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Île-de-France / France

Île-de-France ; literally "Island of France") is the most populous of the 18 regions of France. It is located in the north-central part of the country and often called the Région Parisienne because it includes the city of Paris. Île-de-France is densely populated and economically important: it covers only 12,012 square kilometres but has an official estimated population of 12,278,210 , and accounts for 31% of French gross domestic product .The region is made up of eight administrative departments: Paris, Essonne, Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, Seine-et-Marne, Val-de-Marne, Val-d'Oise and Yvelines. It was created as the "District of the Paris Region" in 1961. In 1976, its status was aligned with the French administrative regions that were created in 1972, it was renamed after the historic province of Île-de-France. Residents are sometimes referred to as Franciliens, an administrative word created in the 1980s. The GDP of the region in 2018 was €734 billion . It has the highest per-capita GDP among regions in France and the third-highest of regions in the European Union. In 2018, almost all of the twenty-eight French companies listed in the Fortune Global 500 had their headquarters in the Paris Region.Besides the landmarks of Paris, the region has many important historic sites, including the Palace of Versailles and the Palace of Fontainebleau, as well as the most-visited tourist attraction in France, Disneyland Paris. The poverty rate in Île-de-France was 15.9% in 2015, compared with 12.3% in 2006. The region is also increasingly unequal. Housing prices have pushed the less affluent outside Paris.

Musée du Luxembourg

Île-de-France / France

The Musée du Luxembourg is a museum at 19 rue de Vaugirard in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. Established in 1750, it was initially an art museum located in the east wing of the Luxembourg Palace and in 1818 became the first museum of contemporary art. In 1884 the museum moved into its current building, the former orangery of the Palace. The museum was taken over by the French Ministry of Culture and the French Senate in 2000, when it began to be used for temporary exhibitions, and became part of the Réunion des Musées Nationaux in 2010.

Musée national Eugène Delacroix

Île-de-France / France

The Musée national Eugène Delacroix, also known as the Musée Delacroix, is an art museum dedicated to painter Eugène Delacroix and located in the 6th arrondissement at 6, rue de Furstenberg, Paris, France. It is open daily except Tuesday; an admission fee is charged.

Hôtel de Soubise

Île-de-France / France

The Hôtel de Soubise is a city mansion entre cour et jardin , located at 60 rue des Francs-Bourgeois, in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris. The Hôtel de Soubise was built for the Prince and Princess de Soubise on the site of a semi-fortified manor house named the Grand-Chantier built in 1375 for connétable Olivier de Clisson, that had formerly been a property of the Templars. The site previously contained the Hôtel de Guise, the Paris residence of the Dukes of Guise, a cadet branch of the House of Lorraine. It was the birthplace of the last Duke, Francis Joseph, Duke of Guise, the son of Élisabeth Marguerite d'Orléans, Duchess of Alençon. He died in 1675 and the Guise estate passed to Marie de Lorraine who died at the Hôtel in 1688 having been born there in 1615. On March 27, 1700, François de Rohan, prince de Soubise bought the Hôtel de Clisson, lately de Guise, and asked the architect Pierre-Alexis Delamair to remodel it completely. Works started in 1704. His wife Anne de Rohan-Chabot, one time mistress of Louis XIV died here in 1709. Hercule Mériadec, Prince of Soubise was responsible for some interior décor at the Hôtel de Soubise engaging Germain Boffrand in the process. This dates from the 1730s. Improvements were made to celebrate the marriage of Hercule Mériadec to Marie Sophie de Courcillon, granddaughter of the famous marquis de Dangeau. It was the home of Louis XV's friend Charles de Rohan, prince de Soubise; his daughter Charlotte Élisabeth Godefride de Rohan, future princesse de Condé was born here in 1737 as was the Princess of Guéméné in 1743. Interiors by Germain Boffrand, created about 1735–40 and partly dismantled, are accounted among the high points of the rococo style in France . They constituted the new apartments of the Prince on the ground floor and the Princesse on the piano nobile, both of which featured oval salons looking into the garden. These rooms have changed very little since the 18th century, including the Chambre du prince, Salon ovale du prince, Chambre d'apparat de la princesse and the very fine Salon ovale de la princesse with gilded carvings and mirror-glass embedded in the boiserie and ceiling canvases and overdoors by François Boucher, Charles-Joseph Natoire, and Carle Van Loo.Since a Napoleonic decree of 1808, this residence has been the property of the State. Nowadays it hosts the Musée de l'Histoire de France and a part of the French National Archives.

