Paris History

If you ever find yourself in Paris during Fashion Week, you don’t need a front row invitation or a backstage pass to be part of the stylish action — you can feel the energy simply when walking the streets, where you’ll invariably come across gaggles of gleaming-skinned models, stylists and Instagrammers dressed to les neufs, […]

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Like the perfect pas de deux, ballet and opera have been in sync in Paris since 1669, when the Sun King Louis XIV — who fancied himself as a gifted dancer as much as a benevolent patron of the arts — founded the Académie d’Opéra. Ballet was originally performed as an entr’acte during an operatic […]

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For a proudly republican country, France sure loves its traditionally religious holidays. Take, for instance, La Chandeleur — or, Candlemas — which falls on February 2nd, forty days after Christmas. Thing is, these Christian holidays are deeply embedded into the cultural fabric of France because so many go back to ancient times, being reworkings of […]

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After a relatively tranquil beginning, the past Parisian decade turned out to be one of the most tumultuous of recent times. Here, some of the highs and the lows of the twenty-tens in the City of Light … 2010 The world’s most famous avenue went green for a two-day festival called Nature Capitale, designed to […]

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