Inside Paris [antikvár]

2-3 Panommic view of the city. On the left ttie Tour Saint-Jacques, and on liie rigiil tie Hôtel de Ville. 4 lj)e Luxor Qbeiisk rises majesticaiiy from the Place de la Concorde. 6 Darimess fails on the Jardins des Tuileries, the Place de la Concorde and the Arc de Triomphe. 7 Panoramic view of the city from the top of Arc de Triomphe, in the background, the white silhouette of the Sacré-Coeur Basilica. ^aris is everything you could want it to be", wrote Frederic Chopin. It is like an enormous open-air market in which all that is joyful, intelligent and beautiful is on display: art, architecture, museums, books, restaurants and shows. Like other multi-faceted and labyrinthine cities, Paris cannot merely be visited: it has to be stormed and possessed with enthusiasm and passion. Follow your instincts and forget other people's advice. But do not be in too much of a hurry, either This metropolis does not induce the breathlessness of New York or London but clings to its memories and always gives you a second and a third chance. "If you had the luck to live in Paris in your youth, afterwards no matter where you spend the rest of life it stays with you because Paris is a movable feast". Thus wrote the novelist and adventurer Ernest Hemingway, capturing the most fascinating characteristic of this memorable city: the ability to stick in the mind complete with its colours, its sounds, and its smells. Paris, like all imperial cities, intimidates those who come to pay it homage: it seems designed to provoke envy and amazement in anyone who observes its grandeur, its historically rich monuments and continual resurfacing of the past which is capable of merging imperceptibly into the present and into its own impressive future. At this point, a brief historical digression might be useful in order to learn about the birth and development of this city which everybody dreams of visiting at least once in his life. It was probably founded by the Párisii, a Celto-Gallic tribe who settled on the hill on the left bank of the Seine overlooking the He de la Cité. They were fishermen, quite unlike the warlike stereotype embodied by Astérix, who has almost become a national symbol. In fact, the Romans, under the command of Labienus met little resistance when they took control of the region and founded Lutetia (Paris). Following attacks by barbaric hordes, the inhabitants of Paris and the Roman conquerors again pulled back on to the lie de la Cité and it was left to the Merovingian Franks under Clovis to make the city the capital of their little barbarian kingdom. Paris remained rather isolated from the great European events until 987 when the founder of the Capetian dynasty, Hugues Capet, settled there and made it the political and economic capital of France. The Middle Ages saw the development of the city from a commercial and mercantile point of view and, indeed, it was the income from duties which financed the construction of the imposing Gothic cathedral of Notre-Dame and the fortress of the Louvre. The merchants proved to be the backbone of the town again in 1356 when they even formed a sort of civic dictatorship. The 14th century was as devastating for Paris as it was for the rest of France. The plague and the Hundred Years' War reduced the nation to rubble. The following century was also extremely dramatic. The Duke of Orleans was assassinated in Paris and it was this which set off the bloody conflict between the Burgundians and the Armagnacs which lasted 12 years and only ended with the arrival of the English in 1420. At the end of the