Attractions & Map Hotel Lutetia is located on Paris' Left Bank in Saint-Germain-des-Prés in the heart of the fashion, art and literature district, a few minutes from the Luxembourg Gardens, antique shops, the Orsay and Louvre museums, and opposite the Bon Marché department store. We have listed some recommended local attractions below, for more information on Paris please click here.
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Musée du Louvre
website  Once the main residence of the Kings and Emperors of France, today the museum is home to eight separate departments and over 35,000 masterpieces. The most famous attractions are Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa but there is much to discover in the less crowded galleries: Egyptian, Roman antiquities, Italian, Spanish, French painting, and the Napoleon III apartments. Additional activities are organized also: concerts, guided thematic tours, exhibitions of research carried out by museum specialists and so on. The Louvre is also famous for its glass pyramid created by American architect Ieoh Ming Pei. Inaugurated in 1988, it is located in the Napoleon courtyard and is now the main entrance to the museum as well as a venue for fashion shows and other prestigious events.
Saint-Germain-des-Prés
website Saint-Germain-des-Prés is located on the left bank of the River Seine, an area associated with the existentialist movement and café culture. It is now the place to find fabulous shops for the top range in fashion and design. Equally impressive are the lively bars and restaurants especially Les Deux Magots and Le Café de Flore as well as the jazz clubs such as Le Petit Zinc or Chez Papa.
Musée d'Orsay
website A former railway station, the Musée d'Orsay was opened in 1986 to house European art dating between 1848 and 1914. The museum's permanent collection displays works of art by some of the world's most renowned Impressionist painters including Monet, Manet, Cezanne, Renoir, Degas and Courbet. The huge, airy space provided by the now empty railway terminal is used to great effect to feature sculpture, furniture and photographers, alongside its frequent and highly acclaimed special exhibitions. The building, now classified an historic monument, is a great example of second empire architecture and is worth the visit for that reason alone.
Le Bon Marché and Shopping District
website A chic department store full of the biggest names in fashion as well as the less well known, but nonetheless exclusive, designers of Paris' Left Bank. This is the Parisian department store of choice and it is also home to a fantastic gourmet department, stocked with both international and French delicacies. Shopping around the Hotel Lutetia is not limited to the Bon Marché, there are an abundance of independent boutiques along the "rue de Sèvres" and "rue du Cherche Midi" with the best that Paris has to offer in fashion, design and home furnishings - more than 500 stores are listed in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés area.
Musée du Quai Branly website The most recent addition to the great museums of Paris, the Musée du Quai Branly was opened in June 2006 to exhibit indigenous art from Oceania, Asia, Africa and the Americas. Highly controversial ever since the project was announced by Jacques Chirac in 1996, the new museum, designed by Jean Nouvel, now permanently exhibits 3,500 artefacts from its collection of 300,000. The architecture is radical and controversial: mismatched structures set in amongst lush gardens, perhaps not entirely in keeping with the 19th century elegance that was Haussmann’s vision for central Paris. The exhibition space itself is also unique but its merits are hotly debated. We highly recommend a visit so you can form your own conclusions or, if you prefer, simply to admire the spectacular, 8,600-square-foot garden ‘hanging’ off the north-west wall – in Nouvel’s own words: “When you put in little flowers, people are happy.” |