Paris (English /ˈpærɪs/, 
i/ˈpɛrɪs/; French: [paʁi] (
)) is the capital and most populous city of France. It is situated on the River Seine, in the north of the country, at the heart of the Île-de-France region. Within its administrative limits (the 20 arrondissements), the city had 2,234,105 inhabitants in 2009 while its metropolitan area is one of the largest population centres in Europe with more than 12 million inhabitants.
i/ˈpɛrɪs/; French: [paʁi] ( )) is the capital and most populous city of France. It is situated on the River Seine, in the north of the country, at the heart of the Île-de-France region. Within its administrative limits (the 20 arrondissements), the city had 2,234,105 inhabitants in 2009 while its metropolitan area is one of the largest population centres in Europe with more than 12 million inhabitants.
An important settlement for more than two millennia, by the late 12th century Paris had become a walled cathedral city that was one of Europe's foremost centres of learning and the arts and the largest city in the Western world until the turn of the 18th century. Paris was the focal point for many important political events throughout its history, including the French Revolution. Today it is one of the world's leading business and cultural centres, and its influence in politics, education, entertainment, media, science, fashion and the arts all contribute to its status as one of the world's major cities. The city has one of the largest GDPs in the world, €607 billion (US$845 billion) as of 2011, and as a result of its high concentration of national and international political, cultural and scientific institutions is one of the world's leading tourist destinations. The Paris Region hosts the world headquarters of 30 of the Fortune Global 500 companies[6] in several business districts, notably La Défense, the largest dedicated business district in Europe.[7]
Centuries of cultural and political development have brought Paris a variety of museums, theatres, monuments and architectural styles. Many of its masterpieces such as the Louvreand the Arc de Triomphe are iconic buildings, especially its internationally recognized symbol, the Eiffel Tower. Long regarded as an international centre for the arts, works by history's most famous painters can be found in the Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay and its many other museums and galleries. Paris is a global hub of fashion and has been referred to as the "international capital of style", noted for its haute couture tailoring, its high-end boutiques, and the twice-yearly Paris Fashion Week. It is world renowned for its haute cuisine, attracting many of the world's leading chefs. Many of France's most prestigious universities and Grandes Écoles are in Paris or its suburbs, and France's major newspapers Le Monde, Le Figaro, Libération are based in the city, and Le Parisien in Saint-Ouen near Paris.
Paris is home to the association football club Paris Saint-Germain FC and the rugby union club Stade Français. The 80,000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located in Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros. Paris played host to the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics, the 1938 and 1998 FIFA World Cup, and the 2007 Rugby World Cup. The city is a major rail, highway, and air-transport hub, served by the two international airports Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the city's subway system, the Paris Métro, serves 9 million passengers daily. Paris is the hub of the national road network, and is surrounded by three orbital roads: the Périphérique, the A86 motorway, and the Francilienne motorway in the outer suburbs.
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[show]Toponyms[edit]
- See Wiktionary for the name of Paris in various languages other than English and French.
