PARIS AND THE ILE DE FRANCE
What's the most romantic place in Paris? The
Mur des je t'aime, of course! A disciple of Philéas Fogg, Frédéric Baron dreamed of a trip around the world in 80 "I love yous."
The result is the Mur des je t'aime (the I Love You Wall). The expression "I love you" appears 1000 times in 311 different languages. Calligraphic artist Claire Kito created the ensemble and muralist Daniel Boulogne executed the work., which was innauturated in October 2000. The Wall is located in Montmartre near the Place des Abbesses on the Square Jehan Rictus. In addition to a desciption and photographs, the website also has a virtual tour of the Mur des je t'aime using Quicktime and sound clips that help you pronounce "I love you" in many different languages.
The Paris Convention and Tourist Bureau has launched a superb English-language site with valuable information for anyone planning a trip to Paris. Check out particularly the page of Paris in Pictures to discover Green Paris, Convivial Paris, Modern Paris and, especially, Trendy Paris.
L'office de Tourisme et des Congrès de Paris a lancé un superbe site en français plein de renseignements utiles. A ne pas manquer: Paris Vert, Paris Convivial, Paris Moderne et surtout Paris Tendence avec tout ce vous avez jamais voulu savoir sur le fabuleux Montmartre d'Amélie Poulain!
The official site of the Ile-de-France Regional Tourist Board's Tourist Information Center, Paris Ile-de-France allows you to search by subject or destination, send an E-card, prepare your stay, check the weather, learn about tourist destinations. There's something for ecveryone on this site.
Paris Ile-de-France Site portail du tourisme francilien. Recherche par mot-clé, destination, ou thème. Les bons plans. Actualités. La Météo. Espace professionnels. Services en ligne. Tout le monde y trouvera son bonheur !
If you are using public transportation in Paris or the suburbs, RATP.fr is an indispensable tool. Type in your location and the address of where you want to go and the search engine will not only prepare your itinerary by rail or bus, but show both locations on detailed maps that you can print out and take with you.
RATP.fr, la RATP sur le net: Préparez vos itinéraires en Ile-de-France, consultez l'état du trafic métro, bus, RER, commandez votre coupon de Carte Orange en ligne, connaissez les emboutillages en Ile-de-France.
Living and Working in France. Danish francophile Finn Skovgaard has created a great page containing an extensive list of resources for the immigrant to France and the expat already living in France. "Here, you will find the answers to many little problems that you will encounter as a foreigner. That said, travellers may also find some useful information on this page."
Any American who has spent more than a few days in Paris has found a copy of
FUSAC
(France USA Contacts), the free magazine offering classified ads for employment and housing in Paris and the surrounding area. Now, thanks to the Internet, you don't even have to be in Paris to read FUSAC or place your ad: it's on line!
Créé en 1988,
FUSAC
(France USA Contacts) est un magazine de petites annonces destiné aux communautés internationales anglophones de Paris et sa région.
Bonjour Paris is a perfect English-language gateway to France. In addition to travel information, the site has intelligent, timely articles, chats, discussion boards, ecards, a site search engine and a marketplace. Visitors can subscribe to the Bonjour Paris Newsletter, too.
Paris Link
offers news, features and comment along with Podcasts about Paris. You can also subscribe to the Paris Link Monday newsletter.
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Paris walker Claude Geourjon has created Promenades dans le Paris Inconnu (Walks Off the Beaten Path in Paris), an online guide to discovering Paris on foot. Geourjon has created ten itineraires illustrated with over 800 color photos. The text is in French but the navigation is universal. This is a good way to reconnoiter places to visit on your next trip to Paris.
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Over 18,000 votes have been cast in a poll to determine once and for all the answer to the burning question: Combien de bises? That’s French for "How many kisses." The number, which varies from one to four (five is too much, even for the French), shows an interesting regional variability. It's all revealed on the French Kissing Map.
