Of course, I need to come back to the most beautiful avenue in the world and its in Paris ! I found some lost pictures in other posts that needed to be in one along on this wonderful avenue, me think. Therefore, this is my take again on the Avenue des Champs Elysées of Paris, part II !!! Hope you enjoy the post as I.
Everyone comes here need to visit it and they do in hordes of visitors, not to mention the poor souls who need to work here. So will tell you again what you can see here according to yours truly. Here you find the luxury of my belle France but also architecture and history to boot ! And my dear late wife Martine first went out here when girlfriend and than more so many memories forever on this avenue. How about looking at the avenue des Champs-Elysées !!! The Avenue des Champs-Élysées or locals call it simply Champs-Élysées, and even shorter for Champs is almost 2 km long linking the Place de la Concorde to the Place Charles-de-Gaulle in the 8éme district/arrondissement of Paris. It takes this name from the place of hell where the souls rest in the Greek mythology, so they tell me, The Avenue des Champs-Élysées is the most beautiful avenue in the world and of course in the most beautiful City in the world, Paris.
The avenue des Champs-Elysées is 70 meters wide, comprises a 30-meter-wide carriageway with four lanes of traffic in each direction and two 20-meter-wide sidewalks. In its lower section, east of the Champs-Élysées-Marcel-Dassault roundabout, the avenue is bordered by service roads called the “Promenade des Champs-Élysées,” which run alongside the Champs-Élysées gardens (see post). The avenue thus crosses the entire length of the gardens, a distance of 700 meters. You can access walking or by car with nice underground parking at Concorde and Arc de Triomphe, However, public transport is easy at the metro and RER stations : Concorde (lines 1, 8, and 12 -mine); Champs-Élysées – Clemenceau (lines 1 and 13); Franklin D. Roosevelt (lines 1 and 9); George V (line 1); Charles de Gaulle – Étoile (lines 1, 2, and 6). Charles de Gaulle – Étoile station (RER A line).
My list of favorites buildings here are at No. 25, Hotel de la Païva. This particular hotel, was built between 1856 and 1866 for Esther Lachmann, marquise de Païva, called La Païva , famous courtesan of the Second Empire. The hotel, famous for its interior decoration, is one of the best preserved examples of private architecture of the Second Empire. After the death of the Païva, the hotel was sold to a banker in Berlin and then, in 1895, to the restaurateur Pierre Cubat. Since 1904, it houses a private circle, the Travellers. No. 30: Home of the Earl of Monte Cristo in the novel by Alexandre Dumas. No. 37 (corner of rue Marbeuf): Residence of Beatrice Charlotte Antoinette Denis de Kérédern de Trobriand . She was the daughter of the Count Régis de Trobriand , a naturalized French aristocrat and general of the Union armies during the American Civil War, and Mary Jones, wealthy heiress, daughter of Mary Mason Jones, Grand-aunt of Edith Wharton. While her husband lived in New York, the Countess of Trobriand resided most of the time in Paris. The Countess lived separate from her husband after an episode of theft and corruption. This episode inspired Maurice Leblanc to do a chapter on the novel entitled “The Blue Diamond” of Arsène Lupin against Sherlock Holmes (1908). At Nos. 52-60: Originally built (1933) in the place of the Hotel de Massa for the American bank Citybank of New York, this building subsequently hosts a Virgin Megastore store (from 1988 to 2013), as well as a Monoprix. It is renovated from 2016 after the closure of the Virgin Megastore and now host a store of Galleries Lafayette. At No. 70: Vuitton Building (now the Marriott Hotel). Facade of late Art nouveau style built in 1914. At no 76-78; Arcades of the Lido. The building raised at this address has on the ground floor a shopping arcade which gives on one side on the Champs-Elysées and on the other on the rue Ponthieu. The arcades of the Champs-Elysées,of luxury shops, were built in 1925. The arcades were inaugurated in 1926. Some marble columns, coming from the old Hotel Dufayel, are used in the realization. The basement of the passage housed the Lido until 1976. Inaugurated in 1928, it was originally a beauty