The name "Paris" is derived from that of its earliest inhabitants, the Gaulish tribe known as the Parisii. The city was called Lutetia (more fully, Lutetia Parisiorum, "Lutetia of the Parisii"), during the Roman era of the 1st to the 4th century AD, but during the reign of Julian the Apostate (360–3), the city was renamed Paris.[8] It is believed that the name of the Parisii tribe comes from the Celtic Gallic word parisio, meaning "the working people" or "the craftsmen".[9]
Paris has many nicknames, like "The City of Love", but its most famous is "La Ville-Lumière" ("The City of Light"),[10] a name it owes first to its fame as a centre of education and ideas during the Age of Enlightenment. The sobriquet's "light" took on a more literal sense when Paris became one of the first European cities to adopt gas street lighting: thePassage des Panoramas was Paris' first gas-lit throughfare from 1817.[11]
Since the mid-19th century, Paris has been known as Paname ([panam]) in the Parisian slang called argot (
Moi j'suis d'Paname, i.e. "I'm from Paname").[12] The singer Renaudrepopularised the term among the younger generation with his 1976 album Amoureux de Paname ("In love with Paname").[13]
Moi j'suis d'Paname, i.e. "I'm from Paname").[12] The singer Renaudrepopularised the term among the younger generation with his 1976 album Amoureux de Paname ("In love with Paname").[13]
Inhabitants are known in English as "Parisians" and in French as Parisiens ([paʁizjɛ̃] ( )) and Parisiennes. Parisians were often pejoratively called Parigots ([paʁiɡo] ( )) and Parigotes, a term first used in 1900 by those living outside the Paris region.[14]
)) and Parisiennes. Parisians were often pejoratively called Parigots ([paʁiɡo] ( )) and Parigotes, a term first used in 1900 by those living outside the Paris region.[14]History[edit]
Main article: History of Paris
Prehistoric Paris[edit]
In 2006 French archeologists digging near rue Henri-Farman in the 15th arrondissement, not far from the left bank of the Seine, discovered the oldest traces of human habitation in Paris, an encampment of hunter-gatherers dating to the Mesolithic period, between 8200 and 7500 BC [15] The earliest traces of permanent settlements were found at Bercy in 1991, dating from around 4500–4200 BC.[16] The excavations at Bercy found the fragments of three wooden canoes used by fishermen on the Seine, the oldest dating to 4800-4300 BC. They are now on display at the Carnavalet Museum. [17] [18][19] Excavations at the rue Henri-Farman site found traces of settlements from the middle Neolithic period (4200-3500 BC); the early Bronze Age (3500-1500 BC); and the first Iron Age (800-500 BC). The archaeologists found ceramics, animal bone fragments, and pieces of polished axes. [20] Hatchets made in eastern Europe were found at the Neolithic site in Bercy, showing that first Parisians were already trading with settlements in other parts of Europe.[21]
The Parisii and the Romans[edit]
Between 250 and 225 BC, during the Iron Age, the Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, settled on the Ile de la Cité and on the banks of the Seine. At the beginning of the 2nd century BC they built an oppidum, a walled fort, on the Ile de la Cité, and they built the first bridges over the Seine.[21] The settlement, called Lucoticia or Lutetia, was strategically placed on the river trade route between Britain and the Mediterranean world, and was also the easiest place to cross the river. [22][23] The location and the fees for crossing the bridge and passing along the river made the new town prosperous.,[24] so much so it was able to mint its own gold coins, which were used for trade across Europe. Coins from the towns along the Rhine and Danube and even from Cadiz in Spain were found in the excavations of Lutece.[25]
Julius Caesar and his Roman army campaigned in Gaul between 58 and 53 BC, under the pretext of protecting the territory from Germanic invaders, but in reality to conquer it and annex it to the Roman Republic. [26] In the summer of 53 BC he visited Lutece, and addressed the delegates of the Gallic tribes, assembled before the temple on the Ile de la Cite, asking for them to contribute soldiers and money to his campaign.[27] Wary of the Romans, the Lutecians formed a secret alliance with the other Gallic tribes, under the leadership ofVercingetorix, and launched an uprising against the Romans in January 52 BC. [28]
The Romans conquered the Paris basin around 52 BC,[16] with a permanent settlement by the end of the same century on the left bank Sainte Geneviève Hill and the Île de la Cité. The Gallo-Roman town was originally called Lutetia, or Lutetia Parisorum but later Gallicised to Lutèce.[29] It expanded greatly over the following centuries, becoming a prosperous city with a forum, palaces, baths, temples, theatres, and an amphitheatre.[30]
