0.4. CONTENTS

EACH PAGE MAKES A SEPARATE POINT

"Contents" lets you click on chapters and sections of chapters,  "Menu" gives summaries. Both let you click and scroll down, but don't go so fast that the ideas merge. 

Harald Wolff

Scrolling stops when the pages become too heavy to load so you end up clicking anyway. Clicking at the pages' end is the best way to start. Scrolling quickly via the menu works for returning to particular information or pictures.

I.

WHAT MAKES FRANCE DISTINCT?

1.1. SETTING THE SCENE

1.1. THE PLAYERS, LEGENDARY OR UNSUNG 

1.1.1. Kings, at the heart of French civilization

1.1.2. Women of the court who bequeathed their refinement 

1.1.3. The Church, inseparable from monarchy

1.1.4. Small farms: ferocious repressions and art de vivre

1.1.5. Rebels and their demand for social justice

1.1.6. Exiles and expats

1.1.7. The French language, imperialists' explosive gift

1.1.8. Immigrants, source of new energies

II.

AN UNSUSPECTED CITY

2.1. THE LOGIC OF THE LEGENDARY CORE

2.1.1. A spectral rampart: Sites of the Revolution and a haven away from 

the street  /  A trace of the past and a sign of the future  /  A rampart vestige  

in a parking lot 

 

2.1.2. Saint-Germain-des-Prés, rampart heir: Outlaws and Protestants 

 live beyond the rampart  / The Church and the "Grandes Écoles"  ("great schools")  / 

Intellectuals, cafés and the Occupation  / The Liberation and a brief  golden age / 

Hollywood's take  /  Europe's capital of movies and jazz / Brands attack, 

tradition holds on  / Art galleries' riches and traps  / Other galleries that one can trust

 

2.1.3. Lords step out from the shadows: Push open this door to glimpse 

the nobles' world  / Farther on  / Plaques reveal this river bank's prestige  / More 

antiquarians / Return to the river    

 

2.1.4. Back to the rampart, on to the river: A pedestrian street for gourmets  
/ Institut de France, a bastion of the Old Régime / Eternal France, river banks and book sellers / Epitaph 

 

2.1.5. Palaces: glory and demise: Power takes off from the river / Fatal passion 

at the Louvre  /  Palais-Royal, a world apart  /  "If your son marries my daughter I'll give 

you Palais-Royal" / Another way the past stepped in: the threat from other royals  /  

 Libertarian gardens where the modern world began  /  Moving on

   Claude Abron

     Palais-Royal, where the ideas of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity took wing.

2.2. BRANDS TAKE OVER THE HISTORIC CENTER 

2.2.1. Palais-Royal now: Evolution  / The ambiance of a Balzac novel   

/ Remembrance  things past  / A sumptuous covered passage remains  / The walk ends 

in a salon  /  A restaurant that prolongs the mood   

 

2.2.2. A left-bank oasis evokes the recent past: Gertrude Stein, classic movies, Picasso and no cars  /  Beloved dinky toys,  collectors' items  / Fashion that was classic yet unique  / End of a Japanese landmark  / Evolution 

 

2.2.3. Shun the grotesque profits: "real" Paris's affordable shopping

Wares at a neighborhood market  / A street where (some) wholesalers sell retail  / At last  

a brand to appreciate  /  Woolens for Heads of State  / Detour: knowledge of the past brings an extra dimension  /  Detour: the Boulevards, once luxury's planetary heart  / If you absolutely 

must buy globalized brands

2.3. A TRADE ROUTE FOR PILGRIMS AND KINGS (rue Saint-Denis)

2.3.1. Medieval spirits linger: Traces of a prison and countryside  /  A cemetery that bewilders  /  The "Court of Miracles"  /  That territory now  /  Detour: a prostitute who (almost) rose up from the street  /  The huge open space at the city's heart   /  "Les Halles," above ground and below it  /  Specters emerge from the cemetery

 

  Entry of Louis XI to Paris by Francis Tattegrain, 1889-90 / zoom

A 19th-century reconstruction. For images from the time, please click. 

