Paris has no shortage of curiosities, if you only know where to look!
Egyptian influences
Paris’s Egyptomania began long before the resounding success of the exhibition “Tutankhamun” in 1967 and now “Ramses” (see p. 12), currently showing at the Grande Hallede la Villette. From the Luxor obelisk installed in 1836 at Place de la Concorde to I.M. Pei’s Louvre pyramid, inaugurated in 1989, the City of Light is teeming with Egyptian references. Enthusiasm for the ancient civilisation became a full-blown craze when Napoleon Bonaparte made his famous Egypt expedition between 1798 and 1801. To mark the event, street names in the heart of the 2nd arrondissement “were Egyptianised”: the Rue du Nil, Rue du Caire, Rue d’Aboukir and Rue d’Alexandrie. The city’s first covered passage – those elegant all-glass galleries, lit and heated with gas that served as the first shopping malls – was dubbed the Passage du Caire in 1798. In 1828 its facades were adorned with a sculpture of the goddess Hathor, lotus-shaped friezes and capital columns. Passage du Caire. 2, place du Caire, Paris 2e. The point zero Every road that leads to Paris starts here. At the foot of Notre-Dame Cathedral, the point zero is used to calculate the distance between the capital and every major French city. Established in April 1769 by King Louis XV, the point is marked by a bronze octagon engraved with a compass rose and surrounded by a stone plaque that was finally added in 1924 after 12 years of debate in the Paris city council. Before the point zero, this was the spot where the Scale of Justice once stood, where people found guilty of crimes were forced to kneel and make their amends. Even further back in time, between the 10th and 11th centuries, the square housed the chapel of Saint-Christophe, the patron saint of travellers. A popular legend says whomever treads on point zero is destined to return to Paris.