The collapse of the Roman empire, along with the Germanic invasions of the 5th century, sent the city into a period of decline. By 400 AD, Lutèce was largely abandoned by its inhabitants, little more than a garrison town entrenched into a hastily fortified central island.[16] The city reclaimed its original appellation of "Paris" towards the end of the Roman occupation, around 360 AD, when Julian the Apostate, Prefect of the Gauls, was proclaimed emperor.[31] The proclamation was made on the Île de la Cité. Julian remained based there for three years, making Paris the de facto capital of the Western Empire.[32]
Merovingian and Feudal eras[edit]
_-_Clovis_roi_des_Francs_(465-511).jpg)
The Paris region was under full control of the Salian Franks by the late 5th century. The Frankish king Clovis the Frank, the first king of the Merovingian dynasty, made the city his capital from 508 and was responsible for converting the city back to Christianity.[33] The late 8th century Carolingian dynasty displaced the Frankish capital to Aachen; this period coincided with the beginning of Viking invasions that had spread as far as Paris by the early 9th century.[33]
One of the most remarkable Viking raids was on 28 March 845, when Paris was invaded by some 200 Norse ships along the Seine and sacked and held ransom,[34] probably byRagnar Lodbrok, who reputedly left only after receiving a large bounty paid by the crown. Repeated invasions forced Eudes, Count of Paris, to build a fortress on the Île de la Cité in 885 AD. However, the city soon suffered a siege lasting almost a year, eventually relieved by the Carolingian king, Charles "The Fat", who instead of attacking allowed the besiegers to sail up the Seine and lay waste to Burgundy.[33] Eudes then took the crown for himself, plunging the French crown into dynastic turmoil lasting over a century until 987 AD when Hugh Capet, count of Paris, was elected king of France. Paris, under the Capetian kings, became a capital once more, and his coronation was seen by many historians as the moment marking the birth of modern France.[33]
Middle Ages to 18th century[edit]
Paris became prosperous and by the end of the 11th century, scholars, teachers and monks flocked to the city to engage in intellectual exchanges, to teach and be taught; Philippe-Augustefounded the University of Paris in 1200.[33] The guilds gradually became more powerful and were instrumental in inciting the first revolt after the king was captured by the English in 1356.[35]Paris' population was around 200,000[36] when the Black Death arrived in 1348, killing as many as 800 people a day; 40,000 died from the plague in 1466.[37] During the 16th and 17th centuries,plague visited the city for almost one year out of three.[38] Paris lost its position as seat of the French realm during the occupation by the English-allied Burgundians during the Hundred Years' War, but when Charles VII of France reclaimed the city from English rule in 1436, Paris became France's capital once again in title, although the real centre of power remained in the Loire Valley[39] until King Francis I returned France's crown residences to Paris in 1528.
During the French Wars of Religion, Paris was a stronghold of the Catholic party. In August 1572, under the reign of Charles IX, while many noble Protestants were in Paris on the occasion of the marriage of Henri of Navarre—the future Henri IV—to Margaret of Valois, sister of Charles IX, the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre occurred; beginning on 24 August, it lasted several days and spread throughout the country.[40][41]
In 1590 Henri IV unsuccessfully laid siege to the city in the Siege of Paris, but, threatened with usurpation from Philip II of Spain, he converted to Catholicism in 1594, and the city welcomed him as king.[35] The Bourbons, Henri's family, spent vast amounts of money keeping the city under control, building the Ile St-Louis as well as bridges and other infrastructure.[35] But unhappy with their lack of political representation, in 1648 Parisians rose in a rebellion known as the Fronde and the royal family fled the city. Louis XIV later moved the royal court permanently toVersailles, a lavish estate on the outskirts of Paris,[35] in 1682. The following century was an "Age of Enlightenment"; Paris' reputation grew on the writings of its intellectuals such as the philosopher Voltaire and Diderot, the first volume of whose Encyclopédie was published in Paris in 1751.[42]
French Revolution[edit]
Main article: French Revolution
