BEAUTY WHOSE BRUTAL ORIGIN HAS BEEN FORGOTTEN

THE FIRST WORKING-CLASS INSURRECTION, 1848; THE CITY'S TRANSFORMATION, MAINLY 1853-1870*

*It continues until 1926

As well as straight streets, places and perspectives...

Razing rebel neighborhoods allows five-story buildings of luminous limestone with delicate balconies. The style gives the center of the right bank its unity and the zinc roofs, oblique to bring light onto the street, led to the name "City of Light."  

 My Private Paris / zoom

• The neo-Gothic churches meant to inculcate docility are neighborhood symbols and settings for daily life:

Sculpture at Notre-Dame de la Gare, built in the then miserable 13th district (built in 1858).

• Covering over the canal that blocked the army's entry to the east now allows two kilometers of gardens...

• The statue that introduces them masks the tragedies of many working-class grisettes, but in itself it is delightful (please click and scroll all the way down).

• Preparing to bombard the Latin Quarter led to a left-bank panorama, and to beautifully rebuilding the hospital that had been torn down to allow bombarding the Latin Quarter.

• The fountain that celebrates Socialism's defeat hovers over festivity:

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Imagining the violent origin of much of what makes Paris splendid is very hard to do.

But without the revolts and repressions

that are now carefully erased,

it would look like any other city.

*     *     *

Next,

Progressives hijack streets and spaces