MAIS ABSOLUMENT!
Noticing what is usually skipped reveals a different story and asks new questions.
- 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
- 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.
Why? That transformation used to be mentioned and explained: not anymore.
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This guidebook stresses observation for the present and the role of the underlying economy for the past. My credentials: a French-American who has lived in Paris for decades, professor of history in the U.S. and tour guide in Paris (as a former member of the Office of Tourism I know its priorities).
The method used here transforms how one sees the city. For its wider relevance, please click.
There's space for comments at the end of each page: political discussions welcome.
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The 13th district in the southeast
used to be Paris's most miserable area.
It is now hosts two major festivals, the Chinese New Year mentioned below and that of "Gauls"* and other ethnicities. It is also a hub of innovative art.
*Term used for its precision.
In shunned La Goutte d'Or
on the city's northern fringe...
a Gaul clown and actor made the streets a stage and an Iranian refugee has created a major center for world and urban music.
These inventions are known by posters, newsletters and word of mouth, rarely by mainstream media.
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Paris and its surroundings include the greatest concentration of Asians, Maghrebis and Africans in Europe, but their creativity is only exceptionally recognized.
- The Chinese New Year festivities last for three weeks and include a spectacular parade. It began in 1986 and had to spread beyond the 13th's homeland and attract huge crowds before tourist publications noticed it — in 2025.
*Clicking on "zoom" leads to the original image and information about it.
And the other events, such as the joyful street performances that announce the parade? The Asian neighborhood itself, bursting with with color and little-known produce? Not to my knowledge.
- Barbès, with its market under the aerial métro and bracelet of Muslim shops along its tracts, is Paris's most visited site. In my seven years as member of the Office of Tourism I never heard that said, or that it is particularly worth visiting during Ramadan, when succulent specialties are made on the street:
PHOTO
- The coiffures, moustaches and beards that youths have universally adopted...
...come from Black neighborhoods like La Goutte d'Or. There innumerable styles appear on posters...
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Bouno coiffure, 51 rue de la Goutte d'Or, 18th district
...whose origin are signs in African markets:
Panel from Abidjan's Treichville market, 1973 (notice the "Kennedy" haircut).
- Those styles are part of an art that makes appearance a composition that communicates:
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| On rue Doudeauville, "Main Street" |
"Art must reveal a philosophy. Otherwise it is just decoration," an art critic told me. Those looks express an upbeat affirmation of individual uniqueness and the signs, a homogenous, supportive community.
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THE PAST:
A city of kings and insurrection
The specificity that gives the city such allure are long, wide, straight streets that lead to a point of focus. Kings built them to proclaim their grandeur, and fear of 19th-century insurrections multiplied them to march troops fast. But kings are reduced to anecdotes and insurrections so ignored that many people think the figures in an iconic painting are storming the Bastille:
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La Liberté guide le people by Eugene Delacroix, 1830-1831 (cropped) / zoom
- But the Revolution of 1830 inspired the work. Its three days of combat finished what the French Revolution had begun: eliminate nobles' power. That let capitalism take wing and to endemic revolts between 1830 and 1871, which are now largely forgotten.
- The last and most tragic upheaval led to the Paris Commune, when inexperienced young leaders whom the humble backed ran the city from March to May 1871. They kept the continent's largest city (population a million and a half) running while sketching out a society that was genuinely democratic.
Proclamation de la Commune le 26 mars 1871, anonymous engraving / zoom
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
For schoolbook views click here and here, and for the historical museum's take on that upheaval and others, here.
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TRAILER TO PART II:
AN APPROACH TO THE PAST
THAT IS CROSS-CULTURAL AND ECONOMIC
One example: Ostentation erases investible profits to maintain the status quo.
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A Royal Army on the March,16th-century tapestry (detail), Renaissance Museum |
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History from Fresh Perspectives says more.
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This is a "blook,"a book that makes its points briskly through headlines and pictures.
It includes drawings by Harald Wolff. 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 History, a tool of enlightenment suggest their wider relevance.
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Next,
