THE COMMUNARD FIRES

THEY BURN SYMBOLIC BUILDINGS BUT SPARE CHURCHES AND HOMES OF "THE RICH" (THIERS'S EXCEPTED)

Firemen come from as far as Brussels.

-- Victor Hugo, Things Seen (his journal), May 25,  1871

Insurrectionary Paris, exhibit at  City Hall, 2011

Since rebuilding took place in the style imposed only 15 years before, one rarely feels the copy: "The reconstructed monuments have taken on the lovely gray dress that gives them an air of tranquil and respectable age... »

-- Vuillaume

Exceptions: 

• City Hall

Taking City Hall: the Arcole Bridge (detail) by Amédée Bourgeois, 1830 / zoom

   John Orbigny Immobilier (good photos from the past, this one gone

• The Tuileries palace...

Military Parade at the Tuileries in 1810 by Hippolyte Bellangé, 1862 / zoom

Zoom

...could have been restored... 

Ruins of the Tuileries Palace by Ernest Meissonnier, 1870's / zoom

...but leaders of the fragile new republic did not want to resurrect that symbol of monarchy, and now one walks through a void:

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The ruins were tourist sites for 20 years.

New York poster of 1891 sold on the web

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Next,

The inferno in context