Still Breathtaking

Even after six months here, sometimes I see something that just takes my breath away:


This is a view from place de la Madeleine, home to some of Paris's top food shops, up the boulevard des Malesherbes to the church of St. Augustine. I was walking around the plaza and just stumbled on this yesterday.

This church isn't even mentioned in my guidebook's chapter on "The Major Churches," which must tell you something all by itself. Maybe there's nothing worth seeing inside, but it's still startling to round a corner and see something like this.

I'm guessing that we have Baron Haussmann to thank for this -- he's the guy who rebuilt Paris in the 1860s into a city of boulevards, and what he seems to have done is just taken the existing landmarks and bulldozed boulevards strategically between them. So you get vistas that you don't get in, say, London, which also has a pretty good selection of landmarks but (for better or worse) never had a Haussmann or a Napoleon III to open up the vistas.

Just something else to love about this place.