MAIS ABSOLUMENT!
Noticing what makes no sense or or is left out changes the narrative and applies universally.
- For example, when houses crowded up to the facade of Notre-Dame Cathedral...
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Twelth century, Grez computer image |
The space in front of the church was used for a market, for religious performances and for the condemned to ask pardon before execution. But it was small.
...the edifice surged up over daily life, the impression its builders intended.
Claude Abron
- But the huge esplanade of 1853 leads to seeing it from afar. It then seems smaller and less imposing, and the reminder of eternity vanishes:
Uncredited photos are mine.
The space was meant for massing troops in case of insurrection. That used to be explained. Not anymore.
- Other pages that challenge the usual view concern the Sacre-Coeur, Napoleon's tomb, the Arc of Triumph and the Opéra.
- Or go beyond it, as for the Louvre (here for the visit, here for the palace), place des Vosges, Palais-Royal, pont Neuf, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Versailles.
- Or concern important sites that are usually missed (Louis XIV's arc at the Saint-Denis gate, the church of Saint-Paul Saint-Louis, a band of gardens that pierces eastern Paris and another that covers over a canal).
- "Contents" gives the complete list.
For two wider topics that are minimized or simply omitted, please scroll down.
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This "blook" (book-blog) makes its points briefly through headlines and pictures. It stresses observation for the present and the underlying economy for the past. For those methods' wider relevance, please click.
My credentials: a French-American who has lived in Paris for decades, a professor of history in the U.S. and a tour guide in Paris. Once a member of the Office of Tourism (for seven-years), I know the usual story well.
There's space for comments at the end of each page: political discussions welcome.
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BLOOK I:
HOW PARIS IS SEEN
1.
NOT SAID:
THAT ADS AND BRANDS OVERWHELM THE HISTORIC CENTER...
...OR THAT CREATIVE ENERGY APPEARS
MAINLY IN THE OUTSKIRTS
Take the 13th* on the city's southeastern fringe. Once exceptionally miserable, it is now a hub of innovative art.
The passage under the aerial métro in the 13th, illuminated by voters' choice through 2026.
*To skip repeating "arrondissement" or "district," I say simply "13th," or whatever the number, as the French do.
It also hosts two major festivals, of the Chinese New Year and Paris's newest, of innovative arts and ethnic performances, described here. The Chinese parade was finally noticed in 2025, after 40 years, and the celebrations that surround it are still skipped, while residents are almost alone to know of the new festival.
Boulevard Vincent Auriol, 13th
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PARIS AND ITS SURROUNDINGS INCLUDE THE GREATEST CONCENTRATION OF ASIANS, MAGHREBIS AND AFRICANS IN EUROPE. THEIR INVENTIVITY IS IGNORED.
Media presentation of North African Barbès and largely African La Goutte d'or, both on the city's northern fringe, emphasizes fear or misery.
But Barbès bustles with energy along a ribbon of aerial métro tracks...
- Posters announcing concerts that dot the walls in this portal to the immense periphery, where immigrants invent music and dance.
A concert that will last until 4 a.m.
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| Bouno coiffure, 51 rue de la Goutte d'Or, 18th One of four that cluster together and stay open until 10 or 11 p.m. |
...on whose facades are posters that derive from African market signs...
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Panel from Abidjan's Treichville market, 1973 (notice the "Kennedy" haircut).
...let immigrant youths choose flamboyant styles that "Gauls" timidly copy:
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Tip Top Couture, 84 rue de Ménilmontant, 20th |
- They are part of an art by which personal appearance becomes a composition that communicates:
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| On rue Doudeauville, "Main Street" |
"Art must express a philosophy, otherwise it is just decoration," an esteemed critic told me. By expressing an upbeat affirmation of individual uniqueness in the context of a homogenous, supportive community, they fit that definition.
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THE MAIN REASONS FOR THE CITY'S ALLURE:
KINGS' GOAL OF GRANDEUR
AND ELITES' DREAD OF INSURRECTION
Yet kings are reduced to anecdotes. Except for the Louvre, a former palace that is impossible to ignore, the majesty they bequeathed is forgotten.
Insurrections are so minimized that many people think the figures in an iconic painting are storming the Bastille, though the forgotten Revolution of 1830 inspired the work:
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La Liberté guide le people by Eugene Delacroix, 1830-1831 (cropped) / zoom
*Clicking on "zoom" leads to the original image and information about it.
