Retell Lecture

Cities are interesting places. Some cities are carefully planned, built for a reason, and reflect the needs of the people as it grows. Others are less conscientiously designed. Paris, for example, was originally founded in the 3rd century as a small village and with every passing generation, it grew in size and importance. It grew from a medieval city to a modern city, but the transition was not always smooth, Emperor Napoleon III had to hire someone to oversee the rebuilding of Paris. The man he chose was Georges-Eugène Haussmann. In 1853, Haussmann began the process of renovating France's capital city. His basic instructions were to bring light and air into the central districts, improve the sanitation and living areas, and make Paris a more modern, beautiful city. Not your average weekend renovation. Haussmann's projects included the destruction of old, medieval neighborhoods, widening of streets, building large parks and public squares, and addition of fountains and sewer lines. To add to all of this, the size of Paris had to be increased - doubled, actually - and Napoleon III issued official decrees annexing nearby suburbs to make them part of the city. One of the main priorities of this massive renovation was to connect all of the districts together. If we think of Paris like a house, each district was its own room, existing essentially independently of the other districts. Napoleon III wanted it to be easier to travel between the most important districts and to create a sense of this being one unified city, not a series of independent neighborhoods. So Haussman created large avenues that connected the districts. More than that, he made all the avenues look roughly the same. Buildings on a major avenue were required to be roughly the same height and style, and even had to use the same cream-colored stone for the façade. The result was to remove any local characteristics and create a uniform Paris. For the first time, the city had a specific look, a style that people began to associate not with a district, but with Paris itself.