The Next Time You See Paris

...In 1977, his successor, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, startled Parisians and many other people by inaugurating the Pompidou Center, popularly known as the "Beaubourg" after the old quarter in which it is situated...

...Technologically, many French opinion leaders see the country as the California of Europe...

...Some cafés displayed a poster showing the Statue waving the Stars and Stripes, with the Eiffel Tower in the background—not as surrealistic a collage as it might seem, since a small replica of Miss Liberty stands on the Left Bank, downstream from the Tower, a "thank-you" from the U. S. This summer's American in Paris will discover a city looking ahead to another anniversary linked with humanity's stumble toward political enlightenment: the bicentenary of the French Revolution...

...The controversy over it has proved tame, though, compared with that provoked by the building of the Eiffel Tower and, just a dozen years ago, the Pompidou Center...

...It is intended to siphon off part of the crowds from the city's famous 19th-century opera, the vast ornate Palais Garnier...

...it was the first major capital in Europe to undertake the cleaning of its buildings and monuments...

...There, in the labrinthine Cité des Sciences, escalators and transparent gangways crisscross the scientific universe...

...One may travel through space in a planetarium or a 1986-model spaceship, or board the Tramvie for a disquieting journey through life and death...

...President Georges Pompidou, who succeeded de Gaulle, had Manhattanstyle dreams for Paris...

...1 think Pei's embellishment would be better suited to the Dali museum in Figueras, Catalonia, than to the Louvre (and what a challenge to visiting English yobs— all that glass...

...While this sort of thing may be old hat to Americans with their theme parks, it is a novelty for Europeans...

...France, like Britain, became a slow-moving society of people content to "muddle through...

...and a library stores both science-fiction classics and scientific tomes...

...after all, craftsmen have been chipping away at the Louvre on and off for some 800 years...

...Another Mitterrand project has altered the look of the former slaughterhouse quarter of La Villette...

...But over the last 25 years, science and mathematics have leapt forward (at the expense, mainly, of Latin and Greek...

...Examples dot the city...

...The result was airy and harmonious...

...and the elegant façade was given a frieze of statues symbolizing the towns departing express trains traveled to...

...And in two years the Eiffel Tower will celebrate its 100th birthday...

...Plans to move the government offices that occupy one wing of the palace have been welcomed by Parisians, the majority of whom have resigned themselves to the pyramidal glass blister by I. M. Pei that is being erected in the main courtyard to cover a new entrance...

...President François Mitterrand's main gif t to Paris will be the big theater for ballet and opera currently under construction in the Bastille quarter...

...I award high marks to the Forum des Halles, a shopping precinct, exposition center and public garden built on the site of the city's old central market, and to the new Picasso Museum, installed in a lovely mansion in the historic Marais district...

...Then World War I wiped out a generation of scientists and engineers, inclining inter-War intellectuals and educators against "materialistic" studies...

...French rockets thrust European satellites into orbit and propel British naval missiles...

...on a clear day it is sullied by the faintly visible blocks of La Défense looming in the background...

...Looking westward from the Louvre through the Carrousel arch, one sees the obelisk on the Place de la Concorde and beyond it, at the far end of the Champs-Elysées, the Arc de Triomphe: On a dull day this is still one of the finest urban perspectives in Europe...

...Paris does not need the impetus of anniversaries to preserve its heritage and renovate old landmarks...

...Painting and sculpture are the star attractions, but the museum also exhibits furniture, photographs and posters of the second half of the 19th century, vividly recapturing the flavor of a period of breakthroughs in art, science and technology...

...Inspired rather than inhibited by their architectural legacy, Parisians tend to welcomenovel ideas and styles...

...Most summers, they are almost as much a part of this city's scenery as the Eiffel Tower...

...Charles de Gaulle's Administration gave its blessing to prosaic developments like the boulevard périphérique—a functional road ringing the city that some other capitals, most recently (and less successfully) London, have copied—and a high-rise suburb of offices and service industries called La Défense, two miles west of the Arc de Triomphe...

...Undeterred, visitors have voted with their feet...

...My colleague Ray Alan dubbed thestyle, notunfondly, "extestinal Bauhaus.' Le Monde mocked "this architectural King Kong...

...Still, renovation does seem to have become more ambitious of late, and new landmarks have mushroomed...

...Although some elements of La Défense, have a modicum of architectural merit, anyone with a feeling for Paris must view the complex as a whole as an esthetic outrage...

...As the glass pyramid illustrates, conservation is not allowed to stifle innovation in the French capital...

...About 5 million visitors have explored the Cité des Sciences since it opened last December...

...With its new interior by the Italian architect Gae Aulenti, the long unused structure—rechristened the Musée d'Orsay—is a perfect setting for the magnificent art collection it now houses, ranging from neoclassical to post-Impressionist...

...One of the most exciting projects has been the transformation of the Gare d'Orsay into a museum of 19th-century art...

...computers give couples the genetic profile of their future offspring...

...Traditionalists reeled when they saw the façade—its boldly-colored steel pipes and perspex tubes suggested arefinery...

...All this cultural and technological enterprise is a fitting commemoration of a revolution that started a ferment of new ideas—as fellow republicans across the Atlantic can appreciate better than anyone...

...Like the monarchs of the old regime, French presidents have sought to leave their mark on Paris—a boulevard here, a housingprojectoragallerythere...

...Across the Seine, the art galleries of the Louvre are undergoing expansion...

...Millions of homes have been equipped by the State with free computer terminals that provide a wide range of telecom services, including a unique nationwide electronic telephone directory, yellow "pages" and all...

...France's highspeed Trains à Grande Vitesse, capable ofreaching 190 miles per hour, will soon be running in other European countries...

...We haven't even acquired a Disneyland yet, though work is now beginning on one a short drive east of Paris...

...No one seems impatient...

...The Beaubourg is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year with a wide spectrum of activities, and Parisians now look affectionately on their domesticated monstre...

...The French are of course not newcomers to technological innovation: They were among the pioneers of modern medicine, aeronautics and the cinema...

...The blister will be ready by 1989, but work on the Louvre will not end before the year 2000...

...He favored the gargantuan Montparnasse tower (no asset to the skyline, but tolerable) and a fast traffic lane along the right bank of the Seine (sheer vandalism...

...Eight million of them flock annually to the Beaubourg, whose different levels, linked by external escalators cased in transparent plastic, contain an outstanding museum of contemporary art, multimedia libraries, exhibition halls, and artistic workshops for children and adults...

...The former railroad station is an impressive edifice: Designed by Victor Laloux for the World's Fair of 1900, its construction required over 300,000 square feet of glass and one-and-a-half times more steel than the Eiffel Tower...

...A scary aircraft, the Avion à Grande Vitesse, is being designed to fly from Paris to New York in an hour—a feat that would make the Concorde look like a kite...

...Distorting chambers challenge notions of space...

...Last year, sadly, terrorism and the decline of the dollar discouraged many Americans, so they missed the Paris end of the celebrations marking the Statue of Liberty's centenary...

...A spherical building called the Géode, encrusted with mirrors and glass (it looks like a satellite of Jupiter), houses a special-effects cinema that plunges viewers into a sea of sound and motion...

...I am, however, unenthusiastic about the candy-striped columns that Mitterrand's first culture minister, the headline-hungry Jack Lang, planted in the main courtyard of the Palais Royal...

...On sunny days, there is free entertainment along the extensive pedestrian areas around the Center—amateur offerings ranging from pantomime and spectacular juggling to chamber music and dancing...

...Janice Valls-Russell writes about French and Spanish affairs for the ?L...