<< Original article: Tracing Loona’s steps: how I visited the places where Loona has been in Europe
Last year, while I was traveling around Europe, I stopped in various places around the continent where the members of K-Pop group Loona have been, including the locations where they shot a music video and had photoshoots for their albums. While I was there, I tried to take the same pictures as them, and I wrote an article showcasing my results, with all the photos and an explanation on where these places are and how you can reach them.
This year I managed to do the same thing while visiting Paris, so I will again explain how I did this and how you can do it too. Here I will not talk about who Loona is, their story, or how I found these places, since I already explained it in the original article, so make sure to read it before this one, the link is above.
Paris is an important city for the history of Loona, closely linked with HeeJin, the first member of the group. This is where HeeJin had the photoshoot for her solo album, which is the first ever release of the long pre-debut project that led to the formation of Loona. So, it could be said that Paris is where it all began. But this is not all, here Go Won and HyeJu (formerly Olivia Hye, she recently changed her stage name so I will use HyeJu from now on) filmed a teaser for the song “Butterfly”. Speaking of this song, some scenes of the music video were filmed in Paris. The members of the group do not appear in these scenes but I visited the location anyway. Finally, in Paris Loona held a concert last year, while Odd Eye Circle did the same during their European tour this year, so I went to some places where they have been while visiting the city.
I was going to Paris to see Aespa’s concert (and you can read my review of this concert, along with the other two K-Pop concerts I saw this year, by Red Velvet and Odd Eye Circle, in this article), and so I took the opportunity to visit the many Loona-related places here while walking around the city. However, I had some travel issues and I ended up losing an entire day. I decided to travel by bus from Italy, my home country, but just one hour before the bus was supposed to depart I received a message saying that it was delayed from 4:30 p.m. to 2 a.m., without any explanation as to why. Since I had to travel to another city to get this bus, I had to go back home and return later, and I ended up arriving in Paris in the late evening instead of the early morning. Anyway, I changed up my plans and I still managed to attend the concert and visit all the Loona-related places I wanted to see.
The first one was the place where some of the pictures in HeeJin’s album were taken, the Jardin des Tuileries, a garden located in front of the Louvre Museum. The photo on the cover of the physical album was taken near a statue called Les Fils de Caïn, looking toward the Louvre Palace (Google Maps, coordinates: 48.8615, 2.3290). Another picture from the album was taken nearby, along the railing of a staircase, again with the background of the Louvre Palace and the park (Google Maps, coordinates: 48.8618, 2.3286).
Two more pictures were instead taken next to the statues that surround the Grand Bassin Rond, a fountain at the center of the garden. The photo on the first page of the album (which is also the cover of the digital version) sees HeeJin next to a statue called Le Bon Samaritain (Google Maps, coordinates: 48.8625, 2.3292), while in another picture HeeJin is leaning on a statue titled L’Homme et Sa Misere (Google Maps, coordinates: 48.8626, 2.3298).
The music video for the acoustic version of “ViViD” by HeeJin was also shot in Paris. In one scene HeeJin is on the Petit-Pont-Cardinal-Lustiger with another bridge on the Seine, the Pont au Double, in the background (Google Maps, coordinates: 48.8532, 2.3470). Continuing along the southern shore of the river, you can walk under the Pont de la Tournelle. In the music video for “Butterfly” a woman is dancing here under the arch of the bridge with the Notre-Dame Cathedral in the background (Google Maps, coordinates: 48.8502, 2.3551).
Another Loona-related place can be found after crossing to the northern shore of the Seine. In the “XIIIX” teaser for the song “Butterfly”, HyeJu can be seen walking in the tunnel located along the Voie George Pompidou, exiting from the south-eastern end (Google Maps, coordinates: 48.8476, 2.3641).
A group of Loona-related places is located on the other side of the city, near the Tour Eiffel. While Go Won and HyeJu were in Paris to film the “XIIIX” teaser, they went to the scenic point on the river with a view on the Tour Eiffel located under the arches of the Pont de Bir Hakeim bridge, as you can see in the first episode of the vlog series titled Go Won TV (Google Maps, coordinates: 48.8556, 2.2878).
Meanwhile, when Odd Eye Circle stopped in Paris for their European tour last summer, Kim Lip and Choerry visited the Esplanade du Trocadéro, a popular panoramic point with a view on the Tour Eiffel. Here, they took some pictures in the middle of the square (Google Maps, coordinates: 48.8622, 2.2883) and along the wall at the end of it (Google Maps, coordinates: 48.8619, 2.2886), with the background of the famous landmark. I even managed to find the precise spot where both Kim Lip and Choerry took photos by looking at the writings and scribbles on the wall (Kim Lip’s post on Instagram, Choerry’s post on Instagram).
There are two more Loona-related places that I visited in Paris, and both are quite far from the other ones. In Loona TV #7, HeeJin goes to a restaurant located in front of the Tour Montparnasse. Unfortunately, now that restaurant has closed, and has since been replaced by another one (Google Maps, coordinates: 48.8443, 2.3230).
The final location is completely on the opposite side of Paris, inside the Parc de la Villette. During their world tour in 2022, Loona performed here, in a venue called Zénith. Not far from this arena is the Fontaine aux Lions, a fountain located at the center of a square at the southern entrance of the park. I cannot show them for copyright reasons, but ViVi posted two pictures taken here in a paid app called Fab on September 15, 2022. The pictures show ViVi near the fountain at night, one with the Grande Halle de la Villette in the background, and the other one looking toward the building hosting the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (Google Maps, coordinates: 48.8896, 2.3923).
This concludes my journey through Loona places in Paris. I am very pleased with how the photos turned out and all the places I visited, it’s always surreal being in these locations that I saw so many times in various videos and pictures. It was also a fun throwback to when I was searching for Loona places around Europe last year.
I also want to share a few pictures from the past few months that are not related to Loona, but instead to another K-Pop group, Red Velvet. Last May I visited Ljubljana, and Red Velvet has been there for the third season of their reality show Level Up Project! in 2018, so I took the opportunity to take the same photo as Seulgi on the Triple Bridge (Google Maps, coordinates: 46.0512, 14.5062). I also walked a bit around the same spots that the group visited in the city, but unfortunately the padlocks that they left on the Butchers’ Bridge are not there anymore, as they are periodically removed to make space for new ones.
Also, in June Seulgi visited Italy and she went to the Sorrento Peninsula and Positano on the Amalfi Coast. I was there just a few weeks later so I went to the same spots where she took some pictures, like the panoramic point called Belvedere di Sorrento (Google Maps, coordinates: 40.6496, 14.4107) and the Church of Santa Maria Assunta in Positano (Google Maps, coordinates: 40.6283, 14.4867) (Seulgi’s post on Instagram).
I ended my previous article saying that I wanted to continue my journey across the Loonaverse, and I am very happy to have been able to do it so soon. There are still several places all over the world where Loona has been and, whenever I have the opportunity to visit one of these locations, I will keep doing all of this.