An easily missed masterpiece...
My usual run along the River takes me West along the right bank, past the Louvre and the Grand Palais to the bridge that crosses from the Trocadero to the Eiffel Tower, and then back along the Rive Gauche, past Les Invalides (the huge Napoleonic war hospital), the Musée d’Orsay and the Intitute Française. Today, however, I chose to run in the opposite direction to the Gare d’Austerlitz and then back along the left bank crossing over at the Ille St. Louis for home. This route takes one past the Pont de la Tournelle, one of Paris’s less famous bridges.
The bridge has, in my opinion, been wrongly overlooked—an art-deco masterpiece, it is one of the most beautiful crossings of the Seine. Built in 1928, the bridge has a largely uninteresting history, it’s virtue lies in its deliberate and beautiful asymmetry caused by one of Paris’s most easily missed sculptures, the statue of Saint Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris, by Paul Landowski. The Polish artist Paul Landowski was born in Paris in 1875 to a Polish father who had fled his homeland as a refugee and a French mother. His most famous work is undoubtedly the statue of Christ the Redeemer that looks out over the city of Rio de Janeiro. That statue is momumental in the true sense of the word, designed to dominate the landscape that it sits in, asserting itself as an ever present and all surveying feature. The statue of Saint Geneviève, depicted with a small child, in contrast, is subtle and quiet. Though it too is placed high up on a plinth, one could walk past it without noticing it, but once you have it has a mesmerising, haunting quality. Definitely worth checking out!
Dinner: Cauliflower and cheese soup, with baguette baked by the boulangerie class at Ferrandi.