The Seine river

The Seine (pronounced "sen") is a major river of northern France, forming the country's chief commercial waterway. It is also a tourist attraction, particularly within the city of Paris.

The river is 780 km (485 miles) long, France's second longest (after the Loire which is 1020 km (634 miles) long). In ancient times the Seine was known by the Latin name Sequana.

The Seine's main tributaries are the Aube, Marne and Oise rivers from the north and the Yonne and Eure rivers from the south. It is connected with canals to the Scheldt (also called the Escaut), Meuse, Rhine, Saône and Loire rivers.

The Seine rises in the French région of Burgundy, in the département of Côte-d'Or, 30 km (18 miles) northwest of Dijon at a height of 471 metres (1545 feet). The river then flows through Troyes to Paris.
In Paris, narrowed between high stone embankments, the river carries commercial barges, waterbuses and large tourist boats (bateaux-mouches). From the water, fine views are seen of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay (housing Paris' collection of Impressionist art), the Conciergerie and the Eiffel Tower. The northern side of the river is described as the Right Bank (Rive Droite) and the southern side as the Left Bank (Rive Gauche).

Banks of the river Seine

From the Louvre to the Eiffel Tower, from the Place de la Concorde to the Grand and Petit Palais, the evolution of Paris and its history can be seen from the River Seine. The Cathedral of Notre-Dame and the Sainte Chapelle are architectural masterpieces while Haussmann's wide squares and boulevards influenced late 19th- and 20th-century town planning the world over.

Orsay museum

The Musée d'Orsay is a museum in Paris, France, on the left bank of the Seine, housed in the former railway station, the Gare d'Orsay. It holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1915, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography, and is probably best known for its extensive collection of impressionist masterpieces by popular painters such as Monet and Renoir. Many of these works were held at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume prior to the museum's opening in 1986.

The museum building was originally a railway station, Gare d'Orsay, constructed for the Chemin de Fer de Paris à Orléans and finished in time for the 1900 Exposition Universelle to the design of three architects: Lucien Magne, Émile Bénard and Victor Laloux. It was the terminus for the railways of southwestern France until 1939.
By 1939 the station's short platforms had become unsuitable for the longer trains that had come to be used for mainline services. After 1939 it was used for suburban services and part of it became a mailing center during World War II. The station's hotel closed on 1 January 1973.

Museum conversion

In 1977 the French Government decided to convert the station to a museum. ACT Architecture (Renaud Bardon, Pierre Colboc and Jean-Paul Philippon) were the designers and the construction work was carried by Bouygues[1]. The works involved creating 20,000 sq. m. of new floorspace on four floors. The new museum was opened by President François Mitterrand on 1 December 1986.

Management

The Directors have been:
Françoise Cachin: 1986–1994
Henri Loyrette: 1994–2001
Serge Lemoine: 2001–present

The Eiffel tower

The Eiffel Tower is the most recognizable landmark in Paris and is known worldwide as a symbol of France. Named after its designer, Gustave Eiffel, it is a premier tourist destination, with over 5.5 million visitors per year.

The structure was built from 1887-1889 as the entrance arch for the Exposition Universelle (1889), a World's fair marking the centennial celebration of the French revolution. It was inaugurated on March 31, 1889, and opened on May 6. 300 steel workers joined together 18,038 pieces of steel, using two and a half million rivets. Considering the safety standards in place at the time, it is remarkable that only one worker died in the construction of the tower (during the installation of Otis Elevator's lifts (elevators)).
The tower is 300 metres (986 feet) tall, not including the television antenna on top, which adds another 20 meters, and weighs over 10,000 tons (over 21,000,000 pounds). It was the tallest structure in the world for forty years. Maintenance on the tower includes 50 tons of three graded tones of brown paint every 7 years. Depending on the ambient temperature, the top of the Eiffel Tower will shift away from the sun by eight centimetres because of expansion of the sun-warmed metal.
Perhaps predictably, the tower met with resistance from the public when it was first built, many thought it would be an eyesore. Today it is widely considered to be one of the most striking pieces of architectural art in the world.
One of the great Hollywood movie clichés is that the view from a Parisian window always includes the Eiffel Tower.
Originally, Eiffel had a permit to leave the tower standing for 20 years, more than recouping his expenses, but as it proved valuable for communication purposes, it was allowed to stay after the end of the permit.

