There have been three Expositions in Paris under the Third Republic. Each has left behind a permanent memorial. The Palace of the Trocadéro, dating from 1878, is a huge concert hall where government-trained actors and singers often give for a strangely modest sum the same performances which cost more in the regular theaters with more elaborate accessories. The architecture of the Trocadéro is not beautiful but the situation is imposing and the general effect impressive when seen across the river from the south bank where the Eiffel Tower has raised its huge iron spider web since the World’s Fair of 1889.
The tower is a little world in itself with a restaurant and a theater, a government weather observatory and a wireless station. Since aviation has become fashionable the frequent purr of an engine tells the tourist sipping his tea “in English fashion” on the first stage that yet another aviator is taking his afternoon spin “around the Tour Eiffel.”
The latest exposition, that of 1900, gave to Paris the handsome bridge named after Czar Alexander III, the Grand Palais, where the world’s best pictures and sculptures are exhibited every spring, and the Petit Palais which holds several general collections and also the paintings and sculpture bought by the city from the Salons of the last thirty-five years. Such public art galleries are found throughout France, a development of Napoleon’s idea of bringing art to the people. Like Paris the provinces take advantage of the Salons to add to the treasures of their galleries.
Near the two palaces is the exquisite chapel of Our Lady of Consolation. It is built on the site of a building destroyed during the progress of a fashionable bazaar by a fire which wiped out one hundred thirty-two lives. The architectural details are of the classic style popular in the reign of Louis XVI.
Already rich in beautiful churches Paris has been further graced in recent years by the majestic basilica of the Sacred Heart gleaming mysteriously through the delicate haze that always enwraps Montmartre. The style is Romanesque-Byzantine, and the structure is topped by a large dome flanked by smaller ones. The interior lacks the colorful warmth of most of the city churches, but time will remedy that in part. Construction has been extremely slow for the same reason that the building of the Pantheon was a long process—the discovery that the summit of the hill was honeycombed by ancient quarries. It became necessary to sink shafts which were filled with masonry or concrete. Upon this strong sub-structure rises the splendid
SECTION OF LOUVRE BEGUN BY HENRY IV, TO CONNECT THE EASTERN END OF THE LOUVRE WITH THE TUILERIES.