 

2.3.2. The street that proclaimed royal power: Parades that unite kings and subjects  /  Marching down rue Saint-Denis / Royal funerals take the route in reverse  / The vanished gate  / Beyond the gate, the royal gibbet  /  Public executions, rituals of power  /  Executioners, necessary pariahs  /  Now a street that is pleasant and pedestrian 

 

Execution of the Templars (cropped), anonymous, 15th century / zoom

 This typical illustration shows the king looking on, riding a white horse.

2.3.3. Erasing rebel neighborhoods 

 

2.3.4. A hinterland for criminals, nobles and the garment district: Poisons and black masses / Crime that shook the Sun King's court / Nobles take over / The garment district, heir of boulevards and nobles / A seedy neighborhood gentrifies with character   

 

2.3.5. An arc built to honor Louis XIV looms over the route  

 

    Claude Abron

2.3.6. Toward the horizon: Lepers on the trade route / Catholic nobles become

 saints and heroes / Nuns' coiffes communicate / Congregations prosper, leave and return / Vanished jails     

 

2.3.7. Immigrants energize tradition:  Traditional France on the trade route now 

  /  Here 72 languages are said to be spoken

2.4. VISITS WITH CHILDREN (OR WITHOUT THEM)

2.4.1. - 2.4.4: If you come with little boys (adapt to little girls) / Kids follow 

signs and pictures / A wood where children play / New horizons

Europe's main center for young men's casual clothes harks back to the Middle Ages.

 

2.4.5. The Louvre through their sharp eyes: The Mona Lisa, one masterpiece among a multitude / Art that tells stories / Finding your way through the huge museum  

/ Rewards / Save the blockbusters for last / Outdoor ending 

2.5. THE VISIT FOR ADULTS: NOBLES, GODS AND HEROES The primacy of hereditary rank / Everything aids the overclass / Allegory:  nobles vs. rising capitalists / Real 

stories and political messages / The Church gives the humble the bodies of gods / Rubens's decor 

for a queen  / A plea for peace and a threat of  revolt /  Detour: History — anecdotes or the economy? 

Philip of France in Costume of Antiquity by Jean Nocret, toward 1650 / zoom

Louis XIV's younger brother dressed as a Roman general

2.6. The gods' modernity: The first great work of defiance / A goddess becomes 

     a plebeian revolutionary / The goddess's descendants

  

2.7. WHEN OBSERVATION AND THE USUAL STORY CLASH: 

WHAT OPERA TOURS WON'T SAY

2.7.1. A palace for a new elite: An urban design that highlights power  

 

2.7.2. Backers, sex and money: The backers who finance performances / 

 Detour: ballet, an art of the French court / Degas's "little dancer" / A ceiling decorated 

by an orgy  

 

2.7.3. Blackout? Tycoons equal to an emperor / Masking the monument's purpose /   

Merch does not explain the change / Ignoring the obvious and getting away with it

 

   The backers' private salon is decorated by an orgy. Guides skip it. Few visitors notice. 

2.7.4. From nymphs to Nazis: How Opéra girls saved the City of Love: Place Vendôme and the Occupation / Why Paris didn't burn

 III.

VITALITY ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TRACKS

A giant puppet in a parade on the northern fringe

3.1. EUROPE'S "CHINATOWN" 

     

3.1.1. A walk where cultures mix: "Porte"(gate) de Choisy /  

Come to "L'Arche de la Fraternité" / Cultures intertwine    

 

3.1.2. Colors of shops and street: The other artery / Crossroads shops /

A street that seems ordinary at first

3.1.3. High-rises ahead of their time: "The neighborhood needed cleaning up" / An enclave  / autonomy /  The inspiration of royal squares / A historical panel that skips what counts

3.1.4. Asians broaden a French neighborhood: A street that is almost ordinary /  

Asians enliven Parisian sobriety / A park evokes Asians and kings / The T'ang supermarkets / Small, distinctive shops align.

3.1.5. Some of the restaurants: The multitude on avenue d'Ivry  / A bustling Vietnamese cantine. / Thai décor as refined as the cuisine. / A Chinese feast 

3.1.6.  Asians emerge from the shadows: The Chinese New Year celebration / A parade unique in Europe / Asians in ads, the ultimate acceptance 

French residents observe a Chinese New Year celebration.

