Petit Palais is an art museum built in the 19th century to celebrate the 20th century. The construction of the museum was finished in April 1900. This museum is one of the 14 museums in Paris. The façades of the museum face the Seine, the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, and Avenue Nicolas II (which is now known as Avenue Winston-Churchill).
The reason Petit Palais existed, is because architect Charles Girault won the competition for the 1900 Exhibition area. Architects could do as they please with the museum that needed to be replaced. Destroy, keep, or alter. It didn't matter. Architect Charles Girault was heavily inspired by the late 17th and 18th-century French style.
Even though the construction of the Petit Palais cost around 400,000 pounds, Girault's plan for it had minimal alterations from the design to the execution. The main façade (which is also the largest façade of the three) faces the Grand Palais.
King Leopold II of Belgium was so impressed with the architectural design of Girault, he hired him to build structures in Belgium. For example, the Arcade du Cinquantenaire in Brussels is made by Girault (the famous arc near the royal aviation museum), as well as the Royal Museum for Central Africa (located in Tervuren, Belgium), as well as several more. Note that the Royal Museum for Central Africa looks quite like the Petit Palais.
It was a beautiful day, the weather was perfect, and maybe just a little bit too warm for my taste. We had to do a lot of walking. @Lackofcolor wanted to pay a visit to Petit Palais. But due to all the things going on, we decided to chill and relax on a bench instead. Paris is a big attraction to many tourists and places can become packed rather quickly. Since I had to photograph the Focus Art Fair on this day as well, I think it was best to keep it chill and prepare for the huge amounts of packed people.
Right across the street, you could see Grand Palais, which in my opinion, is less beautiful than the Petit Palais. Maybe I filtered the Grand Palais out of my memory as I couldn't photograph the giant building with my camera. It was nice to sit for a bit and ground ourselves in our surroundings. We are in Paris! Whether we believe it or not. We felt blessed, and indeed, good times are ahead.
And this is what I photographed back then. Back then, it was very dark, so I had a nice opportunity to be able to capture this beautiful building at night. Night photography is something else, you better bring that tripod with you.
So, for this image, I took about 7 photographs, as I wanted to create a panorama. This photograph ended up becoming an image of 10K by 3K pixels.
It was awesome to photograph the Petit Palais during the day. The last time when I was in Paris, I only saw the museum at night. I didn't even know it was a museum until I did some research about it online. I thought it was just a garden (because that was the reason why Lackofcolor wanted to go there) where you can sit and chill.
It's always nice to come home and see the details of all these buildings. I wonder why we stopped putting so much effort into architecture. I can only speak for myself, but this truly reminds me of how great humanity can be. The things we do out of passion, or the things we learned so long for, craftmanship that we rarely see these days anymore. It's a shame. But hey, I'm here to provide you with some evidence of how great Paris is! Hope you enjoyed it.
Cheers,
Ruben
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