Our
stop
Quai de Solférino, 7th arrondissement: leaving Musée
d'Orsay, cross the street along the quays and go down the steps to the
river bank.
The quarter
This stop is a railway station, as Orsay was at the
end of the railway line before it housed all the nineteenth century European
artistic movements. The thousands of visitors who visit the museum each
day cause a bit of disturbance in this secretive, discreet quarter. The
magnificent mansions built by the nobility in the eighteenth century are
now mainly used as ministries and embassies. Although the heavy doors
behind which state decisions are taken and that only open for the coming
and going of ministerial limousines, Faubourg Saint-Germain is not just
the hushed paradise of the political and diplomatic world. A walk reveals
the finest buildings in Paris in a quarter that is secretive even for
Parisians. |