Visit the oficial site of the Musée du Louvre. Learn about the permanent collections and temporary expositions. Avoid waiting in line by purchasing your ticket before you leave home. Take a virtual tour. Site officiel du Musée du Louvre.
The Paris Channels. Visit Paris without leaving your home. This site offers a virtual tour of Paris with hundreds of images. Start at random in the center or start at the Eiffel Tower. Take a taxi or use an interactive map to go to the area you like.
Metropole Paris is "A weekly online English-language magazine about Paris. It is for lovers, dreamers, hopeless romantics and ordinary visitors to Paris; past, present, future, virtual and now, real." Lots of interesting articles and practical information for visitors. The
Café Metropole Club meets every Thursday and offers readers of Metropole Paris the opportunity to meet and socialize.
The official site of the City of Paris provides a useful site in French on many of the city's museums. The site contains timely information on current expositions, entrance fees, facilities for the handicapped, and links to all the museums, including the Museé de la Vie Romantique!
Le serveur officiel de la Ville de Paris a crée cette page consacrée aux musées. Sur le menu: Les expositions à l'affiche, les tarifs, l'oeuvre du mois, la vie des collections, la Photothèque.
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Eat in Paris. You are looking for a restaurant in or near Paris. Now you can search over 2,200 restaurants according to five criteria: name, district, type of cuisine, ambiance, or price. Eat in Paris gives you the results in two clicks. Version française.
Les Pages de Paris - The Paris Pages This project about Paris was created by Norman Barth in 1994 and has an extensive list of links. Unfortunately, the site does not appear to have been updated in several years; consequently, many of the links are dead.
Château de Versailles The official web site of the Château de Versailles. Bilingual. A very rich site with interactive visits and 360-degree photographs.
Vaux-le-Vicomte. The inspiration for Versailles. Once the setting of a historical tragedy, and a meeting-place for the arts, Vaux le Vicomte now offers visitors an unforgettable experience that combines culture and enjoyment with a real sense of occasion. Don't miss the photos!
L'inspiration de Versailles.Théâtre d'une tragédie de l'Histoire et rendez-vous de tous les arts, Vaux le Vicomte présente aujourd'hui une visite inoubliable de plaisir, de culture et de fête. Vaux-le-Vicomte en images.
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FRANCE
Fed up with France-bashing? Miquelon.org sets the record straight. Miquelon.org is a watchdog group dedicated to documenting French-Bashing and Anti-French activity and monitoring the news and entertainment media.
Tourism in France, the official site of the Fédération Nationale des Offices de Tourisme et Syndicats d'Initiative, is another fabulous site for anyone preparing a visit to France. Using a data base of over 3,600 tourist offices throughout France, the site enables you to search a specific town or area, offers recommended itineraries, a calendar of events, and links to transportation and accommodations providers. This site can help you discover the real France outside of Paris.
Tourisme en France, site officel de la Fédération Nationale des Offices de Tourisme et Syndicats d'Initiative. La France Secrète. Découvrez votre destination, choisissez votre itineraire, découvrez les terroirs, préparez votre voyage. Hébergement. Gastronomie. Découverte insolite. Détente.
Visit the official site of the Embassy of France in the United States. Information about traveling, studying or working in France, a selection of articles from France Magazine, France from A to Z, Franco-American Relations, speeches and press releases and a kids' page. The site is searchable, too.
Maison de la France is the official site of the French Government Tourist Office. France is still the world's top tourist destination. This multilingual site (French, English, German, Italian, Spanish) provides information coordinated to your country of residence. Calendar of over 3,000 events throughout France. Discover the 22 French regions. Discover nature in France. Information for travel professions. Site search. Newsletter. Much more. If you are planning a trip to France, this is a good place to begin.
Compiled by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, French Culture News Online is a regularly updated index of news, reviews, and feature articles about French culture from the world wide web. Articles are gleaned from a variety of international newspapers, magazines and other publications with web sites.
