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Musée du Louvre
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The
Musée du Louvre is the national museum of France, the most visited museum in the world, and a historic monument. It is a central landmark of Paris, located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement. Nearly 35,000 objects from the 6th century BC to the 19th century are exhibited over an area of 652,300 square feet. The museum is housed in the Louvre Palace (Palais du Louvre) which began as a fortress built in the late 12th century under Philip II.
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Notre-Dame Cathedral
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Notre Dame de Paris ('Our Lady of Paris' in French) is a Gothic cathedral on the eastern half of the Île de la Cité in the fourth arrondissement of Paris. This Gothic masterpiece took almost 200 years to build. Notre Dame de Paris was one of the first Gothic cathedrals, and its construction spanned the Gothic period. Its sculptures and stained glass show the heavy influence of naturalism, unlike that of earlier Romanesque architecture.
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Tour Eiffel
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Originally built to impress visitors to the Universal Exposition of 1889, the
Eiffel Tower was a temporary addition to Paris, but has remained and become the symbol of the city. Named after its designer, engineer Gustave Eiffel, the Eiffel Tower is the tallest building in Paris. More than 200,000,000 people have visited the tower since its construction in 1889 making it the most visited paid monument in the world.
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Château de Versailles
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During a 50 years span, the
Palace of Versailles was transformed from Louis XIII’s hunting lodge to arguably the world’s most magnificent palace. Utilizing the talents of 35,000-45,000 builders, marshes were drained, forests were moved and an opulence was created that would never be duplicated. From the beautiful hall of Mirrors to the Grands Appartements to the stunning Gardens, Versailles itself is a reason to visit France.
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Champs Elysées
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The
Avenue des Champs-Élysées is a prestigious avenue in Paris, France. With its cinemas, cafés, luxury specialty shops and stunning trees, the Avenue des Champs-Élysées is one of the most famous streets in the world, and with rents as high as $1.5 million per 1,000 square feet of space, it remains the most expensive strip of real estate in Europe. The name is French for Elysian Fields, the place of the blessed dead in Greek mythology.
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Musée d'Orsay
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The
Musée d'Orsay is a museum in Paris on the left bank of the Seine, housed in the former railway station, the Gare d'Orsay, an impressive Beaux-Arts edifice built between 1898 and 1900. It holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1915, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography, and is probably best known for its extensive collection of impressionist masterpieces by such painters such as Monet, Degas, Renoir, and Cezanne.
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Musée Rodin
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The
Musée Rodin contains most of Rodin's significant creations, including The Thinker and The Kiss. Many of his sculptures are displayed in the museum's extensive garden. The museum is one of the most accessible museums in Paris. Rodin used the Hôtel Biron as his residence from 1908, and subsequently donated his entire collection of sculptures (along with paintings by Vincent van Gogh and Pierre-Auguste Renoir that he had acquired) to the French State on the condition that they turn the building into a museum dedicated to his works.
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Musée Picasso
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The Musée is an art gallery located in the Hôtel Salé in rue de Thorigny, in the Marais district of Paris. The
Musée Picasso contains more than 3000 different works of art by Pablo Picasso including drawings, ceramics and paintings. This is complemented by Picasso's own personal art collection of works by other artists, including Cézanne, Degas, Rousseau, Seurat, de Chirico and Matisse. It also contains some Iberian bronzes and a good collection of primitive art. One of the most impressive aspects of the museum is that it contains a large number of works which Picasso painted after his seventieth birthday.
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Latin Quarter
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Known for its lively atmosphere and bistros, the
Latin Quarter is the home to a number of higher education establishments besides the university itself. This old part of the city between the Seine river and Luxembourg Gardens is filled with bookstores, cafés, movie theaters and jazz clubs. This area is the nerve center of the young Paris. The area gets its name from the Latin language, which, as the international language of learning in the Middle Ages, was once widely spoken in and around the University.
