The Quai Branly Museum or Museum of arts and civilizations in Africa, Asia, Oceania and America, devised and designed by Jean Nouvel, is made of four buildings which are linked together by footbridges.
This cultural place is set under the patronage of the UNESCO. Its ambition is to acknowledge the major place occupied by civilizations, sometimes kept on the sidelines of the present culture of the world. This museum gives people much to see and think about.
Established in 1984, the Fondation Cartier stands up for visual arts, cinema, photography and fashion. Since 1994 it has been located in a wonderful glass building designed by Jean Nouvel. The Fondation is a really lively place, thanks to the “Nomades” Evenings, regular appointments with the performing arts, but also with the work-groups for children or an initiation to contemporary art.
The National Museum of the Middle Ages is settled down in two exceptional Parisian monuments: the Gallo-Roman thermae (1st and 2nd centuries) and the Hotel of the abbots of Cluny (end of the 15th century). The collections enable people to go through almost fifteen centuries of art and architecture : Romanesque architecture, Gothic sculpture, paintings, stained-glass windows, the famous tapestries of the Dame à la Licorne.
The medieval garden shows the different facets of the garden as it used to be during the Middle Ages, both wild and organized.
The Musée Bourdelle is the studio where Antoine Bourdelle lived and worked for four years. The museum takes up the whole space: apartments, studio and garden. The place was turned into a museum in 1949. Then two expansions were made by Henri Gautruche in 1961 and by Christian de Portzamparc in 1992. More than 500 sculpted works of art are scattered over the rooms and the garden of the museum. But many temporary exhibitions of contemporary artists are also presented : Luciano Fabro, Felice Varini, Henry Moore, Alain Séchas …
Since its opening in 1997, the Community Arts Center of Japan has offered the public to discover all the facets of the traditional and contemporary Japanese culture, thanks to its various activities : exhibitions, live performances, cinema and courses, tea ceremony, cookery, ikebana, calligraphy, Go game, origami …
A family garden, where children can play and run, and where we can picnic or have a nap in the grass, because the vast lawns bordered with lime trees and poplars are hidden behind the high stone wall of the Rue de Babylone. It is a real orchard that kept all the charm of the convent garden of which it preserved the cross-shaped line.
129 rue de Babylone 75007 Paris
(M° Vaneau)
This terraced garden is particularly intimate, hidden at the bottom of the Rue Récamier, which is a residential dead end street sheltered from the surrounding tumult. It was built in 1933 at the place where the convent of the Abbaye-aux-Bois used to be, and where Madame Récamier withdrew to end her days. What makes this garden unique is the majestic fig tree at the entrance, but also the weeping beech and the sophora which dominates the shrubs with sweet-smelling flowers. Periwinkles, rhododendrons and heather, which flower in autumn, cover the mounds. You will only hear the birdsong and the noise of the water of a small waterfall.
Delacroix’s studio (which has become a museum), Serge Aboukrat’s art gallery, the sublime shop windows of the material designers, and its four trees which make it really romantic in the spring time : the Place Furstenberg is the meeting place of beautiful materials lovers and of lovers in general. Today, its postcard beauty and its peaceful atmosphere are what make it still so special.
