Chimney pots

Looks like somebody recently replaced the chimney pots and their caps on this building. I've never seen a collection of such neat and clean chimney toppers. You can see some of the old style chimney pots, in orange terra-cotta, behind.

All shiny and new!

At this point our group was gathered back up and ushered down the stairs back into the church. We may have spent about fifteen or twenty minutes (at the most) up there. The whole tour from the beginning of the climb to the end was billed at forty-five minutes, but I didn't think to time it.

Another sky view

There is so much "Paris" going on in this shot that I don't know where to start. But we have to start somewhere, so let me direct your eye to the upper left. The modern tower you see at the edge of the photo is the Hotel Concorde-Lafayette at the Porte Maillot. It stands on the axis of the Champs-Elysées between the Arc de Triomphe and the high-rise La Défense district. At the base of the tower is the Palais des Congrès, a theater where I saw a Russian ballet troupe in 1981 and, many years later, a production of "Starmania." Just below that, and to the right, is the gorgeous glass roof of the Grand Palais.

I'm sure many of you can identify even more Parisian landmarks than I did in this shot.

Just to the right of that, but closer to the camera, the blocky-looking church tower with a pointed black roof is Saint-Germain-des-Près. Moving toward the center of the image you can see a large Ferris wheel that sits on the Place de la Concorde over on the Right Bank. The American embassy is nestled among the trees you can see just behind the wheel. The Tuileries gardens extend in a long thin line to the right of the wheel and, where they end, the roofs of the Louvre are visible. Behind them is the long green roof of the Madeleine church and the impressive dome of the church of Saint-Augustin.

Many of the buildings in the foreground, including the large slate-roofed dome and the two green observatories, are part of the Sorbonne university complex. In the extreme foreground, the long building topped with a row of dormer windows (it stretches across the entire photo) and the two wings perpendicular to it (one has a clock on its sunny southern facade) are part of the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, another prestigious Parisian high school.

If you've got a good eye (and you click to enlarge the photo), you might identify the roof of the Musée d'Orsay, the tip of the column in the Place Vendôme, the buildings around the Cluny museum where the boulevard Saint-Michel intersects the boulevard Saint-Germain, and the University of Paris Descartes Medical School complex.

Lastly, in the upper right corner, you can see a forest of construction cranes; some big buildings are being built up north!

Saint-Etienne-du-Mont

This gothic church is just next-door to the Panthéon. I've never been inside, although I've read that it's worth seeing. Maybe one of these days. It was built in the sixteenth century, long before its more massive neighbor. The mont in its name refers to the montagne Sainte-Geneviève, the hill named for the patron saint of Paris.

The tall building behind the church is part of the University of Paris, Pierre and Marie Curie campus, at Jussieu. The church-looking tower on the right is part of the Lycée Henri IV, a well-known Parisian high school.

The neighborhood is where the Romans built their city back in the day of Julius Caesar. Not far from this site is the old Roman amphitheater on the rue Monge, the ancient Roman forum, and the baths at Cluny. It's also very close to the spot (down the hill to the left) where Owen Wilson was picked up on his trips into the Parisian past in Woody Allen's film, "Midnight in Paris."

La basilique du Sacré-Cœur

Here's another iconic Parisian monument, the Sacred Heart basilica. It's not an old building, having been completed at the turn of the century. Uh, from the 19th to the 20th, that is. I forget that the century has turned again since that expression became popular. Us mid-century types are getting old.

The gothic church without towers just below the Sacré Cœur in the photo is Saint Eustache at les Halles. The gothic spire on the left, just behind the pointy green roof, is the Sainte Chapelle on the Ile de la Cité.

I won't go into the details of why it was built -- lots of guilt, remorse, political, religious and moral stuff, all of which you can look up on the internet if you're interested. But since it was built, up on the heights of Montmartre, it has become an icon of Paris and a tourist mecca. The views out over the city from the terraces are terrific. I have yet to climb up into the church's dome. Maybe one day!

Notre Dame de Paris

Here's a Parisian monument that everyone knows: the cathedral of Notre Dame. This view is, of course, from the dome of the Panthéon, looking right down the street where my hotel was, across the arm of the river that separates the Left Bank from the Ile de la Cité, and smack into the southern flank of the cathedral.

The bright blue and red building behind the church's towers is the Centre Pompidou, Paris' modern art museum.

What more can I say? I didn't visit the church this time, but I did walk by the front on my way to another neighborhood later on that day. It's been way over a week since I've returned from my trip, but I'm still showing you photos from that first afternoon, before I even left France.

La TGB

These towers frame the François Mitterand National Library just up river from the Austerlitz train station on the Left Bank of the Seine in Paris. It's the second site of France's national library, the first being on the rue Vivienne over on the Right Bank. When the library was being built in the late 1990s, I heard it referred to more than once as la TGB (Très Grande Bibliotheque, or Very Big Library), a take-off on the name for France's high speed train, le TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse). Haha.

I think that dome belongs to the Eglise Saint-Louis, part of the Hôpital Universitaire Pitié-Salpêtrière complex.

The library is part of a decades-long renovation of this section of the city where old manufacturing plants lined the river along the railroad tracks. Now, large sections of the tracks are disappearing under the rising mix of offices, shops, and university and residential buildings that are filling in the neighborhood.

Bleu, blanc, et rouge

The big church with the round towers in the photo is Saint Sulpice in the heart of Paris' sixth arrondissement. It's the neighborhood where I spent my first months in a Paris boarding house back in 1981. The church is huge, recently restored, and worth a visit if you're in the city.

Looking toward the northwest from the Panthéon's dome.

Beyond the church you can see La Défense, a high-rise neighborhood of offices, shopping centers, hotels, and residential buildings built along the extended axis formed by the Louvre and the Champs-Elysées. To the left of flag is the gilded dome of the church at Les Invalides. Napoléon's tomb lies under it.