The Eiffel Tower is one of the most famous landmarks in the world, named after Gustave Eifffel, the engineer whose company designed and built the tower, completed in 1889. The tower, which is constructed of wrought iron lattice was built as the entrance to the 1889 World's Fair. To the right is the Palais de Chaillot which houses a number of museums, including the Naval Museum as well as the the Musée de l'Homme (ethnology) in the southern (Passy) wing,
the Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, including the Musée national des Monuments Français, in the eastern (Paris) wing, from which one also enters the Théâtre national de Chaillot, a theater below the esplanade.


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Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864 - 1901) vividly depicted the revelry of 19th century Parisian nightlife in paintings and posters. After injuring both legs in his early teens, Toulouse-Lautrec immersed himself in art while he recovered. He later entered the bohemian world of Paris’ Montmartre, painting its colorful cross-section of inhabitants, circuses, dance halls, nightclubs and racetracks. Toulouse-Lautrec began to exhibit widely, and Vincent Van Gogh’s brother Theo was one of his biggest supporters. While institutionalized for alcoholism, he created an extraordinary group of circus drawings which he created solely from memory.

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The Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés was founded in the 6th century by Childebert I. Under royal patronage the Abbey became one of the richest in France,and remained a center of intellectual life in the French Catholic church until it was disbanded during the French Revolution. An explosion of saltpetre in storage leveled the Abbey and its cloisters, but the church was spared. the statues in the portal were removed and some destroyed, and in a fire in 1794 the library vanished in smoke. The abbey church remains as the Église de Saint-Germain-des-Prés, one of the oldest churches in Paris.

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The Château du Clos Lucé , formerly known as the Cloux Manor, is a house where Leonardo da Vinci, at the invitation of Francis I, lived three years, from 1516 to his death on May 2, 1519. It was in 1516 that Francis I invited Leonardo da Vinci to Amboise, on the advice of his sister Marguerite de Navarre.

"You will be free here to dream, to think and to work": advised Francis I. Da Vinci crossed the Alps by mule, carrying with him three of his most remarkable works : the Mona Lisa, St. Anne the Virgin and Child and St. John the Baptist, enroute to the Chateau. Receiving a pension of 1000 crowns of gold per year, After the death of Leonardo da Vinci on May 2, 1519, Babou de la Bourdaisière, favorite of Francis I, settled at the estate.
In 1660, the Château was sold to the family of Amboise, who saves it from destruction during the Revolution.

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Cerbère (in Catalan: Cervera de la Marenda) is a commune in the Pyrénées region of southern France. Its inhabitants are called Cerbériens (Cerverins / Cerverines in Catalan).

The village is best known for the border railway station, Gare de Cerbère, on the French side of the border on the railway line between Perpignan and Barcelona. Since France and Spain use different rail gauges, the border stations of Cerbère and Portbou are quite busy with various transfer or gauge adjustment operations. Cerbère's nearness to Spain played a significant role in what has become known as "The Retreat" or "La Retirada". In the early months of 1939, many of the near 500,000 Republican refugees fleeing Franco's Spain flooded over the border at Col-des-Balistras/Belitres Pass into Cerbère and other border villages.

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