VIII. AN INDEX TO CLICK INTO

ZOOM INTO THE MAIN IDEAS

All drawings by Harald Wolff

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• 8.1. The importance of the economic base

• 8.2. Other left-out topics

• 8.3. Dramas

• 8.4. The interest of enigmas and details

• 8.5. Omissions by trusted authorities

• 8.6. Urban designs that reveal priorities

• 8.7. Classic art, a tool of persuasion

• 8.8. Outskirts, crucibles of the arts

• Outings

• Recommendations

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History, a tool for decoding

VIII.1. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE ECONOMIC BASE

GRASPING IT CHANGES ONE'S VIEW OF THE PAST. THEN ONE APPLIES IT TO THE PRESENT. 

They erased it. Of course!

For the difference read these pages:  

• Setting the scene:Tangible factors explain the city's structure.

• Small farms: ferocious repressions and art de vivre: How sales of émigré and Church lands to peasants during the Revolution underlay French culture until the 1960's.

• Why nobles could rarely adjust to capitalism: Please scroll down.

• Nobles, gods and heroes: Nobles adopt mythology to announce their superiority.

• "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder:" Why middle-class Western and traditional African views of corpulence differ.

• "Objective history sticks to the facts:" which facts? Short section

• Have the kings become subversive? Short section  

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Other left-out topics

VIII.2. OTHER LEFT-OUT TOPICS

WHATEVER CHALLENGES MULITNATIONALS' NARRATIVE DISAPPEARS

Musée Carnavelet Commune

• Players who make France unique (The full chapter shows the monarchy as basic rather than anecdotal and emphasizes usually minimized rebels, immigrants and foreigners.)

• Outskirts that are mainly "Gaul:" the east; the 13th

• Outskirts that are mainly immigrant: Asian and African

• Rue Saint-Denis: the royal route: the monarchy

• A tantrum changes history — for awhile: See the end of the page.

• Majesty on a human scale, forgotten gift of kings: A subject that anecdotes submerge.

• The city of revolt and massacre: A topic that is almost taboo.

• What Opéra tours won't say: The official view substitutes culture for emphatically different priorities.

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VIII.3.

Dramas that are better than the movies

VIII.3. DRAMAS

STORIES THAT SHOW HOW THINGS WORKED 

 "At last I am king!" cried Louis XIII from a palace window, as the crowd cheered his thugs assassinating a usurper. 

"I played the child," Louis would say of pretending to be retarded. At age 15 he had absorbed the court's duplicity: "Everything becomes cleverness, design, false deference, boundless flattery and and bitterness at heart..."

--  Madame de Maintenon, Louis XIV second wife, in dans Madame de Maintenon, "The Age of Conversation" by Benedetta Craveri, 2001, p. 236 (in French).

As well, 

• A tantrum changes history... for awhile: the fall of queen Marie de Medicis

• Revolt at la Bastille: the swan song of the independent nobility

• Love wins out —  unfortunately: passion breaks caste barriers... 

• Crime that shook the Sun King's court: the "Affair of the Poisons"

• The consequence of upstaging a king: Nicolas Fouquet's too-spectacular fête

• Catholic nobles become saints and heroes

• "If  your son marries my daughter I'll give you Palais-Royal"

• "Bonjour, Sire!" A greeting announces calamity

• Marie-Antoinette attains grandeur

• Louis XVII, a story that has no end

• An intelligent ogre checks in: Adolphe Thiers, leader of 40 years of repression

• Empathy from a countess alone: breaking the rules brings siding with rebels

• An unaware general steps into the fray: La Commune begins

• Escape by socializing with the enemy: how two Communards survive the repression)

• Love humanizes an icon: Louise Michel, heroine of La Commune

• Catholic martyrs whom even the Church forgets

• The fate of a political painter: Gustave Courbet, target of revenge

• A prostitute who (almost) rose up from the street

• How France became a republic

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VIII.4.

The importance of enigmas and details

VIII.4. NOTICE WHAT MAKES NO SENSE

THEY CAN REVEAL UNFAMILIAR MENTALITIES OR UNSTATED AGENDAS

Louis XVI tries to flee revolutionary Paris. Secrecy is essential but postillons' bright yellow liveries resemble those of the hated lord of the lands through which he passes...

