Hello Paris - Bonjour Paris
Paris, the city, and the capital of France, situated in the north-central part of the country. People were living on the site of the present-day city, located along the Seine River some 233 miles (375 km) upstream from the river’s mouth on the English Channel (La Manche), by about 7600 BCE. The modern city has spread from the island (the Île de la Cité) and far beyond both banks of the Seine.
Cultural Life
Paris has for centuries been regarded as the main cultural powerhouse of the Western world, a magnet for artists and intellectuals, and a place where new ideas originate and art reigns supreme. This notion was especially true in the early part of the 20th century, when the city was favored by numerous expatriate writers and artists, including Ernest Hemingway from the United States, James Joyce from Ireland, Pablo Picasso from Spain, and Amedeo Modigliani from Italy.
While some critics have maintained that Parisian culture has become more a matter of show and dazzle than of true creativity, the city’s cultural life is still highly active and distinctive. Parisians love novelty, have an abounding intellectual curiosity, know how to dress up the simplest cultural event with flair and elegance, and are avid patrons of the arts, so the theatres and concert halls, museums, art galleries, and art cinemas are always well attended.
The principal state-run theatres are the Comédie-Française, the Odéon Theatre, and the National Theatre of Chaillot, which offer a repertoire of French classics, serious modern plays, and foreign imports. Lighter fare is provided by the many privately owned “boulevard” theatres, which struggle to survive. There are more than 150 smaller theatres, many of them state-supported, which present a mixed program of experimental “fringe” shows, cabaret, and the like. In addition to many multiscreen commercial cinemas, there are scores of little “art” houses that show a wide variety of movies, many of them with subtitles. France’s main film studios are in the suburbs of Paris.
While the Louvre is the greatest of the classic art museums, newer major museums include the National Museum of Modern Art in the Pompidou Centre, the Orsay Museum of 19th-century art and civilization, and the science museum at La Villette. A specialty of Paris is the staging of large and lavishly mounted exhibitions, usual retrospectives of an individual artist or historical period.
The city’s musical life, once-moribund, became much livelier after the early 1970s, in part because the state provided much-needed funding. The city also renewed its commitment to opera by opening a second opera house, at the Place de la Bastille, in 1989. Major annual festivals emphasizing music and drama include the Music Festival (Fête de la Musique), held in June, and the Autumn Festival (Festival d’Automne), held from mid-September through December.
The main publishing houses and bookshops are located in the Latin Quarter and Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhoods. The best-known daily newspaper is Le Monde, followed by the daily Le Figaro and Libération. Among the widely read weekly newsmagazines are L’Express and Le Point. The satiric weekly Charlie Hebdo long had a reputation of skewering political and religious figures, and its relatively low circulation numbers belied its cultural influence. Its depiction of the Prophet Muhammad drew a violent response from Islamist militants—the magazine was firebombed in 2011, and a deadly shooting in January 2015 claimed the lives of 11 journalists and security personnel, including editor Stéphane (“Charb”) Charbonnier. All the main French national radio and television networks are centered in Paris; some are owned by the state, and some are privately owned.
Music
Le P'tit Bal Du Samedi Soir by Gus Viseur Et Son Orchestre
French Café - Accordion Music
• French Café - Accordion Music