3.2. THE EAST, WHERE NEW WORLDS EMERGE

3.2.1. Memories of insurrection: La Commune and some of its sites /  

Preliminary fracas: the mad "Descent from La  Courtille" / Toward the Belleville  

crossroad  /  The area stays left 

 

3.2.2.  A place where the arts spring up: Ménilmontant, where walls turn 

 into art galleries / Kitch and class  / "To feel the real pulse of the city go east" /  

Bars and music  

 

3.2.3.  A path through "real Paris" 

   

3.3. "BARBÈS DON'T PANIC:" Back to the wine tax  / A métro station and a movie theater  /  Toward La Goutte d'Or / The media: fear, exoticism, misery and bias  / (Not very) threatening youth  / Take another look 

3.4. THE UNHAILED ENERGIES OF LA GOUTTE D'OR

3.4.1. A setting of "Gauls:"  Precious books  /  Monotheisms as their founders intended  /  A shoemaker transmits / A school for knitwear design and techniques /

Odd socks' comeback  /  Framing for  neighbors and museums  /  An immigrant nourishes  

the ultimate French tradition  

 

3.4.2. Arts known mainly to neighbors: Inventiveness that brightened an ordinary street  / Art links the neighborhood and kids in Africa  /  Signs on park railings  /   

Photography as singular as its site  /  Theater that makes  the street the stage  /  Sculpture 

hovers over a washroom  

 

3.4.3. First steps in another land

 

3.5.4. Appearance, a way to communicate  Making oneself a composition  /   

Barbershops and beauty salons line the street  /   Young men's exuberant hair styles  /  

 How those coiffures and beards began / Hair-dressersalons' good humor /  Shops that 

 continue the attention  /  Africans' humanistic advertising  /  Reinventing dandies  /   

Detour: politicizing Black men's fashion 

 

Making oneself a composition, an art that immigrants invent.

 

3.4.5. Textiles and tailors, more emphasis:  "Wax" prints, symbols of Africa  /   

Start at the textile hub next door and stroll down the slope  / Textile stores for prints, 

almost as omnipresent as the barber shops  / Shops for notions follow up  /  Young tailors' energy  /  Embroidery, a royal ornamentation  /  Plebeian prints gain their letters of nobility  

 

 

3.4.6. A couturier for Kenzo and Paco Rabanne: With his perfect French... / Sources

of  inspiration  / The workshop  / You may pass it and not see it.  

3.4.7. Gentrification with brakes: Empty lots and new building / A Moroccan restaurant changes hands  / Fast food replaces convivial bar  / Traditional and gourmet shops intertwine. 

 

3.4.8. Social services, key to the mix 

African elders ignore a trendy boutique. 

 

3.4.9. "The emerging design hub of Paris"  

 

 

3.4.9.x.  Africans' exuberant creativity  

Since 2022, a three-day fair  

A street musician of La Goutte d'Or

 

3.4.9.xx. Tomorrow's destination?  World and urban culture for the planet?  /  The Institute for the Cultures of Islam / The Barbès metro station: accessibility and spaces for the arts  /  A 1920's cinema  /  The wash-house that literature immortalized  / The City-backed couturiers' cooperative  /  A portal toward the music of the outskirts 

 

 

3.4.9.xxx. A place that Gertrude Stein would have appreciated: A take out... / A picnic in a park where sculpted figures play  / At a time when the public valued only classic works...

IV.
WHY IS A CITY WITHOUT NATURAL BEAUTY 

SO GRAND? 

4.1. MAJESTY ON A HUMAN SCALE, FORGOTTEN GIFT OF KINGS

4.1.1. A parade route changes course: From "joyous" to "royal" entry / The path  

that linked kings with their ancestors / The importance of the Saint-Denis basilica / The 

church where "Gothic" architecture began / Detour: right-wing extremists use medieval imagery / France's first straight street and point of focus / Drop the ancestors, hail power /  

Revolt at La Bastille / Detour: Love wins out — unfortunately 

A history book for children, 1931

 Louis XIV's royal entry trumpets tougher monarchy by passing innovations.

