THE REAL COMMUNARD FIRES

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

Firemen come from as far as Brussels.

-- Victor Hugo, Choses vues ("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

Prise de l'Hôtel de Ville: le pont d'Arcole (detail) by Amédée Bourgeois, 1830 / zoom

        John Orbigny Immobilier (gone from web)

The building adapts the 16th-century original, but no one would mistake it for it.

• The Tuileries palace could have been restored.

      Parade militaire au Tuileries en 1810 by Hippolyte Bellangé, 1862 / zoom

Zoom

Ruines du palais des Tuileries par 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:

# # #

The ruins were tourist sites for 20 years.

New York poster of 1891 sold on the web

*    *    *

Next,

The inferno in context