MAIS ABSOLUMENT!
Noticing what is usually skipped tells a different story.
- 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.
That transformation used to be explained. Not anymore.
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This guidebook stresses observation for the present and the importance of the underlying economy for the past. For its 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 familiar story well.
There's space for comments at the end of each page: political discussions welcome.
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The passage under the aerial métro in the 13th, illuminated by voters' choice through 2026.
- Once the city's most miserable district, the 13th* on the southeastern fringe is now a hub of innovative art. It hosts two major festivals, of the Chinese New Year mentioned below and Paris's newest, described here.
- In shunned, northern La Goutte d'Or a Gaul* actor made the streets a stage, African immigrants make music hum and an Iranian refugee has created a major center for world and urban music.
*The term indicates origin ("Our ancestors the Gauls" is how French history for children used to begin). "White" or "French " are too broad.
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Paris and its surroundings include the greatest concentration of Asians, Maghrebis and Africans in Europe, but almost nothing is said of their inventivity.
- Touristic publications finally discovered the spectacular Chinese New Year parade in 2025, forty years after it began. They still ignore the three weeks of celebration...
Boulevard Vincent Auriol, 13th
...and the Asian neighborhood, which bursts with color and produce to discover.
- Barbès, with its flourishing market under an aerial métro and the bracelet of Muslim shops along its tracks, pulses with energy. During Ramadan, sumptuous specialties sold along its rails.
- The coiffures, moustaches and beards that boys and young men have adopted world wide...
Tip Top Couture, 84 rue de Ménilmontant, 20th
A barber in a neighborhood that is white, progressive and trendy.
...come from Black neighborhoods like La Goutte d'Or, where barbershops line the streets...
Bouno coiffure, 51 rue de la Goutte d'Or, 18th
One of four barbershops in that cluster together, it closes at 11 p.m.
...that propose innumerable styles by posters...
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...which derive from African market signs:
Panel from Abidjan's Treichville market, 1973 (notice the "Kennedy" haircut).
- They are part of an art that turns appearance into 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
Long, wide, straight streets that lead to a point of focus are the heart of the city's allure. 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 the insurrections so ignored that many people think the figures in an iconic painting are storming the Bastille, though the 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.
- 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, prefaced the first conscious working-class insurrection in 1848 and culminated with civil war and La Commune in 1871 were another result.
- 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 in spite of war, siege, and the departure of most seasoned administrators, and sketched 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. 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.
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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 Economic History, a Tool of Enlightenment suggest their wider relevance.
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Next,