- Europe's first conscious massive working-class movement, the upheaval of June 1848...
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Le combat devant la porte Saint-Denis, anonymous lithograph, 1848 |
...brought the city's physical transformation, which began a few years later: the space in front of Notre-Dame to assemble troops is one aspect of the unparalleled metamorphosis that is usually explained as "modernization."
- The Paris Commune was the last, most tragic and most important of the many upheavals.
Proclamation de la Commune le 26 mars 1871, anonymous engraving / zoom
Military defeat and government treason or incompetence brought an explosion that led young idealists, backed by the humble, to take over the city from March to May 1871. They kept the continent's largest city (population a million and a half) running, in spite of the flight of most seasoned administrators, siege and war. They also sketched out a city that was genuinely democratic.
The appellation "Bloody Week" recalls the ferocity of their repression.
Un Peloton d'exécution [firing squad] pendant la Semaine sanglante by V. Sarday / zoom
A painting made a generation later, based on prints of the time and opponents' grudging statements of respect.
La Commune still inspires the left.
Commemorative parade, 2021
The violence of the city's past almost disappears from the official narrative. The musée Carnavalet (the historical museum)...
- presents the French Revolution as almost peaceful.
- relegates 1848 to a single sentence at the back of a room and turns its barricades into a game for kids.
- sandwiches La Commune into a four-meter passage that connects rooms about elites. On one side are portraits of people that were marginal to the event, or irrelevant to it: a huge image of a rebel's later girlfriend, who was 13 at the time of la Commune, takes up much of the space. Reflections on a glass showcase hide the two very small pictures of carnage.
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That aberrant presentation buttresses the mentality that globalized capitalism promotes. Advertisements reveal it: they give no reason for buying the product; the figures are usually alone; the contexts are voids that they cannot understand or affect. It is impervious to logic and makes acting with others for change impossible.
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Pont d'Arcole in central Paris
By showing how whatever confronts that mindset is omitted these pages join a fight that takes place wherever capitalism holds sway.
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BLOOK II:
AN APPROACH TO THE PAST
THAT IS CROSS-CULTURAL AND ECONOMIC
It shows how societies of precolonial Africa and pre-industrial France reacted in similar ways to the destabilization brought by economic growth.
One example: elites use ostentation to destroy profits that if invested would bring a new class that would challenge them.
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A Royal Army on the March,16th-century tapestry (detail), Renaissance Museum |
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History from Fresh Perspectives changes how the past itself is viewed.
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Like the vast majority of Parisian artists he is foreign (German), and lives not in the places associated with them (Saint-Germain, Montmartre, Montparnasse) but in a plebeian suburb (Montreuil) where rents are lower. So he is part of the reality that these pages describe.
The index, under the menu on the right, gives immediate access to the main ideas. Contents is more detailed.
Epilogues and Economic History, a Tool of Enlightenment say more about their relevance.
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Next,
- The media finally discovered the spectacular Chinese New Year parade in 2025, forty years after it began. They still ignore the three weeks of celebration...
...and the Asian neighborhood, which bursts with color and produce to discover.
In northern La Goutte d'Or an actor makes the streets a stage. The washhouse where Émile Zola set The Drinking Den's key scene hosts performances and unstandardized exhibits. An Iranian refugee has created a major center for world and urban music.
- The Maghrebin neighborhood of Barbès, with its flourishing market under an aerial métro, pulses with energy. During Ramadan crowds come for the sumptuous specialties proposed along the tracks.
- Immediately north of Barbès is the largely African neighborhood of La Goutte d'Or.* The coiffures, moustaches and beards that have been adopted world wide...
*"Drop of gold," from the vineyards that preceded industrialization.
A barber in a neighborhood that is white, progressive and trendy.
...come from that and other Black neighborhoods. There ...
...whose windows propose innumerable styles by posters...
- Its two days of street fighting finished what the French Revolution had begun: eliminate nobles' power and let capitalism take wing. The revolts that began six months later and remained endemic prefaced Europe's first conscious working-class insurrection in 1848, culminating with civil war and La Commune in 1871.
For schoolbook views click here and here. For the historical museum's take on that upheaval and others, here. For how even a Social-Democrat municipality presents the victors' point of view, here.
