The Windmills of Paris
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 3, 2020
Windmills of Montmartre, Maurice Utrillo. Paris is not exactly hilly, but there are a couple of high points in the city where one can ea...
Showing posts with the label France
The Meridian That Stood Up To Greenwich
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 24, 2020
Railways, in the late 19th century, ushered in a revolution in transport, but with that arose one unexpected problem. Back then, there was...
The Cobbled Hell of Trouée d'Arenberg
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 13, 2020
The famous cobblestone road through the forest of Saint-Amand-Wallers, in France. Photo: Radu Razvan/Shutterstock.com The forest of Sain...
LlÃvia: A Curious Spanish Enclave in France
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 3, 2020
A welcome sign on the road to LlÃvia, a landlock state of Spain inside France. Photo: LMspencer/Shutterstock.com Deep in the Pyrenees, s...
Aerotrain: The High-Speed Train That Almost Revolutionized Transport
Kaushik Patowary
May 19, 2020
Some of the fastest trains in service today have a top speed in excess of 200 miles per hour. With the exception of Shanghai maglev, all o...
The Bayeux Tapestry
Kaushik Patowary
May 7, 2020
History is not always written. Sometimes it’s carved . Sometimes it’s embroidered. In a museum in Bayeux, in Normandy, is such a piece o...
The Guillotine Haircut
Kaushik Patowary
Apr 1, 2020
Women traditionally wore their hair long. So when did short hair become the vogue? Some say it became fashionable only about hundred years...
The Mulberry Harbours of Normandy
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 22, 2020
When the sea goes out in Arromanches-les-Bains, a small village on the coast of Normandy in northwestern France, the large concrete pontoons...
Celles, The Village That Didn’t Drown
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 9, 2020
In the late 1950s, residents of Celles, a small village in the Salagou valley in southern France, received notices for evacuation. Their nei...
The Newspaper That is Published Only on 29th February
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 2, 2020
The French newspaper, La Bougie du Sapeur, has been publishing for the last 40 years. Yet, there has been only eleven issues so far. Why? ...
Machine de Marly
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 11, 2019
Water features form an impressive part of the gardens in the Palace of Versailles in Paris. There are fountains, cascading waterfalls, calm ...
Repurposing Old Industrial Sites As Public Parks
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 27, 2019
The public park Landschaftspark in Duisburg-Meiderich, Germany. Image credit: mini_malist/Flickr Landschaftspark, or “landscape park”, of ...
Hameau de la Reine: Marie Antoinette’s Pretend Village
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 21, 2019
Marie Antoinette, the last Queen of France, is often portrayed as a frivolous, selfish, and immoral woman whose decadent lifestyle emptied t...
Bridges With Buildings—Part 2
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 5, 2019
During the Middle Ages, it was common to have buildings built on top of bridges. These spaces were rented out to shopkeepers and merchants, ...
Why Mediaeval Europeans Slept Inside Boxes
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 1, 2019
For much of human history, privacy during bedtime was an alien concept. Many poor families lived in small houses, where there was only one o...
The French Chateau With The World’s Largest Private Collection of Warplanes
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 26, 2019
Among the rolling hills of Burgundy's wine country, surrounded by vineyards and forested land, stands a 14th-century castle belonging to...
The Rotating Solariums of Jean Saidman
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 22, 2019
The importance of sunlight to human health is well understood, and that understanding developed in the late 19th century when it was discov...
The World’s Longest Dinosaur Trackway
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 27, 2019
In the French village of Plagne, in the Jura Mountains, 200 kilometers east of Lyon, there is a set of huge footprints made 150 million yea...
The World’s First Parachute Jump
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 25, 2019
On December 26, 1783, a crowd gathered outside the observatory in Montpellier, a French city near the south coast on the Mediterranean Sea. ...
François Coignet’s Reinforced Concrete House
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 20, 2019
In a quiet suburb, north of Paris, by the River Seine, stands a derelict four-story building. Its windows and doors are broken, some are bar...
