| Avenue de Paris | |
 Paris Avenue, seen from the Pavillon Dufour in the Château de Versailles. | |
  | |
| Length | 1.55 mi (2.49 km) |
|---|---|
| Width | 0.06 mi (0.097 km) |
| Location | Versailles, Yvelines |
| Coordinates | 48°48′02″N02°08′09″E / 48.80056°N 2.13583°E |
| East end | Place Louis XIV |
| West end | Place d'Armes (Versailles) |
| Construction | |
| Completion | 1685 |
The Paris Avenue (Avenue de Paris, in French) is a thoroughfare in Versailles, France.
The Paris Avenue(Avenue de Paris, in french) is one of three roads that fan out from Place d'Armes, in front of the Château de Versailles, along with Avenue de Saint-Cloud to the north and Avenue de Sceaux to the south. The Avenue de Paris, in the center, is located in the axis of the château. It runs southeast for around 1,500 m, then bends east for 1 km to end at Place Louis-XIV. On the other side of the square, it is extended by the Avenue du Général-Leclerc in Viroflay.
At 90 m wide, the avenue is one of the widest in France. It consists of a central artery dedicated to automobile traffic, and two contra-alleys. A median strip planted with two rows of plane trees separates the central thoroughfare from the side-alleys. Because of its width, it forms a real physical boundary within the city, cutting it into two parts. It separates the Notre-Dame and Montreuil districts to the north of the avenue from the Saint-Louis, Chantiers and Porchefontaine districts to the south. It takes its name from the fact that it leads to Paris via Sèvres. It is also the link between the center of Versailles and Porchefontaine.
The Paris Avenue coincides with Route Départementale 10 for most of its length.
Numerous parking spaces are available along this road, either in a parallel or in a herringbone pattern. Most of these spaces are pay and display parking meters. [1]
For some years now, the city has been deploying bikeways on the Paris Avenue's medians, as well as bicycle parking hoops. [2]
It is so named because it heads towards Paris.
The Paris Avenue was born of the Sun King's desire to build a wide, straight, tree-lined avenue leading from the Place d'Armes, to showcase the palace of Versailles by creating a perspective view. Before the avenue was built, there were only two ways to get from the village of Versailles to Paris, one of them winding to the north and the other to the south around the obstacle constituted by the Montbauron hill. To build the Paris Avenue, four years of earthworks were necessary, using shovels and pickaxes, wicker baskets and dump trucks. A trench had to be opened up on the southern flank of the Montbauron hill, whose embossing blocked the view of the palace. To get an idea of the scale of the work involved, one need only consider how steeply the Montbauron street slopes away from the avenue. In addition, the avenue had to be raised above the Porchefontaine ponds. The avenue was completed in 1685 and took its present name.
In 1824, on the orders of the Marquis de la Londe, mayor of the 3rd arrondissement of Seine and Oise, the city built pavilions to collect the octroi tax. Two pavilions were built on the Paris Avenue at the entrance to Versailles, on either side of the central artery. Iron gates running the full width of the Avenue de Paris were also installed. These pavilions and gates were used to control and tax the passage of goods. The building on the left, on the way from Paris, housed the collection office, while the building on the right was used to accommodate the officials. As octroi had become a tax that hampered the development of economic activity, the municipality decided to abolish it in February 1943 and replace it with local taxes. The buildings were disused and the gates removed. For a time, the municipality considered destroying the pavilions, as they made the intersection of Avenue de Paris with Avenue de Porchefontaine and Rue Vauban a dangerous one. Indeed, they constitute a visual obstacle. But the Monuments Historiques, which listed them in June 1959, objected. Finally, in 1993, the crossroads was redesigned to make it safer, while the pavilions were preserved as a symbolic entrance to the city. [3]
The Paris Avenue was served by the tramway line from Sèvres to Versailles from 1857 to 1934, when it was replaced by the RATP 171 bus line. At its inception, the tramway consisted of a horse-drawn carriage. The tramway line was mechanized in 1894, then fully electrified in 1913.
Every year since 1976, the Paris Avenue has served as the finishing line of the Paris-Versailles race. The avenue's two-kilometre false flat is the race's final hurdle.
On March 4, 1984, the avenue was the site of a demonstration by the "mouvement de l'École libre" (the "free school movement" in English), [4] which stretched as far as Place d'Armes.
The Paris Avenue borders the following buildings:
Jules Hardouin-Mansart was a French Baroque architect and builder whose major work included the Place des Victoires (1684–1690); Place Vendôme (1690); the domed chapel of Les Invalides (1690), and the Grand Trianon of the Palace of Versailles. His monumental work was designed to glorify the reign of Louis XIV of France.
The Place des Vosges, originally the Place Royale, is the oldest planned square in Paris, France. It is located in the Marais district, and it straddles the dividing-line between the 3rd and 4th arrondissements of Paris. It is the oldest square in Paris, just before the Place Dauphine. It is an enclosed square, accessible via a main street on one of its four sides and two streets running beneath pavilions. It was a fashionable and expensive square to live in during the 17th and 18th centuries, and one of the main reasons for the chic nature of Le Marais among the Parisian nobility. Along with Place des Victoires, Place Dauphine, Place Vendôme and Place de la Concorde, it is one of the five royal squares in Paris.
