Paris: the food, the fashion, the fromage, the fantasy. No matter how many times we visit the French capital, its charms never ever grow old. And we’re not alone in thinking that. Paris is a major tourist destination that attracts thousands upon thousands of enthusiastic travellers with heads filled with images of Breton jumpers, tiny dogs and posh chocolates. But how do you enjoy this gorgeous city without just succumbing to the age-old clichés? We’ve compiled a list of the 50 best attractions in Paris, from the big name ‘must-visits’ to something a little bit more bespoke and authentically Parisian. So whether you’re looking for lesser-known museums, late night live music or the best places for shopping, we’ve got ideas a-plenty – and they’re all as tasty as a Ladurée macaron.
Who are we?
A vocation, art for all
In 1969, President Georges Pompidou decided to provide France with a venue like no other: a centre for art and culture capable of housing both the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, with an international dimension, a large public library (the future Bpi), a centre for industrial creation and a centre for musical research and creation (Ircam), all together in one and the same building situated in the heart of the capital. As great art lovers, the president and his wife were also ardent advocates of the democratisation of art. For Claude and Georges Pompidou, the Centre Pompidou had to be a place where all disciplines could meet, where artists could converse with the public. It also had to support emerging scenes and introduce and provoke debate. The titanic construction works began in May 1972 with two young architects, Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, at the helm. Alas, the president died in 1974 before he could see the Centre Pompidou completed. It was inaugurated by his successor Valery Giscard d’Estaing in the presence of his wife Claude Pompidou on 31 January 1977.
It was an immediate success as soon as it opened. Whether people came out of curiosity, as amateurs or specialists, from close at hand or farther afield, the Centre Pompidou welcomed everyone. The venue saw itself as a “cultural machine” abolishing the frontiers between disciplines and between generations, and quickly became one of the five most-visited monuments in Paris.
Our building
Nestled in the centre of Paris since 1977, the Centre Pompidou building, a glass and metal structure bathed in light, resembles a heart fed by monumental arteries in bright primary colours. Envisioned by its two architects, Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, as a genuinely living organism, it is also built in one of the capital’s oldest districts and the beating heart of Paris since Medieval times, the Beaubourg plateau.
Masterpieces
Vassily Kandinsky
« Mit dem schwarzen Bogen (Avec l’Arc noir) », 1912
A thick black arch stretches over three colour blocks, holding them at a distance as they are apparently on the point of collision.
Vassily Kandinsky has invented a richly nuanced world of moving shapes and colours. In quivering touches, lines dissociate from colour, creating as much discord as alliance. Adopting composer Arnold Schönberg’s dissonance principle, this research led him to abstract pictorial language. He distances himself from appearances, too fleeting, to reach the inner world where souls vibrate. For him, painting needs to engender strong, captivating sensations, as when listening to a concert.
Marcel Duchamp
« Fontaine », 1917/1964
In 1917, Marcel Duchamp bought a urinal, turned it over, signed it “Richard Mutt” and dubbed it the Fontaine and presented it as a work of art.
He then sent it to a New York gallery, where it was rejected. The jury of artists was not yet prepared to admit this provocative artwork. Duchamp called it “ready-made”: elevating an industrial object to “work of art” status, simply because the artist chose it.
With this simple act, Duchamp conferred a new viewpoint for the object as well as the very artistic sphere. What is the artist’s role? How do you define “work of art” in the age of film, photography, and industry? Does it still have to be beautiful? Unique? Purely intuitive? Hand-made? Non-reproducible? Raising such questions did not always lead to answers, but did completely shake up 20th-century art.
Robert Delaunay
« Manège de cochons », 1922
A pair of black-stockinged legs, swept up in a riot of colours, projects the noisy atmosphere of a Roaring Twenties funfair.
Myriad coloured discs, the artist’s favourite motif, seem to rise from a top hat. Their “tumultuous orchestration” draws onlookers into a merry-go-round’s frantically swirling movement and music.
The modern, brightly-lit, colourful city with its new advertising hoardings and popular, entertaining sports are a source of new sensations for the painter. In the foreground, Robert and Sonia Delaunay’s friend Tristan Tzara, the dada poet, signifies the close ties between the painter couple and contemporary poetry.
Otto Dix
« Bildnis der Journalistin Sylvia von Harden (Portrait de la journaliste Sylvia von Harden) », 1926
Who is this woman who dares to appear in public alone, cigarette in hand, at a table of the Romanische Café, a haunt of the Berlin literary and art worlds?
Sylvia von Harden was a journalist in Berlin in the 1920s. Her ostensibly nonchalant stance is a statement of her emancipated intellectual role. Otto Dix undermines her arrogance with the detail of a loose stocking and her rather awkward pose. Her red-check dress contrast with the pink environment, typically Art Nouveau.
The cold, satirical realism typifies the New Objectivity movement to which the painter belonged. Inspired by early 16th-century German masters (Cranach, Holbein), he embraced the tempera on wood panel technique as well as the choice to exhibit the ugliness of the humankind.
Frida Kahlo
« The Frame », 1938
Born in Mexico in 1907, Frida Kahlo sustained a terrible accident at the age of 18, and started painting while lying on a hospital bed. This was the first of a long series of self-portraits. In 1928, she met muralist Diego Rivera, and married him the following year. Her tumultuous life with him, her physical and mental suffering then became the main themes of her work.
This self-portrait was painted on a fine aluminium sheet, overlaid with glass plate painted by Mexican artisans on the underside. Frida Kahlo’s face thus stares out from a frame typically used for a mirror, photo-portrait or holy icon. The artist’s face shines through luxuriant décor. Its gaudy colours and ornamentation are reminiscent of accessories and Pre-Columbian objects that feature heavily throughout Frida Kahlo’s work.
Marc Chagall
« Les mariés de la Tour Eiffel », 1938-1939
A large white cockerel whisks the painter and his wife in full bridal finery into an indeterminate décor mingling Parisian and Russian elements.
After their first trip to Paris from 1911 to 1914 and participation in the Bolshevik revolution, Marc Chagall moved to Paris with his wife Bella. The newly-weds are surrounded by a hotchpotch of souvenirs from Russia, music, Parisian life and animals.
To the right, the couple’s native Jewish quarter risks catching fire from the flames of a chandelier snatched by an upside-down angel. Seeing signs of imminent war in 1938-1939, Chagall painted a fragile hapiness.
