Places, museums, monuments : 133
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Place, museum or monumentMusée Fesch – Ajaccio
In the heart of Ajaccio lies Palais Fesch, and in that building is the Musée Fesch displaying the painting collection amassed by Cardinal Joseph Fesch (1763-1839), Napoleon's maternal uncle and archbishop of Lyons, the primate of the Gauls, a great art lover and important patron. It was Fesch's desire to found an Intsitute of Arts […]
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Place, museum or monumentMuseo Civico del Risorgimento – Bologna
During the Esposizione Emiliana of 1888, one exhibit, a 'temple to the Risorgimento', was so popular with the public that the council of the Comune decided to make it into a permanent museum, a museum which has been in effect inaugurated on the 12th June 1883 in a room in the Municipal Museum. As with […]
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Place, museum or monumentPanthéon
Conceived following a wish of Louis XV, Saint- Geneviève church was built by Soufflot then by Rondelet from 1764 to 1789. In 1791, the Constituent Assembly transformed the new church into a temple destined “to receive the great men of the epoch of French liberty.” Mirabeau, Voltaire, Le Peletier of Saint-Fargeau, Bara, Rousseau and Marat […]
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Place, museum or monumentNational Napoleonic Museum of Aix Island
It was on Aix Island where Napoleon spent his last days on French soil, July 12 to 15, 1815, before embarking for his exile. Settled into the commander's house that he himself had ordered constructed in 1808, the Emperor composed the rough draft of the famous letter that was placed under the protection of the […]
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Place, museum or monumentFlaubert Pavilion
Of the property where Gustave Flaubert lived and worked from 1843 until his death, all that remains is this garden pavilion facing a factory-littered Rouen landscape. In the last century, however, Flaubert's house was situated in a particularly agreeable location, on a hillside overlooking the Seine, and a watercolour by Rochegrosse (on show in the […]
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Place, museum or monumentHome of Balzac
Honoré de Balzac lived in this house from 1840 to 1847. Of the eleven Parisian residences of the writer, it is the only one which exists today. This house is also a witness to that which made the village of Passy during the last century: a place of holiday for city dwellers yearning for the […]
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Place, museum or monumentHome of Zola
It was at Médan that Zola composed a large portion of Rougon-Macquart, natural and social history of a family under the Second Empire. There he wrote, among others, Nana, Germinal and La Terre (The Earth).Acquired in 1878, thanks to the success of L'Assommoir, the Médan house permitted Zola to associate his name with a geographic […]
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Place, museum or monumentHome of Victor Hugo
It was in October 1832, that the Hugo family moved into this house in the Place Royale, today the Place des Vosges. The writer lived there until the Revolution of 1848. There he wrote an siginificant part of his oeuvre, namely: Les Chants du Crepuscule, 1835; Les Voix Intérieures, 1837; Ruy Blas, 1838; Les Rayons […]
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Place, museum or monumentBaltard Pavilion
In the town of Nogent-sur-Marne stand the last remains of the Grandes Halles de Paris, Paris's great covered market known as Les Halles and built during the Second Empire. Only as a result of the town's obstinacy was this pavilion the only one to escape demolition in 1970. The Baltard Pavilion (Pavilion number 8) for […]
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Place, museum or monumentNational Museum of the Légion d’Honneur and the order of knights
The Légion d'honneur was instituted by Bonaparte on 29 Floréal, An X, (19 May, 1802) as a reward for civil and military services and virtues which had “contributed to the defence and prosperity of the country”. Borrowing its name from Roman antiquity, it took as its motto the words “Honour and Homeland”. There are three […]