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French Personalities
French Personalities
Victor Hugo was a French novelist, poet and visual artist, and an influential representative of Romanticism. He was brought up mainly by his mother, who moved to Paris in 1803. At the age of 20, he published his first poetry and received a royal pension from Louis XVIII. In 1827, he created his neverstaged verse drama 'Cromwell'. Hugo remains famous all over the world as an author of mature fiction, such as 'Les Misrables' and 'Notre Dame de Paris'. The visible effect of the latter was the Notre Dame Cathedral being restored, as the novel much increased its popularity. Both books have been turned into films on several occasions. When Napoleon III came to power in 1851, the author openly spoke against him, and in result lived in exile in Brussels, Jersey and on the Channel Island of Guernsey. He returned to Paris in 1870, where he was treated like a national hero, which he remains to this day.
Louis Braille contributed greatly to generations of blind people, as he was the one who invented their alphabet for reading and writing, which has been adapted into almost every language. Born in a small town of Coupvray not far from Paris, he was accidentally blinded at the age of four. As a ten-year-old boy, he luckily received a scholarship to attend the Royal Institution for Blind Youth in Paris, the first school of its kind in the world. In 1821, influenced by the night-writing code used by soldiers, he began working on his raised-dots system, which he finished at the age of just fifteen. This six-dot solution enabled the recognition of a meaning simply by the touch of a single fingertip. Later, Braille adjusted it to include mathematics and musical texts. He remained at the Institute as a respected teacher, and died at the age of 43. His body now lies in the Pantheon.
Arc de Triomphe
The Arc de Triomphe is one of the most familiar landmarks in Paris, France. It lies at the heart of Place de l'Etoile, a magnificent square at the centre of the city. Twelve avenues converge upon this square, which had led to its being nicknamed the Star Square. One of these avenues is the fabulous Champslyses itself. In 1970 the square was renamed to Place Charles de Gaulle to honor the president of France, but it is commonly referred to by its original name. The Arc forms the centre of the historical axis, which starts at the Louvre Palace and runs by many landmarks and monuments along a grand itinerary leading out of Paris.
Eiffel Tower
When one thinks of France, the Eiffel Tower immediately comes to mind. This iron tower is located on the bank of the Seine, and it is a prime tourist spot with over five million visitors each year. The tower, designed by engineer Gustave Eiffel, is 300 m high. It was completed in 1889, and it was the tallest building in the world at the time. It remained so for over four decades, until the 319-metre high Chrystler Building was erected in 1930. Today it is still among the tallest buildings in France, second only to the Allouis longwave transmitter.
Notre Dame de Paris (IPA: [nt dam d pai]; French for Our Lady of Paris), also known as Notre Dame Cathedral,[2] is a Gothic, Roman Catholic cathedral on the eastern half of the le de la Cit in the fourth arrondissement of Paris, France. It is the cathedral of the CatholicArchdiocese of Paris: that is, it is the church that contains the cathedra (official chair) of the Archbishop of Paris, currently Andr Vingt-Trois. The cathedral treasury houses a reliquary with the purported Crown of Thorns.
The Muse du Louvre contains more than 380,000 objects and displays 35,000 works of art in eight curatorial departments with more than 60,600 square metres (652,000 sq ft) dedicated to the permanent collection.[31] The Louvre exhibits sculptures, objets d'art, paintings, drawings, and archaeological finds.[19] It is the world's most visited museum, averaging 15,000 visitors per day, 65 percent of whom are foreign tourists.[30][32] In popular culture, the Louvre was a point of interest in the book The Da Vinci Code and the 2006 film based on the book. The museum earned $2.5 million by allowing filming in its galleries