A lively pedestrian zone leads us to the Pompidou Center, an inside-out building covered with pipes and beams, containing Paris's main collection of modern art. Drop in and run through if you are a fan of modern and contemporary painting and sculpture, and be sure to have a look at the wild Stravinsky Fountains outdoors next door on the Plaza with their colorful kinetic sculptures spinning like crazy.
Hôtel de Ville is the City Hall of Paris. This grand structure was first built back in the 1530s by King Francois the 1st, and it took quite a while to finish the construction – it was later expanded and in the 1870s there was a colossal fire that burned out all of the inside of the building and damaged the exterior stone shell, as well and then it was rebuilt. It was reconstructed in the 1880s in the original style, so what we're looking at today is a French Renaissance structure. The City Hall is the most important building because this is a huge city. It was the largest city in Europe when the City Hall was first built in the 1530s and still today it's one of Europe's largest cities.
Just a couple blocks away we get to another one of the city's great monuments, the Cathedral of Notre Dame. One of the oldest buildings in town, it was first constructed from 1163 in the Gothic style. It is the prototype for several hundred churches that were built in the same style all over northern Europe in the 12, 13 and 14th centuries, right on up through the 16th century. It's a big church, it is rather dark so it's a little hard to see inside – you've got to let your eyes get adjusted – with its majestic stone roof and round glass windows, surrounded by beautiful parks and gardens right on the banks of the River Seine.
Notice the flying buttresses that are holding up the rear part of the church, the apse. Stone pillars coming out from the walls and going down to the ground, making sure the walls don't collapse outward. Notre Dame was the first place in the history of Gothic architecture that the these flying buttresses were ever used.
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