Best Travel Destinations - France
The Musee Rodin in Paris is the home of thousands of works of art by Auguste Rodin, a man considered by many to be one of the greatest and most revered artists in history. Undoubtedly his most famous work is a sculpture known as The Thinker. Copies of the work, large and small, are on display elsewhere, but there’s no better place to see the grand work of art than in Rodin’s own hometown of Paris, where he was born in 1840 to a working-class family. It is in Paris where he learned to become an artist, largely self-taught, and it is here, in what was once called the Hotel Biron, that he wished his work to be displayed. The largest collection of Rodin’s drawings ...
If there's one thing that we know and understand about France, above all else, it's that not only do they love their food and wine, but they're great at making it. The soft touch of freshly baked bread for an evening meal, the mouth-watering taste of Crème Brûlée and the smell of freshly cooked chocolate Crêpes, all awaken the senses to what's becoming a universal love for French food. As French chefs have taken their cooking beyond French borders to extend to countries around the world, the taste of French cuisine now comes closer to home for many people. You no longer have to travel to the back country roads and small towns of France to enjoy authentic French dishes. In fact, with the rise ...
France’s Loire Valley is a beautiful landscape of historic towns, wineries, and stunning chateaux that recall the days of the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment. The area is known as “the Garden of France,” and considered to be the cradle of the French language. The valley is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that they say is “an exceptional cultural landscape, of great beauty, comprised of historic cities and villages, great architectural monuments - the Châteaux - and lands that have been cultivated and shaped by centuries of interaction between local populations and their physical environment, in particular the Loire itself." And it is all best seen from the seat of a bicycle. The Loire Valley came to life in the 16th Century as several ...
Imagine, for a moment, a rapidly growing metropolis that gains more citizens, but also gains more dead. The existing graveyards are almost full, and the citizens are suffering from disease due to improper burial practices and the use of mass graves. They need more graveyards, but they don't have room for them. What do they do? For 18th century Parisians, the answer was simple—remove the bodies to a safer location. But where? Why not underground, into the vast network of subterranean tunnels, where, in Roman times, the limestone that built Paris was quarried. The Catacombs of Paris are one of the world's most famous burial grounds, right up there with the Egyptian pyramids. These catacombs began as limestone quarries in the Roman era, when modern ...
Just an hour outside of Paris by TGV, the town of Lille is home to one of the most anticipated events in France: the annual two-day Braderie de Lille. As the largest flea market in all of Europe, this vibrant event dates back to medieval times and now attracts almost two million visitors each September. The “Braderie” (French for “sell at a low price”) offers over 10,000 exhibitors hawking their wares with everything from knick-knacks to treasures. Saturday kicks off the Braderie de Lille, and as with any yard sale, the first day offers the best selection. Note that “window shopping” is allowed on Saturday morning, but the sale does not officially begin until 2:00 p.m. Although the streets will get crowded and may even ...
Anyone who’s walked through the Marais in Paris—that ritzy, Right Bank neighbourhood that stretches across the 3rd and 4th arrondissements—will have seen the Centre Georges Pompidou. The Centre Pompidou, known to Parisians as the Beauborg (because of its location on rue Beaubourg) is one of modern architecture's greatest achievements, and home to some of the world's best modern art. The doors of its Kandinsky Library are open to students, researchers, and the general public, and its cinema offers regular screenings of avant-garde films. Centre Georges Pompidou looks the way it does for a reason: it's inside out! Architects Renzo Piano, Gianfranco Franchini, and Richard Rogers won this contract in a design competition in 1971. Construction was completed in 1977, and came with a whopping price ...
Paris's Musée Picasso, located in one of the city's oldest districts, is entirely devoted to the works of the painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso. The Hôtel Salé, where the Musée Picasso is located, was constructed in 1656 by the architect Jean Boullier. Since 1985, the Hôtel Salé has been home to 156 works of sculpture and 203 paintings by Picasso. It was once the luxurious home of Pierre Aubert, a wealthy tax collector who paid for his home mostly from the proceeds of salt taxes, which he called “sale” after the French word for salty. The Musée Picasso is a French national museum that Picasso's family handed over to the state to pay for his estate’s taxes following his death. Pablo Picasso lived in Paris ...
The Roman Empire is known for a lot of things, including feeding Christians to lions, inventing the alphabet, and popularizing the cucumber (yes, really!). The Romans were so good at empire-building that many of their edifices survive, relatively unscathed, twenty centuries later—including the Pont du Gard aqueduct bridge near Remoulins, France. The Pont du Gard Roman aqueduct was constructed to the city of Nîmes in the south of France. People had been living in the region for thousands of years before it became part of the Roman colony of Gaul in 45 B.C. The Pont du Gard aqueduct was built in the first century A.D., when Nîmes was home to about 20,000 Roman citizens. In the past, the city had relied on the spring at ...
The Arc de Triomphe is one of Paris’s most well-known monuments. The Arc is easily recognizable as a symbol of Paris, if not of France, as are the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, or the Basilica of the Sacre Coeur—to name a few other such icons. The Arc de Triomphe has been seen in countless photographs, films, and described in more than a few books, so there is little wonder why it is so well known, thanks to the fantastic history surrounding the monument. The Arc de Triomphe is the centerpiece to the Place Charles de Gaulle: a massive roundabout at the western end of the famous Champs-Elysees. This is a glamorous, famous street stretching for two kilometers (1.25 miles) from the Arc de Triomphe to ...
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