Rue Cler and Quai d'Orsay
From Paris Hotels Reviews
Rue Cler and Quai d'Orsay
A few steps southeast of the sewers and Musée du Quai Branly sit an attractive, villagey wedge of early nineteenth-century streets between avenue Bosquet and the Invalides. This miniature quartier constrasts starkly with the grand austrrity of much of the rest of the Septième. At its heart is the lively market street rue Cler, whose cross-streets, rue de Grenelle and rue St-Dominique, are full of neighbourhood shops, posh bistrots and little hotels. The daily market is a well-to-do affair – as much permanent delicatessens as fruit stalls on barrows.
Back on the riverbank, immediately north, the pale neo-Gothic tower and copper spire of the American Church stand out on the quai d’Orsay. Together with the American Colloge nearby at 31 avenues Bosquet, it plays a key role in the busy life of Paris’s large expat American community. Newspaper reporting on French foreign policy uses “the quai d’Orsay” to refer to the Ministère des Affaires Etrangères (Ministry of Foreign Affairs), which sits next to the Esplanade des Invalides and the Palais Bourbon, hime of the Assemblèe Natinale. Napoleon, never a great one for democracy, had the riverfront façade of the Palais Bourdon done to match the pseudo-Greek of the Madeleine. The result is an entrance that sheds little light on what’s happening within.
The eastern end of the quai d’Orsay opens out into a grand esplanade. Parading across the river towards the giant conservatories of the Grand and Petit Palais is the Pont Alexandre III. The vista here was sop cherished that when this bridge was built it was set as low as possible above the water so as not to get in the way of the view. That said, it’s surely the most extravagant bridge in the city, its single-span metal arch stretching 109m across the river. It was unveiled in 1900, just in time for the Exposition Universelle, its name and elaborate decoration symbolizing Franco-Russian friendship – an ever-more important alliance, in the face of fast-growing German power. The nymph stretching out downstream represents the Seine, matched by Petersburg’s River Neva holds the winged horse Pegasus.
