Even after living here for over four months, there is still a lot that we have not done in Paris. J recently took a vacation day and we spent a fun day getting to see a little more of this gorgeous city.
We started our day at the Grand Palais to see an exhibition called “La France en relief.” The exhibition was a collection of three-dimensional relief maps of cities in France, built between the 1660s and the 1870s. These maps were built to allow evaluation of the measures taken to fortify towns around the country against attack. About two hundred and sixty maps were originally created and around one hundred still exist today.
The relief maps were put out on display in the Grand Palais, clustered around a large floor map of the country of France, with circles marking the cities shown in the relief maps.
As a child and as an adult, I have always been up for a miniature model of something (or even a full-scale model: I still have fond memories of Greenfield Village and of Yesterday’s Main Street at the Museum of Science & Industry), so I was pretty excited about the exhibit.
The scale of the models was amazing, as was the good condition of the models given their age.
I think the most interesting part of the display was an enormous model that included the French city of Brest. Brest was decimated by World War II; 40% of the buildings in the city were totally destroyed and 30% were severely damaged by the war. The city has since been rebuilt, but the model is one of the best representations of the old pre-war city. Accompanying the model of Brest were photos of the city prior to the war and immediately after, as well as a screen playing video of the city during the war.
After we left the exhibit, we walked over to a little Spanish restaurant I had been wanting to try. We had a late lunch of chorizo, grilled pimientos de padron and manchego, with a little Spanish wine. Refreshed by the lunch break, we set off toward out next destination, stopping first to take a few pictures from the very ornate bridge between the Grand Palais and Les Invalides.
We walked over to the Louvre and spent an hour or so walking through some of the galleries of large format French and Italian paintings, stopping to admire Winged Victory, the Mona Lisa (and the crowds in front of the Mona Lisa), and the beautiful rooms housing these treasures.
