History
The places in this guide are not isolated curiosities: each is a fragment of a larger story. These five threads tie them together in order of time.
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c. 1st century – c. 1500
Roman and medieval Paris
From Lutetia’s arena to the archbishops’ Gothic town house: the oldest Paris, which survives in fragments, behind façades and under pavements.
10 places
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1500–1789
Royal Paris
Bridges, squares, hospitals, libraries and an observatory: how the kings and their ministers remade Paris between the Wars of Religion and 1789.
15 places
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1789–1799, and after
The Revolution and its memory
A toll house, a printing press, two burial grounds and a village churchyard: where the Revolution passed, and how Paris remembered it.
5 places
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c. 1820–1850
Romantic Paris
Glass-roofed passages, painters’ studios and writers’ lodgings: the Paris of Hugo, Balzac, Delacroix, Sand and Chopin, between two revolutions.
10 places
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1852–1914
Haussmann and the Belle Époque
Railways round the city, passages and wax museums, artists on the Butte and a house built for a son: Paris from the Second Empire to 1914.
9 places