The Tuileries Palace was a royal and imperial palace in Paris which stood on the right bank of the Seine, directly in front of the Louvre Palace. It was the Parisian residence of most French monarchs, from Henry IV to Napoleon III, until it was burned by the Paris Commune in 1871.
The Château de Marly was a French royal residence located in what is now Marly-le-Roi, the commune on the northern edge of the royal park. This was situated west of the palace and garden complex at Versailles. Marly-le-Roi is the town that developed to serve the château, which was demolished in 1806 after passing into private ownership and being used as a factory. The town is now a bedroom community for Paris.
Ange-Jacques Gabriel was the principal architect of King Louis XV of France. His major works included the Place de la Concorde, the École Militaire, and the Petit Trianon and opera theater at the Palace of Versailles. His style was a careful balance between French Baroque architecture and French neoclassicism.
Louveciennes is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris, between Versailles and Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and adjacent to Marly-le-Roi.
The Louvre Palace, often referred to simply as the Louvre, is an iconic French palace located on the Right Bank of the Seine in Paris, occupying a vast expanse of land between the Tuileries Gardens and the church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois. Originally a defensive castle, it has served numerous government-related functions in the past, including intermittently as a royal residence between the 14th and 18th centuries. It is now mostly used by the Louvre Museum, which first opened there in 1793.
Jean-François-Thérèse Chalgrin was a French architect, best known for his design for the Arc de Triomphe, Paris.
Claude-Nicolas Ledoux was one of the earliest exponents of French Neoclassical architecture. He used his knowledge of architectural theory to design not only domestic architecture but also town planning; as a consequence of his visionary plan for the Ideal City of Chaux, he became known as a utopian. His greatest works were funded by the French monarchy and came to be perceived as symbols of the Ancien Régime rather than Utopia. The French Revolution hampered his career; much of his work was destroyed in the nineteenth century. In 1804, he published a collection of his designs under the title L'Architecture considérée sous le rapport de l'art, des mœurs et de la législation. In this book he took the opportunity of revising his earlier designs, making them more rigorously neoclassical and up to date. This revision has distorted an accurate assessment of his role in the evolution of Neoclassical architecture. His most ambitious work was the uncompleted Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans, an idealistic and visionary town showing many examples of architecture parlante. Conversely his works and commissions also included the more mundane and everyday architecture such as approximately sixty elaborate tollgates around Paris in the Wall of the General Tax Farm.
The Pavillon de Flore, part of the Louvre Palace in Paris, France, stands at the southwest end of the Louvre, near the Pont Royal. It was originally constructed in 1607–1610, during the reign of Henry IV, as the corner pavilion between the Tuileries Palace to the north and the Louvre's Grande Galerie to the east. The pavilion was entirely redesigned and rebuilt by Hector-Martin Lefuel in 1864–1868 in a highly decorated Second Empire style. Arguably the most famous sculpture on the exterior of the Louvre, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux's Triumph of Flora, was added below the central pediment of the south façade at this time. The Tuileries Palace was burned by the Paris Commune in 1871, and a north façade, similar to the south façade, was added to the pavilion by Lefuel in 1874–1879. Currently, the Pavillon de Flore is part of the Louvre Museum.
Louis XVI style, also called Louis Seize, is a style of architecture, furniture, decoration and art which developed in France during the 19-year reign of Louis XVI (1774–1792), just before the French Revolution. It saw the final phase of the Baroque style as well as the birth of French Neoclassicism. The style was a reaction against the elaborate ornament of the preceding Baroque period. It was inspired in part by the discoveries of Ancient Roman paintings, sculpture and architecture in Herculaneum and Pompeii. Its features included the straight column, the simplicity of the post-and-lintel, the architrave of the Greek temple. It also expressed the Rousseau-inspired values of returning to nature and the view of nature as an idealized and wild but still orderly and inherently worthy model for the arts to follow.
Hector-Martin Lefuel was a French architect, best known for his work on the Palais du Louvre, including Napoleon III's Louvre expansion and the reconstruction of the Pavillon de Flore.
The Place de la Nation is a circle on the eastern side of Paris, between the Place de la Bastille and the Bois de Vincennes, on the border of the 11th and 12th arrondissements. Widely known for having the most active guillotines during the Revolution, the square acquired its current name on Bastille Day, 14 July 1880, under the Third Republic.
The Grande Écurie is a building located in Versailles (Yvelines), on the Place d'Armes, opposite the Palace, between the avenues of Saint-Cloud and Paris. Together with the Petite Écurie, it formed the Royal Stables, and was built under the direction of architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart and completed in 1682.
The Place d'Armes is a square in Versailles, France.
The Avenue de Sceaux is a thoroughfare in Versailles, France.
The Petite Écurie is a monument located in Versailles, on the Place d'Armes, opposite the Palace of Versailles, between the Avenue de Paris and the Avenue de Sceaux. Together with the Grande Écurie, it formed the Écuries royales, and was built under the direction of architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart and completed in 1681.
The King's Stables are located in Versailles, at 5 Carnot street, a few hundred meters from the Palace. Constituting the Royal Stables, they were built in 1672.
The Fresh pavilion, Fresh salon or Pavillon frais is a folly built for Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour by Ange-Jacques Gabriel in the French Garden of the Petit Trianon, in the grounds of the Château de Versailles.