back next 1     Paris,France, Photos Imagetripping sells beautiful framed distintive images of Paris, France. Paris, France The Eiffel Tower is an iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris. It was named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower. Erected in 1889 as the entrance arch to the 1889 World's Fair, it has become both a global cultural icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world. The tower is the tallest structure in Paris. The tower is the tallest structure in Paris standing 324 metres (1,063 ft) tall,and the tallest man-made structure in the world. The tower has three levels for visitors. The third level observatory's upper platform is at 279.11 m (915.7 ft) the highest accessible to the public in the European Union. The Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile is one of the most famous monuments in Paris. It stands in the centre of the Place Charles de Gaulle (originally named Place de l'Étoile), at the western end of the Champs-Élysées. The monument stands 50 metres (164 ft) in height, 45 m (148 ft) wide and 22 m (72 ft) deep. It was commissioned in 1806 after the victory at Austerlitz by Emperor Napoleon at the peak of his fortunes. Construction was completed in 1836. The Arc de Triomphe became the rallying point of French troops parading after successful military campaigns and for the annual Bastille Day Military Parade. Famous victory marches around or under the Arc have included the Germans in 1871, the French in 1919, the Germans in 1940, and the French and Allies in 1944 and 1945. Les Invalides, officially known as L'Hôtel national des Invalides, is a complex of buildings in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, France, containing museums and monuments, all relating to French military history. The buildings house the Musée de l'Armée, the military museum of the Army of France, the Musée des Plans-Reliefs, and the Musée d'Histoire Contemporaine, as well as the burial site for Napoleon Bonaparte. Place de la Concorde is the largest public squares measuring 21.3 acres in Paris, located at the eastern end of the Champs-Élysées. The center of the Place is occupied by a giant Egyptian obelisk decorated with hieroglyphics exalting the reign of the pharaoh Ramesses II. The obelisk once marked the entrance to the Luxor Temple. The Ottoman viceroy of Egypt, Mehmet Ali, offered the 3,300-year-old Luxor Obelisk to France in 1829. It arrived in Paris on December 20, 1833. Three years later, King Louis Philippe had it placed in the center of Place de la Concorde, where a guillotine used to stand during the Revolution. The obelisk, a yellow granite column, rises 23 metres (75 ft) high, including the base, and weighs over 250 metric tons (280 short tons). Given the technical limitations of the day, transporting it was no easy feat — on the pedestal are drawn diagrams explaining the machinery that was used for the transportation. The obelisk is flanked on both sides by fountains constructed at the time of its erection on the Place. The two fountains in the Place de la Concorde were designed by Jacques Ignace Hittorff, a student of the Neoclassical designer Charles Percier at the École des Beaux-Arts. Hittorff's two fountains were on the theme of rivers and seas, in part because of their proximity to the Ministry of Navy, and to the Seine. Their arrangement, on a north-south axis aligned with the Obelisk of Luxor and the Rue Royale, and the form of the fountains themselves, were influenced by the fountains of Rome, particularly Piazza Navona and the Piazza San Pietro, both of which had obelisks aligned with fountains. Musée d'Orsay holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1915, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography. It houses the largest collection of impressionist and post-impressionist masterpieces in the world, by painters including Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, Sisley, Gauguin and Van Gogh. The museum building was originally a railway station, Gare d'Orsay, constructed for the Chemin de Fer de Paris à Orléans and finished in time for the 1900 Exposition Universelle. It was converted to a museum which officially opened in December 1986 by then-president, François Mitterrand. The center hall features a Clock designed by Victor Laloux. Luxembourg Palace and Gardens MÉMORIAL DE LA DÉPORTATION (DEPORTATION MEMORIAL) The Germans invaded France on May 10, 1940, and Paris fell on June 14th. Two weeks later the armistice was signed and France was divided into unoccupied and occupied zones, and Alsace-Lorraine was annexed to the Reich. A Vichy government was set up in France. An estimated 300,000 Jews lived in France prior to the invasion. In March 1942, the first convoy of 1,112 Jews was deported to concentration camps in Poland and Germany. An infamous roundup took place on July 16-17, 1942, when 12,884 people from Paris and its suburbs were arrested. Another notorious round-up occurred on August 15, 1942, when 7,000 foreign Jews were arrested and handed over to the Germans. Between 1942 and July 1944, nearly 76,00 Jews were deported to concentration camps in the East via French transit camps, only 2,500 returned. Of those deported, 23,000 had French nationality, the rest were "stateless." The Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation is a memorial to the 200,000 people deported from Vichy France to the Nazi concentration camps during World War II. It is located in Paris, France on the site of a former morgue, underground behind Notre Dame on Île de la Cité. It was designed by French modernist architect, writer, teacher, and town planner Georges-Henri Pingusson and opened in 1962. Pingusson intended that its long and narrow subterranean space convey a feeling of claustrophobia. A circular plaque on the floor of the underground chamber is inscribed: "They descended into the mouth of the earth and they did not return." Along both walls of the narrow chamber are 200,000 crystals with light shining through meant to symbolize each of the deportees who died in the concentration camps; at the end of the tunnel is a single bright light. Either side of the chamber are small rooms that seem to depict prison cells. Opposite the entrance is a stark iron gate overlooking the Seine at the tip of the Île de la Cité. A "flame of eternal hope" burns and The Tomb of the Unknown Deportee bears the inscription: "Dedicated to the living memory of the 200,000 French deportees sleeping in the night and the fog, exterminated in the Nazi concentration camps." At the exit to the chamber is the injunction, engraved, found at all sites memorializing the victims of the Nazis: "Forgive but never forget". Some useful France travel resources are: Paris Tourism Office French Tourist Authority for France Travel and Tourism Site