French-at-a-Touch
is an English-language portal providing information, history and maps of France and other French-speaking countries. The site also hosts special sections on French-language news, schools and universities and gastronomy.
If you are planning a trip to France, you need to know what the weather will be. Your best resource is
Meteo France,
which offers a wide variety of information including interactive maps of France showing twenty-four hour forecasts, precipitation statistics, satellite maps, and ultraviolet and ozone indices. There's also a "Weather Watch Map," showing four color-coded threat levels for high winds, heavy rain, thunderstorms and snow and icy conditions. Indespensable.
Consulter le site de
Météo France.
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CityVox is a multilingual guide to 36 cities in France as well as major cities in nine other European countires. Find the best places to visit, read others' opinions and add your own. Best of all: you can download data from CityVox on your Palm through Avantgo!
CityVox est décliné en 6 langues et vous offre 36 villes de France et 9 autres pays d'Europe ! Vous y trouverez une sélection des meilleures sorties. Le plus intéressant sur ce city guide est la rubrique "cityporters" qui présente les avis de visiteurs sur des lieux insolites, des idées de sorties... et vous pouvez vous aussi donner votre avis!
Cit@enet, un répertoire des sites Internet des communes de France. Rechercher une commune de France par moteur de recherche ou sur la carte. Cit@enet est une référence sur la vie des communes, des associations, et des entreprises au quotidien sur Internet.
Cit@enet maintains a data base of websites about French towns, cities, and regions. Conduct a search for any locality in France using the search box or the map.
CybeVasion France. Begin with the map of France. Click on any of the 22 regions to zoom in on an interactive map of that region. Read a brief description of that region, order a guidebook about that region from Amazon.com, or access directories of webcams, hotels, restaurants, photographs and other resources. Then zoom in on any département in that region. An excellent example of interactive cartography.
FranceKeys is an informative site of particular interest to visitors to France. There's a wealth of helpful information about essentials, practical tips, pointers, and notes about French culture. Links to maps of the 22 French regions.
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FRENCH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
Now you can throw your Bescherelle in the trash can! Verb2Verbe is a new site that provides conjugations and translations of over 4,000 French and English verbs. Plus, you can test your knowledge while it's still fresh in your mind by taking the online quizzes. The site is a labor of love designed by Alan Paul, an Australian Francophile currently living in Paris.
French is the only language spoken in France, right? Wrong. Professor Bernard Cerquiglini, Director of the l'Institut national de la langue française, wrote in
Les Langues de la France that 75 languages are spoken in France and its overseas territories. In metropolitan France itself, people speak fourteen languages and numerous dialects, including
Breton,
Basque, Catalan,
Corsican,
Occitan,
Picard or Franco-Picard,
Franco-Provençal (Arpitan), Poitevin-Saintongeais, and one of the world's rarest languages, a Latin-derived dialect known as
Welche
that is spoken in several remote valleys of Alsace and has no connection whatsoever with Wales!
And don’t forget
Argot and
Verlan.
Just in case you missed it, 2001 was the European Year of Languages. But it's not too late; 2008 is the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue.
The About.com French language page. Laura K. Lawless is your guide to this excellent site for English-speaking learners of French. La leçon du jour, la citation du jour, jobs using French, encyclopédia de verbes, and much more.
Quia is a site designed principally for teachers and students. One feature of the site is that it allows instructors to design and upload lessons, activities, quizzes and tests.
The Quia French page includes almost 1,500 quizzes and activities to help English-speakers learn French. The Top 20 activities are on the default page for easy access. Caveat: Quia has not reviewed the material, thus some activities may contain inaccuracies.
French Lessons on the Internet Want to learn Monsieur de Monville's native language? Follow this link to the French resources on the iLoveLanguages web site.
ATHENA Once you've mastered the language, or if you speak French already, check out this source of online French literature. Its creator, Pierre Perroud, says there are enough texts here to keep you busy for the next 20 years.
