France, Paris: A Nighttime view from a hotel room within Kyriad Hotel at Gare de l'Est (Paris-Est station), including distant views of the Eiffel Tower. Clip recorded 7th September 2012.

The Gare de l'Est, officially Paris-Est, is one of the six large SNCF termini in Paris. It is in the 10th arrondissement, not far from the Gare du Nord, facing the Boulevard de Strasbourg, part of the north-south axis of Paris created by Georges-Eugène Haussmann. It is one of the largest and the oldest railway stations in Paris, the western terminus of the Paris–Strasbourg railway and the Paris–Mulhouse railway which then proceeds to Basel, Switzerland.

The Gare de l'Est was opened in 1849 by the Compagnie du Chemin de Fer de Paris à Strasbourg (Paris–Strasbourg Railway Company) under the name "Strasbourg platform" (Embarcadère de Strasbourg); an official inauguration with President Louis Napoléon Bonaparte took place the next year. Designed by architect François Duquesnay, it was renamed the "Gare de l'Est" in 1854, after the expansion of service to Mulhouse.

The Gare de l'Est is the terminus of a strategic railway network extending towards the eastern part of France, and it saw large mobilizations of French troops, most notably in 1914, at the beginning of World War I. In the main-line train hall, a monumental painting by Albert Herter, Le Départ des poilus, août 1914 dating from 1926, illustrates the departure of these soldiers for the Western front. The SNCF started LGV Est Européenne services from the Gare de l'Est on 10 June 2007, with TGV and Intercity-Express (ICE) services to Northeastern France, Luxembourg, Southern Germany and Switzerland.
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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France, since the 17th century, Paris has been one of Europe's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, fashion, science and arts. The City of Paris is the centre and seat of government of the Île-de-France, or Paris Region.

The city is a major railway, highway and air-transport hub served by two international airports: Paris–Charles de Gaulle (the second busiest airport in Europe) and Paris–Orly. Opened in 1900, the city's subway system, the Paris Métro, serves 5.23 million passengers daily; it is the second busiest metro system in Europe after the Moscow Metro. Gare du Nord is the 24th busiest railway station in the world, but the first located outside Japan.
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The SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de fer français; "French National Railway Corporation") is France's national state-owned railway company. SNCF operates the country's national rail services, including the TGV, France's high-speed rail network. Its functions include operation of rail services for passengers and freight, and maintenance and signalling of rail infrastructure owned by Réseau Ferré de France (RFF).

SNCF employs more than 180,000 people in 120 countries across the globe. The rail network consists of about 32,000 km (20,000 mi) of route, of which 1,800 km (1,100 mi) are high-speed lines and 14,500 km (9,000 mi) electrified. About 14,000 trains are operated daily. The chairman of SNCF is Guillaume Pépy. The company's headquarters is in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, in the Rue du Commandant Mouchotte.

Fret SNCF est l'entreprise de fret ferroviaire sous statut EPIC en France dans la branche transport et logistique de la SNCF, au sein de SNCF Geodis, à côté de l'autre opérateur de fret ferroviaire de ce groupe en France, VFLI, qui fonctionne sous régime commercial de droit privé, et des activités de fret ferroviaire hors de France, groupées sous la marque Captrain.
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The Eiffel Tower is a wrought-iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France. It is named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower.

Constructed from 1887 to 1889 as the entrance to the 1889 World's Fair, it was initially criticised by some of France's leading artists and intellectuals for its design, but it has become a global cultural icon of France and one of the most recognisable structures in the world.

The tower is 324 metres (1,063 ft) tall, about the same height as an 81-storey building, and the tallest structure in Paris. Its base is square, measuring 125 metres (410 ft) on each side. During its construction, the Eiffel Tower surpassed the Washington Monument to become the tallest man-made structure in the world, a title it held for 41 years until the Chrysler Building in New York City was finished in 1930. Due to the addition of a broadcasting aerial at the top of the tower in 1957, it is now taller than the Chrysler Building by 5.2 metres (17 ft).
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