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onjour!
Many consider Paris to be the most beautiful city in the world. How did it become so? Let’s start with
Napoleon Bonaparte who is credited with not only getting France back on its feet after the French Revolution
of 1789, but also for being the first one to reshape this magnificent city that he loved so much.
But before continuing, please remember that you can access and read all the newsletters already published at
http://www.francemonthly.com/ |
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Napoleon I & Paris
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Napoleon Bonaparte was barely 15 years old when he came to Paris for the first time in 1784, as a cadet recently
admitted to the Ecole Militaire (Military Academy). Eight
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The Invalides
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years later he found himself in the capital once again, and witnessed
the desperate population taking over the streets while Louis
XVI was attempting to escape. In 1799, when he staged a coup
to overthrow the Directoire government and seized power, he
already had great plans for Paris which was still a medieval-looking
city devastated by ten years of revolution and anarchy. He
proclaimed his ambition at once: "to turn Paris into the most
beautiful capital in the universe". He had many reasons for
this, one of which was to ensure that Parisians had work,
perhaps to make them happy but certainly to keep them from
rioting in the future. Napoleon Bonaparte also wanted to embellish
the city, but this goal was not simply an esthetic one. The
capital was also to reflect, with dignity, the glorious and
grand image of its hero. Napoleon Bonaparte was vain, no doubt
about it, but he was also a true visionary for this beloved
city.
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The Rue de Rivoli
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At the beginning of the 19th century,
Parisian streets were narrow, filthy and poorly lit. Traffic
along them was chaotic and often dangerous. As Louis XIV
before him, Napoleon I (as he was known after crowning himself
Emperor in 1804) dreamed of a "triumphal way" that would
cross the city from west to east. To the west, thanks to
the Sun King (Louis XIV), there was already a prestigious
axis that extended from the Tuileries all the way up the
Champs Elysées. Much further to the east, another axis allowed
one to leave Paris towards the rising sun. However, there
was no worthy central axis to connect the two, just the
river Seine and a dirt road that would later become the
Rue Saint Honoré. Napoleon I decided to build a street that
would run from the Place de la Concorde along the Tuileries
and the Louvre, across the Place de la Bastille (which had
become a sordid wasteland after the 1789 Revolution), all
the way to the Faubourg Saint Antoine. He wanted to create
a thoroughfare of luxury, so any trade that used “an oven
or a hammer”, such as that of baker or butcher, was banished
from it by decree. The architecture was to be symmetrical
and sober, and incorporate pedestrian-friendly arcades and
passages which were fashionable at the time. Of course,
this street was to bear the name of one of his last Italian
conquests: Rivoli (1797).
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Recipe for January 2005 |
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Poulet Marengo
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Cooking SOS!
If you run into trouble with one of our recipes, send an SOS e-mail to
911@FranceMonthly.com
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The Rue de la Paix
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The Rue de la Paix (Peace Street) connects the Place Vendome
to the Garnier Opera. At the beginning of the 19th century,
this well-known neighborhood which is so pleasant to stroll
today, was quite different in appearance.
Houses and various businesses crowded the Louvre courtyard
and the Tuileries gardens.
The Rue de Rivoli, regal and full of promises,
was nonetheless surrounded by wastelands
and run-down houses to the north, and the thoroughfare of luxury
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The Rue de la Paix
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project was on hold as investors got cold feet. This prompted the granting of generous tax
exemptions, at first for twenty years, then thirty -- enough
of an incentive for the most reluctant to give in! Still,
funds were lacking, and the Rue de Rivoli never did reach
the Bastille as originally planned. The expansion project
went ahead anyway, and an entire neighborhood of perpendicular
streets which connected to the principal thoroughfare was
created. The Emperor demanded that one of these streets be
the most beautiful of Paris. No surprise here, it was called
Rue Napoleon. Later, during the Restoration period, the beautiful
Rue Napoleon was re-baptized Rue de la Paix.
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The Vendome Column
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Napoleon I wanted to bestow many monuments on the city to
embellish it but also, and mostly, to celebrate his victories.
The Place Vendome, once open to traffic with newly designed
streets feeding into it, was the ideal location for him to
indulge his cult of personality. He was at the
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The Rue de Rivoli
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height of his glory, idolized by
the French for being, in 1806, the man who brought peace to
the country. He came up with the idea of erecting a monument,
not in honor of the fallen soldiers, but in glory of a single
hero: the Emperor of the French! The final design was a 148-foot-high
column inspired by the Roman column of Troy. The low-reliefs
tell the story of the Austrian campaign. It is built out of
very hard stone and is covered with bronze plates provided
by melting down the 250 canons taken from the Russians and
the Austrians. A statue of Napoleon, dressed as a Roman emperor,
rises at the top. Construction had its setbacks. First, several
of Napoleon’s marshals were disappointed and upset over the
insignificant place they were allotted on the monument, then
there was the difficulty in attaching the bronze plates. Finally,
the names of the defeated from the Austrian campaign, the
Tsar Alexander and the Emperor of Austria, François II, had
already been engraved when Napoleon I contemplated marrying
a Russian princess (he had by then divorced Josephine de Beauharnais
who couldn’t produce an heir). For diplomatic reasons, he
had the Tsar’s initials quickly removed. Unfortunately, by
the time the monument was inaugurated on August 15, 1810,
his intended wife was no longer a Russian princess but the
Austrian Marie Louise -- and the Emperor of Austria François
II’s initials were clearly there engraved on the column, under
the list of the defeated. Diplomatic relations were strained
a bit.
