Place des Vosges

Friday
A grey day today, with rain in the forecast, so we decided to go up to Paris and see one of the museums. We had been thinking of the Louvre, but there was a ridiculously long line to get in, so we changed our plans, and instead went to the Marais area, and visited the Musée Carnavalet.
The Musée Carnavalet occupies two adjoining mansions and is devoted to the history of Paris. It includes entire decorated rooms with panelling, furniture and objects d'art, many works of art and sculptures of prominent personalities. We then went to the Place des Vosges, one corner of which is depicted in my blip. Place des Vosges is considered by many to be the most beautiful square in Paris. It's impressive symmetry - 36 houses, nine on each side, of brick and stone, with deep slate roofs and dormer windows, over arcades - is still intact after 400 years. It has been the site of many historic events over the centuries, and home to several famous people, notably the poet and writer Victor Hugo, who lived here for 16 years, in the corner shown in my blip. He lived in an apartment on the second floor, which is now a museum dedicated to his life, so that became our next destination. Following that, we went walking in the Jewish Quarter. Jews first settled here in the 13th c., with a second wave arriving in the 19th c. from Russia, Poland and Central Europe. Today it is an area of synagogues, Jewish schools, bakeries and restaurants. There were several poignant reminders of the war years. On one of the schools is a plaque dedicated to all the Jewish children deported from Paris, mainly to Ausschwitz. More than half of the 11,400 children deported from France between 1942 and 1944 were Parisians. By this time, early evening, the skies were finally clearing a little, so we strolled down to the river and watched the tourist boats go by for a while, before returning to the Jewish Quarter to eat.