L'Opéra Garnier, the Left Bank, the Sorbonne, the Latin Quarter and the Pantheon

The ceiling of the Opera Garnier's auditorium

The other ceilings are lavishly decorated in Baroque style

This room is a lot like the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles

The marble staircase

Another view of the auditorium

The Opera Garnier is a neo-Baroque extravaganza (the architectural style is called Beaux-Arts), almost like a mini-Versailles. It was built in the late 19th century and the walls and ceilings are covered in extravagant paintings and there's marble everywhere. The auditorium's ceiling was painted by Marc Chagall in 1964 - his idiosyncratic style being a welcome change from the faux Baroque or even Rococo paintings that festoon every other surface. There are sculptures all over the place as well and extremely elaborate chandeliers - the chandelier in the main auditorium weighs more than six tons.

The Musée de Cluny, built in Medieval times

Another view of the Musée de Cluny


The Sorbonne is a huge university and one of the oldest in Europe


Montaigne, a great bloke

The Panthéon is yet another mind-blower. It was originally a church dedicated to St Genevieve, one of the patron saints of Paris (she saved Paris from the Huns apparently); they started building in 1758 and it was only just finished when the French Revolution intervened in 1789. The atheist revolutionary leaders decided that instead of a church, it should be a mausoleum for the interment of great Frenchmen and most of the great figures of French history are lying there, including Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Émile Zola, Jean Moulin, Marie and Pierre Curie and Louis Braille.

The Pantheon exterior


The main dome




Voltaire's buried there

The other fantastic aspect of the Panthéon is Foucault’s pendulum: Foucault demonstrated the rotation of the Earth with this device in 1851 and it’s still there, swinging away. The pendulum hangs from the centre of the dome of the Panthéon, which is a gigantic dome. The whole building has a lovely air of solemnity that is mostly respected by visitors, even with photography being allowed.

Foucault's pendulum

Another church nearby before we trudged home - it was built in the 15th century. There was an incredibly cute baby about to be christened – he was laughing and chuckling and all dressed up: French babies, like all French people, have lots of style!

Those Sorbonne students get up to some mischief sometimes!