Visiting Versailles just about drove me crazy. It’s an exhausting day, taking a commuter railroad out from central Paris. But you have to take the right train, from the right station to the correct destination because there are multiple depots in the town of Versailles. It was a beautiful day for the start, and it…
Tag: Palaces
The Louvre
I get a good laugh out of the Louvre. It is an absurdity. Obscenely huge, the product of around twenty expansions and now the home of a gigantic museum with a stellar art collection as well as numerous other institutions in other wings, the Louvre was never the seat of the royal government in France….
The Luxembourg Palace
Another influential palace is the Luxembourg, constructed by Marie de Medici, the Florentine wife of Henry IV, who was assassinated. Their son was Louis XIII, and after numerous plots against by his own mother, he finally exiled her out of the kingdom. The famous Marie de Medici cycle was designed to fit in a giant…
The Tuileries: A Lost Palace in Paris and Its Influence on St. Louis Architecture
You’ve probably never heard of the Tuileries Palace, but it’s actually one of the most important places in French history over the last five hundred years, and its influence on the architecture of what has become known as Second Empire in the United States and St. Louis is hard to overstate. First of all, it…
Some Random Impressions of France
First off, perhaps I would like to start off with some impressions of Paris, and France in general. This was my twelfth trip to Europe, but my first to France. Many people were surprised that I had never been, and that was a major reason I chose to finally go. As I remarked to someone,…
Back from Paris and Northern France with over a Thousand Photographs
While certainly I wanted to show off the beauty of Dutchtown for two weeks, that was also cover for the fact I was traveling in Europe for over a week, specifically in Paris and throughout northern France. I took over 1,000 photos, which is slacking off a bit considering I took over 2,400 photos back…
Caserta, Campania, Italy
Every once and a while, I like to go back to the sources of much of St. Louis’s architecture. Usually, that means Europe. The palace at Caserta, built outside Naples in the Campania region of Italy, sits right on the edge of the mountains that rise dramatically from the plains around the port city. A…