The right bank is dominated by the modernistic Forum de Halles and the Pompidou Centre in the Beaubourg.
Beaubourg and Les Halles are Paris's most thriving public areas, with millions of tourists, shoppers and students flowing between them.
Young people flock to Les Halles, shopping for the lattest street fashions beneath the concrete and glass bubbles of the underground arcades.
All roads from Les Halles appear to lead to the Pompidou centre, an avant-garde assembly of pipes, ducts and cables housing the Musée National d'Art Moderne.
The smaller streets around the centre are full of art galleries housed in crooked gabled buildings.
The neighbouring Marais was abandoned by its royal residents during the 1789 Revolution, and it descended into architectural wasteland before being rescued in the 1960s.
It has since become a very fashionable address, though small cafés, bakeries and artisans still survive in its streets. Enchanting sites, like Place des Vosges, with the surrounding XVIIth-century buidings are to be visited, just like Place de la Bastille, with its brand new Opera.
Centre
Pompidou :It opened in 1977, and remains one of the most revolutionary contemporary buildings in Paris. Architects Richard Roger and Renzo Piano put the lifts, escalators and heating and air-conditioning pipes on the outside, colour coding them by their different functions and leaving the inside freee for multifarious arts activities.
The policy of free entry, implemented by the Culture Department, means that the ground floor often resembles Speaker's corner, an extension of the street acts from the piazza outside. But do not let that put you off visiting the superb art collection, temporary exhibitions and the many other events.
Address : Plateau Beaubourg, 4th; phone : 44 78 12 33 - Open Mon, Wed-Fri noon-10pm; Sat, Sun 10am-10pm.
Place des
Vosges :
The square Louis XIII was planted in the midst of the elegant Place des Vosges. It is planted with linden trees and lawns which are criss-crossed by symetrical paths.
The Ginard fountain, whose waters were drawn from the Canal de l'Ourq, was inaugurated in 1811, and was replaced in 1835, when the four Ménager fountains were installed.
The arcades around house expensive antique shops, chic restaurants and the Maison de Victor Hugo.
Bastille
and the opéra :
Apart from a few chunks of the foundations inside the métro station, nothing remains of the infamous Bastille prison, which was stormed by the revolutionary masses in 1789.
But the Place de la Bastille is still the scene of a lively street bal every Bastille day (on July 14th). The column in the centre commemorates the parisians killed during the riots of 1830 and 1848, and is crowned by the gilded génie de la Bastille.
On the south side of the square, Carlo Ott built his granite and glass Opéra-Bastille in 1989, to celebrate the 1789 French Revolution. The main theatre has a capacity of 2,700 seats.
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