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Lyon
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For several centuries
Lyon has been known as the French capital of gastronomy, due, in part, to the presence of many of France's finest chefs in the city and its surroundings (e.g. Paul Bocuse). This reputation also comes from the fact that two of France's best known wine-growing regions are located near Lyon: the Beaujolais to the North, and the Côtes du Rhône to the South. The Saint-Jean and the Croix-Rousse areas, which are noted for their narrow passageways (traboules) that pass through buildings and link the streets either side, were designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1998.
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Notre Dame de Reims
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Notre-Dame de Reims (Our Lady of Rheims) is the Roman Catholic cathedral of Reims, where the kings of France were once crowned. It replaces an older church, destroyed by a fire in 1211, which was built on the site of the basilica where Clovis was baptized by Saint Remi, bishop of Reims, in AD 496. That original structure had been erected on the site of the Roman baths. As the cathedral it remains the seat of the Archbishop of Reims.
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Palais des Papes
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The Palais des Papes is a historical palace in Avignon, southern France, one of the largest and most important medieval Gothic buildings in Europe. Since 1995, the palais des Papes is classified with the historic center of Avignon, on the World Heritage Site of the Unesco. Avignon became the residence of the Popes in 1309, when the Gascon Bertrand de Goth, as Pope Clement V, unwilling to face the violent chaos of Rome after his election (1305), moved the Papal Curia to Avignon, a period known as the Avignon Papacy.
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Pont du Gard
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The
Pont du Gard is an aqueduct in the South of France constructed by the Roman Empire during the 1st century, and located in Vers-Pont-du-Gard near Remoulins. The majority of the Pont du Gard remains impressively intact. It was constructed entirely without the use of mortar. The aqueduct's stones – some of which weigh up to 6 tons – were precisely cut to fit perfectly together eliminating the need for mortar. Designed to carry the water across the small Gardon river valley, it was part of a nearly 50 km (31 mi) aqueduct that brought water from the Fontaines d'Eure springs near Uzès to the Castellum in the Roman city of Nemausus (Nîmes).
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Carnac
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Carnac is famous as the site of more than 3,000 prehistoric standing stones. The stones were hewn from local rock and erected by the pre-Celtic people of Brittany. Carnac (Breton= Karnag) is a commune beside the Gulf of Morbihan on the south coast of Brittany in northwestern France.
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Cathar Castles
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Cathar castles (in French Châteaux cathares) is a modern term to designate a series of fortresses built by the French king on the southern border of his lands at the end of the Albigensian Crusade during the 13th century. Some of these sites, before the royal period, were fortified villages capable of sheltering Cathars and which were destroyed during the building of citadels.
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Mont St Michel
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Mont-Saint-Michel was used in the sixth and seventh centuries as an Armorican stronghold of Romano-Breton culture and power, until it was ransacked by the Franks, thus ending the trans-channel culture that had stood since the departure of the Romans in AD 460. It's a rocky tidal island in Normandy. It is located approximately one kilometre off the country's north coast, at the mouth of the Couesnon River.
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Gorges du Verdon
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The
Verdon Gorge (in French: Gorges du Verdon or Grand canyon du Verdon), in south-eastern France (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence), is a river canyon that is considered by many to be Europe's most beautiful. It is the world's second largest gorge, at about 25 kilometers in length and up to 700 meters deep. It was formed by the Verdon River, which is named after its startling turquoise-green colour, one of the canyon's most distinguishing characteristics. The most impressive part lies between the towns of Castellane and Moustiers-Sainte-Marie, where the river has cut a ravine up to 700 metres down through the limestone mass.
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Carcassonne
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Carcassonne (Occitan: Carcassona) is a fortified French town in the Aude departement, in the former province of Languedoc. Since the pre-Roman period, a fortified settlement has existed on the hill where Carcassonne now stands. In its present form it is an outstanding example of a medieval fortified town, with its massive defences encircling the castle and the surrounding buildings, its streets and its fine Gothic cathedral. Carcassonne is also of exceptional importance because of the lengthy restoration campaign undertaken by Viollet-le-Duc, one of the founders of the modern science of conservation.
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