was lifted. After a €1.4 billion (roughly $1.5 billion) cleanup project undertaken partly to host open-water swimming and triathlon events at the 2024 Paris Olympics, three official swimming sites opened along the riverbanks, one near Notre-Dame, one near the Eiffel Tower, and one in eastern Paris. On the morning of July 5, 2025, the first swimmers climbed down the steel ladders into the Seine and came back up grinning.

The children in these photographs would have understood exactly what the fuss was about.

This is Le Centaure (The Centaur), a 5-meter bronze sculpture standing on Place Michel-Debré, in the 6th arrondissement ...
01/06/2026

This is Le Centaure (The Centaur), a 5-meter bronze sculpture standing on Place Michel-Debré, in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. Most people glance at it and keep walking. A few stop and stare. Almost nobody notices the Statue of Liberty.

It is embedded in the breastplate, roughly the size of an adult hand, visible from the front if you know to look for it. Paris has at least seven Statues of Liberty scattered across the city. This is the smallest, and the most hidden.

The sculpture was created between 1983 and 1985 by César Baldaccini, the French sculptor known simply as César, the same César whose name graces the French equivalent of the Oscars. The centaur was conceived as a homage to Pablo Picasso, whose own work César considered a lifelong reference. The human upper body is a self-portrait: the face, the beard, the bearing are all César's own. He placed himself on the body of a horse, assembled from fragments of tools, brushes, and mechanical debris, and tucked a tiny Statue of Liberty into his own chest.

The reasons César gave for the inclusion were never entirely clear. The most common interpretation is that it gestures toward the ideals of freedom and modernity embedded in the sculpture's larger meditation on mythology and the machine age. Whatever the intention, it rewards the people who actually look.

César considered Le Centaure his most significant work.

When he died in 1998, a reproduction of the sculpture was placed on his gravestone at Montparnasse Cemetery, a short walk away.

Have you ever spotted it ?

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