 

• A métro station's face lift: Why the mega-budget transformation at forgotten Château Rouge?

• A parade route changes course: Few remark the royal entries, much less the implications of altering their route. 

• A royal statue for a bridge: Why is the king's statue on the bridge instead of in the center of his square?

• The layout and architecture that gives Napoleon's tomb its majesty was created for Louis XIV. Why not say so? 

• The insurgents' discipline of February and June 1848 terrified the privileged.

• Emblematic site, odd marker: The shooting shown is impossible and the comment omits the essential. 

• Masking the Opéra's purpose: Why is the salon at the heart of the edifice decorated by an orgy? 

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VIII.5.

Priorities that urban designs reveal

VIII.5. PRIORITIES THAT URBAN DESIGNS REVEAL

STREET DESIGNS, VOIDS AND GIANT SPACES

DRAWING

Majesty on a human scale, forgotten gift of kings

• France's first straight street and point of focus: the space before the Saint-Denis Basilica, the royal mausoleum

• Paris's first straight street and point of focus: rue de Birague

• The path that links kings with their ancestors: rue Saint-Denis

• Straight streets and monarchy

• The place that is ancestor of all: place des Vosges, once place Royale

• Royal places multiply

• A design that was inconceivable elsewhere: the Grand Axis

• The Grand Axis as model

• Straight streets and points of focus, key to the city's grandeur

Fear, unlikely promoter or urban grandeur

• Voids replace rebel localities

• Open the town to the army

• A military network crisscrosses town

• The new arteries' military purpose

• The "masterly line" of the working-class east

• Blue-collar neighborhoods' grand open spaces

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VIII.6.

Omissions by trusted authorities

VIII.6. OMISSIONS BY TRUSTED AUTHORITIES

 

Schoolbooks: Accounts of La Commune become more intelligently awful 

The City Museum (Musée Carnavalet):

• A spectacular homage to the elites

• A French Revolution that is almost peaceful  

• Insurrections as shown before the museum's renovation

• The Revolution of 1830: Elegant fighters replace the humble 

• The February Revolution of 1848: furniture, not underclass 

• The June Days of 1848: A table at the back of the room and barricades shown as a game for kids  

• La Commune before the renovation... 

• And after it

Monuments

• Camouflage at the Louvre 

• Marie-Antoinette's cell replaced by a tablet (the Conciergerie)

• Napoleon's tomb: Straight streets lead to a sepulchre. Whose? 

• The Arc de Triumph's lame homage to the plebes

• The July Column, as evasive

• Ignoring the evidence and getting away with it (the Opéra)

Historical panels

 

• The Asian towers of the 13th

• Emblematic site, incompréhensible panel

• A place where the past is deleted

• La Commune is finally mentioned but...

• Vanished industry  

• For an exception, please scroll all the way down.

We are so used to accepting what authorities say

that we do not notice what makes no sense. 

 

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VIII.6,

Visits based on observation

VIII.7. CLASSIC ART, A TOOL OF PERSUASION

 

IT CAN CARRY A MESSAGE THAT IS SOCIAL OR POLITICAL

DRAWING

• Nobles, gods and heroes : Figures from mythology and Antiquity trumpet nobles' superiority a

• Supermen: the décor of châteaux and churches 

• A queen's apotheosis: point of departure of Rubens's series for Marie de Médicis

• A plea for peace and a menace of revolt: a painting of the series

• An arc that heralds three centuries of calamity: the Saint-Denis gate

• The violent imagery of the victor on horseback

• Heroes on white horses

• The first great work of defiance: The Raft of the Medusa

• A goddess becomes a plebeian revolutionary: Liberty guides the people

• Freedom's great painting, fervent but ambiguous: same

• The goddess's descendants 

• The Revolution of 1830: faceless poor and bourgeois heroes

• The City Museum's sole proletarian seen full face (please click down to the end of the page)

• Ballet, an art of the French court

• The Opéra; millionaires and ballerinas 

• A ceiling decorated by an orgy (continuation)

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 Outskirts, cauldrons of the arts

