It is not just a city, but the religion of fashion—Dior, Chanel, Balmain, Hermes, or Louis Vuitton—you name a fashion brand, and the city is home to it.
It is Paris…But have you ever wondered why Paris looks the way it does now? when till the year 1853, the city was overcorwded, poor and diseased.
This is the story of how Paris was transformed into the world’s most opulent city.
In the year 1848, King Louis Philippe of France was overthrown, and Louin Napolean, nephew of Napolean Bonaparte, was elected president.
Three years later, he staged a coup and became Emperor Napoleon III – France’s last monarch. So, till the 19th century, none of France’s emperors were too determined to uplift the look of Paris; At their time, Paris was overcrowded, and the urban poor were suffering from diseases.
However, Napoleon the Third was quite different, he had this grand ambition to totally rebuild the city and turn Paris into a modern metropolis.
So, when the first man he appointed as “Prefect of Seine” to carry out his plans wasn’t up to the task,. Napoleon turned to a civil servant called Georges-Eugène Haussmann. Haussmann was not only talented, but he also dreamt of a beautiful Paris, just like Napoleon III.
So, starting in 1853, Haussman was given all control by Napoleon to redesign and rebuild Paris. The main idea of this plan was a network of wide streets spreading out from the Arc de Triomphe, mixed with smaller roads and squares.
Then the process involved the addition of suburbs around Paris, the subtraction of already standing-old buildings, the division of streets, and the multiplication of spacious roads.
Cohesive, uniform, disciplined looking buildings, like one building standing at one end of the road trying to mirror the other. The idea was to give Paris a unique identity, and so it worked.
Haussman’s architect and Napolean III’s dream today stand as the world’s number one tourist destination.
