Paris notebook 2: Statue of Liberty, Folies Bergère, 9th-10th, Louvre at blue hour

Par Gabriel Goldberg 3 July 2026 12 min read

Paris is never just Paris. There is the postcard Paris — Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Champs-Élysées — and there is another Paris, the one you only find by looking up at a corner of the 10th arrondissement, lingering in front of an Art Deco façade on rue Richer, or pushing open the gate of a forgotten passageway between two Haussmann buildings. After the guide "Paris and Les Bleus" ahead of the 2026 World Cup , this notebook extends the walk where guidebooks don't venture: the small Parises that make up the great one. Cour Napoléon at blue hour: the Louvre is never as monumental as when the city falls silent The Louvre at blue hour: the first Parisian lesson You have to see the Louvre at the exact moment when the sky slides from grey to Prussian blue, that in-between moment when Pei's pyramid becomes a lantern set down in the Cour Napoléon. At that precise moment, the day's tourists are gone, the evening's are not yet there, and Paris breathes. The court is immense — 40,000 square metres — yet it feels intimate. The cobbles glisten with recent rain, the streetlamps trace a string of pearls to the Denon Pavilion, and you finally understand why Ieoh Ming Pei insisted in 1989: his glass pyramid does not hide the palace, it frames it. It is an optical frame, a contemporary signature placed upon eight centuries of French history. Key takeaways A second Paris notebook, complementing the Bleus 2026 guide : this time, the Paris you don't visit but inhabit. The Eiffel Tower in three…