In recent years, thanks in large part to social media, the peony has become the signature bloom of Paris in the late springtime. Countless stems of the flower, running a stunning colour spectrum from cream to musk to garnet, are stacked high in Paris’s food markets, their closed petals promising a glorious unfurling to come […]
Paris History
The Parisian Beginnings of Impressionism
This year’s blockbuster exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay is Paris 1874: Inventing Impressionism — a celebration of the 150th anniversary of the widely adored style of art. Impressionists are so beloved these days, in fact, that it’s close to impossible to imagine a time when their work wasn’t admired and acclaimed. But it took these […]
The Incredible Life (and Delicious Legacy) of Antonin Carême, the Original Parisian Celebrity Chef
Marie-Antoine Carême had the misfortune to be born the sixteenth child of a desperately poor Parisian family, five years before the French Revolution. At the culmination of the revolutionary period so bloodthirsty it would be called the Reign of Terror, Papa Carême walked a ten-year-old ‘Antonin’ from their shanty home on Rue du Bac to […]
An Egyptian Treasure Hunt … in Paris
The French have long loved the style of the classical world — what is now considered to be classic Parisian architecture originally took many cues from Ancient Greece and Rome. Signs of Egyptian influence might not be as plentiful, but they’re there to be found — and tracking down Paris’s Egyptian markers makes for a […]