Palais de Chaillot
This little hill used to
have a convent on it, until Napoleon I pulled it down to build a palace for his
son, the King of Rome.
Nothing was built before Waterloo, except the Pont d’Iéna, the bridge at the
foot of the slope.
This
was named after a victory Napoleon had won against the Prussians, and the
Prussians who occupied Paris in 1815 wanted to blow it up,
but Louis XVIII wouldn’t let
them. In 1837 a square, named Place du Trocadéro after another victory, was laid
out on top of the hill.
Then for the World Exhibition of 1878 a Moorish Palace
was built overlooking the river; and finally that was pulled down and replace in
1937.
There’s never a
dull moment for builders in Paris. The present building looks like two palaces
with a gap in the middle,
but the middle bit is just lower than the rest, with
its roof level with Place du Trocadéro.
From this roof, superb view of the Eiffel Tower and
beyond it the Champ de Mars, École Militaire and the Tour du Maine at
Montparnasse in the distance.
Inside the building are two theatres, an aquarium and
three museums; the MUSÉE DES MONUMENTS FRANÇAIS, an architectural museum;
the MUSÉE DE LA MARINE, the
Navy Museum; and the MUSÉE DE L’HOMME, the museum of Man; how people live all
over the world,
and how
they used to live as well. Beautifully laid out, it’s one of the most attractive
museums in Paris.
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