Jardin du Luxembourg

Île-de-France / France

The Jardin du Luxembourg , also known in English as the Luxembourg Gardens, is located in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, France. It was created beginning in 1612 by Marie de' Medici, the widow of King Henry IV of France, for a new residence she constructed, the Luxembourg Palace. The garden today is owned by the French Senate, which meets in the Palace. It covers 23 hectares and is known for its lawns, tree-lined promenades, flowerbeds, model sailboats on its circular basin, and picturesque Medici Fountain, built in 1620. The name Luxembourg comes from the Latin Mons Lucotitius, the name of the hill where the garden is located.

Ministry of the Economy and Finance (France)

Île-de-France / France

The Ministry of the Economy and Finance , informally referred to as Bercy, is one of the most important ministries in the Government of France. Its minister is one of the most prominent cabinet members after the Prime Minister. The name of the ministry has changed over time; it has included the terms "economy", "industry", "finance" and "employment" through history.

Army Museum (Paris)

Île-de-France / France

The Musée de l'Armée is a national military museum of France located at Les Invalides in the 7th arrondissement of Paris. It is served by Paris Métro stations Invalides, Varenne, and La Tour-Maubourg. The Musée de l'Armée was created in 1905 with the merger of the Musée d'Artillerie and the Musée Historique de l'Armée. The museum's seven main spaces and departments contain collections that span the period from antiquity through the 20th century.

Panthéon

Île-de-France / France

The Panthéon is a monument in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, France. It is located in the area known as the Latin Quarter, standing atop the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, at the center of the Place du Panthéon which was named after it. The edifice was built from 1758 to 1790 over the designs of Jacques-Germain Soufflot at the behest of King Louis XV of France, who meant it as a church dedicated to Saint Genevieve, the city's patron saint, whose relics were to be housed there. Neither Soufflot nor Louis XV however lived to see the church completed. By the time the construction was finished, the French Revolution had started, and the National Constituent Assembly voted in 1791 to transform the Church of Saint Genevieve into a mausoleum for the remains of distinguished French citizens, modelled on the Pantheon in Rome which had been used in this way since the 16th century. The first panthéonisé was Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, although his remains were removed from the place a few years later. The building was twice restored to church usage in the course of the 19th century—although Soufflot's remains were transferred inside it in 1829—until the French Third Republic finally decreed its exclusive use as a mausoleum in 1881; the placement of Victor Hugo's remains in the crypt in 1885 was the first one in over fifty years. The successive changes in the building's purpose resulted in modifications of the pediment's decoration, the capping of the dome by a cross or a flag, and some of the originally existing windows were blocked up with masonry in order to give the interior a darker and more funereal atmosphere, which compromised somewhat Soufflot's initial attempt at combining the lightness and brightness of the Gothic cathedral with classical principles. The architecture of the Panthéon is an early example of Neoclassicism, surmounted by a dome that owes some of its character to Bramante's Tempietto. As of 2018 the remains of 78 people have been transferred to the Panthéon, including those of 73 men and 5 women. More than half of all the panthéonisations were made under Napoleon's rule during the First French Empire. In 1851, Léon Foucault conducted a demonstration of diurnal motion at the Panthéon by suspending a pendulum from the ceiling, a copy of which is still visible today.

Fondation Custodia

Île-de-France / France

The Fondation Custodia is an art museum in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, focusing on European Old Master works, including works by Dutch, Flemish, Italian and French artists. The museum was founded in 1947 by the collector and art historian Frits Lugt to house his collection of drawings, prints and paintings. Located at 121 rue de Lille, it occupies the Hôtel Turgot, an 18th-century mansion.