MAIS ABSOLUMENT!
Noticing what's skipped tells a different story 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 guidebook 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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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 shown below and Paris's newest, described here.
- In La Goutte d'Or on the northern borde 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.
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Paris and its surroundings include the greatest concentration of Asians, Maghrebis and Africans in Europe. Their inventivity is largely ignored.
- 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...
Boulevard Vincent Auriol, 13th
...and the Asian neighborhood, which bursts with color and produce to discover.
- 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.
Tip Top Couture, 84 rue de Ménilmontant, 20th
A barber in a neighborhood that is white, progressive and trendy.
...come from that and other Black neighborhoods. There 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.
...whose windows propose innumerable styles by posters...
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...that come from African market signs:
Panel from Abidjan's Treichville market, 1973 (notice the "Kennedy" haircut).
- They are part of compositions that communicate:
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| On rue Doudeauville, "Main Street" |
Those looks express an upbeat affirmation of individual uniqueness and the signs, a homogenous, supportive community.
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KINGS TRIVIALIZED,
INSURRECTIONS MENTIONED AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE
Kings are reduced to anecdotes. Except for the Louvre, a former palace impossible to ignore, the grandeur they bequeathed is forgotten (please click here and scroll down).
Insurrections are so ignored 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.
- 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.
- The Paris Commune was the last, most tragic and by far the most important of those upheavals. From the March to May 1871 young idealists whom the humble backed 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 sketched out a society that was genuinely democratic.
Proclamation de la Commune le 26 mars 1871, anonymous engraving / zoom
The appellation "Bloody Week" recalls the ferocity with which they were repressed.
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
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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