Description of the attraction
Rue de Rivoli is considered the longest in Paris. She is also the most famous (except, of course, the Champs Elysees). The guidebooks say that Rivoli is a "natural continuation" of the Champs Elysees. This is not entirely true: the crossings of the streets do not match. But Rivoli really stretches east from the Place de la Concorde, parallel to the Seine, all the way to the old Mare quarter - three kilometers of grace and history.
Founded rue Napoleon in 1806 - he named it in memory of his own military victory near the Italian city of Rivoli. The "Napoleonic" part of the street stretches along the Tuileries Gardens and the Louvre. On its northern part, the architects of the emperor Persier and Fontaine erected a long - more than a kilometer - row of identical buildings with deep arcades. They were invented by Fontaine so that, as he explained, "the visitors of fashionable shops … could not pay attention to bad weather."
Since then, Rivoli has been a street of dozens of chic lingerie shops, boutiques, cafes, and souvenir shops. This is perhaps the best place to shop for all sorts of little things in memory of Paris.
Charles X and Louis-Philippe continued the work of Napoleon Bonaparte, continuing Rivoli east to Saint-Antoine suburb - it was with them that it became so long. The construction had a good reason: in the crooked streets of the suburbs, it is convenient for the insurgent population to build barricades, Rivoli was necessary for the quick transfer of troops there. Nevertheless, the street has remained exceptionally peaceful throughout its centuries of history.
On the Rivoli there is the Louvre, the Gothic tower of Saint-Jacques, the building of the Paris City Hall overlooks it. In the center of the modest Pyramids Square (named again in honor of Napoleon's victory in Egypt) there is a small gilded equestrian statue of Joan of Arc, which does not really correspond to the grandiose architectural ensemble.
Rivoli is directly related to Russian culture. Ivan Turgenev rented a small apartment on the fourth floor in house No. 210 for three years. He also recommended the family boarding house in house number 206 to Leo Tolstoy - the classic lived here for several months. A memorial plaque on the facade of the house reminds of this.