salon with a worldly swimming pool. Transformed into a cabaret in 1946, they were the origin of the current name of the passage, the “arcades of the Lido”. No. 92: During the Nazis occupation, the seat of the magazine Der Deutsche Wegleiter für Paris, intended for occupation troops. The building houses on the ground floor the famous brasserie Fouquet and, on the upper floors, the hotel Fouquet Barrière, inaugurated in 2006. At No. 103: Élysée-Palace. Hotel de Voyageurs built in 1898 for the company of sleeping wagons. This was the first of the great Hotels of travelers built on the Champs-Elysées. It was soon followed by the Hotel Astoria (1904) and the Hotel Claridge (1912). Th original decor was destroyed by the Crédit commercial de France, which acquired the building in 1919 to install its headquarters. At No. 114: Alberto Santos-Dumont , an aviation pioneer, inhabited this building in front of which he landed in 1903 his airship. At No 116 bis-118 was the seat of Radio-Paris under the Nazi occupation, in the building of the post office. In 1977 , it became the Cabaret Lido (that was before at No 78). At No 119 : Hôtel Carlton, built in 1907. In 1988 it was the HQ of Air France. At No 120 , James Gordon Bennett jr, owner of the New York Herald lived here. At No 122 , the Count Henry de La Vaulx a pioneer of Aviation lived here from 1898 to 1909. At No 124 (corner of 2, rue Balzac) mansion built before 1858 for Santiago Drake del Castillo, (French of Cuban origins) one of the rare examples of Second Empire mansions bordering the avenue. At No 133, the drugstore Publicis , was the first drugstore to open in Europe on October 16 1958 in a building from early 20C. It was destroyed by fire in 1972 and rebuilt in glass and steel. No. 138: William Kissam Vanderbilt’s hotel ; an American businessman and horse breeder, a member of the prominent Vanderbilt family. He assembled in the salons a priceless collection of paintings and objets d’art, but he only allowed a select few to admire it. No. 140: Hôtel du Baron Édouard de Rothschild in 1910. He was a French banker, Among the acquisitions of Baron Édouard de Rothschild was an admirable van Dyck which, thanks to the Baron’s heirs, became one of the jewels of the Louvre: the portrait of Henrietta Maria of France, daughter of Henry IV, who was to marry Charles I of England. At No 144 entrance to the Tunnel or tunnel de l’Étoile, connects the avenue de la Grande-Armée passing underneath the Arc de triomphe de l’Étoile. And onwards on the avenue….
A bit of history I like tell us that originally, the Champs-Élysées were nothing but marshy, uninhabited land. Marie de Medici decided to have a long avenue lined with elms and linden trees laid out beyond the Tuileries Palace (see post now gone), along the Seine. The Cours la Reine, inspired by the Florentine promenade of the Cascine, was opened in 1616. André Le Nôtre designed, along the axis of the central pavilion of the Tuileries Palace, from the present-day Place de la Concorde to the current Rond-Point des Champs-Élysées-Marcel-Dassault, towards the Montagne du Roule ,which was located on the site of the present-day Place de l’Étoile ,a beautiful avenue bordered by landscaping with elm-lined paths and lawns. It is called the “Grand-Cours” to distinguish it from the Cours la Reine, or also the “Grande Allée du Roule,” the “Avenue de la Grille Royale” (1678), the “Avenue du Palais des Tuileries” (1680), and the “Champs-Élysées,” a name that appears in 1694 but was not definitively established until 1709, as attested by the royal accounts. In 1722, the king annexed the village of Roule to the suburbs of Paris. In 1765, he authorized the construction of buildings on both sides of the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. In 1774, king Louis XV had the avenue widened and extended westward to the Seine, at the level of the Pont de Neuilly, via the present-day Avenue de la Grande-Armée in Paris and Avenue Charles-de-Gaulle in Neuilly-sur-Seine (see post). It was then called the “Avenue de la Grille Royale” up to the Chaillot gate and the “Avenue de Neuilly” beyond it. The popularity of the Champs-Élysées, which then took on its definitive name of Avenue des Champs-Élysées in 1789, only truly took off during the French revolution. It was along the