 

4.1.2. The milestones and their meanings: Paris's first street and point of focus /  The "place" that is ancestor of all / The successive statues of place des Vosges / A church that 

changes the way to salvation / A royal statue for a bridge / The king among his people

4.1.3. A design inconceivable elsewhere: Demolishing the city wall announced hegemony  / The Boulevards that replaced it gave access to Versailles  /  Louis builds an arc 

of triumph on the main gate's site  /  It announces three centuries of calamity / Now the 

arches hover like ghosts over the traffic   

 

Claude Abron: photo taken from a helicopter

The line that stretches from palace to horizon symbolizes endless power.

4.1.4. The royal imprint blossoms: Straight streets and monarchy  /  

Napoleon's tomb, built for Louis XIV / Royal places multiply / At the last royal place,

change begins

4.1.5. The curtain falls on traditional monarchy: A queen breaks rules that she 

does not understand / A bubblehead rises to the occasion / "Bonjour Sire!" The greeting that announces calamity / The disastrous flight revisited: the guards' yellow liveries / End of the 

1500 year old monarchy / "The Temple," a prison that could have been worse /  

"I have no tears left to cry / Marie-Antoinette attains grandeur / Louis XVII, a story that has no end / The Obelisk announces a new era / How  France became a republic / French Presidents, 

heirs of kings

 

4.2. A MODERN ROYAL CITY: The Grand Axis as model / Perspectives, key to the city's grandeur / "Places" stay royal / The violent imagery of victors on horseback / Detour: heroes on 

white horses 

 

4.3. HAVE THE KINGS BECOME SUBVERSIVE? The Champs-Elysées, challenged majesty / A new society creeps in / Goddesses hover over the city / Kings and globalization

 

Pamela Spurdon

Louis XIV in the courtyard of the Louvre, and an omnipresent giant ad.

 V.

CRADLE OF UPHEAVAL

How fear of insurrection broadened the beauty the kings began

A passage that let the army invade working-class territory

5. HISTORY IS ALWAYS SUBJECTIVE, SINCE ONE MUST CHOOSE AMONG A MULTITUDE OF FACTS. But some narratives make more sense than others.

5.1. 1830, the peopled fooled:  Liberty's great painting, fervent and ambiguous / The Arc de Triomphe's lame homage to the plebes / The July Column, as evasive / Victor Hugo's"Time of Riots" / Algeria enters France's conflicts

 

5.2. Republican misunderstandings: Social classes whose interests diverge / Faceless poor and bourgeois heroes / More on bourgeois heroes / An intelligent ogre checks in

 

5.3. 1848, the people fooled again: Insurrection by accident / Schism looms /Popular discipline terrifies / The Parisian upheaval overwhelms Europe / Feudal monarchies emerge still stronger 

 

5.4. Workers' first conscious revolt & first great massacre: A republic for the happy few / A workers' revolt announces the future / The right changes too: Provincial nobles answer the call / Young delinquents joyously join in /  Empathy from a countess alone / The uprising brings Europe's most authoritarian regime

  The Barricade of Rue de la Mortellerie, June 1848 by Ernest Meissonnier / zoom

Painting from a sketch made on the spot.

5.5. The City Museum & the insurrections: A spectacular homage to elites /  

A French Revolution that is almost peaceful / The 19th-century insurrections before the renovation / 1830: Capitalism wins and elegant fighters replace plebeians / February 1848: Furniture replaces humble fighters / June 1848: a single sentence at the back of the floor / Barricades, a game for kids 

Print at the Musée Carnavalet (the City Museum)

5.6. FEAR, UNLIKELY PROMOTER OF URBAN GRANDEUR

       

5.6.1. The metamorphosis seen up close

"An ounce of prevention:" churches and a park / Open the town to the army /  

Three huge spaces to assemble troops / The fountain where the Emperor crushes 

Socialism / The new arteries' military purpose / A "masterly line" cuts through the 

working-class east /Blue-collar neighborhoods' vast open spaces / Huge "places" 

and power symbols / The exception across the river / At Notre-Dame Cathedral, 

repression replaces eternity / Planning Latin Quarter bombardment has happy 

results / The hospital garden 

5.6.2. Gifts of the repression 

Adapting royal majesty / Other kinds of beauty / Progressives hijack streets 

and spaces / Space meant for an army is used for a market

VI.

