David Prowler Blog

You could stand in line for the Louvre or walk across the Seine at Sunset or sit at a cafe with an espresso or even visit the Eiffel Tower.

You could watch Emily in Paris or ask ChatGPT to plan five perfect days in the City of Lights. Then there are the less « Carte Postale» corners, the more diverse ‘Quartiers Populaires » like Belleville, Ménilmontant, Battignoles, or the Chinatown of the 13th Arrondissement. They’re great too.

But to REALLY see Paris, your best bet is to visit the Anti-Paris, La Défense.

It’s a place where there is no charm whatsoever, no surprises or quirks, no little squares with fountains.

You won’t find streets like this:

Or giant snails like this:

Nothing surrealist.

Nothing Parisian at all. And it’s just a short hop on the subway. You can see it from Paris:

It’s La Défense, the largest business district in Europe. 

By the numbers :

·      61 skyscrapers

·      On 1,400 acres

·     38 million square feet of office space – now about   15% empty thanks to work from home. The overall Parisian office vacancy rate is more like 4%. In San Francisco it’s 35%.

·     There is a giant underground shopping mall with 220 stores and 48 restaurants. When it was built it was the biggest mall in Europe.

·     There is the largest arena in Europe.

·     It’s not just offices – 25,000 people live there.

From before 1964: nothing.

It’s got the masses of skyscrapers you would find in mid-town Manhattan but without the glamour. It’s a bad copy (like French pop music).

Here is a short video that tries to make it look good :

Here’s another video, more realistic.  It’s called The Anguish of Emptiness :

https://fb.watch/wCyELkNb7U/

The people I saw at La Défense didn’t look too happy to be there, except when they were eating lunch in the mall.

There are McDonalds and KFC and Starbucks and you can get a haircut.

But nothing like this:

And none of the unique shops found all over Paris, like the toy train store or the doll collectors’ shop or the ribbon store or the mountain climbing bookstore. Or the ping pong supply store.

Nobody would go there if they didn’t have to.

My friend Dominique, a retired journalist, has lived almost his whole life in Paris and we went to La Defense for his first visit a few months ago. 

It’s not far, only 26 minutes from the Louvre.

You can see that it’s a straight shot from the Louvre through the Tuileries via the Arc De Triomphe. 

There are no intimate public spaces or even side streets or alleys and the buildings seem a lot more jagged than they need to be. The whole place seems very masculine.

Here are the architects (from the book, The Architects of La Defense):

The whole landscape is awful.

But it’s not all terrible. There is a dome with movie theatres and some big sculptures.

And in the mall this was pretty cool:

La Défense really is the Anti-Paris. Whatever you like about Paris, you won’t find it at La Défense.

I was there today for two hours and got homesick.