PIÈCES DE RÉSISTANCE
The city of love is feeling a little jilted of late. Now it’s looking to reignite its dwindling tourist romance with a spotlight on its creative arts, writes Elizabeth Sleith
IT’S got magical midnights. Springtime worth singing about. It counts among its residents the woman with the world’s most beguiling smile. No wonder then that Paris, since its very first lamps were lit, has been a beacon for adventurous hearts.
Even those who’ve never gone know what they would see there: the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Place de la Concorde, Sacré-Coeur, the Seine, Notre-Dame, the Arc de Triomphe ….
Until recently, it has consistently lured 30-million tourists a year, more than any other city in the world.
Yet, things have soured of late in the City of Love. The French capital and its surrounding region recorded a staggering 1.5 million dive in visitors in 2016 compared to the year before. We all know why. We don’t have to speak of it. At home, the city mothers and fathers talk in hushed tones and euphemisms: the Sad Events, the Troubles, the Lives Lost. Our country suffered, they say.
And yet the suffering has also ignited a momentum. Parisians want you to know that their city is still dancing, still elegant and still worthy of love.
They want you back and they’re willing to woo you. And how? With their finest heart-tugging skills, of course. And that, mes amis, is art.
Paris has always been a refuge for artists. From the opulence-obsessed kings, queens and emperors who commissioned grand works to decorate their gilded fireplaces to the poets, writers and painters who descended here in the late 19th and 20th centuries to make names for themselves and to inspire one another, Paris has been a cradle for creators.
Now the central government, the City of Paris and the Paris Region are investing à8-million in what Mayor Anne Hidalgo calls “an ambitious plan to relaunch tourism”.
Part of that is La Saison Culturelle 2017 (The Cultural Season), encompassing more than 500 events and programmes by arts and culture centres in Paris and beyond, catering to all sorts of styles, tastes and age groups.
The point is to remind us all of Paris’s immense creative diversity and through that, its ability to make us feel. That, after all, is the reason we all travel, in the end, and why Paris is bound to keep its romance alive.
Here is a small selection from my visit last month for a taster, an amuse-bouche if you will, of some of the highlights.