KIIS Paris-Munich

12/10/2026

The Marché des Enfants-Rouges, the oldest covered food market in Paris, was destroyed by a fire overnight from Sunday to Monday. It stood on Rue de Bretagne in the Marais, one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city, in the 3rd arrondissement.

Firefighters were still on site early Monday. The fire chief said nothing remained of the covered market, and its metal structure had partly collapsed inside. The building covered about 1,000 square meters (roughly 10,800 square feet). The fire was brought under control and did not spread to nearby buildings. Authorities reported no victims. One firefighter felt slightly unwell. The cause is not known yet.

The market dated back to 1615, during the reign of King Louis XIII. The name Enfants-Rouges means "Red Children." It came from a nearby orphanage whose children wore red clothes, the color of Christian charity. That orphanage closed in 1772.

Locals and visitors loved it for its cheese counters, fruit and vegetable stalls, florists and small stands serving food from all over the world. It was listed as a historic monument in 1982. After a full renovation, it reopened in 2000, and many neighbors called it the village square of the area.

The mayor of central Paris, Ariel Weil, asked people to avoid the area while crews secured the site. Authorities said the main concern was the risk of the rest of the structure collapsing.

03/10/2026

26/08/2026

Paris has officially committed to reopening the Sorbonne Chapel to the public after 25 years behind locked doors.

The chapel sits right at the heart of the Sorbonne, the oldest university in France, and its gray dome is one of the most recognizable rooftops in the Latin Quarter. Inside is the marble tomb of Cardinal Richelieu, carved by François Girardon, along with dome paintings by Philippe de Champaigne that are considered some of the only surviving examples of his large-scale decorative work. A storm in 1999 badly damaged the structure, and the interior has been closed to visitors ever since, aside from a couple of days a year.

Restoration work is already underway. The entrance doors were repaired last year, giving direct access from Place de la Sorbonne for the first time in decades, and crews are now cleaning and restoring the four painted medallions at the base of the dome.

City Hall, the Sorbonne, and the World Monuments Fund have formed an official partnership and meet every six months to track progress, though a full reopening will still take years, since it also requires new safety and accessibility upgrades.

14/08/2026

September 15 is the deadline to apply for the Paris-Munich Winter Program this year! Who's going to join us on our culinary adventure in Germany and France? Find out more and apply here:

Date: December 27, 2026 - January 7, 2027 Cost: $3,475 + airfare Subjects: Cuisine & Culture, Film, Honors

31/07/2026

Le Chat Noir opened on November 18, 1881, in two small rented rooms at 84 Boulevard de Rochechouart, at the foot of Montmartre. Its founder, Rodolphe Salis, briefly called it Cabaret Artistique before renaming it after the black cat, an image already tied to Paris's stray, roaming nightlife.

The venue quickly outgrew itself. Within three and a half years, Salis moved the cabaret to larger premises nearby, on Rue Victor-Massé, styled by an architect to look like a fashionable country inn. He installed a piano, still a novelty for venues at the time, and built a format that became the blueprint for the modern cabaret: patrons seated at tables with drinks, watching a variety show led by an emcee who riffed with the crowd. Writers and artists including Verlaine, Debussy, Satie, and Toulouse-Lautrec passed through its doors.

In 1896, Salis commissioned artist Théophile Steinlen to design a poster advertising a touring version of the cabaret's act. The result, a black cat with arched back and glowing yellow eyes, became one of the most reproduced images of the era.

Salis died in March 1897, at just 45, and Le Chat Noir closed soon after, only 16 years after it opened. The building and the cabaret itself are long gone, but Steinlen's poster still outsells almost every other piece of Belle Époque art in print today.

29/07/2026

Today marks 136 years since Vincent van Gogh died in Auvers-sur-Oise, a small village about 20 miles (30 kilometers) north of Paris.

His grave is not what most people expect. No marble angel, no grand monument. Just a simple headstone against the cemetery wall, covered in ivy that reportedly came from the garden of Dr. Paul Gachet, the physician who cared for him in his final weeks.

Right beside him is his brother Theo, an art dealer who spent years funding Vincent's paintings and supplies when almost nobody else believed in his work. Theo died just six months after Vincent, and many say grief played a part. He was originally buried in the Netherlands. In 1914, his widow Johanna had his remains moved across the continent so the two brothers could finally rest side by side.

They still do today, sharing that same blanket of ivy.

A lot of Van Gogh's most famous paintings, the ones many of us first saw in a textbook or on a museum wall growing up in the States, were painted during his final 70 days here in Auvers. That's part of why the village has become a quiet stop for American travelers extending a Paris trip, even though the grave itself is easy to miss if you don't know where to look.

25/07/2026

Before Les Deux Magots was a café, it was a fabric shop.

In 1812, a novelty and lingerie store opened at 23 rue de Buci, taking its name from a popular 18th century play called Les Deux Magots de la Chine. The shop displayed two carved Chinese mandarin figurines, known as magots, that were meant to evoke wisdom and exoticism from the Far East.

In 1873, the business moved to its current spot on Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and in 1884 it became a café and liquor shop. The new owners kept the name and the two figurines, which were installed on the pillars of the main room, where they still sit today.

The café went on to host some of the most influential names in French literature and art. Verlaine, Rimbaud, and later Hemingway, Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir all became regulars, and in 1933 a group of Surrealists founded the Prix des Deux Magots, a literary prize still awarded from the same room.

More than 140 years after the figurines were first installed, the two magots are still watching over the same café, on the same square in Saint-Germain-des-Prés.