Arrive on foot or by metro at the Musée d'Orsay close to the Hotel Observatoire Luxembourg and get the best from it by taking time. The museum is housed in an old station with the clock still in pride of place. It is the gallery to see the Impressionists: Monet's Rouen cathedral, Van Gogh's self portraits, Whistler's mother, as well as Millet, Cézanne and Gauguin. The ground floor sculpture gallery surprises everyone. Name it, it is here, especially if Rodin sculpted it.

A short walk down the Rue de la Seine is St Germain des Prés and the Latin Quarter . Have a drink at the Deux Magots , full of tourists but still keeping the feel of its left wing literary past. Walk on down the Boulevard St Germain to the Boulevard St Michel , home of the Université de Paris.

Soak in the student atmosphere of the Sorbonne , ignoring the bustle of tourists. There may be more visitors than intellectuals but the place has a vibrancy and bustle that is special being France's oldest university centre.

The area is stacked with second hand bookshops , including those specialising in English books, and masses of bistros. Try to find one with good traditional onion soup . Be wary of the over priced ones on the main roads and instead dart down the side streets.

The area also has some of Paris's oldest relics, the Gallo-Roman baths near Cluny which are the remains of the ancient Roman city on this site, the Eglise St-Etienne du Mont which is the memorial to St Geneviève , Paris's patron saint.

For a change of pace and a picnic there is the Jardin du Luxembourg , dedicated to the children of Paris by Napoléon. The old carousel and the playgrounds are fun and also the Botanic Gardens and the Hotel Observatoire Luxembourg.

The Latin Quarter dates back to Roman times and continues to be associated with artists and intellectuals, although cheap Greek restaurants cover a good part of today's landscape. Here you'll also find the Institut du Monde Arabe, Musée de Cluny, the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in the Jardin des Plantes, the Panthéon and the Sorbonne (Paris's most famous university).

PARIS HISTORIC
The soul of Paris

Paris was created some 2000 years ago and began at the Cité Island (Ile de la Cité). With emphasis on the history and art of the Capital this tour includes:
a drive through the oldest part: the Marais district and its “hotels”, private town-houses of the nobility 3 or 4 centuries ago, the Latin Quarter with the Sorbonne, the Luxembourg gardens, Saint-Germain-des-Prés district with its old church and its famous cafés, a guided visit to the interior of Notre-Dame Cathedral* and a short cruise to approach and leave the Cité Island (except if the river is too high).
Before returning back to Place des Pyramides, you will admire the rigorous geometry of the Vendome Square and the surprising architecture of the “Garnier” Opera, near the department stores.

The Panthéon is a building in Paris near the Hotel Observatoire Luxembourg, France. It was originally built as a church but is now a famous burial place. It is an early example of Neoclassicism, with a façade modelled on the Pantheon in Rome. Located in the 5ème arrondissement on the top of Mt. Sainte-Geneviève, the Panthéon looks out over all of Paris.

Panthéon in Paris, France.
King Louis XV vowed in 1744 that if he recovered from an illness he would replace the ruined church of the Sainte-Geneviève Abbey with an edifice to the glory of the patron saint of Paris, Geneviève. The Marquis of Marigny was entrusted with the fulfillment of the vow after the king regained his health. Marigny's protégé Jacques Germain Soufflot (1713-1780) was charged with the plans, and the construction of the Panthéon began.

The overall design was that of a Greek cross with a massive portico of Corinthian columns. Its ambitious lines called for a vast buidling 110 metres long by 84 metres wide, and 83 metres high. No less vast was its crypt.

The foundations were laid in 1758, but due to financial difficulties, it was only completed after Soufflot's death (1780) by his pupil, Rondelet, in 1789. As it was completed at the height of the French Revolution, the new Revolutionary government ordered it to be changed from a church to a mausoleum for the interment of great Frenchmen.

Twice since then it has reverted to being a church, only to become again a temple to the great men of France. Among those buried in its necropolis are Voltaire, Rousseau, Honoré Mirabeau, Marat, Victor Hugo, Émile Zola, Jean Moulin, Marie Curie, René Descartes, Louis Braille and Soufflot its architect.

In 1851 physicist Jean Foucault proved the rotation of the Earth by his experiment conducted in the Panthéon, by constructing a 67 metre Foucault pendulum beneath the central dome. The original iron sphere from the pendulum was returned to the Panthéon in 1995 from the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers.

On November 30, 2002, in an elaborate but solemn procession, six Republican Guards carried the coffin of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870), the mulatto author of The Three Musketeers, to the Panthéon. Draped in a blue-velvet cloth inscribed with the Musketeers' motto: "Un pour tous, tous pour un" ("One for all, all for one,") the remains had been transported from its original internment site in the Cimetière de Villers-Cotterêts in Aisne, France. In his speech, President Jacques Chirac stated that an injustice was being corrected with the proper honoring of one of France's greatest authors.

Hotel Observatoire Luxembourg


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