Tear Down the Bastille

As you well should know in the unlikely case of being an avid reader of this blog, I love Paris and consider it the most beautiful city in the world. Walking along the left banks of the Seine facing the Louvre on the other side in a dark winter afternoon is an almost magical experience for me. However, you can also find some ugly pieces of architecture. Some of the most hated buildings in Paris from the last decades are the Tour Montparnasse (that I love), and the Pompidou Centre (that I don't dislike). Most people do also deeply hate the high-rise appartment blocks that you can find in some areas of Paris intra-muros, like Italie 13, les tours de Orgues de Flandre, Front de Seine, and some other mid-rise housing states in the Belleville/Menilmontant area. Well, I have to say that I quite like those areas. For sure, save for some of the ones in Front de Seine, the architecture of these tower-blocks is not remarkable, but they add architectural diversity and reference points.

It seems like in the last years the Louis Vuitton Foundation (I have not seen it in person yet, but I guess I'll pretty like it) and the new Holy Trinity Ortodhox Cathedral (it quite disappointed me, indeed I think I prefer the old, Alexande Nevsky one) have become new targets for the dislike of Parisians and visitors alike.

In my last visit to Paris I came across one construction that since my first visit quite caught my eye for its ugliness. Over the years, this impression has not improved, I'm talking about Opera Bastille. This building looks really ugly to me, probably in other location it would not look so bad, but in the middle of Paris it really stands out.

Reading the wikipedia article I've learnt that it was part of the Grand Travaux of the Francois Mitterrand era. I thought these "Grand Travaux" had been just the Louvre Pyramid, le Grand Arch de la Defense and the Biblioteque Francois Mitterrands, 3 works that I absolutely love, but the article lists some more projects. One of them, the Ministry of Finances, is not particularly appealling to me, and the another one, The Arab World Institute, I just hate it, not for its architecture, but for what it is.

City of so many contrasts, when going from Bastille to the Seine I came across one very nice and unexpected surprise, Le Bassin de l'Arsenal.