beautiful tourist attractions in France

The Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris, commonly known as Sacré-Cœur Basilica and often simply Sacré-Cœur (French: Basilique du Sacré-Cœur, pronounced [sakʁe kœʁ]), is a Roman Catholic church and minor basilica, dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in Paris, France. A popular landmark, the basilica is located at the summit of the butte Montmartre, the highest point in the city. Sacré-Cœur is a double monument, political and cultural, both a national penance for the defeat of France in the 1871 Franco-Prussian War and the socialist Paris Commune of 1871crowning its most rebellious neighborhood, and an embodiment of conservative moral order, publicly dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which was an increasingly popular vision of a loving and sympathetic Christ,The Sacré-Cœur Basilica was designed by Paul Abadie. Construction began in 1875 and was finished in 1914. It was consecrated after the end of World War I in 1919.

The Musée d'Orsay (French pronunciation: ​[myze dɔʁsɛ]) is a museum in Paris, France, on the left bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1915, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography. It houses the largest collection of impressionist and post-impressionist masterpieces in the world, by painters including Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, Sisley, Gauguin and Van Gogh. Many of these works were held at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume prior to the museum's opening in 1986.The museum building was originally a railway station, Gare d'Orsay, constructed for the Chemin de Fer de Paris à Orléans and finished in time for the 1900 Exposition Universelle to the design of three architects: Lucien Magne, Émile Bénard and Victor Laloux. It was the terminus for the railways of southwestern France until 1939,By 1939 the station's short platforms had become unsuitable for the longer trains that had come to be used for mainline services. After 1939 it was used for suburban services and part of it became a mailing centre during World War II. It was then used as a set for several films, such as Kafka's The Trial adapted by Orson Welles, and as a haven for the Renaud–Barrault Theatre Company and for auctioneers, while the Hôtel Drouot was being rebuilt In 1970, permission was granted to demolish the station but Jacques Duhamel, Minister for Cultural Affairs, ruled against plans to build a new hotel in its stead. The station was put on the supplementary list of Historic Monuments and finally listed in 1978. The suggestion to turn the station into a museum came from the Directorate of the Museums of France. The idea was to build a museum that would bridge the gap between the Louvre and the National Museum of Modern Art at the Georges Pompidou Centre. The plan was accepted by Georges Pompidou and a study was commissioned in 1974. In 1978, a competition was organized to design the new museum. ACT Architecture, a team of three young architects (Pierre Colboc, Renaud Bardon and Jean-Paul Philippon), were awarded the contract which involved creating 20,000 sq. m. of new floorspace on four floors. The construction work was carried out by Bouygues. In 1981, the Italian architect, Gae Aulenti was chosen to design the interior including the internal arrangement, decoration, furniture and fittings of the museum. Finally in July 1986, the museum was ready to receive its exhibits. It took 6 months to install the 2000 or so paintings, 600 sculptures and other works. The museum officially opened in December 1986 by then-president, François Mitterrand.

katedral chartres

Chartres Cathedral (French: Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres), located in Chartres, about 50 miles from Paris, is considered as one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture,The church was built in 1145, but was destroyed by fire in 1194. The only remaining western part, so that this section has the early gothic style. This church was rebuilt between 1194 and 1220. The total is 117 058 square feet (10 875 m2).




guimet museum

The museum, which was first located at Lyon in 1879 and was handed over to the state and transferred to Paris in 1885,[citation needed] was founded by Émile Étienne Guimet, an industrialist. Devoted to travel, Guimet was in 1876 commissioned by the minister of public instruction to study the religions of the Far East, and the museum contains many of the fruits of this expedition, including a fine collection of Chinese and Japanese porcelain and many objects relating not merely to the religions of the East but also to those of Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. One of its wings, the Panthéon Bouddhique, displays religious artworks,Some of the museum's artifacts were collected from Southeast Asia by French authorities during the colonial period.From December 2006 to April 2007, the museum harboured collections of the Kabul Museum, with archaeological pieces from the Greco-Bactrian city of Ai-Khanoum, and the Indo-Scythian treasure of Tillia Tepe.




notre dame de la garde marseilles


Notre-Dame de la Garde beautiful tourist attractions in France(literally Our Lady of the Guard), is a Catholic basilica in Marseille, France. This Neo-Byzantine church was built by the architect Henri-Jacques Espérandieu on the foundations of an ancient fort located at the highest natural point in Marseille, a 149 m (490 ft) limestone outcrop on the south side of the Old Port. It is a major local landmark and the site of a popular annual pilgrimage every year on Assumption Day, August 15.The basilica was consecrated on June 5, 1864 and replaced a church of the same name built in 1214 and restored in the 15th century. It was built on the foundations of a 16th-century fort built by Francis I of France to resist the 1536 siege of Marseille by the Emperor Charles V. The basilica consists of a lower church, or crypt, in the Romanesque style carved from the rock, as well as an upper church of Neo-Byzantine style decorated with mosaics. A square bell tower of 41 m (135 ft) topped by a belfry of 12.5 m (42 ft) supports a monumental 11.2 m (27 ft) statue of the Madonna and Child, made of copper gilded with gold leaf.The green limestone from the area surrounding Florence used to build the basilica, has been discovered to be sensitive to atmospheric corrosion. An extensive restoration took place from 2001 to 2008, including work on the mosaics that were damaged by candle smoke and the impact of bullets during the Liberation of France at the end of World War II.People from Marseille traditionally see Notre-Dame de la Garde as the guardian and the protector of the city. Local inhabitants commonly refer to it as la bonne mère ("the good mother").