At the end of the century, Paris was the centre stage for the French Revolution; a bad harvest in 1788 caused food prices to rocket and by the following year the sovereign debt had reached an unprecedented level.[43] On 14 July 1789, Parisians, appalled by the king's pressure on the new assembly formed by the Third Estate, took siege of the Bastille fortress, a symbol of absolutism,[44]starting revolution and rejecting the divine right of monarchs in France. Jean-Sylvain Bailly, the first Mayor, was elected on 15 July 1789,[45] and two days later the national tricolour flag with the colours of Paris (blue and red) and of the King (white) was adopted at the Hôtel de Ville by Louis XVI.[46]
The Republic was declared for the first time in 1792. In 1793, Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette were executed on the Place de la Révolution, in Paris, the site of many executions. The guillotine was most active during the "Reign of Terror", in the summer of 1794, when in a single month more than 1,300 people were executed. Following the Terror, the French Directory held control until it was overthrown in a coup d'état by Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon put an end to the revolution and established the French Consulate, and then later was elected by plebiscite[47] as emperor of the First French Empire.[48]
The Paris of Napoleon I (1801-1815)[edit]
First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte moved into the Tuileries Palace on 19 February 1800 and immediately began to re-establish calm and order after the years of uncertainty and terror of the Revolution. He made peace with the Catholic church; masses were held again in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, priests were allowed to wear ecclesiastical clothing again, and churches were allowed once more to ring their bells.[49] To re-establish order in the unruly city, he abolished the elected position of the Mayor of Paris, and replaced it with a Prefect of the Seine and a Prefect of Police, both appointed by him. Each of the twelve arrondissements had its own mayor, but their power was limited to enforcing the decrees of Napoleon's ministers.[50]
After he crowned himself Emperor in 1804, Napoleon began a series of projects to make Paris into an imperial capital to rival ancient Rome. He began construction of the Rue de Rivoli, from thePlace de la Concorde as far as the Place des Pyramides. The old convent of the Capucines was demolished and he built a new street that connected Place Vendôme, to the grand boulevards. The street was called Rue Napoleon, later renamed Rue de la Paix.[51]
In 1802, he built a revolutionary iron bridge, the Pont des Arts, across the Seine. It was decorated with two greenhouses of exotic plants, and rows of orange trees. Passage across the bridge cost one sou.[52] He gave the names of his victories to two new bridges, the Pont d'Austerlitz (1802) and the Pont d'Iéna (1807) [53]
In 1806, in imitation of Ancient Rome, he ordered the construction of a series of monuments to the military glory of France. The first and largest was the Arc de Triomphe, begun at the edge of the city at the Barrier d'Etoile de Neuilly, but not finished until July 1836. He ordered the building of the smaller Arc du Carousel (1806-1808), copied from the arch of Septimus Severus and Constantine in Rome, next to the Tuileries Palace. It was crowned by a team of bronze horses he took from the facade of the Cathedral of Saint Mark in Venice. His soldiers celebrated his victories with grand parades around the Carousel. He also commissioned the building of the Vendome Column (1806–10), copied from the column of Trajan in Rome, made of the iron of cannon captured by Napoleon from the Russians and Austrians in 1805. At the end of the Rue Royale he took the foundations of an unfinished church, theEglise de la Madeleine, which had been started in 1763, and transformed it into the Temple de la Gloire, a military shrine to display the statues of France’s most famous generals.[54]
Napoleon also looked after the infrastructure of the city, which had been neglected for years by the Kings of France in Versailles. In 1802 he began construction of the Ourq canal, to bring fresh water to the city, and built the Basin de la Villette to serve as a reservoir. To distribute the fresh water to the Parisians, he built a series of monumental fountains, the largest of which was the Fontaine de Palmier, on Place du Chatelet. He also began construction of the Canal St. Martin to further river transportation within the city.[54]
His last project 1n 1810 was a fountain in the shape of an enormous bronze elephant, twenty-four meters high, which was intended for the centre of the Place de la Bastille, but he did not have time to finish it; an enormous plaster mockup of the elephant stood in the square for many years after his final defeat and exile.
