If you’ve long had the Moulin Rouge written in bright red on that Paris bucket list of yours, by all means feel free to tick it off. But be aware that the dinner-and-show cabaret is a far cry from its old dancehall days, catering as it does to tourist buses rather than nostalgia seekers. The […]
Haute Culture
Fête de la Musique: The Day Paris Lets its Hair Down
Ancient France was a pagan kind of a place. Think Druidic rituals in forests (if you’ve read Astérix, you’ll well picture this) and Celtic chants around bonfires. And then along came King Clovis I, in the fifth century, who decided to convert to Christianity. One way in which he, and various other powers-that-be, successfully converted […]
Where to See Art Nouveau in Paris
Art Nouveau (“new art”) was an ornamental design movement that flourished in Paris at the turn of the twentieth century. It enjoyed mainstream appeal for only around a decade, but its impact was forceful — it was a direct contrast to, and defiance of, the classicism that had kept Paris aesthetically in line for the […]
Romantic Paris: Two Exquisite New Exhibitions
Before Paris became a city of romance, where misty-eyed lovers could stroll hand-in-hand along beautiful boulevards or lock lips on the city’s graceful bridges, it was the city of Romanticism. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Paris was not yet the City of Light, but rather a dark place, still medieval in design, […]