Friday, October 28, 2011

Arago Plaques

The French seem to give more recognition to their scientists and intellectuals than Americans do.  François Arago was an astronomer and politician who worked on the project to complete the meridian arc.  His statue was re-smelted by the Germans when they occupied Paris, so in 1987 the City of Paris decided to create a new monument to Arago.  This monument took the form of 135 4.7 inch bronze medallions placed along the 12 kilometer north-south meridian (so-called Rose Line) of Paris.  Today we found five of them.  They all look exactly alike, so I'll show you only one.


Here's the kind of restaurant we don't go to.  The menu is from l'Arpege, reportedly the most expensive restaurant in Paris.  The autumn menu is 120 euros.


And last, La Pagode is a Japanese pagoda built in 1896 as a gift from the owner of Bon Marché department store to his wife.  It's completely out of character with the surrounding traditional Haussmann style buildings. It was saved from demolition in 1970 and is now used as a movie theater.  It's a tall building with a wall and lots of trees nearby and lots of restoration work going on in the roof area, so it's very difficult to take a photo that captures its character.  Here's a picture of the ornate exterior wall.


Today's cheese:  None

No comments:

Post a Comment