19th century[edit]
Paris was occupied by Russian and Allied armies upon Napoleon's defeat on 31 March 1814; this was the first time in 400 years that the city had been conquered by a foreign power.[55] The ensuing Restoration period, or the return of the monarchy under Louis XVIII (1814–24) and Charles X, ended with theJuly Revolution Parisian uprising of 1830.[56] The new constitutional monarchy under Louis-Philippe ended with the 1848 "February Revolution" that led to the creation of the Second Republic.[57]
The Paris of Louis-Philippe (1830-1848)[edit]
The Paris of King Louis-Philippe was the city described in the novels of Honore de Balzac and Victor Hugo. The population of Paris increased from 785,000 in 1831 to 1,053,000 in 1848, crowded more and more densely in the center of the city.[58]
The heart the city, around the Ile de la Cite, was a maze of narrow, winding streets and crumbling buildings from earlier centuries; it was picturesque but dark, crowded, unhealthy and dangerous. Water was distributed by porters carrying buckets from a pole on their shoulders, and the sewers emptied directly into the Seine. A cholera outbreak in the center 1830 killed twenty thousand people. The Comte de Rambuteau, the prefect of the Seine for fifteen years under Louis-Philippe, made tentative efforts to improve the center of the city; he paved the quays of the Seine with stone paths, and planted trees along the river. He built a new street (now Rue Rambuteau) to connect the Le Marais District with the markets, and began construction of Les Halles, the famous central markets of Paris, finished by Napoleon III.[59]
Louis-Philippe lived in his old family residence, the Palais-Royal until 1832, before moving to the Tuileries Palace. His chief contribution to the monuments of Paris was the completion of the Place de la Concorde in 1836; the huge square was decorated with two fountains, one devoted to river commerce and the other to sea commerce, and statues of women representing the great cities of France. (The statue of Strasbourg was a likeness of Juliette Drouet, the mistress of Victor Hugo. The Place de la Concorde was further embellished on 25 October 1836 by the placement of the obelisque of Luxor, weighing two hundred fifty tons, carried to France from Egypt on a specially-built ship. In the same year, at the other end of the Champs-Elysees, Louis-Philippe completed and dedicated the Arc de Triomphe, which had been begun by Napoleon I.[59]
The ashes of Napoleon were returned to Paris from Saint Helena in a solemn ceremony on 15 December 1840, and Louis-Philippe built an impressive tomb for them at the Invalides. He also placed the statue of Napoleon atop the column in the Place Vendome. In 1840 he completed a column in the Place de la Bastille dedicated to the July 1830 revolution which had brought him to power. He also began the restoration of the Paris churches ruined by the French Revolution, carried out by the ardent architectural historian Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, beginning with the church of the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Between 1837-1841, he built a new Hotel de Ville with an interior salon decorated by Eugene Delacroix.[60]
The first railroad stations in Paris were built under Louis-Philippe. Each belonged to a different company, they were not connected to each other, and they were outside the center of the city. The first, called Embarcadero Saint-Germain, was opened on 24 August 1837 on Place de l'Europe. An early version of the Gare Saint-Lazare was begun in 1842, and the first lines between Paris and Orleans and Paris and Rouen were inaugurated 1–2 May 1843.[61]
As the population of Paris grew, so did discontent in the working-class neighborhoods. There were riots in 1830, in 1831, 1832, 1835, 1839, and 1840. The 1832 uprising, following the funeral of a fierce critic of Louis-Philippe, General Jean Maximilien Lamarque, was immortalized in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables.[62]
The growing unrest finally exploded in 23 February 1848, when a large demonstration was broken up by the army. Barricades went up in the eastern working-class neighborhoods, The King reviewed his soldiers in front of the Tuileries Palace, but instead of cheering him, many shouted "Long Live Reform!" Discouraged, he abdicated and departed for exile in England.
The Paris of Napoleon III (1852-1870)[edit]
For more details on this topic, see Haussmann's renovation of Paris.
During the reign of Emperor Napoleon III, the population of Paris grew from one million to two million. He began his reign by annexing eleven surrounding Communes to the city, creating eight new arrondissements, and bringing the city to its present boundaries. In 1853 he gave his new prefect of the Seine, Georges-Eugene Haussmann, the assignment of bringing more water, air and light to the center of the city, and making it the most beautiful city in Europe.
Haussmann's vast projects lasted seventeen years, and employed tens of thousands of workers. He rebuilt the sewers of Paris so they no longer emptied into the Seine, and built a new aqueduct and reservoir to bring in more fresh water. He demolished most of the old medieval buildings on the Ile de la Cite, and replaced them with a new hospital and government buildings.
