I snuck out from our new hotel in the 16th arr to have a look at La Defense while J took the prudent option and stayed home to ice her ankle.
La Defense is an area in the NW of Paris by the Peripherique (ring road) that has been under development as a business district for the past 50 years or so. The first 'master plan' was prepared in 1964 and it has grown hugely since with each decade bringing bold new projects.
It differs from central Paris in having multiple high rise office blocks. (The rest of Paris is low rise by decree, with a small number of notable exceptions.) The architecture is great (I thought) with one of the main features being the Grande Arche - an office building in the shape of an arch. There are many other spectacular buildings as well.
The whole area has had the benefit of good long term planning, with impressive layers of roads, rail, buildings, pedestrian plazas, gardens etc all working together. The scale of infrastructure development here and in other large cities is always impressive when you come from NZ, and makes one a little envious at times.
Did I mention rail? Well I travelled there on the metro number 1 line, which is a driverless automatic system with the trains running on rubber tyres and guided by horizontal wheels bearing against guide rails. If I had felt like it I could instead have got there on the RER suburban train, or even the main line SNCF train. I could have walked, or as a last resort gone by bus. Once there I discovered there was also a tram option. I would have gone for a tram ride, but my metro ticket wouldn't let me try it. (Paris has a number of tram lines although the network is nowhere near as extensive as the other public transport services.)
As La Defense is still part of Paris its easy to find art scattered about amongst the engineering things. Here is Le Pouce (the thumb), a 12m high bronze, as an example. A bit corny, but La Defense definitely gets the thumbs up from me.
P
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