Paris: Story of a City

Medieval to Modern within a Century

In 1853 Napoleon III appointed Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, a lawyer and civil servant, to the post of prefect of the Seine département of France. His brief was to improve Paris's planning, and for the following two decades he swept away acres of rambling medieval streets and substituted his own concept of a modern city - wide, straight boulevards with imposing façades, converging at major junctions marked by monuments, public buildings and points of importance such as city gates or railway stations. Paris became the yardstick by which all European cities were judged. This film was made to mark the centenary of the death of Baron Haussmann in 1891. Historian Francis Loyer combs the city, scrutinizing objects that are so familiar we no longer see them: a wooden shutter, the angle of a street, a carving on a façade. `Haussmannism' is often seen as a kind of urban vandalism presaging the great modern devastations in the name of progress; it can also look like totalitarian imposition by an authority eager to control and police its populace and to suppress revolution. In this film, however, Haussmann's scheme is considered as a rigorous and coherent means of controlling the growth of a city.

© 1998-2008 The Roland Collection & Pira Intl.