City of Light: The Making of Modern Paris

A sparkling account of the nineteenth-century reinvention of Paris as the most beautiful, exciting city in the world

In 1853, French emperor Louis Napoleon inaugurated a vast and ambitious program of public works in Paris, directed by Georges-Eugè Haussmann, the prefect of the Seine. Haussmann transformed 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 rail 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.

Lively and engaging, City of Light is a book for anyone who wants to know how Paris became Paris.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 10/09/2018
ISBN: 9781541673397
Pages: 224
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 7.60h x 5.20w x 1.00d

Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 08/27/2018
Kirkus Reviews 09/01/2018
Booklist 09/15/2018 pg. 16
Library Journal 10/15/2018 pg. 66