On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
It seems like forever ago that we finished up with Paris After Dark, but it’s only been two weeks! Time warp. In any case, now we get Paris pics sprinkled in with everything else in the morning. ~WaterGirl
MollyS
A second pastiche of Paris, from 8 years of visiting my daughter several times a year.

The Maritime Fountain is one of two huge fountains in the place de la Concorde. The repair work on the building behind is disguised by a false front, instead of the usual bare scaffolding. At 19 acres, the place de la Concorde is the largest public square in Paris. In its center, the Obelisk Luxor occupies the spot where the French Revolution guillotine once stood.

Electric car charging stations on rue Legendre. Many of the smaller streets have similar charging stations.

Bob Dylan, just hanging out in the 17th. Rue Biot is off the place de Clichy, not to be confused with the boulevard de Clichy, the avenue de Clichy, or the rue de Clichy. A good map is a handy device for walking in the 17th.

Looking down on Cimetière Montmartre, from the rue Caulaincourt sidewalk. The cemetery has 20,000 residents, including Emile Zola. The largest Paris cemetery, the Cimetière du Père Lachaise, is home to Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, and some 70,000 others.

Statue of the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, at the corner of rue de Rivoli and the forecourt of the Hôtel de Ville. The World War II bullet holes missed the architect of the 1840s Notre Dame restoration. He also worked on restoring Sainte-Chappelle, and was designing the internal structure of the Statue of Liberty, but died before the statue was completed.

One of the (in)famous Parisian circular staircases that can be terrifying after hours of walking. This is six flights up, 120 steps, in an apartment on rue du Fabourg Saint-Antoine, one of oldest roads in Paris.

Winter sunset on the place d’Italie.

One of the many walkways in the jardin des Plantes, The botanical garden was created in 1635 as a medicinal garden for Louis XIII. Its 69 acres include 11 gardens, archives, greenhouses, libraries, a botanical school, and a zoo.
eclare
Wonderful pictures!
Lapassionara
Thank you. I always welcome photos of Paris.
JPL
Molly, Is your daughter still in Paris? The pictures are amazing.
Mary G
Wonderful, except for the stairs.
MollyS
@JPL: Yes, she is. She married a terrific young Frenchman and is now a permanent resident of Paris!
MollyS
@Mary G: Mais oui! This staircase had a landing at each floor (to keep the residents from collapsing, we thought). For some unknown reason, there was a ladder resting against the wall on the fifth-floor landing. That was the signal that we had just one more flight to go.
donatellonerd
lovely.
MazeDancer
Love the staircase shot. The feet are a great touch.
There go two miscreants
Very nice — love the false front on the renovation!
currants
Thank you for this, Molly. I lived in France for a year (08-09, primarily based in Aix-en-Provence, but spent 8-10 weeks in Paris) and loved just about every second of it. I don’t have a camera (and didn’t then have an iPhone), so seeing others’ photos has been a pleasure.
montanareddog
Molly, that brings back memories because I lived for 5 years in the 17th, in Les Batignolles, two blocks from Rue Legendre (Cité Lemercier). It is off the tourist track for sure – is that because your daughter lives or lived in that district?
montanareddog
And I used to hang out in a bar called Le Cyrano on rue Biot. It had been taken over and pushed upmarket the last time I visited a few years ago – but 30 years ago, it was a real local cafe, covered in football scarves hiding the lovely old fittings. It was used for the cover photo of a Mathilda May album, with the then owner standing next to her
Mathilda May Album Cover
WaterGirl
Molly, you were missing the “c” in .com, so your comments weren’t posting. I fixed it on the two comments that were in moderation.
If you haven’t caught that already, you will want to fix it before your next comment. In any case, thanks for the pics!
WaterGirl
@Mary G: I thought the same thing! I had to look away. :-)
Elizabelle
Love these, Molly. Merci.
A real feel of walking around the city. And up those carpeted stairs. (An answer to “The French Paradox” — why the French are still in good shape after drinking red wine and eating all the delicious cheeses and pastries. In moderation. Unlike, sometimes, the stairs they face …)
Betty
All great pictures. So wonderful to have time to explore Paris like that. The last picture looks like a painting.
Miss Bianca
So that’s what the Place d’Italie looks like! On my one trip to Paris umpty-ump years ago, I didn’t get to visit, but it’s always stuck in my brain, thanks to fact that my middle-school French lessons featured la famille Thibaut – Monsieur et Madame, and their two petits, Paul et Catherine – and they lived in a flat in Place d’Italie!
J R in WV
Wonderful visit to Paris~!!~ Thanks for sharing.
I have always loved rounded staircases… on the other hand 6 flights would keep wife from ever getting home!
I could take wonderful pictures in Paris like these, but wouldn’t be able to tell anyone where they were taken, nor what was shown in the photos…
Also, the faux front on the building being worked on, we saw a lot of that in Firenze/Florence Italy, one was a huge cathedral wrapped in scaffolding, with printed photo of the cathedral inside the wrapping outside the scaffolds. I thought it was nice, but expensive way to help tourists visualize the way it was supposed to be. Will never see that in the US…
Thanks again!
JanieM
Nice varied set to give those of us who have never been to Paris a taste. The last picture is very like one I took of a park in Brussels when I went there for work. Also the one of a statue in a niche up high on a building.
Maybe we could do a series on cemeteries someday……
MollyS
@WaterGirl: Thank you! I definitely needed more coffee early this morning …
MollyS
@montanareddog: I know just where you were! My daughter/son-in-law are not far from rue Legendre so I’ve walked up and down many times … some fine boulangeries and small shops on the way to the boulevard de Clichy.
MollyS
@Elizabelle: Parisians walk everywhere. And it’s not only the stairs to one’s apartment. It’s the hundreds of steps they climb every week, up and down in the various Metro stations. Abbesses station, in Montmartre, is 115 feet below ground. It’s a loooong way up …