Yes Yes Paris, Rue de Rivoli, Paris (2026)

28/09/2026

Is a Seine dinner cruise worth the money or would you take a regular cruise and eat somewhere else?

27/09/2026

The last pope to celebrate at Notre-Dame before John Paul II had come to Paris to crown Napoleon. That was 1804. It took 176 years for another one to show up.

On the evening of May 30, 1980, on his first visit to France as pope, John Paul II celebrated Mass in front of the cathedral. Two days later, just outside Paris, he asked a huge crowd a question the French still remember: "France, eldest daughter of the Church, are you faithful to the promises of your baptism?" That nickname goes back about 1,500 years, to the baptism of King Clovis.

He came back to Notre-Dame in 1997 for World Youth Day.

After his death in 2005, Paris gave him one of the most famous addresses in the city. Since 2006, the big square in front of the cathedral has officially been called Parvis Notre-Dame – Place Jean-Paul-II. A parvis is the open forecourt of a church. It's also where you'll find Point Zéro, the spot from which every road distance in France is measured.

The statue took longer. The 12-foot (3.6-meter) bronze was a gift from Russian sculptor Zurab Tsereteli. It spent years in storage in a Paris convent because nobody could agree where to put it. It was finally unveiled on October 25, 2014, in the garden on the south side of Notre-Dame.

The timing worked out nicely. Six months earlier, John Paul II had been declared a saint on the same day as Pope John XXIII. The garden where his statue now stands is Square Jean-XXIII.

If you're visiting soon, note that the garden is still closed while work continues around the cathedral. The city plans to redo it in 2029–2030.

27/09/2026

Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, prayed before Notre-Dame's silver statue of the Virgin Mary on Friday, during the first papal visit to the cathedral since the 2019 fire.

It was the first day of his four-day trip to France. Inside the cathedral, the Chicago-born pope knelt before the Crown of Thorns, one of the most treasured relics in the Catholic world, and kissed it. He then led Vespers, the Church's evening prayer, with bishops, priests, nuns and seminarians from all over France.

On the square in front of the cathedral, he prayed the Salve Regina with the crowd. In English, the prayer is known as "Hail, Holy Queen." Thousands joined him. Along his route through Paris, local authorities estimated that around 300,000 people came out to greet him.

The statue has its own story. It is made of solid silver and stands about 5 feet (1.5 meters) tall. King Charles X gave it to Notre-Dame in 1826. It honored a promise made in 1638, when King Louis XIII placed France under the protection of the Virgin Mary. In 1831, rioters threw it out of the archbishop's palace, and it later came close to being melted down. Today it is kept in the cathedral's treasury. It usually comes out only for the August 15 procession on the Feast of the Assumption.

In his homily, the pope remembered the night the world watched the cathedral burn. "Notre-Dame is more than a monument," he said.

27/09/2026

According to legend, Saint Denis didn't stop preaching when he was beheaded. He picked up his own head and kept walking.

Denis was the first bishop of Paris, in the 3rd century. He was executed along with two companions, the priest Rusticus and the deacon Eleutherius, on the hill we now call Montmartre.

The legend says he then walked north for several miles with his head in his hands, preaching the whole way, until he finally collapsed. A shrine was built on the spot where he fell. It grew into the Basilica of Saint-Denis, the burial place of the kings of France.

Saints shown carrying their own heads even have a name: cephalophores, from the Greek for "head-carriers." Denis is the most famous, but a French folklorist counted 134 examples in French saints' stories alone.

Many people believe Montmartre means "mountain of the martyrs," in his honor. Historians think the name more likely comes from the Roman gods Mars and Mercury, who were once worshipped on the hill.

At Notre-Dame, Denis stands on the Portal of the Virgin, on the left side of the facade, between two angels. The original statues there were smashed during the French Revolution in 1793. The one you see today was recreated in the 19th century under the architect Viollet-le-Duc.

His feast day is October 9.

27/09/2026

On July 8, 1993, one of the most famous swimming pools in Paris sank into the Seine in about 40 minutes.

The Piscine Deligny was a floating pool moored along the quai Anatole-France, in the 7th arrondissement, between the Place de la Concorde and the National Assembly. Its story began in 1785, when bathing cabins on stilts were first set up in the river. In 1801, a swimming instructor named Deligny opened a swimming school on the spot, and his name stuck.

In 1840, the baths were rebuilt using a boat linked to the return of Napoleon's remains to Paris that same year.

Until filters were installed in the early 20th century, the pool's water reportedly came straight from the Seine, unfiltered and unheated.

By the 1970s, Deligny was the place to see and be seen, with a restaurant, a bar and a sun deck. It was also where Parisian women started sunbathing topless. In 1973, a member of parliament sent a letter of complaint to the Interior Ministry, because from one spot on the Pont de la Concorde, you could see straight into the pool.

In 1990, a barge crashed into it. Three years later, it went under, settling about four meters (13 feet) down. It was never rebuilt.

Parisians did eventually get their river back. In the summer of 2025, the city opened public swimming spots in the Seine, the first since swimming there was banned in 1923.

