Paris Olympiades

Olympiades is a station of the Paris Métro. It is the southern terminus of Line 14.

The station was formally inaugurated on June 25, 2007 in the presence of the Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, and opened to the general public at just before 5.30am on June 26, 2007.

It takes its name from the area of high-rise residential tower blocks known as Les Olympiades in the heart of Paris' 13th arrondissement, to the east of the station Tolbiac, a quarter of Paris that was previously poorly served by the Metro. This area also contains the Tolbiac centre of the University of Paris. Since the opening of the new station, residents of this area, as well as staff and students at the university, can now access Saint Lazare railway station in 13 minutes and the centre of Paris in around 10 minutes.

The station entrance is at the intersection of the rue de Tolbiac and the rue Nationale.

Les Olympiades is a district of residential towers located in the 13th arrondissement of Paris, France. Built from 1969 to 1974, the district consists of a dozen towers built along a huge esplanade, elevated eight meters from the ground, that is dedicated to pedestrians. A shopping mall, known as the Pagode, stands at the center of the esplanade. Below it are streets dedicated to vehicular traffic. Shops and boutiques can easily receive deliveries on the lower level. The main entrances to the residential towers are on the esplanade.

Though the proportions are more modest, Les Olympiades are designed similarly to the esplanade of La Défense. The Olympiades esplanade has maintained a rather important business and commercial activity, something that is not true of other projects in Paris and its suburbs. The northern part of the neighborhood is typical of the 13th arrondissement, with the Parc de Choisy and Lycée Claude Monet at the northern edge of the Olympiades and the Place d'Italie three blocks north.

The eight tallest towers are each 104 meters (341 feet) tall and are named after cities that have hosted the Olympic games: Anvers (Antwerp), Athènes (Athens), Cortina, Helsinki, Londres (London), Mexico, Sapporo, and Tokyo. Other residential buildings, which are wider than they are tall, complete the district. The opening in June 2007, of the new Métro station at Les Olympiades, as part of the driverless hi-speed Metro line 14 running every 4 minutes, brought Les Olympiades residents and visitors to the Olympiades complex and its esplanade — shops, restaurants, apartments, and recreational facilities — within 11-14 minutes of Saint-Lazare, Madeleine, and Pyramides on the opposite side of Paris and 2–4 minutes from the new Cour Saint-Émilion entertainment center and Bibliothèque Nationale François Mitterrand.

The 13th arrondissement of Paris (also known as "arrondissement des Gobelins") is one of the 20 arrondissements (administrative districts) of the capital city of France.

Situated on the Left Bank of the River Seine, it is home to Paris's main Chinatown, which is located in the southeast of the arrondissement in an area that contains many high-rise apartment buildings. The current mayor is Jérôme Coumet (Socialist), who was re-elected by the arrondissement council on 29 March 2008 after the list which he headed gained 70% of the votes cast in the second round of the French municipal elections, 2008.

The 13th arrondissement also hosts the Bibliothèque François Mitterrand and the newly built business district of Paris Rive Gauche.

La Rive Gauche (French pronunciation: [la ʁiv ɡoʃ], The Left Bank) is the southern bank of the river Seine in Paris. Here the river flows roughly westward, cutting the city in two: looking downstream, the southern bank is to the left, and the northern bank (or Rive Droite) is to the right.

"Rive Gauche" or "Left Bank" generally refers to the Paris of an earlier era; the Paris of artists, writers and philosophers, including Pablo Picasso, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, Henri Matisse, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and dozens of other members of the great artistic community at Montparnasse. The phrase implies a sense of bohemianism and creativity. Some of its famous streets are the Boulevard Saint-Germain, the Boulevard Saint-Michel and the Rue de Rennes.

The Latin Quarter is a Left Bank area in the 5th arrondissement, so named because originally Latin was widely spoken by students in the vicinity of the University of Paris.