Napoléon I: Flâneurs

• Internationally, Haussmann is celebrated for much that is loved about the French capital; notably
those wide avenues flanked with imposing buildings of neatly dressed ashlar and intricate wrought
iron balconies.
• Ashlar is finely dressed stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared or the
structure built of it. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally cuboid,
• In 1848, Haussmann was an ambitious civil servant determinedly climbing the ranks when Louis-
Napoléon Bonaparte – nephew and heir of Napoléon I– returned to Paris after 12 years’ exile in
London to become president of the French Second Republic.
• Bonaparte, later elected Emperor Napoléon III, hated what he saw. In his absence, the population
of Paris had exploded from 759,000 in 1831 to more than a million in 1846 – despite regular
outbreaks of cholera and typhoid that killed tens of thousands.
• The French capital was overcrowded, dingy, dirty and riddled with disease. Why, Bonaparte
pondered, was it not more like London, with its grand parks and gardens, its tree-lined avenues and
modern sewage system? Paris, he declared, needed light, air, clean water and good sanitation.
• A drawing of the rebuilding of Paris under Haussmann’s command, from around 1860.
• Napoléon III produced his plan for Paris. It showed a map of the city with three straight, dark lines
drawn over it: one running north-to-south and two east-to-west either side of the Seine, all cutting
through some of the most densely populated but historic areas of central Paris.
• Haussmann cut a swathe through the cramped and chaotic labyrinth of slum streets in the city
centre, knocked down 12,000 buildings, cleared space for the Palais Garnier, home of the Opéra
National de Paris, and Les Halles marketplace, and linked the new train terminals with his long,
wide and straight avenues.
• It was the start of the most extensive public works programme ever voluntarily carried out in a
European city, turning Paris into a vast building site for more than 17 years.
• Less well known is Haussmann’s commissioning of an outstanding collection of street furniture –
lampposts, newspaper kiosks, railings – and the decorative bandstands in the 27 parks and squares
he created.
• Below ground, Haussmann oversaw the installation of les egouts, the city’s complex sewage
network. He also commissioned reservoirs and aquaducts to bring clean drinking water to the city.
• gas lamps were installed along the widened cobbled streets; now when the elegant flâneurs who
strolled the 137km of new boulevards retired for the night, the revellers and prostitutes who
emerged from the bars and the shadows could walk safely. The new streets came with trees and
broad pavements along which café terraces sprang up, soon to be filled with artists and artisans
enjoying “absinthe hour”.
• The Palais Garnier was built on the orders of Napoléon III as part of Haussmann’s grand
reconstruction project. Photograph
• Condition of paris before: At the beginning of the 19th century, the city of Paris doubled in density
without increasing its space. Prior to then the city center was chaotic, overcrowded, dark, crime-
ridden, dangerous and unhealthy. It was not uncommon to find 23 people, adults and children,
living in a room five meters square, less than eight by seven feet. “Paris is an immense workshop of
putrefaction, where misery, pestilence and sickness work in concert, where sunlight and air rarely
penetrate. Paris is a terrible place where plants shrivel and perish…”, wrote Victor Considerant,
French social reformer in 1845. Within a city already filled to the brim with people– wagons,
carriages and carts could barely move. The widest streets were only five meters wide (16 feet) and
the narrowest were only one meter wide (three feet). Paris was at a heaving standstill.
• a cohesive cream-colored, neoclassical wonder built from Lutetian limestone quarried outside the
city.
• First they concentrated on boulevards, streets, public works (including sewer, water and gas lines),
train stations to move large concentrations of people, then architecture. They wanted a well-
ordered city, based on a geometric grid with streets running north and south, east and west. Since
the Seine River served as a natural border, they divided the Medieval neighborhoods of Paris into
districts, or arrondissements, growing the number from 12 to 20, and began reconstructing inward
from the river’s banks
• Upon completion, Haussmann had constructed 26,294 km of new boulevards, streets and avenues;
created 2,000 hectares (4,932 acres) of parks – four at the cardinal points of the city; and built 24
new squares totaling 150,000 square meters
• To house the teeming inhabitants of the city, he instructed his newly formed Corps d’Architects to
design apartments five stories high. These were to be constructed in a simple classical style from
massive stone blocks to create the illusion of larger buildings. For the upwardly mobile residents,
thenouveau riche, he combined elaborate decorative adornments of sculptured friezes, Corinthian
columns, Baroque and early Renaissance motifs.
• Chestnut and plane trees were planted (600,000) to line the boulevards, composing a grand urban
landscape.

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• Internationally, Haussmann is celebrated for much that is loved about the French capital; notably

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