France Attractions

Ile-de-France is rife with places to visit. You could spend your entire vacation in Paris, for goodness sake, and still not see everything that only that city has to offer. But Ile-de-France is much more than just the City of Lights. As home to many of France's kings and queens, the region is rich with historical sights that you may have read and daydreamed about in history class. A few of the highlights of the Ile-de-France region include:

Paris -- this is a no-brainer, and pages and pages could be written here about what to see and what to do. Whilst the Louvre may be its most famous museum, Paris is also home to a variety of other art museums, with houses of art dedicated to Monet, Rodin, and just about any other French artist you can think of. Other 'of-course!' places to see and things to do include the Tour Eiffel, Arc de Triomphe, Hotel des Invalides, a stroll down the Champs-Elysee, a walking tour of the roof of Notre Dame ... the list goes on and on. For a comprehensive listing of all-things Paris, check out the Inside Paris pages.

Versailles -- located 16 km (10 miles) west of Paris, the sights of Versailles are breathtaking -- both inside and out. Chateau Versailles, home of Louis XIV and Marie-Antoinette, is both ostentatious and awe-inspiring at the same time. Admission to Versailles is dependent on which part of the grounds you wish to visit and the time of year. (Not surprisingly, admission is more expensive during the summer high season). If you've gone into bling overload whilst inside the palace, be sure to spend some time wandering the 250-acre grounds of the Parc de Versailles, which surrounds the palace.

Chartres -- located 19 km (12 miles) west of Maintenou, Chartres is home to Chartres Cathedral. The current cathedral, built during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, is a stunning example of Gothic architecture. The cathedral is open to visitors from 8:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. daily. Tours of the crypt occur daily during the summer. Check for times at the Cathedral. The price for a crypt tour is 2.30 Euro.

Giverny -- you've seen Monet's paintings, now see where he was inspired, as Giverney is home to le Maison et Jardin Claude-Monet. The best time to visit Giverney is May or June, when the garden blooms are at their peak. Monet's house and gardens are open to the public April through October, Tuesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.Admission to the gardens and home is 5.50 Euro, to the gardens only is 4 Euro.

Fontainbleau -- located 61 km (38 miles) southeast of Paris, the Chateau de Fontainbleau was the home to a long line of royalty, beginning with Francois I in the sixteenth century. Over the years each proceeding member of the royalty added his or her own touches to the sprawling palace. Fontainbleau is open daily (except Tuesday) year-round, from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. October through May and 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. June through September. Cost of admission is 6.50 Euro for adults and free for those 18 and under. There is an additional 3 Euro fee to visit Napoleon's apartments.

Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich ( /ˈnjuːt ˈɡɪŋɡrɪtʃ/; born Newton Leroy McPherson; June 17, 1943) is an American politician, author, and political consultant. He represented Georgia's 6th congressional district as a Republican from 1979 until his resignation in 1999, and served as the 58th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. Gingrich is a candidate for the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination.

In the 1970s, Gingrich taught history and geography at the University of West Georgia. During this period he ran twice (1974 and 1976)^[3] for the United States House of Representatives before winning in November 1978. He served as House Minority Whip from 1989 to 1995.

A co-author and architect of the "Contract with America", Gingrich was a major leader in the Republican victory in the 1994 congressional election. In 1995, Time named him "Man of the Year" for "his role in ending the four-decades-long Democratic majority in the House".^[4] While he was House speaker, the House enacted welfare reform, passed a capital gains tax cut in 1997, and in 1998 passed the first balanced budget since 1969. The poor showing by Republicans in the 1998 Congressional election and pressure from Republican colleagues caused Gingrich's resignation from the speakership on November 5, 1998, and then the House on January 3, 1999.

Since leaving the House, Gingrich has remained active in public policy debates and worked as a political consultant. He founded and chaired several policy think tanks, including American Solutions for Winning the Future and the Center for Health Transformation. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.^[5] He has written or co-authored 27 books. In May 2011, he announced his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

Gingrich converted to Roman Catholicism in 2009 with the help of Father C. John McCloskey^[6], after being raised Lutheran and spending most of his adult life as a Southern Baptist. He has been married three times, with the first two marriages ending in divorce. He has two children from his first marriage and has been married to Callista (Bisek) Gingrich since 2000.

by Nicole Smith, About.com Paris Travel Contributor

Flatten, build, deconstruct, bulldoze, build again and expand: there is, perhaps, no other place in Paris that has seen more sudden and drastic renovation than the former market area known as Les Halles. Napoleon III's desire to showcase Paris as the world's most beautiful city led to architect Victor Baltard's constructon of twelve cast iron market pavilions in 1870. In 1933, a 21 year-old French photographer named Robert Doisneau began using his Leica camera to capture the bustling central marketplace for the next 40 years. His 200 black and white photographs of the area are featured in the free exhibition "Doisneau: Paris Les Halles" currently running at the city hall (Hotel de Ville).

The exhibit is located in the hospitality room, a space which provides the intimacy that was felt during the 1950s and 1960s at Les Halles. Doisneau's genuine street scenes capture various guises of the famed marketplace which nearly never slept. At night, activity at Les Halles was at its peak, with merchandise arriving from all regions of France for traders to begin selling when the market bell rang at 1 a.m. Cafes and restaurants were open 24 hours a day, which not only offered a place for social gatherings, but also served as a venue for conducting transactions and lending a short repose for workers. More than 5,000 people worked at Les Halles: butchers, fishmongers, cheese makers, florists, etc. Every square meter of the quarter was used, thus making Les Halles a truly communal setting.

From smiling laborers at their posts on the street to butchers proudly displaying their meat underground, Doisneau excelled in taking portraits of the everyday life and festivities of the marketplace. He was also able to capture the mass numbers of people and products that cluttered the site through expansive field shots. Perhaps the most amusing sequence shows people from all walks of life who frequented the quarter, each hopping over the same garbage-ridden puddle.

The tone of the exhibit quickly changes, however, after 1969, when the government decided to move Les Halles outside of Paris to Rungis due to poor sanitary conditions. From there, the exhibit explores the rapid change of Les Halles from a busy marketplace to a bulldozed construction site. All of the Baltard pavilions were destroyed or moved in order to make way for an RER commuter train station and The Forum des Halles, a massive shopping center which is currently undergoing yet another massive and costly renovation.

Doisneau's pictures from the 1970's depict anxious spectators overlooking the construction until the opening of the Forum in 1979. The exhibit truly reflects just how quickly Les Halles has modernized and remodernized itself, from a marketplace to a mega-mall. Asked why he chose the middle of the 20th century to concentrate his lens on Les Halles, Doisneau replied, "I knew it was going to disappear. I absolutely wanted to keep [a] memory of it."

Exhibition: Doisneau: Paris Les Halles​
When: February 8th through April 28th, 2012
Location: Hotel de Ville (Metro Hotel de Ville)

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