Paris - La Défense

The morning I arrived at “La Défense”, the ultra modern quarter in Paris where large companies are located in huge skyscrapers I got the impression that I had managed to see something equivalent to “The real Paris” of nowadays when I observed troops of office workers and managers dealing with their everyday life routines, rushing into the tall office buildings. I had arrived in reality, in modern times, watching employees dressed up, checking their phones, heading to meetings or to their office desks.

This has, of course, nothing to do with the Bohemian way of life of painters, writers, and musicians one associates with the City of Light. Just think about the Paris Hemingway describes in “A moveable feast” or Henry Miller in “Tropic of Cancer” and “Quiet days in Clichy”.

Nonetheless, the place is architecturally overwhelming and amazing and astonishing. The huge arch of “La Défense” is impressively lined up with the “Arc de Triomphe” at “Charles de Gaulle Etoile” and the “Pyramide du Louvre” and that way very interestingly integrated into the urban scenery of the classic Paris of former centuries.