In the center of the city, he conceived four avenues in a huge cross; a north-south axis connecting the Gare de l'Est in the north with the Observatoire in the south; and an east-west axis from the Place de la Concorde along the Rue de Rivoli and rue Saint-Antoine. He built wide new avenues, including Boulevard Saint Germain, Avenue de l'Opera, Avenue Foch, Avenue Voltaire, Boulevard de Sebastopol and Avenue Haussmann, planted more than one hundred thousand trees to line the boulevards, and built new squares, fountains and parks where the avenues intersected. He also imposed architectural standards for the buildings along the new boulevards; they had to be the same height, follow similar design, and be faced with the same cream-colored stone, giving the Paris boulevards their distinct appearance.[63]
For the recreation and relaxation of all the classes of Parisians, Napoleon III created four new parks at the cardinal points of the compass: the Bois de Boulogne to the west, the Bois de Vincennes to the east, the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont to the north, and Parc Montsouris to the south.[64]
To better connect his capital with the rest of France, Napoleon III built two new train stations, the Gare du Nord and the Gare de Lyon. He also built two new theaters facing Place du Chatelet, and commissioned the Palais Garnier as the new home of the Paris Opera.
The first department store in Paris, Bon Marché, opened in 1852 in a modest building, and expanded rapidly, its income going from 450,000 francs a year to 20 million. Its founder commissioned a new building with a glass and iron framework designed by Gustave Eiffel, which opened in 1869, and became the model for the modern department store. Other department stores quickly appeared; Printemps in 1865, and La Samaritaine in 1870. They were soon imitated around the world.[65]
Napoleon III's projects were still unfinished when he was drawn into the Franco-Prussian War in July 1870. The outnumbered and outdated French army was defeated, Napoleon III was captured, and was swiftly deposed by the French parliament, which proclaimed the French Third Republic.
The siege of Paris (September. 1870-January 1871)[edit]
Following the capture of Napoleon III and a large part of the French Army at the Battle of Sedan, the Prussian army swiftly marched to Paris and surrounded the city by 19 September 1870. The city was defended by a 33 kilometer long wall and sixteen forts. The Prussians decided to wait and starve the city into starvation.
Attempts by the army to break the siege failed, and the life of the Parisians under siege became more and more difficult. In December the temperature dropped to ten and fifteen degrees below zero Celsius, and the Seine froze for a period of three weeks. Parisians suffered shortages of food, firewood, coal and medicine. The city was almost completely dark at night. The only communication with the outside world was by balloon, carrier pigeon, or letters packed in iron balls floated down the Seine. The population was forced to eat dogs, cats, and even the two elephants from the Paris zoo.[66]
By early January, the Prussian commanders were tired of the prolonged siege. They installed seventy-two 120 and 150 millimeter artiillery pieces in the forts around the city and on 5 January began to bombard the city day and night. Between 300 and 600 shells hit the center of the city each day. Facing starvation, the city was forced to surrender on 28 January 1871.[67]
The Paris Commune (March–May 1871)[edit]
For more details on this topic, see Paris Commune.
On 18 March 1871, the Paris National Guard, which largely came from working-class neighborhoods, elected its own officers and had become politically radicalized, refused to hand over its arsenal of cannons to the French regular army, and killed two army generals. Adolphe Thiers, the leader of the national government, withdrew the government and regular army from Paris to Versailles, and war was declared between the national government and the Commune.
The members of the Paris National Guard elected a new city government on 23 March 1871, called the Paris Commune, dominated by socialists and revolutionaries. They replaced the tricolour with the red flag and replaced the traditional calendar with with the calendar in use during the French Revolution, and proposed a program of radical social reform, including forbidding religious education, but had little time to put it into effect. They took some seventy hostages, including the Archbishop of Paris, Georges Darboy, hoping to exchange them forLouis Auguste Blanqui, the honorary President of the Commune and the leader of a radical faction, held in prison outside Paris.
