IS THERE ANYTHING NEW TO SAY ABOUT PARIS?

French version

MAIS ABSOLUMENT!

Noticing what makes no sense or is blotted out changes the story  and applies universally.

• For example, when houses crowded up to the facade of Notre-Dame Cathedral... 

     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 wider topics that are minimized or omitted, please scroll down.

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This "blook" (book-blog) makes its points briskly 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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TRAILERS 

1. THE PRESENT:

 MOST VIEWS EXTOL THE FABLED CULTURE,

OMITTING TO SAY THAT 

ADS LOOM OVER THE CENTER AND THAT

BRANDS REPLACE PERSONAL BUSINESSES...

The legendary pont Neuf. For the walk along the Seine to reach it now, please click. For examples of creative businesses disappearing, click here and scroll down.

...AND THAT UNSTANDARDIZED INVENTIVITY

HAS MOVED TO THE OUTSKIRTS

WITH THEIR (MORE) AFFORDABLE RENTS

Take the once miserable 13th* on the city's southeastern fringe, which is now a hub of innovative art.

*To skip repeating "arrondissement" or "district" I say simply "13th," or whatever the number, as the French do.

The passage under the aerial métro in the 13th, illuminated by voters' choice through 2026.

It hosts two major festivals: 10 days of ethnic performances and all kinds of unstandardized art, and three weeks of the Chinese New Year. A few media noticed its parade after 40 years (in 2025). They still ignore its three weeks of festivities.

Boulevard Vincent Auriol, 13th

NOTHING IS SAID OF IMMIGRANT ENERGIES

• The market under the tracks of the aerial métro under Maghrebin Barbès and the ribbon of shops and that run along it make it what may be the most ebullient part of the city. During Ramadan, gourmet specialties sold next to tracks and the  cordial, happy ambiance are in themselves reasons to come. As for the gathering of seemingly frightening youths, please click here. 

• La Goutte d'Or, the largely African area north of Barbès, is poor (though an anchored middle class lives there too). The delinquency, prostitution and drugs are real. 

It is also a heartland of urban and world music: Hear African percussions on a grocery-store radio, pass performers in the street, see announcement of concerts in the immense periphery...

That concert will last until 4 a.m.

...and it is a place where an amiable art of communication through personal appearance flourishes. Aspects include:

• Prints whose interest is starting to be acknowledged:  

"Wax" at the entry of the Louvre, 2022

• Tailors whose animated workshops one sees from the street.

 For an outstanding tailor, please click.

• Barbershops, whose styles "Gauls" timidly copy:

Bouno coiffure, 51 rue de la Goutte d'Or, 18th

One of a cluster that stays open until 10 or 11 p.m.

•  Their posters come from African market signs let boys and young men choose among innumerable, flamboyant styles that have spread worldwide and that "Gauls" timidly copy: 

  Panel from Abidjan's Treichville market, 1973 (notice the "Kennedy" haircut). 

An example of posters in the heart of the neighborhood

Tip Top Couture, 84 rue de Ménilmontant 20th (a trendy neighborhood)

• Costume

On rue Doudeauville, "Main Street"

The Communards (please scroll down) defined art as any creation that adresses the public and is done with passion, and an esteemed critic said, "Art must express a philosophy, or it is just decoration." By expressing an upbeat affirmation of individual uniqueness in the context of a homogenous, supportive community such "looks" fit that definition.

2. THE PAST

THE MAIN REASONS FOR THE CITY'S ALLURE: 

KINGS' GRANDEUR 

AND ELITES' DREAD OF INSURRECTION,

BOTH FORGOTTEN 

Except for the Louvre, a former palace that is impossible to ignore, almost nothing is said of the majesty the kings bequeathed.  

The terror insurrections brought cannot be understood, sinced the upheavals themselves are largely skipped. Many people think these iconic figures are storming the Bastille, though the forgotten Revolution of 1830 inspired the work:

La Liberté guide le people by Eugene Delacroix, 1830-1831 (cropped) / zoom*

  

*Clicking on "zoom" leads to the original image and information about it.

In fact...

• Europe's first conscious massive working-class movement, the upheaval of June 1848 brought the unprecedented urban transformation that began a few years later: The space in front of Notre-Dame to assemble troops is one aspect of the metamorphosis that is usually called "modernization." 

Le Combat devant la porte Saint-Denis, anonymous lithograph, 1848

• The last, most tragic and most important upheaval, that of the Paris Commune, came about when military defeat and government myopia brought an explosion by which young idealists took control of Paris for 72 days in 1871. Backed by the humble, 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, and sketched out a society that was genuinely democratic.

          Proclamation de la Commune le 26 mars 1871, anonymous engraving / zoom

The name "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.

They still inspire the left.

  Commemorative parade, 2021  

Most narratives dismiss the social conflict that permeates the Parisian past. The musée Carnavalet (the historical museum) presents the French Revolution as almost peaceful and...

• relegates 1848 to a single sentence at the back of a room while turning 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 who were marginal or irrelevant: a huge image of a rebel's later girlfriend who had nothing to do with La Commune takes up much of the space. One can barely make out the two small images of carnage, which reflections on a glass showcase hide.

For schoolbooks, click here and here. For how even a Social-Democrat municipality adopts the victors' point of view, here.

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WHY THAT BIAS?

It is commercial (the "City of Love"). More deeply, it fits a mindset that the ads the ads that now hover over great cities promote:  

Richard Nahem

Paris, first  noticed in 2011

Union Square in Manhattan / Elisabeth Rawson

New York

They extoll...

• Mindlessness: No reason is given for buying the brand. Such unquestioning fits ignoring contradictions that should jump out at us, like void in front of Notre-Dame Cathedral — etc.

The Châtelet crossroad in central Paris

• Obedience: The message is an order. History that stresses "great individuals" as if untied to the tangible contexts behind them fits that authoritarianism.

• Passivity: Happiness comes from buying a brand. Whatever contradicts that message is skipped. 

• The outside world is a void. Such conservative contradictions as the grandeur of kings and recently even the past itself, disappear.

• Interchangeable models. Even when of color, they look the same, young, happy and middle class, reinforcing the absence of contradiction.

• The middle-class. The models are the opposite of impoverished immigrants, potential bogeymen. 

• Isolation: The figures are alone (occasional partners are shadowy). Uniting for positive change is unthinkable. Of course insurrections are scrapped.

These pages present the a legendary city in its economic context. Doing so unveils a conditioning of which we are usually unaware and protects from globalized capitalists' manipulation.

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BLOOK II:

AN APPROACH TO THE PAST

THAT IS CROSS-CULTURAL AND ECONOMIC 

History from Fresh Perspectives shows how societies with a common material base react to economic change in similar ways. 

One example: elites use ostentation to destroy profits that would challenge them if invested.

       A Royal Army on the March,16th-century tapestry (detail), Renaissance Museum

Traditional horsemen in Northern Nigeria / zoom

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I am grateful to Harald Wolff for drawings that illustrate many of these points.

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 Materialist history, a tool of enlightenment say more about their relevance.

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Next,

0.1.

This blook is dedicated to the New Jersey cops