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An Imperial City
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When Napoleon I moved in the Tuileries
on July 2nd, 1800, the views out his windows didn’t bear any
resemblance to what they might be today. Back then, the horizon
was confined to a maze of narrow and sinuous streets, and
a tangle of more or less elegant houses and town homes. This
neighborhood was a real labyrinth cut off to the south
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The Louvre
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by the Seine, and closed off to the north since the Rue de
Rivoli had yet to be built. Traffic there was horrendous.
It is even said that ten years earlier, Marie-Antoinette got
lost in one of those small streets while trying to run off
to Varennes, which caused the escape coach to leave late.
This delay turned out to be fatal for the royal family. Napoleon
I had chosen Paris rather than Versailles like his predecessors
had, and wanted to join the Louvre and Tuileries palaces to
create an imperial city worthy of his magnificence. He spared
no expense in renovating the interiors freed up by many expropriations.
When he returned victorious from Austerlitz in 1805, the clearing
work had begun at last and he could finally see the Louvre
from the windows of the Tuileries.
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The City of Paris Firefighters |
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Under the reign of Napoleon I, Paris grew in size and beauty
as it honored its Emperor by building splendid structures.
Although the impetus was there, the capital city had a hard
time shedding its medieval condition. Most streets were still
filthy and poorly lit, the supply of drinkable water remained
a problem despite the construction of many fountains, and
many houses were dilapidated even as beautiful napoleonic
apartment buildings were rising. On top of all this, fires
were multiplying. Of course, there was a city firemen corps,
but it was disorganized and had few resources at its disposal.
On July 1, 1810, during a ball organized by the Austrian Ambassador
in honor of the imperial couple, a fire broke out and spread
rapidly. Napoleon I and Marie-Louise escaped the inferno unharmed.
Having witnessed firsthand the helplessness of the firemen,
the Emperor decided to militarize this trade association.
From then on, firemen were firefighters, subject to unwavering
discipline. They slept in station houses, always on call,
and patrolled the city regularly, wearing shiny helmets to
always be visible in case of smoke. This organization, planned
out in fine detail and still in operation today, was entirely
the work of the great visionary that Napoleon I was. The Firefighters
Corps is truly an institution in itself, representing the
great heroism of its men on a daily basis, in Paris as in
all other cities in the world.
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The Carrousel Arch of Triumph
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The Emperor decided to erect arches of triumph to celebrate
his glory. The Carrousel arch had a double goal, to majestically
mark the entrance to the Tuileries and also to commemorate
his victory at Marengo. Various 1805 campaign scenes and statues
of the different army corps of the
Empire were sculpted into the low-reliefs and the
pink marble columns. The top was crowned with the horses of
Venice’s St-Mark church-war trophies that were somewhat useless-
and adorned with Victory and Peace statues. The sculptor added
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The Carrousel Arch of Triumph
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a chariot which was at first intended to carry a statue of
Mars, and later one of the Emperor, but he formally opposed
it in the end. So the chariot remained empty until 1830, when
a goddess probably representing the Restoration was placed
in it. Meanwhile, the original horse statues were returned
to Venice and replaced with copies. When the monument was
finished, it was confined to a space still cluttered with
a few houses. This monumental gateway was extended on each
side by metal gates, themselves framed by booths. Beautiful
as a gem, it was given its current showcase setting many years
later when Haussmann demolished the last remaining houses
and tripled the square’s area. Only then did the axis of this
monumental arch reveal the magnificent perspective that we
see today. Napoleon I planned another arch of triumph in honor
of Austerlitz: the Arch of Triumph which today majestically
dominates the Champs Elysées but was not completed until the
Second Empire.
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Invitation to Travel |
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All through his reign, ambitious Napoleon I showed true
affection for Paris and its residents. He may have used
the buildings he had constructed as so many instruments
of propaganda, but he did have a genuine desire to bring
a certain modern comfort to Parisians. Even though not all
of his often too grandiose projects came to life, he was,
just as his nephew Napoleon III after him, one of the rare
monarchs who really cared about the development of the city
of Paris. Fifteen years of reign interrupted by bloody and
expensive wars proved insufficient to implement all of his
plans. Still, Napoleon I inspired a creative boost among
builders and he could proudly claim to have greatly contributed
to the French capital’s contemporary architecture that is
so admired today.
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