Views from Atop Paris

The grand old Paris department store La Samaritaine has recently shuttered its doors. La Samaritaine featured everything but the kitchen sink. The nine-story building in the heart of Paris could have been a museum of today’s France. Greeting cards, electronics, housewares, high fashion…it was all a pleasant jumble within a stately Art Deco space. But for me, the closing is a tragedy that goes beyond a loss of merchandise availability. I may never be able to relive one of my life’s most magical experiences: winding my way lazily through the store, following the sign that read PANORAMA and emerging onto the roof, into the drizzle, with all of Paris before me.

The thing about the view from La Samaritaine was that you didn’t feel removed from the city. You felt immersed in it. The Seine and the Pont Neuf were right below you (Matt Damon did some espionage from this spot in The Bourne Identity). And all the highlights of Paris’ skyline appeared in full view or only slightly, tantalizingly veiled. The painted 360-degree illustration that encircled the viewing area had not been updated and did not include La Tour de Montparnasse or Centre Pompidou. These omissons made the painting a beautiful guide to the cultural and historical richness that you could almost see, but still required imagination. For the most part, Paris banishes skyscrapers to outside the city limits, preserving the old world elegance of past centuries.

Many visitors to Paris assume that the authoritative view of the city is from the Eiffel Tower. But to get there, you need to dodge the crowds of tour groups and climb up a dizzying staircase. Even from the first tier, and especially from the top, one seems to have left Paris beneath the clouds. The old center of town lies lost beyond the vast Champ de Mars. Guy de Maupassant once quipped that he loved to eat at the restaurant in the Eiffel Tower, because it was the only spot in town where he wouldn’t have to look at it. But on the contrary, the view from the Eiffel Tower suffers because it lacks the loveliest, grandest monument in Paris: itself.

The Arc de Triomphe is a good one. Its lower height is more suitable for joining with the city eye to eye. The Haussmann-era buildings that remain the norm in Paris reach to a height of just six or seven stories, and like La Samaritaine, the Arc de Triomphe stays in the midst of the Parisians – at least vertically. But horizontally, it is isolated inside the L’Etoile, the world’s largest traffic circle. You need to walk under the street to reach the monument to Napoleon, which was only completed after his exile. And where are the old narrow Paris streets? From here you only see twelve gigantic avenues lined with ritzy hotels.

Sacre Coeur, seen from far away, has that quality of a great monument. It looks completely unique but very familiar. Its bubbly domes seem to have blown in from a vague make-believe Middle Eastern country. The spell is ruined when you get closer to it and it becomes a monochromatic eyesore. Still, the long stretch of steps in the approach to the church facade excites you if you don’t turn around until reaching the summit. Try it at sunrise after a raucous night in Montmartre with Ewan and Nicole. Once atop the Butte de Montmartre you turn around and find yourself an uncomfortable distance from Notre Dame and Sainte-Chapelle. And since there’s nothing to the north between you and Lille, this view cannot be called a panorama. It is 180 degrees at best.

The Centre Georges Pompidou has got some good ideas. Designed by then-radical students Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, the outside-on-the-inside structure purposefully contradicted all principles of conventional museum design. It went up in the 70s when the Marais neighborhood was mostly overlooked. Now, that area is booming. The zigzagging outdoor escalator, which is worth the trip by itself reveals Paris to you in stages. Of course the first recognizable feature is the voluptuous steel of the Eiffel Tower. The view goes from blocked to partial to complete in a dramatic and satisfying sequence. And then you can visit the world’s second-greatest modern art museum.

Panoramas don’t mean what they did when airplanes were a fantasy and peasants toiled at street level. Today you can summon orthographic images of anywhere in the world, conjured up via satellite and beamed into your laptop. But a certain magic remains when you rise above the bustle and the environment stretches all around you to the horizon for your enjoyment. Your eyes can rove through the great spaces and curious interruptions. The little pleasures are what make Paris special. Being able to glimpse the it in just the right way can help safeguard the magic of the French capital, even if its greatest outposts like La Samaritaine are disappearing.