The Buren columns
260 striped stumps — 1986's scandal, now Paris's photo icon.
Marie-Lan Nguyen — Public domain · madras91 — CC BY 2.0 · Agence Rol. Agence photographique (commanditaire) — Public domain · Chatsam — CC BY-SA 4.0
When Daniel Buren unveiled his striped columns in a listed historic court in 1986, France split literally — lawsuits and 'heritage defaced' petitions against 'art's freedom'. Time ruled with irony: the columns now outfame the court, children leap among them, photographers queue. A Parisian lesson in digesting modernity.
Under the arcades, grand names (the historic Grand Véfour grandest) — for occasions. Reality: Rue des Petits-Champs and Richelieu behind line up Japanese and French locals' spots at working prices — the nearby Passage Choiseul is a local lunch trove.
It is the perfect Louvre interval: museum morning, gardens for lunch and coffee, then Paris's covered passages (splendid Galerie Vivienne minutes off) — and the 'elegant Paris' day completes itself, towerless and queueless.
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Steps from the Louvre's crush hides Paris's calmest, most elegant rectangle: the Palais-Royal gardens, Cardinal Richelieu's palace court ringed by arcaded eighteenth-century galleries, where time walks slower under clipped lime rows. Its southern entry is a monument itself: the Colonnes de Buren — 260 striped marble columns of graded heights the artist planted in the court of honour in 1986, igniting an art war and becoming an unstoppable Paris photo icon. Under the arcades, rare boutiques: glove-makers, medal engravers, cult perfumers, a famous antique-metal dealer. Here Colette and Cocteau kept their storied windows, and the French Revolution's spark leapt from its cafés — all in a pocket of silence unknown to most standing a hundred metres away in the pyramid queue.
260 striped stumps — 1986's scandal, now Paris's photo icon.
Gloves, medals and cult perfume under eighteenth-century arches.
The ideal Parisian sit: metal chair, water, arcade view.
From these arcade cafés Desmoulins cried 'to arms' in 1789.
8 Rue de Montpensier, 75001 Paris