The Buren columns
260 striped columns at dancing heights — stand on a short one for the obligatory photo, and consider how the "scandal of 1986" became a Paris icon.
Marie-Lan Nguyen — Public domain · madras91 — CC BY 2.0 · Agence Rol. Agence photographique (commanditaire) — Public domain · Chatsam — CC BY-SA 4.0
No; it houses the Council of State, Constitutional Council and Culture Ministry, opening only on the annual European Heritage Days — the garden, columns and arcades are the visit, and fully sufficient.
The ideal formula: Louvre until exhaustion, lunch nearby, then a recovery hour here among columns and garden — or in the evening, when the arcades light up and empty out.
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Two minutes from the Louvre's crowds hides a royal oasis most tourists never find: the Palais-Royal, Cardinal Richelieu's palace turned royal residence, which lived its golden century as pre-revolutionary Europe's rowdiest shopping-and-pleasure quarter — today France's Council of State, its quiet garden ringed by arcades holding Paris's oldest and oddest shops. At the southern entrance waits the city's most instagrammed installation: the Colonnes de Buren — 260 black-and-white striped marble columns of stepped heights, planted by artist Daniel Buren in 1986 amid national controversy, now a beloved landmark children and photographers hop across. Beyond the columns stretches the walled garden with its tree rows, central fountain and green chairs, surrounded by arcades of shops without equal: medal-makers two centuries old, dealers in vintage couture, music boxes — shopping from another era at this era's prices.
260 striped columns at dancing heights — stand on a short one for the obligatory photo, and consider how the "scandal of 1986" became a Paris icon.
Linden rows, fountain and green chairs enclosed by palace façades on all four sides — the calmest open space in central Paris, full stop.
Beneath the arches, two-century-old trades: medals and decorations, fine vintage couture, musical toys — window-shopping unlike any modern street.
Directly behind the Louvre, 75001 Paris