Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine

Today, our last full day in the Cité we decided to go over to this museum, which opened in 2007, and we hadn't been to it. It's housed in the Palais de Chaillot wing where the Theatre is located, the opposite wing from the old Musee de l'Homme. It has great views of the Eiffel Tower from lots of it's windows and from the top, a great view towards Sacre Coeur. I was taken by the views. The displays on the first floor were of casts of catherdral entrances, full size, it was pretty amazing. Here's C taking a photo of the back of one of the casts. There were lots of models of buildings, too. Very interesting. Upstairs, they had contemporary building models, photo intallations, and a replica of an apartment designed by le Corbusier. Another section had replicas of stained glass windows and frescos.
On the 4th floor, they had an installation of Elle Decor rooms. One room, set for a dinner party, had the walls covered in trompe l'oeil wall paper. Doesn't it look like there are open doors and hallways? Not! It's a flat wall. C might have some photos of the plaster casts, otherwise, you're left to wonder or check out the link above.

The Metro ride back was crazy. The trains were so packed with people and walking through the tunnels to get to the connecting train was a real experience. We were really happy to exit at St. Paul, into the still light evening.

This is "au revoir" from Paris, unless I'm able to get on-line before we leave on Wednesday morning. I leave you with this very cool image of the Eiffel Tower that I took today through a window (with a screen.)