THE CHANGES TURN OUT TO BE USELESS:

LA COMMUNE

6.1. EGALITARIANISM BREAKS THROUGH

La Commune acclaimed at City Hall

6.2. Defeat and revolution

A war of choice brings disaster / "To Berlin!" cry Parisians / Hallucinations 

of an enclosed population / Treason? / Tensions rise / The Guard becomes a 

counter-power / Cannons the army neglects / Prussians parade but guards steal the show  / The Assembly pours oil on the fire / The cannons on the hills 

6.3. Explosion  

"Betrayed!"/ Love humanizes an icon / Crowd and soldiers fraternize / An unaware 

general steps into the fray / Commemorations of the right and the left /

Thiers flees /A visionary future  

 

6.4. Civil war and carnage 

The humble against the powerful / The slaughter of the wretched / Escape by socializing 

with the enemy / The Latin Quarter after defeat / The fate of a political painter / Soldiers 

whom officers mistrust / The officers' responsibility / The adversaries / Parisian sequels /  

The past sways pop culture: Piaf and Sinatra 

"The Call" by André Devambez, 1906, based on the memories of his father and survivors / zoom

6.5. Ruins, revenge, evolution

The inferno in context /The sacred hilltop / The "Acropolis of the Revolution" /  

The church of vengeance / Changed threat, changed city /The Sacré-Coeur frightens, 

Sainte-Anne heals / The "chocolate façade"

6.6. Mystification, old-school and now 

A firing squad that makes no sense / Versaillais propaganda that tells the truth /  

"The hostages of rue Haxo," the other publicized killing /Catholic martyrs whom even 

the Church forgets / Whose violence? The comeback of the Versaillais myth / 

Schoolbooks buttress the individual to erase the group / The City Museum before 

renovation (in 2016-2022)... / And after it / "To the victors / belong the spoils" /  

Two historians fight back 

6.7. Fraternity that worked 

Pariahs take charge of their lives / Leaders we wish we had / Victories of 

La Commune / A rooted memory / "Friends of the Paris Commune"

Women meet during La Commune 

6.8. An omen and a turning point 

 A foretaste of genocide / Toward the 20th century

VII.
A COMMUNARD BASTION,

THE OVERLOOKED 13TH DISTRICT

The long, wide, straight street was built after the insurrection of June 1848 so that 

troops move arrive quickly to quell a future revolt. It also draws the eye to a church,

which preached obedience in what was then the city's poorest district.

7.1. The fight for the hilltop

 Frenzied combat / Communard fighters / A panel does mention La Commune... / The Communard spirit continues

7.2. An epicenter of misery

"A lost district at the city's edge" / Disease, crime and revolt / Vanished industry /  

A third-world revolutionaries' training ground / A walk through an outskirt that used 

to be chilling

 

VIII.

WHAT HAPPENED? 

THE WAR DID

8.1. "Better Hitler than Blum"

8.2. Conservatives who joined the Resistance

Plaque commemorating the site where a fighter for the Liberation of Paris was killed.

 IX.

A PAST THAT IS FORGOTTEN

 YET INDELIBLE

Leftist posters at the Olympiades métro, 13th. 

 

9.2. In the footsteps of "demons"  

The passage by which survivors fled / City-run residences for seniors and the handicapped / Sculptures. Bikes. Gyms. Gardens / More social services, 

gardens and local engagement / Electoral posters in a genuine (political) 

democracy / Small business that Communards would have valued

9.3. Parks and paintings 

Gardens take over a sugar refinery /Art animates / low-cost construction / A giant 

park occupies a gas-making site / Paintings everywhere

 

9.4. A place to pitch your tent?

 Arts you discover by chance / The city's newest festival

     

9.5. More gifts from City Hall

9.6. The future comes up from behind

  

Paris's May Day parade begins in front of the 13th's City Hall.

# # #

EPILOGUE

"YOU'RE TEACHING COMMUNISM TO THE POLICE!"

"YOU'RE MISLED BUT YOU'RE NOT BOUGHT.

JOIN US!"

"DON'T YOU HAVE AN AGENDA?"

*    *    *

The sequel, History from fresh perspectives,

 shows how placing events in their economic contexts

can transform their meanings

and gives a reason for the omissions mentioned here.

*    *    *

*    *    *

Next,

I.

What makes France unique?