3 Colourful Places To Visit In Beautiful Paris

The city of Paris in France is renowned for its amazing monuments, including the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe, as well as the glamorous avenue des Champs-Élysées and the Notre Dame Cathedral. However, the city also has a number of off-the-beaten track locations that are definitely worth a visit, especially if you like a little colour in your life. Speaking of colour, while the famous Louvre Museum is currently closed to visitors due to the ongoing pandemic, you will be pleased to hear that you can see the museum’s entire collection online from home! Once you are allowed to visit in comfort, these are three colourful locations to list on your Paris itinerary.

1. Rue Crémieux, Paris

 
Photo by Sharon VanderKaay/Flickr

This quaint, cobbled street, hidden away in the 12th arrondissement, used to be a secret place known only by locals. However, these days, it is the most Instagrammable street in Paris, due to its many hued homes. Much to the residents’ dismay, Rue Crémieux is an increasingly sought out location for fashion photographers and filmmakers and for visitors looking for something colourful and unique to post on Instagram.

Photo by Sharon VanderKaay/Flickr

The street lies between Rue de Lyon and Rue de Bercy and doesn’t really feel like Paris at all. It seems more like the colourful Burano in Venice, or Portobello Road in Notting Hill, London. Besides the colourful façades, with their shuttered windows and trompes l’œil paintings, the houses are adorned with window boxes and terracotta pots filled to the brim with colourful plants to add to the hues. The street was named in 1897 in honour of Adolphe Crémieux, who defended the human rights of the Jewish people living in France.

Travellers must please remember that this is a residential street, so please visit with courtesy and respect for the property owners.

2. Centre Pompidou, France

Photo by Ninara/Flickr

This colourful “inside-out” building is located in the historical center of Paris in the 4th arrondissement and features Europe’s largest modern art museum. Both the exterior and interior are equally surreal. On the exterior, an “inside-out” design was used with large pipes, while the interior features some quite conceptual modern art.

During the early stages of planning the Centre Pompidou, designers decided to leave the blueprint of the building up to an architectural design competition. A team of three architects (two Italians and one British) ended up winning and drafting the blueprints for a seven-storey, 1.1 million-square-foot architectural masterpiece that the founders loved. BR To make things even more colourful, the building’s appliances are all colour-coded, with blue for heating and cooling, yellow for electrical wiring, green for plumbing pipes and red for the escalator, which is also located on the exterior of the building. Naturally, the art that is housed here is colourful in and of itself.

Photo by Mark B. Schlemmer/Flickr

Another colourful and bizarre attraction at Centre Pompidou is the Stravinsky Fountain (pictured above), which features 16 colourful sculptures representing characters in songs composed by Igor Stravinsky. In front of the building is a plaza, Place Georges Pompidou, which is popular for its jugglers, mimes, street performers and artists.

3. Carousel of Extinct and Endangered Animals - 'Dodo Manège,' Paris

This unique carousel is known as the Dodo Manège and features a herd of animals that have already disappeared - or are heading for extinction now. Located in the Jardin des Plantes, the Dodo Manège plays typical carousel music as the animals turn around.

The carousel was first installed in 1992 and was the brainchild of a scientist in comparative anatomy in the adjacent natural history museum. Children can climb on the back of such extinct creatures as the dodo, the thylacine, the Barbary lion, the aepyornis (a huge creature known as the “elephant bird,” the horned turtle or the sivatherium, an early species of giraffe. Mingled in the herd are endangered creatures like the gorilla and panda.

At the front of the carousel is a small plaque, giving information on the extinct and endangered animals, while the top of the colourful carousel is decorated with scenes of the surrounding Jardin des Plantes.

Take in the more colourful side of Paris on your next vacation in France – it will certainly brighten up anyone’s mood!

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