Parisians have been marking the 100th anniversary of the day the Seine burst its banks and filled the city with torrents of muddy water.
Thousands of residents were forced from their homes and power was cut off for months.
To commemorate the 1910 flood, Paris’s Galerie des Bibliotheques is exhibiting a collection of photos, postcards and witness accounts. Among them are sepia shots of bowler-hatted men travelling piggyback, trousers hoisted up and knee-deep in water; people pulling up to Notre Dame cathedral in boats, and food being delivered by ladder to second-floor apartment windows.
But while present-day Parisians view the old scenes with a smile, there are warnings that it could happen again – and be ten times worse, despite various flood defence measures put in place over the years.
“The flood is unavoidable,” said Louis Hubert, director for the Paris region at France’s Ministry of Ecology and Sustainable Development. “What we can simply say is that we are almost certain to see new considerable floods, but we don’t know when.”
Paris museums such as the Louvre have a flood plan by which priceless objects are removed to a safe house in a town north-west of Paris – if they get enough warning.
by Andy Moreton
The exhibition at Galerie des Bibliotheques is on until March 28th. And if you’re planning a visit to France’s romantic and historic capital city, browse through Luxique’s unrivalled selection of luxury Paris hotels.
Some of the most important museums in Paris have been hit by strike action. Parts of the Louvre, as well as the Pompidou Centre and the Musée d’Orsay, were closed on Wednesday.
The strikers are upset about a government policy to replace only one in two of retiring public servants. After first being applied to government ministries, it’s now being extended to organisations owned by the state, including museums. There’s a fear that this will cripple French museums.
The work stoppage began at the Pompidou modern art museum on November 23rd and unions had warned that the strike could spread.
The Louvre welcomes 8.5 million visitors a year, the Pompidou Centre 5.5 million.
by Andy Moreton
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The next time you visit the Louvre in Paris, you might feast your eyes on the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo … and the quarter pounder with cheese.
Yes, the ancient museum is to get its own McDonald’s – not actually inside the building, but among other retail outlets in the stone-walled underground approach called the Carrousel du Louvre.
Inevitably, there have been protests – just as there were when another American chain, Starbucks, opened a café close to the museum’s entrance last year.
“This is the last straw,” said one art historian at the Louvre, who declined to be named.
“This is the pinnacle of exhausting consumerism, deficient gastronomy and very unpleasant odours.”
The museum said in a statement that it welcomed the fact that visitors could enjoy ‘such a rich and varied restaurant offer’.
While Gallic gastronomes might wring their hands at this pervasion of (junk food), the ordinary French seem to beg to differ. While business in brasseries and bistros has been in freefall, McDonald’s opened 30 outlets in France last year and welcomed some 450 million customers – up 11 per cent on the previous year.
by Andy Moreton
The Louvre is just one of the wonderful places to visit in France’s romantic capital. Let Luxique help you book rooms at a luxury hotel in Paris.
If you find yourself in Paris this summer, you’ll find that you won’t have to watch your step so much.
Paris has been known in the past as ‘the capital of dog mess’, but stringent fines have led to a marked improvement on the streets. The number of fines issued for mess offences have dropped from almost 5,000 in 2004 to fewer than 2,000 last year.
The Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, had been determined to fix a problem that had had its fair share of adverse publicity. In a Paris-based episode of Sex And The City in 2004, the heroine Carrie fouls her expensive stilettos on the Champs Elysees. And apparently the Japanese used dog-messing as an argument against Paris’s bid for the 2008 Olympics.
François Dagnaud, who works for the town hall’s hygiene unit, conceded that problems persisted with the dense poodle population of the chic 7th and 14th arrondissements. To change owners’ habits, some 90 inspectors are due to carry out ‘commando operations’ in these areas in the autumn.
There is another simpler reason for Paris’s cleaner streets: the number of dogs trotting around the capital has plummeted in the past three years, dropping by a third from 2006-7.
by Andy Moreton
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The French are seemingly coming round to the view that tourists deserve to be greeted with a smile.
Hard on the heels of the Japanese company that’s using technology to measure the smiles of its employees, the Paris tourist board has set up stands at popular tourist areas staffed by ‘smile ambassadors’.
Officials are worried that it’s the Parisians’ reputation (deserved or undeserved) for unfriendliness, as well as the economic downturn, that’s led to a 17 per cent drop in visitor numbers this year. A recent survey found Paris to be the most over-rated city in Europe, with people citing its high prices and disagreeable residents.
“We have to work on striking and simple images. There’s nothing as telling as a smile,” said Paul Roll, who heads the tourist board.
Another tourism official, Daniel Fasquelle, said that French from all walks of life needed to play their part if tourism was to remain a major economic sector.
“It’s the American tourist lost in Paris that we inform politely, it’s the English person looking for the way in northern France who we don’t get impatient with by honking our car horns,” he said.
by Andy Moreton
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Politicians in France are once again debating one of the more contentious issues in France – whether shops should be allowed to open on Sundays.
