A closer look
Commuting in Paris is significantly less miserable when your subway entrance was designed to look like an alien beanstalk. Hector Guimard's iconic 1900s Art Nouveau metro entrances, particularly at Abbesses, use sweeping emerald-green cast iron and amber glass lamps to mimic organic plant life. It is a stunning stylistic flex that turned the fundamentally grim act of descending into a subterranean transport tube into a whimsical, botanical art tour, proving the French cannot even build public transit without making it unnecessarily beautiful.