The national government in Versailles assembled an army of 130,000 regular soldiers, commanded by Marshal Patrice Mac-Mahon. Beginning in early April, they began to advance on Paris. They captured the outer walls entered the city on 21 May 1871. The Commune soldiers had built some barricades, but they were outnumbered five or six to one, poorly armed, lacked experienced commanders, and had no plan to defend the city; each neighbourhood was left to defend itself. During "La semaine sanglante" (bloody week), from 21 May to 28 May 1871, the army methodically recaptured Paris neighbourhood by neighbourhood. Commune soldiers were often shot immediately after their capture. In revenge, the Communards shot the Archbishop of Paris and seventy other hostages.[68] The Communards also burned the Tuileries Palace, the Hotel de Ville, the Palais de Justice, the Palais de la Légion d'Honneur, and other buildings they saw as symbols of the old regime.[68] The Louvre was saved by a company of firemen and museum curators.[69] The last battle was fought at Pere Lachaise cemetery, where 150 Commune soldiers were lined up against a wall and shot.[70] Six to seven thousand Communards were buried in the Paris cemeteries after Bloody Week.[71] Four thousand six hundred Communards were exiled, and thousands more fled to England, Belgium, and the United States. They were all amnestied in 1880 and allowed to return home.[72]
Paris during the Belle Epoque (1871-1914)[edit]
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After the fall of the Commune, the city was governed under the strict surveillance of the conservative and monarchist national government. the French government and parliament did not return to the city from Versaillles until 1879, though the Senate returned to the Luxembourg Palace.[73] On 23 July 1873, the monarchist National Assembly endorsed the project of building a basilica on the place where the uprising began; it was intended to atone for the sufferings of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune. The Basilica of Sacre-Coeur was built in the neo-Byzantine style, and paid for by public subscription. It was not finished until 1919, but quickly became one of the most recognisable landmarks in Paris.[74]
The radical Republicans dominated the Paris municipal elections of 1878, winning 75 of the 80 municipal council seats. In 1879, they changed the name of many of the Paris streets and squares; Place Chateau-d’Eau became Place de la Republique, and a statue of the Republic was placed in the center in 1883. The avenues Reine-Hortense, Josephine and Roi-de-Rome were renamed Hoche, Monceau and Kleber, after generals of Napoleon I. Boulevard Haussmann became Boulevard Etienne-Marcel, after the elected mayor of Paris in the 14th century. The Hotel de Ville was rebuilt between 1874 and 1882 in the neo-Renaissance style, with towers modelled after those of the Chateau of Chambord. The ruins of the Cour de Comptes on the Quai d'Orsay, burned by the Commune, were demolished and replaced by a new train station, the Gare d'Orsay (today's Musée d'Orsay). The walls of the Tuileries Palace, were Hugstill standing; Baron Haussmann pleaded for its restoration, but the council decided that it was a symbol of monarchy and in 1884 had it pulled down.[75]
The most memorable Parisian civic event during the period was the funeral of Victor Hugo in 1885. Hundreds of thousands of Parisians lined the Champs Elysses to see the passage of his coffin. The Arc de Triomphe was draped in black. The remains of the writer were placed in the Pantheon, formerly the Church of Saint-Genevieve, which had been turned into a mausoleum for great Frenchmen during the Revolution, then turned back into a church under King Louis Philippe. It was secularised again to be the home of Hugo's remains.[75]
At the end of the century, Paris began to modernize its public transport system, to try to catch up with London and Paris. The first metro line was begun in 1897 between Porte Maillot and the Porte de Vincennes. It was finished in time for the 1900 Universal Exposition. Two new bridges were built over the Seine; the Pont Alexandre III, which connected the left bank with the site of the 1900 Exposition, whose cornerstone was laid by Alexander's son and the future Czar, Nicholas II of Russia. The new street between the bridge and the Champs Elysees was named Avenue Nicholas II. The same engineers who built the modern iron structure of the Pont Alexandre III also built the new Pont Mirabeau, which connected Auteuiland Javel.
