Les Olympiades
Encyclopedia
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. Built from 1969 to 1974, the district consists of a dozen towers built along a huge esplanade, elevated eight meters from the ground, that is dedicated to pedestrians. A shopping mall, known as the Pagode, stands at the center of the esplanade. Below it are streets dedicated to vehicular traffic. Shops and boutiques can easily receive deliveries on the lower level. The main entrances to the residential towers are on the esplanade.
Though the proportions are more modest, Les Olympiades are designed similarly to the esplanade of La Défense
La Défense
La Défense is a major business district of the Paris aire urbaine. With a population of 20,000, it is centered in an orbital motorway straddling the Hauts-de-Seine département municipalities of Nanterre, Courbevoie and Puteaux...
. The Olympiades esplanade has maintained a rather important business and commercial activity, something that is not true of other projects in Paris and its suburbs. The northern part of the neighborhood is typical of the 13th arrondissement, with the Parc de Choisy and Lycée Claude Monet at the northern edge of the Olympiades and the Place d'Italie three blocks north.
The eight tallest towers are each 104 meters (341 feet) tall and are named after cities that have hosted the Olympic games: Anvers (Antwerp), Athènes (Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
), Cortina
Cortina d'Ampezzo
Cortina d'Ampezzo is a town and comune in the southern Alps located in Veneto, a region in Northern Italy. Located in the heart of the Dolomites in an alpine valley, it is a popular winter sport resort known for its ski-ranges, scenery, accommodations, shops and après-ski scene...
, Helsinki
Helsinki
Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...
, Londres (London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
), Mexico
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
, Sapporo, and Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
. Other residential buildings, which are wider than they are tall, complete the district. The opening in June 2007, of the new Métro station at Les Olympiades
Olympiades (Paris Métro)
Olympiades is a station of the Paris Métro. It is the southern terminus of Line 14.The station was formally inaugurated on June 25, 2007 in the presence of the Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, and opened to the general public at just before 5.30am on June 26, 2007.It takes its name from the area...
, as part of the driverless hi-speed Metro line 14
Paris Metro Line 14
Line 14 of the Paris Métro system connects the stations Saint Lazare and Olympiades on a north-west south-east diagonal across the centre of Paris. It is the twelfth busiest of sixteen lines on the network, and as of 2011, the only one to be operated completely automatically; the second such line...
running every 4 minutes, brought Les Olympiades residents and visitors to the Olympiades complex and its esplanade — shops, restaurants, apartments, and recreational facilities — within 11-14 minutes of Saint-Lazare, Madeleine, and Pyramides on the opposite side of Paris and 2–4 minutes from the new Cour Saint-Émilion entertainment center and Bibliothèque Nationale François Mitterrand.
Les Olympiades were built with the aspiration that a population of young professionals would be attracted to this very modern complex offering multiple services (education, sports, etc.), a plan known and later criticized as Italie 13
Italie 13
Italie 13 is the name of a large urbanism project in Paris which started in the 1960s and was interrupted in the 1970s. Its purpose was to profoundly modify the structure of some areas of the 13th arrondissement, mainly around the Avenue d'Italie which inspired its name...
. From 1975 its southern end began to attract Vietnamese
Vietnamese people
The Vietnamese people are an ethnic group originating from present-day northern Vietnam and southern China. They are the majority ethnic group of Vietnam, comprising 86% of the population as of the 1999 census, and are officially known as Kinh to distinguish them from other ethnic groups in Vietnam...
and then Chinese residents, who also populated the main Chinatown
Chinatown
A Chinatown is an ethnic enclave of overseas Chinese people, although it is often generalized to include various Southeast Asian people. Chinatowns exist throughout the world, including East Asia, Southeast Asia, the Americas, Australasia, and Europe. Binondo's Chinatown located in Manila,...
in Paris around the southern end of the complex. Since the end of Project Italie 13 and the return to a more traditional conception of the city, the huge Paris Rive Gauche
Paris Rive Gauche
Paris Rive Gauche is a neighbourhood on the left bank of the thirteenth arrondissement of Paris. The district is bordered by the Seine, the railway tracks of Gare d'Austerlitz and the Périphérique...
project, starting a few hundred meters from the Olympiades, is the second large-scale urbanism project inside the city of Paris to be built since Italie 13, and they now form a geographic unity with a new influx of professionals and office, education, library, and other complexes, including the François Mitterrand Bibliothèque nationale de France
Bibliothèque nationale de France
The is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:...
.
See also
- Olympiades (Paris Métro)Olympiades (Paris Métro)Olympiades is a station of the Paris Métro. It is the southern terminus of Line 14.The station was formally inaugurated on June 25, 2007 in the presence of the Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, and opened to the general public at just before 5.30am on June 26, 2007.It takes its name from the area...
- Italie 13Italie 13Italie 13 is the name of a large urbanism project in Paris which started in the 1960s and was interrupted in the 1970s. Its purpose was to profoundly modify the structure of some areas of the 13th arrondissement, mainly around the Avenue d'Italie which inspired its name...
- List of tallest structures in Paris