ATHENA: Bibliothèque française des textes numérisés. "Si vous ouvrez et lisez un texte chaque jour... vous aurez 20 ans de plus quand vous finirez ce travail." Bon courage!
Langue Française Dépannage en français, difficultés, (bon) usage, syntaxe, orthographe, vocabulaire, étymologie, débats et dossiers thématiques : «Langue française» est un site à but non lucratif, entièrement tricoté à la main.
«Le français normal poursuit son cours.» (Raymond QUENEAU).
VoycabularyA fascinating site that demonstrates the possibilities of the Internet. Enter text and click and you'll receive the same document with every word hyperlinked to a dictionary! Works in English, Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Dutch, Swedish, Portuguese, Russian, Hungarian, and Welsh. Try it out.
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REFERENCE
Expatica.com. If you live in France or are planning to move to France, consult Expatica.com, the site with news and community for the expatriate. Contents include French news, personal finance, relocation, what's on, life in France, health and fitness, shopping, family and education and many more topics. There's a discussion forum, too.
Gallica is the site of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Consult more than 80,000 documents from the Middle Ages to the early twentieth century.
Gallica, la bibliothèque numérique : 80.000 documents numérisés, une navigation plus intuitive. Le lecteur accède aujourd’hui à une bibliothèque multimédia dont les ressources documentaires s’étendent du Moyen Âge au début du XXe siècle.
Histoire de France is part of the World Wide Web Virtual Library, the oldest catalog of the World Wide Web, started by Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web in 1989. This bilingual portal catalogues over a thousand sites relating to French history, and is continually updated by an international confederation of volunteer historians. Recommended for "Historians, searchers, teachers, and honnêtes hommes who like history."
France in the Age of Les Misérables was created in the spring semester 2001 by the Mount Holyoke College students of History 255: " 'Les Mis'and 'Les Media': Realities and Representations in France of the Les Misérables," taught by Professor Robert Schwartz. The site is divided into sections on courtesans, pleasures of the bourgeoisie, Bohemia, life on the street, the world of crime and mapping Paris. This is a user-friendly site with lots of information presented in an accessable manner.
Service-Public.fr is an extremely useful portal created and maintained by the French government. Now you can access more than 6,600 public sites in English (local, national, European, International organizations, foreign nations). Service-Public.fr, le portail de l'administration française.
viaFrance, the internet guide to French events, diffuses the largest cultural and tourist events database in France. The site lists thousands of upcoming events in every region of France: from film and jazz festivals to art exhibits and trade shows. Subscribe to a customized Via France newsletter.
viaFrance. Vivez au coeur des événements! Depuis 1997, au coeur d'un réseau de plus de 6.000 partenaires, l'équipe pluri-disciplinaire de viaFrance recense, décrit, sélectionne et diffuse plus de 55 000 événements par an. Les informations sont remises à jour quotidiennement.
Whatsonwhen uses advanced technology and a clean and esthetic portal to help people people plan their leisure time according to their interests and make sure they didn't miss an event they really wanted to see. Search or browse by continent, country or city.
Whatsonwhen France categories events in France by region, month, area of interest and location.
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The Toqueville Connection is "the insider's Web source for French news and analysis." France Daily. Paris Bourse. France on Wall Street. The corporate handbook. Find a job in France. Continuously updated.
Did you know that for children born in France in 2000, Léa was the most popular girl's name and Lucas the most popular boy's name? Learn about 8,000 French first names on Prenoms.com.
Consultez la liste complète des prénoms. Les prénoms à la mode. Les lois sur les prénoms en France. Abonnez-vous à la lettre des prénoms.
Tennessee Bob's Famous French Links. Robert D. Peckham (Tennessee Bob) is a professor of French at the University of Tennessee-Martin. He has assembled an oustanding collection of links relating to French language, culture, arts and history. Poets: check out his links to resources about the troubadours and early Occitan literature.
