To travel from the center of Paris to Asnières-sur-Seine, about six miles northwest, is to witness a cross section of the city's evolution: Neoclassical monuments give way to the industrial suburb of Clichy, where corporate giants are headquartered and sustainable urbanism is taking hold. From there the Seine cuts through the city sprawl as it snakes its way north, and several traffic-strewn bridges take you over the Left Bank to reach the small commune, a hub of creation that has hummed away just outside the city's periphery for the past 150 years.
A Louis Vuitton trunk being brought to life inside the Asnières-sur-Seine atelier space
The living room of the Vuitton family home
In the mid to late 19th century, Asnières-sur-Seine's streets, lined with elegant brick villas, became a charming refuge from city life for the burgeoning middle class. This was the appeal for a trunk maker named Louis Vuitton, who built a workshop here in 1859. From this base, Vuitton, who became the official packer and box maker for Empress Eugénie de Montijo, wife of Napoleon III, established his leather-goods empire—helped by the advent of train travel and his ingenious courier trunks.
Thierry de Longevialle, director of the museum and family home, now hosts the fashion house's top clients here, a once-in-a-lifetime experience that can be arranged via insiders like Stéphanie Boutet-Fajol, of the boutique travel operator Sacrebleu Paris. Guests can spend half a day exploring the property with a guide and private driver, with a stop for lunch nearby.
On the June day when I visit, the gardens are filled with the scent of roses and jasmine. Obscured from the quiet residential street by high fences, the estate feels Edenic. De Longevialle begins our tour in the home's spacious double salon, part of a 1900 Art Nouveau extension commissioned by Louis Vuitton's only child, Georges Ferréol Vuitton, and designed by Hector Guimard, a leading architect of the decorative arts movement. Georges was considered more flamboyant than his father, as evidenced by the room, which embodies Art Nouveau's valorization of fine craftsmanship and the natural world; sensual frescoes creep up the walls, and a spring garden blooms across the original stained glass windows. At one end is a fantastically ornate bright blue ceramic fireplace by Ècole de Nancy.
Georges is also responsible for creating the LV initial in 1896, a symbol that arguably came to represent the birth of modern luxury. It remains the uniform motif on the exteriors of some 4,000 trunks crafted in the workshop just across the courtyard. Though modern in its design, the light-filled two-story atelier is home to methods, materials, and tools that are little changed since Louis Vuitton's
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UN Tourism and TUI Care Foundation have solidified their ongoing partnership by signing an agreement at the UN Tourism headquarters in Madrid. The agreement focuses on empowering artists and artisans, particularly women and youth, in rural tourism destinations in Africa. With this new agreement, TUI Care Foundation becomes the first partner to support the pilot phase of the Tourism for Rural Development Small Grants Programme by UN Tourism.
The arrival of the biggest summer sport events in Paris has led to a surge in hotel occupancy and room rates in the city in hotels using Mews. Occupancy rates for the next two weeks are 20% higher than in 2023, driven by last-minute bookings, which account for 35% of total occupancy during the sporty event. This is according to analysis by Mews, the cloud software for hotels, based on hundreds of Paris properties.
In Tuscany, the Val d’Orcia, with its rolling fields and untouched landscape beneath the dormant volcano of Monte Amiata, seems created for photo ops. Within it, the town of Pienza is one of the finest examples of Renaissance architecture, designed by the famed Bernardo Gambarelli, better known as Bernardo Rossellino, in white travertine marble and surrounded by palazzi which he also built.
Barcelona is getting ready to host an outstanding global event, similar in scale and style to their magnificent running of the 1992 Olympic Games. The beautiful Port Vell will be thronged by boats of all shapes and sizes from August 22nd through September and October 2024 in Barcelona.
The 2024 Olympics opened in Paris in spectacular style with thousands of athletes sailing along the River Seine past lively performers on bridges, banks and rooftops in an ambitious take on an opening ceremony.
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The Skift Travel Podcast is continuing its series on the Paris Olympics. This episode features a discussion with Patrick Mendes, Accor’s CEO for Europe and North Africa. Accor is an official partner for this year’s Games, as well as Europe’s largest hotel group.
Games wide open! The Paris 2024 Summer Olympics are here—so, expect to hear the roar of that slogan in the weeks again. There’s simply no way to quantify, or perhaps, prepare for, the already-electrifying energy infiltrating the host city and the largest Olympic ceremony ever. Despite the Games’ 300,000 spectator capacity, Paris is expected to receive around 15 million visitors, including 2 million from abroad, in the coming weeks.
With just hours to go until the Opening Ceremony for the Paris 2024 Olympics, chaos has hit the country’s transport network. On the night of Thursday, July 25, a series of fires spread across France’s high-speed rail lines, causing delays, cancelations, and disruptions to the rail system.
France's rail network has been thrown into chaos today following a series of arson attacks, just hours before the nation officially opens the 2024 Paris Olympics.