Tout Paris - a guide to decorative arts, dealers of design items, and eveything else tasteful you might want to hunt down in Paris. In a tasteful hardback volume with a tasteful ribbon marker. Fun book to fuel one's decorative fantasies.
In Search
of the Arago Line:
My Meridian was Here Before Your Meridian
Story and pictures by Leslie Strom
We're all hot
on Paris right now here at Get Lost Magazine. Maybe it's
the approach of Springtime and that April in Paris song. Maybe
our research
on donuts made us hanker for Finer Pastries. Maybe it's a longing for a romantic ideal. And maybe it's this recent discovery we found in the Paris guidebook Travelers'
Tales Guide Paris, of the most obscure and interesting thing
we've seen in years: The Arago Line. Here's the short version
of the roundabout way this was determined, usurped, and rediscovered:
First a little background, from the Mairie Paris web site, and Metropole Paris, a wonderful little on-line Paris magazine we like very much (with a great story about these markers:
The Observatory of Paris is the oldest observatory in service in the world. It was built in 1667 by the architect Claude Perrault. The four facades of the building are oriented towards the four cardinal points. The median line of the building defined the meridian of Paris from 1667 to 1884: the French then adopted the international meridian that passes through Greenwich near to London.
Still today it is one of the world centers for astronomic research, even though it has been associated with the observatories of Meudon and Nancay (Cher department). The observatory diffuses the "coordinated universal time" based on international atomic time.
Since 1995, the Netherlands artist Jean Dibbets marked the imaginary Meridian line across Paris with 135 bronze plaques of 12 cm in diameter set in the ground, marked North and South, and bearing the name of François Arago (1786-1853), a prominent astronomer and political figure. The route, of course, crosses the Observatoire de Paris (Paris Observatory).
It also travels through other parts of Paris, known as the "Rallye Transparisien," making a good excuse for Getting Lost in Paris. like we needed an excuse to get lost anywhere.
Leslie Strom continues to collect
obscure and rather pointless travel goals for future trips. A
little planning goes a Dumb-Ass long way.
Have a look at this month's related story on getting the best possible deal on airfare through internet auctions like Priceline.