One of history’s most influential (not to mention infamous) leaders, Catherine de Medici still enthralls and intrigues the world five hundred years after her birth. Case in point: The Serpent Queen, the new period drama series based on Leonie Frieda’s best-selling biography, Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France. In 1533, the Florentine heiress, aged […]
Louvre
Celebrities in Paris: The Vintage Edition
Because nothing makes a glamorous star all the more glamour than a Parisian backdrop, n’est-ce pas? Sophia Loren at Hôtel Plaza Athenée, 1956 When this photo was taken, the Italian starlet was in town promoting her movie Scandal in Sorrento, and well on her way to mega-star status, about to shoot her first Hollywood movie, […]
In Praise of the Pont des Arts
Of all of Paris’s bridges, the Pont des Arts must surely be the loveliest, with its iron arches rendered so light and lacy, leaping across the Seine as daintily as a ballerina. But it’s also because of the way the bridge seems to pull Paris together so effortlessly. When you linger there, in the middle, […]
Paris, My Sweet: The Pure Delight of Parisian Honey
Paris must be heaven on earth for bees. Think about all of the flowering parks scented with nectar and pollen like an alluringly perfumed Parisienne. There’s the Jardin du Luxembourg with its heady chestnuts. The Palais-Royal and its sweet lindens. The giddy rose garden at the Jardin de Bagatelle. The Tuileries’ ever-changing bouquets of flowerbeds. […]