Many notable artists lived and worked in Paris during the Belle Epoque, often in Montmartre, where rents were low and the atmosphere congenial. Auguste Renoir rented space at 12 rue Cartot on Montmartre in 1876 to paint bal du moulin de la Galette, showing a dance on Montmartre on a Sunday afternoon. Maurice Utrillo lived at the same address from 1906 to 1914, and Raoul Dufy shared an atelier there from 1901 to 1911. The building is now the Museum of Montmartre.[76] Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, and other artists lived and worked in a building called Le Bateau-Lavoir at 13 Place Emile Gougeau, during the years 1904–1909. Picasso painted one of his most important pictures, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, while living there. Several noted composers, including Erik Satie, lived in the neighbourhood . Satie earned money by working as a pianist at a Montmartre club called Le Chat Noir. Most of the artists departed after the outbreak of World War I, with the majority going to the Montparnasse quarter.[77]
On 25 December 1895, the Grand Cafe on Boulevard des Capucines was the location of the first public projection of a motion picture by the Lumiere Brothers. Thirty-three spectators paid a franc each to see a series of short films, beginning with a film of workers leaving the Lumiere brothers' factory in Lyon.[76]
The Paris Universal Expositions (1867-1900)[edit]
In the second half of the 19th century, Paris hosted five international expositions, which attracted millions of visitors an made Paris and increasingly important centre of technology, trade, and tourism.[78]
The first was the Universal Exposition of 1855, hosted by Napoleon III, held in the gardens next to the Champs Elysees. It was inspired by the London’s Great Exhibition in 1851, and was designed to showcase the achievements of French industry and culture. The classification system of Bordeaux wines was developed especially for the Exposition. The Theater du Rond-Point next to the Champs Elysees is a vestige of the Exposition.
The Paris International Exposition in 1867, also hosted by Napoleon III, was held in an enormous oval exhibit hall 490 meters long and 380 meters wide in the Champs de Mars. Famous visitors included Czar Alexander II of Russia, Otto Von Bismarck, Kaiser William I of Germany, King Louis II of Bavaria (better known as “Mad Ludwig), and the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, the first foreign trip ever made by an Ottoman Sultan. The Bateaux Mouches excursion riverboats made their first journeys on the Seine during the Exposition.
The Universal Exposition of 1878, took place on both sides of the Seine, in the Champs de Mars and heights of Trocadéro, where the first Palais de Trocadero was built. Alexander Graham Belldisplayed his new telephone, Thomas Edison presented his phonograph, and the head of the newly finished Statue of Liberty was displayed, before it was sent to New York to be attached to the body. In honour of the Exposition, the Avenue de l’Opera and Place de l’Opera were lit with electric lights for the first time. The Exposition attracted thirteen million visitors.
The Universal Exposition of 1889, which also took place on the Champs de Mars, celebrated the centenary of the beginning of the French Revolution. The most memorable feature was the Eiffel Tower, 300 meters tall when it opened ( now 324 with the addition of broadcast antennas), which served as the gateway to the Exposition. .[79] The Eiffel Tower remained the world's tallest structure until 1930,[80] The Eiffel Tower was not popular with everyone; its modern style was denounced in public letter by many of France’s most prominent cultural figures, including Guy de Maupassant, Charles Gounod and Charles Garnier. Other popular exhibits included the first musical fountain, lit with colored electric lights, changing in time to music. Buffalo Bill and sharpshooter Annie Oakley drew large crowds to their Wild West Show at the Exposition.
The Universal Exposition of 1900 celebrated the turn of the century. It also took place at the Champs de Mars, and attracted fifty million visitors. In addition to the Eiffel Tower, the Exposition featured the world’s largest ferris wheel, the Grande Roue de Paris, one hundred meters high, carrying sixteen hundred passengers in forty cars. Inside the exhibit hall, Rudolph Dieseldemonstrated his new engine. and the first escalator was on display. The Exposition coincided with the 1900 Paris Olympics, the first time that the Olympic games were held outside of Greece. The Exposition also popularised a new artistic style, the art nouveau, to the world. Two architectural legacies of the Exposition, the Grand Palais and Petit Palais, are still in place.
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