27/09/2026

An estimated 800,000 people filled the heart of Paris on Saturday for an open-air Mass celebrated by Pope Leo XIV.

The crowd stretched along the Champs-Élysées for more than a mile (2 kilometers), all the way past the Arc de Triomphe. According to the Vatican, that's about 200,000 more people than had registered in advance.

Before the Mass, the first American pope rode his popemobile down the avenue as families waved French and Vatican flags and lifted small children toward him. The altar stood on the Place de la Concorde, under a giant canopy decorated with a rose window design, like the ones in France's great Gothic cathedrals. Dozens of giant screens lined the avenue so everyone could follow the service, which lasted about an hour and a half.

The setting carries a lot of history. During the French Revolution, the guillotine stood on this square, and both Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were executed here. More than two centuries later, it hosted one of the largest religious gatherings Paris has seen in years.

This was the first official papal visit to France in 18 years. The last one was Benedict XVI in 2008.

Speaking to the crowd, Pope Leo said he was looking at the heirs of France's long and beautiful history of faith, and he encouraged French Catholics to share it openly.

Would you have braved a crowd this size to be there, or is a moment like this better watched from home?

27/09/2026

Yesterday, Pope Leo XIV said Mass for hundreds of thousands of people on Place de la Concorde in Paris. A few hours later, the first American pope was kneeling in a small cave at the foot of the Pyrenees.

That cave is in Lourdes, a small town near the Spanish border, about 500 miles (800 kilometers) from Paris by road. It is one of the most visited Catholic shrines in the world, with four to six million pilgrims every year.

It all started in 1858 with a 14-year-old girl named Bernadette Soubirous. Her family was so poor they lived in a former jail cell. On February 11, while gathering firewood, she said she saw a young lady in white in the rock. The lady appeared to her 18 times.

When Bernadette asked who she was, the answer came in the local dialect: "I am the Immaculate Conception." Bernadette was made a saint in 1933. For many families, her story first arrived through the 1943 Hollywood film The Song of Bernadette.

During one apparition, Bernadette dug in the mud and found a spring. Pilgrims have come for that water ever since. More than 7,000 healings have been reported. The Church officially recognizes 72 as miracles.

Now the Paris part. Twenty-eight years before Lourdes, a young nun on Rue du Bac, in the 7th arrondissement (district), said the Virgin Mary had appeared to her too. The medal she described, the Miraculous Medal, carries the words "O Mary, conceived without sin." Her chapel still welcomes visitors today, right next to the Le Bon Marché department store.

Last night, Leo did what every pilgrim does at the grotto. He touched the rock, lit a candle and drank the water. Only two popes came before him: John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

26/09/2026

Montmartre can be a tourist trap or the best afternoon of your trip.

What to see and what to skip, in the first comment.

26/09/2026

For over 60 years, shoppers at Galeries Lafayette could walk down a grand staircase beneath the dome like guests arriving at the opera. Then, in 1974, the store took it out.

The staircase was unveiled with the flagship store on boulevard Haussmann in October 1912. Its design was inspired by the famous staircase of the Palais Garnier opera house, just a few streets away. The ironwork banister was the work of Louis Majorelle, one of the leading artists of the École de Nancy, the Art Nouveau movement from eastern France.

Above it, glass artist Jacques Grüber designed the stained-glass dome, which rises 43 meters (141 feet) high.

By the 1970s, the staircase was taking up valuable space right in the middle of the store. It was dismantled to reorganize the shop floors, and a decade later the center of the ground floor was turned into luxury boutiques.

The dome was luckier. It had already survived World War II, when its stained glass was taken down so that bombings wouldn't shower shoppers and passers-by with broken glass.

And the store never lacked a sense of spectacle. In 1919, French pilot Jules Védrines landed his plane on its rooftop.

26/09/2026

Same avenue. Same destination. 46 years apart. And this time, the pope riding down the Champs-Élysées was born in Chicago.

On May 30, 1980, John Paul II arrived in Paris for the first papal visit to France in 176 years. The last pope to come was Pius VII, in 1804, for Napoleon's coronation. John Paul II rode standing in an open car next to President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, all the way down to Place de la Concorde.

French bishops were nervous before that trip. They weren't sure Parisians would show up or just watch on TV. They showed up.

The next day, in front of a huge crowd at Le Bourget airport, he asked a question France still quotes today: "France, eldest daughter of the Church, are you faithful to the promises of your baptism?" That nickname goes back to Clovis, king of the Franks, who was baptized Catholic around the year 500.

One year later, John Paul II was shot in St. Peter's Square. Papal security has never been the same.

On Saturday, September 26, 2026, Leo XIV rode down the same 1.2-mile (2-kilometer) avenue in his popemobile, with snipers on the rooftops and helicopters overhead. It is the first official papal visit to France since 2008. The Vatican says 700,000 people attended his Mass at Place de la Concorde.

One more echo. Both popes gave a speech at UNESCO in Paris. In 1980, John Paul II warned about genetic manipulation and nuclear weapons. This week, Leo XIV warned about artificial intelligence and a "paradise of machines."

Yes Yes Paris

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