How Paris Became Paris: The Story Behind Its Iconic Squares, Bridges, Monuments & Boulevards

Even today, the Paris of the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion is, for the most part, the Paris envi­sioned by Baron Georges-Eugène Hauss­mann and made a real­i­ty in the eigh­teen-fifties and six­ties. Not that he could order the city built whole: as explained by Manuel Bra­vo in the new video above, Paris had already exist­ed for about two mil­len­nia, grow­ing larg­er, denser, and more intri­cate all the while. But as the pre­fect under Emper­or Napoleon III, Hauss­mann was empow­ered to carve it up by force, open­ing “dozens of wide, long avenues that con­nect­ed impor­tant parts of the city,” a lay­out that “mir­rored the street sys­tem in Rome cre­at­ed 300 years ear­li­er by Pope Six­tus V, but on a much grander scale.”

How­ev­er con­sid­er­able the vio­lence it did to medieval Paris, this process of “Hauss­m­an­niza­tion” showed a cer­tain his­tor­i­cal con­scious­ness. After all, the French cap­i­tal was once a Roman city: Lute­tia Pariso­rum, named for the Parisii, the Gal­lic tribe that had inhab­it­ed the island in the mid­dle of the Seine that Parisians now call Île de la Cité.

As was their usu­al modus operan­di, the con­quer­ing Romans laid a car­do max­imus run­ning from north to south, today known as Rue Saint-Jacques. There­after, “the rest of the orig­i­nal lay­out was lost to organ­ic growth.” In the form Paris even­tu­al­ly took in the Mid­dle Ages, “there were no pub­lic urban spaces of major sig­nif­i­cance”: no Place Dauphine, no Place des Vos­ges, no Place Vendôme.

Those very same Parisian squares now enjoyed by locals and tourists alike did much to devel­op the expec­ta­tion of “aes­thet­ic uni­ty” in the city’s built envi­ron­ment, and a cou­ple of cen­turies before Hauss­mann at that. It may not be a com­plete exag­ger­a­tion to call Paris frozen in the Baron’s mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, but as Bra­vo explains, a close exam­i­na­tion of both the city’s cel­e­brat­ed spaces and over­all form reveals the ways in which a much deep­er past has done its part to shape or inspire them. An enthu­si­ast of urban his­to­ry can spend weeks, months, or even years appre­ci­at­ing the details that remind us that the palimpsest of Paris has nev­er quite been over­writ­ten, even in a place as unre­lent­ing­ly exam­ined — if sel­dom tru­ly seen — as the Lou­vre.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 3D Ani­ma­tion Reveals What Paris Looked Like When It Was a Roman Town

Take an Aer­i­al Tour of Medieval Paris

The Archi­tec­tur­al His­to­ry of the Lou­vre: 800 Years in Three Min­utes

A 5‑Hour Walk­ing Tour of Paris and Its Famous Streets, Mon­u­ments & Parks

A Cin­e­mat­ic Jour­ney Through Paris, As Seen Through the Lens of Leg­endary Film­mak­er Éric Rohmer: Watch Rohmer in Paris

Venice Explained: Its Archi­tec­ture, Its Streets, Its Canals, and How Best to Expe­ri­ence Them All

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.