French laws are much more restrictive than those in the US and UK, for example. Sundays have been protected since 1906, although bakers, butchers and other small shops are allowed to open until noon.
Carole Landry, a journalist based in Paris, says keeping retail businesses closed has helped cement the tradition of the Sunday family meal that many in France still hold dear.
But there has been a clamour for change over the past twenty years, with recent polls suggesting that a majority of the French believe shops should have the freedom to open on Sundays. Paris’s temple of shopping, Galeries Lafayette, has said this would create between 300 and 400 jobs and boost sales by 10 per cent.
If passed, this amendment to the law would allow shops in designated tourist areas and special commercial zones to open on Sundays.
President Sarkozy has long been a strong supporter of change. After a recent visit by Michelle Obama, President Sarkozy asked: “Is it normal that on a Sunday, when Madame Obama wants to go shopping in Paris with her girls, I have to make phone calls to get them to open?”
by Andy Moreton
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Any visitor to Paris who’s been brave enough to rent a car knows all about the problems of driving there (try negotiating the giant roundabout at the Arc de Triomphe in the rush hour!)
And then there’s the parking. If you happen to choose a forbidden area, you could find a dreaded sabot de Denver (‘Denver boot’ or wheel clamp) when you return.
And don’t think it’s any better for the locals. One anonymous car-owner, apparently fed up with looking for a place to park his car, has paid 470,000 euros (£404,000 / $662,000) for a prime spot on the bank of the River Seine in the heart of the city.
It was put up for auction by the Paris City Hall for a starting price of 200,000 euros (£172,000 / $281,000), but the bidding soon went mad. The final purchase price is said to be roughly the equivalent of that for a three-room apartment in a more modest neighbourhood of Paris.
by Andy Moreton
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As surveys go, this one is pretty gross. Our friends at Tripadvisor.com have come up with a top five tourist attractions that could be bad for your health as they’re so germ-ridden. Here they are in reverse order:
At number 5 is the forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, where celebrities leave their hand- and footprints for posterity. Apparently, it’s covered in grime from the countless visitors who see if their hands and feet match those of the stars.
St Mark’s is a beautiful square in Venice, but it’s always suffered from a surfeit of hungry pigeons and the mess they leave behind. That brings it in at number 4.
At number 3 is Oscar Wilde’s tomb in Paris. People clearly like to kiss it, because it’s covered with lipstick prints. Yuk!
A wall outside Market Theatre in Seattle was placed runner-up in the survey. Since 1990, tens of thousands of people have stuck their unwanted chewing gum to the wall, turning it into a tourist attraction. The display was started by people waiting in line to visit the theatre. The wall has been scraped clean twice but is still covered with gum, some moulded into shapes and faces.
But the ‘favourite’ tourist attraction for picking up germs is the Blarney Stone at Blarney Castle near Cork in the Irish Republic. More than 400,000 tourists a year literally bend over backwards to kiss the Stone, as legend has it that it will give you the gift of eloquent speech.
by Andy Moreton
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The Eiffel Tower in Paris has just celebrated its 120th anniversary with the release of thousands of balloons.
The most instantly recognisable symbol of the French capital was inaugurated in May 1889. Since then it has become one of Europe’s most popular tourist sites, welcoming nearly seven million visitors a year.
To mark the anniversary, there’s an exhibition, Tales of The Eiffel Tower, which runs through to the end of the year. It features photos, posters, films and interactive presentations. It’s on the first floor and stairs of the Tower.
Many 19th century Parisians didn’t care for the Tower. One, the writer, Guy de Maupassant, often ate lunch in the restaurant at its base because he said it was the only place he couldn’t see it.
Another wacky fact: since its opening, the Eiffel Tower has been re-painted every seven years. The nineteenth re-painting job began in March and is expected to take eighteen months.
by Andy Moreton
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The French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, has outlined his blueprint for a bigger, greener Paris.
As I reported earlier in the year, ten leading international architects were asked to look ahead to the future and design a plan for the French capital that would please both the eye and the environment.
Last week, President Sarkozy unveiled those ideas and declared it a priority to reshape the city and its suburbs into a single ‘Greater Paris’, a 21st-century metropolis able to compete as an economic hub with London, New York and Tokyo. He said the government would draw up a Bill by October to release 35 billion euros (£31 billion / $46 billion) of new funds.
What seems certain to be developed is an 80-mile automatic metro line looping around the city, bringing the alienated outlying districts – the banlieues – into the picture. There would also be more flexible planning laws that would allow as many as 70,000 new housing units a year.
One of the most ambitious of the plans was by the French architect, Antoine Grumbach, who foresaw the city extending to the Channel port of Le Havre via Rouen along the Seine, maximising the green possibilities of the river and with a fast rail link.
Mr Sarkozy liked that idea and also said that he’d favour lifting the ban on building skyscrapers in Paris. “Why ban building towers if they are beautiful, if they fit harmoniously into the urban landscape?” he said. “The only reproachable thing is ugliness.”
by Andy Moreton
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