After riding through darkened and almost deserted Paris streets just after midnight local time, Obama’s motorcade stopped in front of the concert hall at 12:45 a.m., according to pool reports. He rode past the Eiffel Tower, the French Assembly building, the Bastille.
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Accompanied by French President Hollande and Parisian Mayor Anne Hidalgo, Obama laid a single white flower, bowed his head and stood in silence at a candle-laden memorial outside the theater.
The solemn visit came as more than 140 world leaders converged on Paris for the COP21 climate summit – and as some climate change activists defied warnings from French authorities about assembling while a post-terrorist attack state of emergency remained in place.
A total of 130 people were killed in a series of shootings and bombings in Paris two weeks ago.
The Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group, which controls swaths of land in Syria and Iraq, has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Obama flew to Paris for the opening two days of an worldwide conference on combatting climate change.
It was his first stop in Paris after arriving for climate talks with other world leaders.
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Thousands of demonstrators gathered in central Paris Sunday and formed a human chain along the route of a long-planned protest march that was banned by France’s Socialist government in a security crackdown following attacks by Islamic extremists earlier this month. He said, separately, that 26 people have been placed under house arrest, stressing they weren’t militants but people known for violence in the past. More than 200 people were detained.
