STRAIGHT STREETS AND POINTS OF FOCUS, KEY TO THE CITY'S GRANDEUR

THEY ARE ANOTHER GIFT OF KINGS

The design comes from...

• The space that leads to the monarchs' tombs.

• The straight streets that lead to symbols of monarchy.

• A probable plan for an urban complex, which culminates with a statue of a king. 

• The straight lines that converge toward the dome of the Invalides, which was meant to harbor the Sun King's tomb.

• The Grand Axis.

It brings grandeur by... 

• Amplifying prestige:

Claude Abron

 Les Invalides

• Highlighting power:

The Senate

• Linking the secular and sacred:

The Chamber of Deputies seen from the church of the Madeleine

• Recalling palaces:

Carolyn Ristau

The Opera

Eurodisney website

Eurodisney

• Adding clout:

The Bank of France

Another bank (the BNP in the 9th)

A church (Notre-Dame de Lorette, 9th)

Another church (Saint-Bernard, 18th)

The Saint-Lazare railway station

The Chamber of Commerce

• Making streets dramatic:

The immigrant neighborhood of Barbès

# # #

Those perspectives were due to one man (the Baron Haussmann, active 1854-1869):

Toward 1860, National Library / zoom

Emperor Napoleon III entrusted the city's transformation to a man who could stand up to him. When the emperor remarked that in London streets served only for traffic, Haussmann answered,

"Sire, Parisians are not English. 

They need something more."  

 -- "Memoirs"

 "Something more" 
is the memory of monarchy.

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Next,
"Places" stay royal