City of light
Subtitle: the making of modern Paris
By: Rupert Christiansen
Edition: First edition.
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 206
ISBN-13: 9781541673397
Subjects: Public works; History; Influence; Urban renewal
Description: "In 1853 the French emperor Louis Napoleon inaugurated a vast and ambitious program of public works, directed by Georges-Eugène Haussmann, the prefect of the Seine. Haussmann's renovation of Paris would transform the old medieval city of squalid slums and disease-ridden alleyways into a "City of Light" characterized by wide boulevards, apartment blocks, parks, squares and public monuments, new railway stations and department stores, and a new system of public sanitation. City of Light charts this fifteen-year project of urban renewal which-despite the interruptions of war, revolution, corruption, and bankruptcy-set a template for nineteenth and early twentieth-century urban planning and created the enduring landscape of modern Paris now so famous around the globe. A lively and engaging read, City of Light is a book for anyone who wants to know how Paris became Paris"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Prologue; title: Louis Napoléon and the Second Empire; title: The Problem of Paris; title: Marvels of the New Babylon; title: Pleasures of the New Babylon; title: Haussmann's Downfall; title: The End of the Second Empire; title: Paris's Civil War; title: Epilogue.