This post is now all-in-one!
Scenes from the View-Master packet Paris (B177) from the Famous Cities Series.
Packet Cover
Booklet Cover
From the 16-page booklet:
PARIS
The rest of the world may not agree that “fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong” about most things. But it usually goes along with the Gallic conviction that Paris is the world’s most exciting city. A city in love with life, this great metropolis on the Seine has been casting its spell over visitors for most of twenty centuries. Paris offers something for every human appetite, from the lowest to the highest. Here a man can feast his stomach on the world’s finest wines and cookery, or feast his soul on the art and architecture of the ages, the treasures of the mind and spirit embodied in the city’s magnificent churches and cathedrals. And somewhere between stomach and soul come the great palaces, towers, and boulevards, the gently arching bridges of the incomparable Seine, the all-pervading sense of history, the certainty that just around the corner some new fascination surely lies. All of this is Paris.
Scene #1
Seine River and Eiffel Tower
The Seine River and the Eiffel Tower
From the 16-page booklet:
EIFFEL TOWER
For the better part of a century the Eiffel Tower has been the unofficial trademark of Paris. Violently protested as an architectural monstrosity when it was built in 1888, the tower outlasted its critics to become the most widely known landmark in a city already crammed with world-famous buildings. It is seen as a background in this view of the River Seine, with one of the bateaux mouches, sightseeing boats, as it heads for the center arch of one of the 32 bridges of the city.
Scene #3
Champ de Mars
Champ de Mars Park from second stage of the Tower
From the 16-page booklet:
CHAMP DE MARS
Between the Eiffel Tower and the Ecole Militaire stretches the Champ de Mars, now a park, but in the 18th Century a huge parade ground for the military cadets. During the period of the Revolution it was the scene of bloody riots, executions, and other violent events. During this century and the last it has been the site of five great expositions, or world fairs, the last of which was in 1937. The huge complex of buildings which form the Ecole Militaire was founded in 1751 by Louis XV and completed in 1769.
Scene #5
Arc de Triomphe
Arc de Triomphe at the Place de l’Etoile
From the 16-page booklet:
PLACE DE L’ETOILE
Crowning triumph of the Parisian system of great boulevards is the Place de l’Etoile. At the hub of this “star” is the Arc de Triomphe, built to glorify the Emperor Napoleon. From this hub radiate, among others, the Avenues de la Grand Armee, Foch, Wagram, Victor Hugo, Kleber, and of course the world-renowned Champs-Elysees, which ends at the Place de la Concorde—in the middle of one of the world’s most scrambled traffic patterns.
Scene #6
Panorama
Paris panorama from the top of the Arc de Triomphe
From the 16-page booklet:
HILL OF MARTYRS
From the top of the Arc de Triomphe the visitor gets this panoramic view across the Paris rooftops to the hill of Montmartre, long celebrated as the center of nighttime gayety and the bohemian freedom associated with artists and stage performers. Crowning the height like a decoration atop a vast wedding cake is the gleaming white Basilica of Sacre-Coeur. The structure’s Romano-Byzantine architectural style at first let it in for some harsh criticism; but in time the city took it to its heart, as it has done that other ugly duckling, the Eiffel Tower.
Scene #8
Moulin Rouge
The famed Moulin Rouge in Montmartre’s Place Blanche
From the 16-page booklet:
MOULIN ROUGE
A virtual byword for the famed night life of Paris is the cabaret Bal du Moulin Rouge, in Montmartre’s Place Blanche, one of the hill’s many charming (or once-charming) little squares. The cabaret and its neighbor, the Moulin de Galette, got their names from some of the many windmills that ground flour for the village. These squares and streets were immortalized in oils by such artists as Manet, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, and Utrillo. The serene scenes they painted in the late 19th Century have become noisy and commercialized.
Scene #13
Place de la Concorde
Egyptian obelisk, floodlit fountains, in Place de la Concorde
From the 16-page booklet:
CONCORDE BY NIGHT
Shown here in its floodlit glory is one of the square’s two great fountains which flank the obelisk. The latter, more than 3,000 years old, is the city’s most ancient monument. It is 75 feet high, weighs 230 tons, and is covered with hieroglyphics telling of the glory of the pharaoh Ramses II. From the obelisk's base the visitor commands unforgettable view—to the left up the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe, and to the right the Garden of the Tuileries and the vast mass of the Palais du Louvre.
Scene #15
Le Louvre
The Louvre houses the world’s greatest art collection
From the 16-page booklet:
THE LOUVRE
The Louvre, a building so vast and complex as to stagger the imagination, now houses the world’s greatest collection of art treasures. The view here is of just one small section. In the 700 years of its history—from the reign of Philip Augustus in the 13th Century, the Louvre has been everything from a royal palace to a den of thieves and prostitutes. Every monarch altered and enlarged it. It was Napoleon I who established it as a museum, and Napoleon III who completed the building near the end of the 19th Century.