Champs-Élysées that the procession of harridans, passed on October 5, 1789, heading towards Versailles to bring the royal family back to Paris. It was also along the Champs-Élysées that the royal family was brought back to Paris on June 25, 1791, after the flight to Varennes, between two lines of National Guardsmen who rendered honors with their rifle butts raised. Administratively, the Champs-Élysées section was created in 1790, which became the Champs-Élysées quartier or neighborhood in 1795. On April 2, 1810, it was along the avenue, adorned for the occasion with a mock triumphal arch, that the new Empress of the French, Marie-Louise of Austria, made her entry into the city. It was by the same route that she left on March 29, 1814. Two days later, Tsar Alexander I of Russia, King Frederick William III of Prussia, and Prince Schwarzenberg took their places in a grandstand erected near the Élysée Palace to watch the parade of the Allied troops. On June 25, 1815, at the end of the Hundred Days, after the defeat at Waterloo, Emperor Napoleon I left Paris for good, having abdicated at the Élysée Palace, to return to the Château de Malmaison. He crosses the Champs-Élysées, at the top of which the Arc de Triomphe is still under construction. On February 22, 1848, a grand banquet was held on the Champs-Élysées; this would be the starting point of the 1848 French revolution. During the Universal Exposition of 1855, the Champs-Élysées became the fashionable place to be. The Second Empire (Napoléon III) was a golden age for the Champs-Élysées. The avenue, lined with luxurious mansions, became the epicenter of elegant Parisian life. Following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the German armies symbolically occupied the Champs-Élysées from March 1st to 3rd. On June 14, 1940, Nazi troops marched for the first time under the Arc de Triomphe. On November 11 of the same year, a demonstration by high school and university students on the Champs-Élysées and in front of the Arc de Triomphe, one of the very first public acts of resistance to the occupier in France, was brutally suppressed by the Nazis. On August 26, 1944, after the Liberation of Paris, General Charles de Gaulle descended the Champs-Élysées, preceded by four tanks of the 2nd Armored Division. The renovated Avenue des Champs-Élysées was inaugurated on September 26, 1994 by Jacques Chirac, Mayor of Paris at the time.
My anecdotes on cinema : The street vendor Jean Seberg in Breathless (1960); Is Paris Burning?, directed by René Clément in 1966; Fantomas by André Hunebelle (1964). In 1969, singer Joe Dassin performed “Les Champs-Élysées,” a song adapted by Pierre Delanoë, telling the story of a romantic encounter on the avenue. Paintings : Distribution of Wine and Food on the Champs-Élysées, 1822, by Louis-Léopold Boilly, oil on canvas, now at the Carnavalet Museum. The Gloppe Pastry Shop, 1889, by Jean Béraud, oil on wood, also at the Carnavalet Museum. The two horses of Marly, a pair of wild, rearing horses, are restrained by naked men. Commissioned in 1739 by Louis XIV from Guillaume I Coustou, they are located in the Place de la Concorde, at the entrance to the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. Two other groups of horses restrained by men and gods are located at the entrance to the Tuileries Gardens. Commissioned by Louis XIV from André Coysevox for the entrance to the Marly watering trough (see post), they represent Fame and Mercury riding a winged horse, Pegasus. The original marble models, which are in the Marly courtyard of the Louvre Museum, have been replaced by cement statues.
The Paris tourist office on the Champs-Elysées: https://parisjetaime.com/eng/article/all-you-need-to-know-about-the-champs-elysees-a708
The Committee on the Champs-Elysées to showcase and support businesses of all sorts on the avenue: https://comite-champs-elysees.com/
The Paris tourist office on the 8éme arrondissement de Paris : https://parisjetaime.com/eng/article/explore-paris-s-8th-arrondissement-a826
There you have it a bit more on the Avenue des Champs-Elysées! A must at least once to get the frenzy feel of Paris. Again, hope you enjoy this post on the Avenue des Champs Elysées of Paris, part II !!! as I.
And remember, happy travels , good health, and many cheers to all !!!
