Paris The Ultimate Guide 2010 - Bookshop - Paris

Paris The Ultimate Guide 2010

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Product Description

Massive Amounts of Information
This guide is set up to give you the maximum amount of information while visiting Paris. The information, whether it is just a brief description of a famous site or an in-depth study, is right at your fingertips. Over 900 pages of information.

Not just the monuments
Paris the Ultimate Guide also contains information amount significant events in the history of Paris and famous People that helped shape the city.

Excerpt:

Grand Palais

The Grand Palais, the Petit Palais and the Pont Alexandre III were all building projects for the 1900 Universal Exhibition (the precursor to the World's Fair). The Grand Palais is currently the largest ironwork and glass structure of its kind in the world.
The Grand Palais is a free exhibition hall displaying many different events from car shows to aviation to fashion. There is also a science museum and an event hall in addition to the exposition hall. The main gallery is a permanent contemporary art site.
In June of 1993 a rivet fell from the roof barely missing a visitor. The Grand Palais had suffered foundation problems from the drop in Paris' ground water, which resulted in the southern part of the Nave to sag by 6 inches...
The great bronze horses that grace the outside were removed and restored as well. Georges Recipon designed the quadrigas. The group on the Seine side represent Harmony Triumphing over Discord and on the Champs-Elysées side Immortality outstripping Time. They were returned to the corners of the Grand Palais in 2003 where they once again leap into the air adding life and vibrance to the building.

Grand Palais in a Nutshell

Built: 1900
Architect: Charles Girault (overall coordinator), Henri Deglane, Albert Louvet, Albert Thomas
During World War I it was converted to a hospital for soldiers
During World War II the Nazis used it as a truck depot and to exhibit Nazi propaganda
8,500 tons of steel used in its construction
There is a major police station in the basement

Metro Station: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Champs-Elysées, Clemenceau

An interesting story

A first kiss in the Grand Palais
"This goes back to before the 1980s. I was a shy, rather podgy teenager. One evening, my father, who worked in artist copyright protection, took me to the opening of the Fiac at the Grand Palais. There I was, under the glass roof, strolling around proudly, with a glass of champagne, getting an eyeful of some pretty strange exhibits! Stuff I'd never seen before: contemporary art. It was inventive, insolent, colourful, forthright: there were ideas, gaiety and joie de vivre everywhere.
In the middle of one of the aisles, a young woman wearing plenty of make-up but precious little else, was sitting astride a chair and - for a nominal fee - offering passers-by a kiss. This was strictly art of course...
Now that I was a contemporary art cognoscenti, and, probably with help from the champagne, I plucked up the courage and decided there were worse ways to use my pocket money. This turned out to be some experience: no ordinary Hollywood job. This was a proper French kiss, with a deep, enterprising tongue. The whole capped by a gorgeous smile.
It was also my first ever 'real' kiss. Long live art at the Grand Palais!"

Yves Castelain - March 25 2009
Director of the Castel1 agency

Also by JD Clarke: The Eiffel Tower 2010 price: $0.99

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