Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor and Palace and Park of Versailles

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor

   Le Corbusier lived at the top of this building for more than thirty years and, in the end, swam away from it for the last time. The block at the Porte Molitor, on the edge of Paris where the sixteenth arrondissement meets Boulogne-Billancourt, was designed in the early 1930s as a set of apartments, and the architect kept the two top floors for his own flat and studio. It has a glass-and-steel facade, an open plan and a curved roof, and it was one of the first buildings to show that the white geometric language of modernism could work in a Parisian street. UNESCO listed it in 2016 as part of his body of work, and the apartment can be visited on guided tours, so check the opening hours before turning up.

   Read the complete Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor is where the day begins. Next is Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner.

2. 2. Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner

   On a gentle rise above the Seine at Poissy, set back from the road in a meadow ringed by trees, a white box floats on thin columns. Villa Savoye is perhaps the most famous house of the twentieth century, designed by Le Corbusier and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret for a wealthy family as a weekend retreat and completed in 1931. It is the purest built expression of Le Corbusier's five points of a new architecture: pilotis, a free plan, a free façade, horizontal ribbon windows and a roof garden. Since 2016 it has been part of the World Heritage site of his architectural work, along with the small gardener's lodge at the entrance, a miniature echo of the main house.

   Read the complete Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner comes up about 26 km into the recorded legs. Next is Palace and Park of Versailles.

3. 3. Palace and Park of Versailles

   Louis XIV wanted a stage on which the whole French nobility would have to perform for him, and Versailles is what that ambition looks like in stone, gilt and gravel. His father's modest hunting lodge on a damp plateau west of Paris grew, over decades of building, into the palace you see now, and in 1682 the court moved out here for good. The Hall of Mirrors, the chapel, the endless enfilade of state rooms: all of it was designed so that a duke had to queue to watch the king get dressed. A long way from the Paris mob, too, which was rather the point, until the mob walked out here in October 1789 and fetched the royal family back to the city.

   Read the complete Palace and Park of Versailles write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 47 km into the recorded legs you reach Palace and Park of Versailles. Next is back through Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner.

4. 4. back through Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner, late in the day. Next is Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor.

5. 5. Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back at Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor. That is the ride.