Quartier Beaubourg and Hotel de Ville
From Paris Hotels Reviews
quartier Beaubourg and Hotel de Ville
The lively quartier Beaubourg around the Pompidou Centre also offers much in the way of visual art. The colourful, moving sculptures and fountains in the pool in front of Eglise St-Merri on place Igor Stravinsky, on the south side of the Pompidou Centre, were created by Jean Tinguely and Niki de St-Phalle; this squirting waterworks pays homage to Stravinsky – each fountain corresponds to one of his compositions (The Firebird, The Rite of Spring, etc.) – but show scant respect for passers-by. Stravinsky’s music in many ways paved the way for the pioneering work of IRCAM (Institute de la Recherche et de la Coordination Acoustique/ Musique), whose entrance is on the west side of the square. Founded by the composer Pirre Boulez, it’s a research centre for contemporary music and a concert venue, much of it underground, with an overground extension by Renzo Piano.
To the north of the Pompidou Centre numerous commercial art galleries and the odd bookshop and salon de thé occupy the attractive hotels particuliers of narrow, pedestrianize rue Quincampoix. A little further east of here, hidden on impasse Berthaud, off rue Beaubourg, is the Musee de la Poupee (daily except Mon 10am-6pm; €6, children €3, www.museedelapoupeeparis.com; M° Rambuteau), a doll museum certain to appeal to small children. In additional to the impressive collection of antique dolls, there are displays of finely detailed tiny irons and sewing machines, furniture and pots and pans and other minuscule accessories.
South of the Pompidou Centre, rue Renard runs down to the Hotel de Ville, the seat of the city’s government and a mansion of gargantuan proportions in florid neo-Renaissance, built in 1882 and modeled pretty much on the previous building burned down in the commune in 1871. An illustrated history of this edifice, always a prime target in riots and revolutions, is display along the platform of M° Châtelet on the Neuilly-Vincennes line. Those oppose to the establishments of kings and emperors created their alternative municipal governments in this building: the Revolutionaries installed themselves here in 1789, the poet Lamartine proclaimed the Second Republic here in 1848, and Gambetta the Third Republic in 1870. But, with defeat of the Commune in 1871, the conservatives, in control once again, concluded that the Parisian municipal authority had to go if order was to be maintained and the people kept in their place. Thereafter Paris was ruled directly by the ministry of the interior until eventually, in 1977, the city was allowed to run its own affairs and Jacques Chirac was elected mayor.
The square in front of the Hotel de Ville, once a notorious execution site, is the location of a popular ice rink from December to mid-March; it’s particularly magical at night and is open till midnight on weekends. You can hire skates for €5.
