IS THERE ANYTHING NEW TO SAY ABOUT PARIS?

French version

MAIS ABSOLUMENT!

Noticing what is usually skipped reveals a different story and leads to questions that we do not think to ask. 

For example, when houses crowded up to the facade of Notre-Dame Cathedral the edifice surged up over daily life, the impression its builders intended. 

     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.

    Uncredited photos are mine.

The huge esplanade of 1853 led to seeing it from afar. It then seemed smaller and less imposing, and the reminder of eternity vanished: 

        

That transformation used to be mentioned and explained: not anymore. 

This guidebook stresses observation and the effects of social change on events that are usually seen as political, religious or military. My credentials: a French-American who has lived in Paris for decades, a college professor of history in the U.S. and a tour guide in Paris (as a former member of the Office of Tourism I know its priorities). 

That method transforms the city's image. For its wider relevance, please click. There's space for comments at the end of each page: political discussions welcome.

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TRAILERS TO PART I

PARIS NOW:

Creativity moves to the outskirts,

where rents are more affordable

and brands do not invade.

 

 The passage under the aerial métro in the 13th district, 

illuminated for all 2026 

City Hall  video

For more examples, click here and here. But that creativity is only locally known. 

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Immigrant creativity is even less recognized. 

• The spectacular Chinese New Year's Day parade, unique in Europe, is only beginning to be noticed. The color of the Asian neighborhood and the inexpensive Tang Frères supermarkets with their plethora of Asian products, are usually ignored.

• Few realize that the city's most visited site is the market and bracelet of Maghrebin shops that line the Barbès métro tracks...

• Or know that the coiffures, moustaches and beards that young men everywhere adopt...

...come from the innumerable barbershops in Black neighborhoods like that of La Goutte d'Or...

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

...with posters... 

...that come from signs in African markets... 

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

 

•  ...and whose variety fits an art in which appearance communicates:

On rue Doudeauville, "Main Street"

"Art must reveal a philosophy. Otherwise it is just decoration," an art critic told me. The looks express an upbeat affirmation of individual uniqueness, and the signs a homogenous, supportive community.

For what we know of the area, please click.

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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 initiate them to emphasize their power, and fear of 19th-century insurrections  continue them to march troops fast. But kings are reduced to anecdotes and insurrections are so ignored that many people think the figures in an iconic painting are storming the Bastille.

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

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

• 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 led to endemic revolts between 1830 and 1871, now largely forgotten. For an account, please click here, for the terror of "barbarian" rebels here and for the city's military transformation here.

• The last and most tragic upheaval led to the Paris Commune, when inexperienced young leaders whom humble people backed ran City Hall 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

Their repression foreshadows genocides. 

     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 the French Revolution and the upheavals that followed, 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. 

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

Traditional horsemen in Northern Nigeria / zoom

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 let is more detailed.  

Epilogues suggests their wider relevance.

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Next,

0.1.

How these views began

 

0.1. HOW THESE VIEWS BEGAN

I GREW UP IN NEW JERSEY...

Where my French maman ignored my saddle shoes and "Seventeen" and detested Elvis. She raised me as if I were French —  the ways of Middlesex County and Paris were so different! Dealing with two truths encouraged reflection.

My junior year was in Paris. I loved its past, which I saw as a series of exploits by individuals in largely political contexts. But a young man I met at the Sorbonne thought differently: to make sense, he insisted, events, attitudes, beliefs had to be placed in their underlying economic contexts, with the practical interests they reinforced or challenged. “And that,” he said, "comes from Karl Marx." 

My fascination for Paris lasted longer than our marriage and I have lived in this magnificent city ever since.

 

My father was a professor and I expected to become one (B.A. Vassar, Masters Harvard, Ph.D. Columbia, all in history). But teaching in a French university then was impossible without a French degree. So I became a tour guide, and this blook is the result.

# # #

A memory: 

Toward 1955, a French aunt, Magda Trocmé, 

whom my dad called "Hurricane Magda" 

came to visit us when on a speaking tour.

She and her husband, André Trocmé, were well-known for their anti-Nazi pacifism and after the war were critical of President Eisenhower's Cold War policies. My father, a stoical New Englander, would leave after dinner, leaving Maman and Aunt Magda to "discuss."

Harald Wolff

"Eisenhower is an old breeches of a general."  "No!!!"

I would listen from the top of the stairs and remember their enthusiasm for exchanging ideas, without expecting to persuade.

 But the discussion may have nuanced

 their extremely vehement points of view.

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Next,

0.2.

Thanks!

0.2. THANKS!

ESPECIALLY TO...

Henry Aubin, Glenn Holliman and Carolyn Ristau for their invaluable critiques, Claude Abron for years of picture-taking and Harald Wolff for his drawings.

Harald Wolff

For other direct help...

• With their photographs: Baroness Danuté, Béatrice Genaudeau, Joëlle Finkpon, Bill Knight, Alain Leiblanc, Cyprian Leym, Camille Mazoyer, Carlton Perrett, Elisabeth Rawson, Ramsay Casadesus Rawson, Carolyn Ristau, Jeannine Sike-Ngangue, Félix Sinpraseuth, Pamela Spurdon, Monique Wells, Jeanne Wikler and Irina Zwergler.

• For factual information: on military history, Marc Ambroise-Rendu; for introducing the "Coulée verte," Paule Girardeau; on Parisian neighborhoods, sites and history, Pascal Payen-Appenzeller; for obscure but important details on monuments, Philippe Schmitt-Kummerlee; for African-Americans, Monique Wells.

• For computer help, Tony Khosravi, Dong Truong Dang and Ramsay Casadesus Rawson.

                     

To those whose pictures come from the Internet...

Photos: Pierre Benite, Luc Boegly, Sigismond Cassidanius, Mathew Fraser, Corey Frye, Juan Francisco Gonzalez, Philippe Guignard, Laurent Grandguillot, Ronald Halbe-Yatzer, Jebulon, Daniel Jolivet, Pavel Krok, Laurence Krongelb,  Daniel Lainé, Stephane Lagoutte, Thibault Le Hégarat, Brian Lin, Bernard Matussière, Baudouin Mouanda, Richard Nahem, François de Nodrest, Andrea Notte, Paris Zigzag, Hanna Romeo, Tangopaso, Alexander Sarlay, Ralf Treinen, Gary Walsh, Jan Wenner and Zig Zagueur.

Drawings: Victor Locuratolo and Alex Varenne.

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Next,

0.3.

Details