El Guisante Verde Project
This is Paris
Our trip to Paris was motivated by two museums: the Musée Marmottan Monet, a human-scale museum where you can get up close with the works of Monet (like the famous "Impression Soleil Levant") and other Impressionists like Gauguin, Sisley, Pissarro, Renoir, and Morisot.
The other is the Guimet Museum of Asian Art, a global reference point for Asian art and home to an incredible collection. The building itself is magnificent and full of natural light which helps show off the works in a tasteful and natural way without interfering with the didactic nature of the museum.
Aside from visiting the museum, we intended to experience the neighborhood to the full, savoring its very essence. It was our favorite neighborhood and we ended up getting a hotel there, only a few meters from the Place des Vosges.
The neighborhood started as a swampy area and then became an agricultural zone, a period which ended when Charles V built the city wall, firmly establishing this area for residential use. The neighborhood reached its peak with the construction of Place des Vosges, but the aristocracy of this period (early 18th century) ended up moving to Versailles, permanently changing the character of the neighborhood. A merchant and artisan class rose which meant that neighborhood suffered only minor architectural losses during the Revolution.
It currently houses a mix of tradition and avant-garde galleries, cafes, wine bars, boulangeries, and friendly bistros. One of the most charming areas is the Place du Marché Sainte-Catherine where you can try authentic and traditional French cooking with some colonial touches.
This is a neighborhood for getting lost:just wandering and taking in the comings and goings of the population before having coffee with chocolate or lemon cake at the Royal Bar.
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