{"id":11560,"date":"2018-09-28T13:41:29","date_gmt":"2018-09-28T11:41:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.book-a-flat.com\/magazine\/?p=11560"},"modified":"2019-05-09T01:59:32","modified_gmt":"2019-05-08T23:59:32","slug":"guide-to-vendome-neighbourhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.book-a-flat.com\/magazine\/en\/guide-to-vendome-neighbourhood","title":{"rendered":"The Place Vend\u00f4me neighbourhood"},"content":{"rendered":"

Place Vend\u00f4me, named after the mansion that was originally built there, is a square around which the surrounding area gravitates, from the Madeleine to the Louvre and along the Rue de Rivoli. It has long been the shining star of luxury \u00e0 la fran\u00e7aise<\/em>. It arouses envy and inspires artists. Visitors from the world over make no mistake, this is where they come to daydream in front of the luxury jewellery stores, enchanted by the charm of this fabulously Romanesque neighbourhood, where the greatest fortunes have been made, and lost.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"place<\/p>\n

A royal square, and an architectural star from its beginnings<\/h3>\n

Louis XIV came up with the idea of \u201copening up\u201d Paris and he wanted to leave his mark on the city \u2014 so Place Vend\u00f4me was designed by Jules Hardouin-Mansart, the king\u2019s architect.
\nOn the site of the former home of the Duke of Vend\u00f4me, he decided to build a vast square surrounded by a dozen public buildings (a royal library, royal academies, a mint, embassies, etc.). At the centre was a bronze equestrian statue of Louis XIV, more than seven metres tall. Construction of this immense project began in 1690 and was inaugurated unfinished in 1699, due to lack of finances. In fact, behind the majestic fa\u00e7ades of the vast square, there was nothing. It was all just a front!
\nA few months later, the land was sold to the city of Paris, the buildings were knocked down and the operation fully privatized. Soon the square would be home to luxurious private mansions financed by the nobles of the capital. There was just one rule to be respected, and that was that the fa\u00e7ades had to be strictly identical, all designed by Jules Hardouin-Mansart. This remains the rule today.<\/p>\n

\"carrousel<\/div>
\"Paris<\/div><\/div>\n

Extending into the Carrousel and Tuileries gardens
\nbetween the Rue de Rivoli and the Seine<\/h3>\n

These two parks, created in the 19th and 16th centuries respectively \u2014 the first at the site of the Palais de Tuileries, which burned down in 1871, and the second on the site of the former royal tile kilns \u2014 are the \u201cgreen lungs\u201d of the area. The Tuileries, created under Louis XIV at the instigation of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, is the oldest French-style garden in Paris. Redesigned by Andr\u00e9 Le N\u00f4tre and completed by his grandson, Pierre Le N\u00f4tre, it has mostly maintained its original aspect. A public park since it opened, designed for people to meet, chat and get some fresh air, it has always had restaurants and caf\u00e9s on its terraces. The walkways are lined with large classical sculptures, to keep the daydreamers who stroll there company. More modern works by Aristide Maillol, Auguste Rodin, Louise Bourgeois, Henry Moore and others began to join them in 1964. Today, just like yesterday, families and lovers wander through the gardens, wherever the wind takes them. For fans of sensory and bucolic experiences, don\u2019t miss the \u201cJardins, jardin aux Tuileries\u201d event. Every year, the gardening fair offers visitors the chance to discover magnificent temporary gardens.<\/p>\n

\"tuileries<\/p>\n

A literary reference, a Romanesque site and a muse<\/h3>\n

With its jewellery shops, banks, luxury fashion houses and palatial hotels, the area around Place Vend\u00f4me<\/a> is a stage for the greatest love stories and tragedies of household names that travel there from the four corners of the globe. The most beautiful place for an intriguing story is of course the Ritz. It is the only five-star hotel on the square, and has become a fictional character in its own right, given the number of times it is quoted in literature. Colette described the experience as being \u201cwrapped up in a sealskin\u201d. Marcel Proust, who enjoyed dining there, mentions it in his correspondence: \u201cLadies in night-dresses, and even in dressing gowns, wander the arched lobby, tightly clutching pearl necklaces.\u201d The place for the beau monde<\/em> to be is featured in several chapters of \u201cIn Search of Lost Time\u201d: \u201cOn those evenings, the Ritz Hotel must seem like the H\u00f4tel du Libre Echange\u201d (Time Regained). Proust observed its client\u00e8le from its inauguration in 1898 and appreciated the hotel\u2019s setting: \u201cThe moonlight appeared as a gentle flow of magnesium that let me take in one last time the nocturnal images of these beautiful places such as Place Vend\u00f4me…\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"beautiful<\/p>\n

Coco Chanel, who lived at the Ritz, remembered that in 1917, \u201cProust went to meet a hotel servant up in the attic. He paid him to write down the names of all the guests, what they\u2019d eaten, how they were dressed. [\u2026] Everyone wanted to appear their best in Proust\u2019s eyes, out of fear or desire to be used as a model for one of his characters.\u201d For L\u00e9on-Paul Fargue, \u201cthe Ritz, so calm and dazzling, so well designed for the beau monde to relax, is actually a world of novels\u201d. (Le pi\u00e9ton de Paris<\/em>). Francis Scott Fitzgerald found inspiration there. Sitting in the Ritz lobby, he saw the woman of his dreams walk by. Captivated, he ordered a bouquet of orchids to be brought to her. The beautiful woman sent the flowers back and the writer, quite inebriated, devoured the petals one by one in front of her. She gave in to his advances the same evening. That was his inspiration for The Diamond as Big as the Ritz<\/em>, which he wrote later on the C\u00f4te d\u2019Azur, setting the scene on the other side of the Atlantic. But Scott Fitzgerald\u2019s contribution to the literary glory of the place is mostly due to his friendship with Ernest Hemingway, who introduced him to the hotel. Hemingway lived there, and legend says that it was even he who \u201cliberated\u201d the Ritz on 25 August, 1944. He arrived with an armed commando, and immediately ordered \u201c50 martinis\u201d. That day, he was celebrating the liberation of Paris \u2014 and his birthday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Place Vend\u00f4me, named after the mansion that was originally built there, is a square around which the surrounding area gravitates, from the Madeleine to the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11501,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"amp_status":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.book-a-flat.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11560"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.book-a-flat.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.book-a-flat.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.book-a-flat.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.book-a-flat.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11560"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.book-a-flat.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13114,"href":"https:\/\/www.book-a-flat.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11560\/revisions\/13114"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.book-a-flat.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.book-a-flat.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.book-a-flat.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.book-a-flat.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}