“Paris is beautiful” - there is no need to repeat this cliche. And yet, I have to wonder how it is possible to make such a city, which is stately, refined and melancholic, and at the same time, gives you the luxury of relaxation? Compared with Greek cities and Rome, its historical monuments are not particularly ancient. The Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Opera, l’Arc de Triomphe, L'Avenue des Champs-Elysees, les Passages - all go back only to 100-300 years ago. The fairly ordinary streets, the views created by their equability, the sooty texture of the buildings, the ambient of the numerous alleys from one street to another, the avenues and the squares - how atmospheric they all are! Looking down, we see the slopes and stairs from the hills to the downtown and the group of chimneys that no longer puff - they all retain certain quaintness. The roofs we see underneath tell the story of the joy and grief of those living thereunder. The chic city rich in poetical imagination and nostalgia may well be made “on the ground of the day-to-day life of and the harmonization among the inhabitants.”. This oil is painted in the landscape format after Vincent van Gogh’s panoramic “View of Paris from Montmartre” (1886) (We do not find the Eiffel Tower there as it was, completed in 1889).