The rooftops of Paris, with Montmartre rising in the background: I didn't know until my second visit to Paris that such a view could be had for the price of a cup of coffee, or maybe a lunch, on the terrace of the Printemps department store. I was in the French capital with Mike Bavar (who knew about the terrace), following my time with David and Pat Hartwell in England.
I don't recall that there was any special event that drew either Mike or me to the city at that time--I do remember a lot of walking through various quarters. My hotel was on the Rue de Lille, just east of the Gare d'Orsay, which in 1973 was still an unused train station (seen below), long before it was converted into one of the great art museums of Paris.
Just across the river from the Gare were the Tuileries Gardens:
And not far from there was the Place Vendome which I may have missed seeing on my previous visit to Paris:
But I can't identify the spots in a couple of other pics. The first is maybe near my hotel; I probably took the photo because of the afternoon light. The row of trees in the second photo makes me think of the Tuileries, but I I don't think that's it.
But it's easy enough to locate spots along the Seine in the photos that follow:
I assume the next photo was taken from my hotel window:
Walks from the hotel often took me toward the Place de la Concorde, or to the Alexandre III Bridge with its views of the Eiffel Tower:
One of the places I'd missed on my first visit, in 1969, was Les Halles, the famous produce market of Central Paris. It had already been demolished by 1973, but one of the great stalls was still partly standing, as you see in the shot below; the domed building beyond it is the Bourse. Nearby is the church of St-Eustache, where Berlioz' Requiem was first performed. A short walk from these is one of the still-standing Art Nouveau Metro entrances, Quatre-Septembre:
In the next photo you see, up a boulevard, the Saint-Augustin Church:
And here are the Luxembourg Gardens (something else I'd missed on my first trip):
I notice that I've cropped quite a few of my Paris pictures. That's partly because of the square format of the Instamatic slides, which often includes undesired amounts of sky and pavement; but also, maybe Paris is a very horizontal city except for the Eiffel Tower and a few other vertical standouts.
My last Paris shots of this trip include Notre Dame, seen from the street and then from the Printemps terrace, plus two more views from the terrace:
After that, Mike and I flew to Rome, to meet up with Carolyn and her friends as we had the year before (cf. BOXES 63-64). An aerial photo shows some Alps from the plane window. But I call attention to this flight mainly because of the stunning contrast it provided between the two cities: in just a little over an hour, going from the cool blue-grey city of Paris in sharp, clear light to the hazy golden Rome with its warm-colored stucco buildings and prominent ancient ruins. (My slides don't always convey the powerful contrast I felt.)
On this third visit to Rome I don't know why I kept taking photos of the Trevi Fountain . . . .
. . . and the Vittorio Emanuele II monument . . . .
. . . except that they're pretty photogenic, and the above pic shows a Roman traffic cop as a bonus. On the other hand, I can't identify the building below; possibly I took the photo because the rooftop garden was Carolyn's. Following it is a more familiar sight, the fountain in front of St Peter's:
On this trip I didn't just walk past the Castel Sant'Angelo but took a tour of it. Since on previous trips I had been to the Church of Sant'Andrea della Valle and the Palazzo Farnese, the settings of Acts 1 and 2 of Tosca, I was glad to see the location of Act 3 now.
A dramatic statue of St Michael tops the building, which was once the tomb of a Caesar (Hadrian), then a fortress, a papal palace, a prison, and now a museum with a cafe. My camera wouldn't let me get a picture of the statue and the parapet in the same frame, so please excuse the tilt, and let me know if you know how to untilt it without cutting off the corners. The Castel is on the Tiber, as you see in one of the shots below. The narrower pedestrian bridge, seen from higher up, was once a route for the Pope and his retinue to escape to the fortress if the Vatican was under siege.
These were all the pictures of Rome I took on this trip. I had planned to spend several days longer, but another Italian Renaissance art historian, a friend from Columbia, was in town and about to go off on a driving excursion through central Italy to seek out great art and architecture, and invited me to go along. I hated leaving Rome early, especially the dining and sightseeing with Mike and Carolyn's friends, but the offer was too special to pass up.
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