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There are many superb venues for music in Paris, embracing every kind of genre and style you can think of. However, we at the L’Ouest Hotel are particularly excited about a new location that is dedicated to music and the rich and varied history of the art form. We would like to give our strongest recommendation that you visit the Cité de la Musique and the Philharmonie de Paris in the Parc de la Villette. Here you will find unlimited access to musical culture by way of concerts, museum exhibits, temporary displays and educational activities for both adults and children. We think you will find it an enchanting experience.

Visit a city of music within the city of lights

Located within the pleasant surroundings of the Parc de la Villette can be found a place where the creativity of music is celebrated in grand style. The Cité de la Musique was designed by the Pritzker Prize winning French architect Christian de Portzamparc. Part of the former French president François Mitterrand's Grands Projets, this superb example of modern architecture was opened in 1995 and became an immediate success. Within its swooping and soaring grandeur can be found a concert hall capable of accommodating an audience of close to a thousand people, an amphitheatre, archives, exhibition spaces, workshops and a museum dedicated to music and built around a stunning collection of several hundred musical instruments spanning the years from the 15th to the 20th centuries. Each day a different musician plays a mini concert in the museum.

The new Philharmonie de Paris

A major part of this grand project opened just this past January. The Philarmonie de Paris is a 2,400 seat symphony hall that has been 20 years in the planning and preparation, and which now completes the Cité de la Musique. Although mainly intended for symphonic concerts, the hall will also showcase a wide variety of other forms of music, with truly eclectic programming planned. The design of the hall’s interior is one which has been referred to as the ‘vineyard style’, with seating tiers surrounding the stage like a vineyard on a hill. This style of design means there are unobstructed sight lines throughout and it also allows the audience to feel more intimately connected to the event by lessening the distance between them and the conductor and performers. In fact, the distance between the conductor and those furthest away is just 32 metres.

The hall also has an educational centre and a restaurant. This first season has certainly launched in style, with some superb concerts, family weekends, original events, participatory musical workshops and an exhibition dedicated to the life and work of the musical chameleon David Bowie, which draws upon the star’s personal archives.

If you are a music fan, or are simply looking for a refreshingly different experience, you cannot afford to miss this fabulous new addition to Parisian culture.

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• Cité de la musique - Paris Philharmonic society
By subway : line 5, direction Bobigny – Pablo Picasso, station Porte de Pantin.
By bus : lines 75, 151 - Noctilien N13 et N41.
By car : underground car park Cité de la musique.
Tramway : T3B stop Porte de Pantin.
Stations vélib' : opposite Café de la musique, Conservatoire and Porte de Pantin, Website.
Stations Autolib’.
Car park with access for the disabled - 5 places : 8 rue Adolphe Mille – 9 Rue des Sept Arpents – 159 Rue Manin.

~oOo~

Picture copyright holder : By Jean-Pierre Dalbéra from Paris, France [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

 

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L'Ouest Hotel, an elegant 3-star hotel at Paris Saint-Lazare