Lilliput Paris on a world tour
Lilliput Paris on a world tour
The city of Paris will soon be off on a world tour. Its famous buildings and landmarks will be packed up in cases and loaded into railway waggons now being specially adapted for the job, including one to house the Eiffel Tower and the Notre Dame Cathedral.
The Paris which will set off on this tour early next year is, of course, a miniature one on which work is now being completed at Montreuil, a suburb of the French capital. For the past year, five model designers and artists have been working to reproduce a Lilliputian version of the familiar outlines of the City of Light.
Their finished work is something of a large size in models for it weighs about 20 tons and will cost the Paris Municipal Council and the city's Chamber of Commerce some $25,000 to produce. So as to be able to reproduce the most famous buildings on a sufficiently large scale, the designers have limited their work to the central Paris area a triangle running north from the Eiffel Tower towards the Church of the Sacred Heart on the hilltop of Montmartre and from there southeast to the former site of the Bastille.
The model, built under the direction of designer René Poirot from plans by architect Jean Leblanc, Will show both the daytime and nighttime faces of Paris. Lighting has been installed so that the famous buildings can be illuminated just as they are in reality.
From the centre of the model will sprout a steel column, some 12 feet high. On it will be mounted a large disk acting as the revolving stage of a theatre in miniature. The stage will be divided into 18 scenes depicting a day in the life of Paris. It begins by showing the bustling early morning activity of the Halles, the central food markets, takes the audience through the highlights of the Paris scene, and ends the following morning with a ride on the last Metro train. One scene will show celebrations of the T4th of July. Four hundred spectators will be able to see each of these ten-minute shows.
Sweden will be the first country to welcome Lilliput Paris in the city of Gothenburg. After several weeks in Sweden, Paris will go to London and from there it will leave on an extensive world tour lasting several years.