Events

On January 12, 1908, the first long-distance radio message was sent from the tower.
View from the Tower across the River Seine, showing the Trocadero gardens and the Palais de Chaillot. A pleasure boat cruises on the river.Father Theodor Wulf in 1910 took observations of radiant energy radiation at the top and bottom of the Eiffel Tower, discovering more than was expected at the top, and thereby detecting what are today known as cosmic rays.
In 1925, the con artist Victor Lustig twice "sold" the Eiffel Tower for scrap.
In 1929, the Tower lost the title of the World's tallest structure when the Chrysler Building was completed in New York.
When Adolf Hitler visited occupied Paris in 1940, the lift cables were cut by the French so that he would have to climb the 1792 steps to the summit - the part to repair them was allegedly impossible to obtain because of the war, though it was working again within hours of the departure of the Nazis. He chose to stay on the ground.
On January 3, 1956 a fire damaged the top of the tower.
In 1959 the present radio antenna was added to the top.
In the 1980s an old restaurant and its supporting iron scaffolding midway up the tower was dismantled; this was purchased and reconstructed in New Orleans, Louisiana, originally as the Tour Eiffel Restaurant, more recently known as the Red Room.
In the year 2000, flashing lights and several high power searchlights were installed on the tower. Since then the light show has become a nightly event. The searchlights on top of the tower make it a beacon in Paris' night sky.
The tower received its 200,000,000th guest on November 28, 2002.
At 19:20 on July 22, 2003, a fire occurred at the top of the tower in the broadcasting equipment room. The entire tower was evacuated; the fire was extinguished after forty minutes, and there were no reports of injuries.

Reproductions and Imitations

Several reproductions of the Eiffel Tower (often smaller-scale) are found in:
• Tokyo, Japan called the Tokyo Tower (13 meters higher than the original, scale 1.04:1)
• Blackpool, England - Blackpool Tower 158 meters (519 feet) tall is not quite a free-standing structure; it stands above the Tower Circus complex, where the four "legs" can be seen.
• Guatemala City, Guatemala - Torre del Reformador, 75 meters tall
• Paradise, Nevada, near Las Vegas, USA (scale 1:2)
• Prague, Czech Republic (scale 1:5), Petrinska rozhledna, built in 1891
• Shenzhen, China (scale 1:3)
• King's Island theme park, Ohio (scale 1:3)
• an imitation in front of Paris Hotel, Las Vegas, 165 meters (540 feet) high (scale 1:2).
• Wembley Park, London - Watkins' Tower
• Woodwards Building, Vancouver, Canada. A small reproduction on the roof of the building is topped by a signature neon "W". This building is now being converted into social housing.
• Paramount Park's Kings Dominion, Virginia. A 84 m (275-ft) reproduction is available for the amusement of visitors. (scale 1:3.59)

Passerelle Solférino

The passerelle Léopold-Sédar-Senghor, formerly known as passerelle Solférino (or pont de Solférino), is a footbridge over the River Seine in the VIIe arrondissement of Paris. It is served by the Metro station Assemblée Nationale.

The first bridges

For a century, it was the cast iron bridge inaugurated by Napoleon III in 1861 which allowed vehicles to cross between quai Anatole-France and quai des Tuileries. Built by the engineers of the Pont des Invalides, Paul-Martin Gallocher de Lagalisserie and Jules Savarin, it was named after the June 1859 French victory of the Battle of Solferino. Having weakened over time (particularly due to barges crashing into it), it was demolished and replaced in 1961 with a steel footbridge, demolished in its turn in 1992.

The present bridge

The new passerelle de Solférino linking the Musée d'Orsay and the Jardin des Tuileries (Tuileries Gardens) was built between 1997 and 1999 under the direction of the engineer and architect Marc Mimram. Crossing the Seine with a single span and no piers, this metallic bridge is architecturally unique and covered in exotic trees (Tabebuias, a Brazilian tree also used for outdoor flooring at the Bibliothèque nationale de France) which gives it a light and warm appearance. Its solidity is, however, never in doubt - at either end, its foundations are in the form of concrete pillars extending 15m into the ground, and the structure itself is made up of six 150 tonne components built by the Eiffel engineering company, Eiffel Constructions métalliques. Its innovative architecture brought Marc Mimram the award "Prix de l'Équerre d'Argent" for the year 1999.
The bridge also has benches and lampposts for promenaders who can reach the Jardin des Tuileries through a subterranean passage on the Rive Droite.
The bridge was renamed after Léopold Sédar Senghor on 9 October 2006 on the centenary of this birth.