The French Revolutionary Calendar (or Republican Calendar) was officially adopted in France on October 24, 1793. The starting date for the calendar was the autumnal equinox, September 22, 1792.
The Revolutionary Calendar had 12 months of 30 days, plus 5 or 6 leap days.
The autumn months were given the names Vendémiaire, Brumaire, and Frimaire; the winter months were called Nivôse, Pluviôse, and Ventôse; the spring months were called Germinal, Floréal, and Prairial; and the summer months were called Messidor, Thermidor, and Fructidor. The extra days were called the Sans Culottides. Each month consisted of three weeks of ten days each.
The calendar was abolished on January 1, 1806 by Emperor Napoleon I. Learn more about the calendar.
Learn today's date on the French Revolutionary Calendar and convert any date since 1792.
Metric Time. In addition to creating the decimal-based metric system for distance, volume, weight and area, the French also replaced the cumbersome Babylonian day of twenty four hours divided into sixty minutes of sixty seconds each with a decimal time system. In the decimal system, a day is divided into 10 hours of 100 minutes each and each minute contains 100 seconds. Thus there were 100,000 seconds in a day.
A handful of decimal clocks and watches were manufactured in France during the last decade of the 18th century; they are now valuable collectibles.
Here is a picture of a
French clock face circa 1795 showing both metric and Babylonian time. This
dual clock face is enhanced with revolutionary smbolism.
Learn the current decimal time in your time zone and convert between Babylonain time and decimal time on this cool
Metric Clock.
Learn more about Metric and Decimal time on the Guide to Metric Time website.
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Quid.fr. Toutes les ressources du Quid sont maintenant en ligne. Retrouvez la France en 22 régions, 95 départements, 36.540 communes en fiches détaillées. Le monde en 208 états, 250.000 données comparatives, 450 cartes, 208 fiches et drapeaux, 1.500 photos. Les 5.000 meilleurs sites web.
La France à Travers des Ages. This resource contains scores of literary, historical and cultural links in French and English. Although many of the links on the site are dead, enough useful links remain to warrant taking a look.
Images de la France d'Autrefois Access a data base of over 80,000 French postcards. No, not that kind! Unfortunately, no views of the Désert de Retz...yet. Dominique Césari, however, has located
five rare postcards of the Désert de Retz from the early twentieth century.
80 000 cartes postales anciennes sont à votre disposition. Accèder à cette base par région et département ou par thèmes (ou mots-clé).
Going to France? Find a cybercafe near you. More than 6,800 verified listings in 169 countries worldwide. Results list the address of each cybercafe, and web site URL and email address, if available. Also lists public internet kiosks and terminals on cruise ships.
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POTPOURRI
iTerroirs.com "Tout sur la cuisine, la gourmandise et les produits du terroir...enfin presque." Plus de 400 sites web, plus de 170 renseignements a consulter, plus de 150 fabricants et négociants.
Label France publishes exclusive articles either written by freelance journalists or taken from the top French news publications, on every aspect of France today. (The title is a French pun: "Label France=La Belle France.")
« Label France » propose des enquêtes, reportages, entretiens, portraits… réalisés par des journalistes indépendants ou issus des meilleurs titres de la presse française sur toutes les façettes de la France d'aujourd'hui.
RFI. Radio France Internationale. Hear and read the latest news from France in 19 languages.
Ecoutez RFI en 19 langues.
FranceLink. Pour être à la pointe de l'actualité française, surfez régulièrement sur cet excellent site d'informations. Il vous sera possible de voir en ligne le journal télévisé de TF1 ou de France2, d'écouter une radio française, ou de feuilleter la presse régionale ou nationale. Vivez la France en direct!
Journal Français Version mensuel en ligne du journal en langue française le plus lu aux Etats-Unis, fondé en Californie au moment de la ruée vers l'or de 1848. "Pour vivre à la française en Amérique.
France Today, the English-language companion publication to Journal Français, is a monthly online compilation of timely and interesting articles about French travel and culture.
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