Parisians

If we want to understand medieval or modern Paris, we need to gain some familiarity with all of the stages along the way. Robb provides some episodic portraits of some of those stages, and the chapter on the eighteenth-century architect Charles-Axel Guillaumot is one of the most arresting discussions I’ve ever seen of how the actions of those living in one epoch can reverberate for generations to come. Guillaumot literally saved Paris from collapsing in on its medieval past by bracing up the swiss-cheese-like network of tunnels that had been left behind by its medieval quarry workers.

This ‘adventure history’ presents in a dazzlingly kaleidoscopic manner the city’s past since the years just before the Revolution of 1789. From a young Napoleon finding his way (and losing his virginity) in the 1780s to the author’s own explorations of the northern suburbs and the district of La Chapelle, this is far from being a conventional narrative. Instead, the story of Paris and its people is captured in snapshots: the shady police agent Eugène-François Vidocq hunting down criminals, the photographic skills of Charles Marville documenting old, disappearing Paris in the 1860s, the first Métro journey in 1900, Juliette Gréco’s… show more.