VIII.8. OUTSKIRTS, CAULDRONS OF THE ARTS

Art that immigrants invent 

• Looks, a sociable art

• Making oneself a composition

• Coiffures and beards that have become universal

•  Reinventing dandies

• African sources of inspiration

Making the street a prop

• Ménilmontant, where walls turn into art galleries

• Kids follow pictures (street art in the 13th) 

• Banality that street art lights up (more street art in the 13th)

• Theater that makes the street a stage (La Goutte d'Or)

• Sculpture that hovers over a restroom (La Goutte d'Or)

• A festival has just appeared (in the 13th)

In the outskirts

• Kitsch with class (in the east)

• "To feel the real pulse of the city go east" 

• Bars and small restaurants of the east

• Art known only to neighbors (La Goutte d'Or)

• World and urban music for the planet? (The 360 Music Factory)

• A portal to the music of the suburbs (La Goutte d'Or)

Unrecognized art 

• Spectres rise up from the street

• "Art is anything done with passion:" small businesses  

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Next, 

VIII.9.

Visits based on observation 

EXCURSIONS

Harold Wolff

Walks in historic Paris 

• Start with a spectral rampart (the left bank, from Odéon to the Seine)

• Saint-Germain-des-Prés, rampart heir

• Antiquarians on the way to Versailles (the 7th near the Seine)

• Power takes off from the river (the Louvre and Palais-Royal)

• Rue Saint-Denis: the royal route (its different sections reveal the past)

• A parade route changes course (the royal imprint, Bastille to Louvre)

• The Latin quarter the morning after victory (a Communard's recollection)

• A Communard bastion erased and transformed (the 13th)

 Visits of monuments and famous sites 

• A bastion of the Old Regime (the Institut de France)

• Eternal France: river banks and booksellers

• Royal gardens, a world of their own, etc. (Palais-Royal)

• A cemetery that bewilders (the cemetery of the Holy Innocents)

• The "Court of Miracles"

• The huge open space at the city's heart (les Halles)

• Above and below the Halles now

• Spectres emerge from the cemetery

• The place that is ancestor of all (place des Vosges)

• A royal statue for a bridge (pont Neuf)

• The arc that heralds three centuries of calamity (at the Saint-Denis gate)

• Napoleon's tomb: Straight streets lead to a sepulchre. Whose?

• The Obelisk announces a new era

• Les Champs-Élysées, challenged majesty

• The Arc de Triomphe, lame hommage to the plebes

• The July Column, as evasive

• Notre-Dame, where repression replaces eternity

• A fountain where the emperor crushes socialism (at place Saint-Michel)

• What Opéra tours won't say (full chapter)

Exploring outskirts

East

• Crime that shook the Sun King's court (near the Saint-Denis gate)

• Eastern Paris, where new worlds emerge (full chapter)  

• The "masterly line" of the working-class east (the Saint Martin canal overpass)

• Blue-collar neighborhoods' grandiose open spaces (the huge eastern places)

North

• If you must buy globalized brands... (a discount shopping center)

• "Barbès don't panic" 

• La Goutte d'Or, a neighborhood unique in Europe

• The "marché Saint-Pierre," textile hub

South (the 13th district)

• Europe's "Chinatown"

• A Communard bastion, erased and transformed 

• A market replaces the army

• A Communard bastion erased and transformed (the 13th)

Visiting churches

• The importance of the Saint-Denis basilica

• The church where "Gothic" architecture began

• A church that changes the way to salvation (Saint-Paul Saint-Louis, 4th)

• "An ounce of prevention:" churches and a park

• Notre-Dame Cathedral, from eternity to repression

• A church of vengeance: Montmartre's Sacré-Cœur

• The Sacre-Cœur scares, Sainte-Anne heals

Discovering parks and gardens

• Palais-Royal (and next pages)

• A wood where children play (20th)

• "Real Paris" and a park that flows through the eastern city

• Parks replace an industrial site (13th)

• From gas-making to a giant park (13th)

• Gardens whose military origin seems hard to imagine (the canal overpass, 10th)

Suggestions for families

• To do with children (or without them)

• For adventurous families

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