Paris: history from 1815

The history of Paris, as the permanent capital of France, is inextricably bound with that of the French nation. Its outstanding architecture, intellectual facilities, and wealth of art treasures, mirrors the evolution of French culture and reflects the city's status as a symbol of prestige, power, and well‐being. See also France: history 1815–1945. For the earlier history of Paris, see Paris: history to 1815.

19th‐century socialism and the belle époque
A policy of calculated liberalism was pursued by Louis XVIII (1814–24), although the end of his reign was dominated by ultra‐royalist pressure. Attempts to reverse the achievements of the Revolution by Charles X ended in his deposition during a three‐day revolt in Paris in 1830, known as les trois glorieuses. The bronze Colonne de Juillet in the Place de la Bastille, surmounted by a gilded statue of liberty, commemorates this struggle. The accession of Louis Philippe in 1830 was backed by the rich bourgeoisie, but corruption discredited his reign. His overthrow in 1848 resulted in the setting up of the Second Republic, but the demands of the workers for greater control over industry were ignored. After the election of a reactionary majority, the workers of Paris rose in revolt in June 1848. During three days of fierce fighting, 900 soldiers were killed, 15,000 people arrested, and an unknown number of insurgents killed; the confrontation resulted in reduction of representation. In 1852 the Second Republic came to an abrupt end when its leader Louis‐Napoleon proclaimed himself emperor Napoleon III. Growing left‐wing opposition against the corruption of the subsequent Second Empire was reflected in the proliferation of socialist organizations in Paris, including a federation of trade unions and, in 1864, a French branch of the International.

During the Franco‐Prussian War, Paris was besieged by the Germans from September 1870 to January 1871, and the city suffered bombardment, damage, and famine. Messengers sent out by hot‐air balloon to rally support were unsuccessful. In 1871 the Prussians marched into Paris and remained garrisoned for three days while the citizens stayed behind closed doors. Social and economic grievances and anger at the ineptitude of the government, erupted when the right wing National Assembly at Versailles attempted to disarm the National Guard. The brief rule of the Paris Commune (March–May 1871), often considered the first socialist government in history, was terminated when Versailles troops captured Paris. The Hôtel de Ville and the Tuileries Palace were destroyed, and 20,000–30,000 people were massacred. Under the conservative Third Republic, the left‐wing political movements of Paris grew increasingly organized, leading to the formation of the Confédération Générale du Travail, a trade union movement, in 1895.

Modern Paris owes much of its present appearance to the city planning and architectural schemes of the 19th century, particularly during the belle époque of the Second Empire and Third Republic. Between 1815 and 1848 the basilicas of Notre Dame de Lorette and St Vincent de Paul, a number of new bridges, and 55 new streets were established. An obelisk from the Temple of Luxor, a gift from the Egyptian viceroy, was raised on the Place de la Concorde in 1833, and another column erected on the Place de la Bastille, but the greatest architectural achievement of the period was the careful restoration of Notre Dame and the Sainte‐Chapelle by Eugène Viollet‐le‐Duc. A sixth circuit of city ramparts was started in 1818, and the seventh, the circuit of Thiers, was constructed between 1841 and 1845. In 1837 the first railway line in France was opened between Paris and St‐Germain‐en‐Laye.

The greatest changes to the city's landscape were effected under Baron Haussmann, prefect of the Seine (1853–70), whose inspiration was to raise the building heights of Paris to six or seven storeys, and drive wide roads through the heart of the city to connect the inner and outer boulevards. Many of the remnants of medieval Paris were swept away and parks, water mains, sewers, and 22 new boulevards and avenues were laid out. In 1857 the north facade of the Louvre was completed. However, conditions for the majority of Parisians remained cramped and insanitary, and a number of Haussmann's measures, such as the building of inner city barracks, were designed to facilitate control over the slum areas. When the city boundaries were expanded to the seventh circuit, the wealthier inhabitants took residence in the new arrondissements of the west, leaving their older properties to be increasingly subdivided amongst a poor whose numbers were constantly swelled by migrant workers. Cholera and tuberculosis were common, and attempts to improve sanitation were largely ignored by the landlords. The appalling conditions of the working classes were described in the powerful works of the contemporary writer and social reformer Émile Zola.

Under the Third Republic the Hôtel de Ville was rebuilt in its original Renaissance style, and work on the basilica of Sacré‐Coeur, situated on the hill of Montmartre, began in 1873; the basilica was consecrated in 1919. Other building works included the renovation of the Sorbonne in 1885. The city was also the venue for two great expositions (‘exhibitions’) of French industry and culture; the Eiffel Tower was constructed by Gustave Eiffel for the exhibition of 1889 to mark the centenary of the 1789 revolution, while the exhibition in 1900 was marked by the extension of Paris into the plain of Grenelle, and the opening of the Métropolitain (métro) underground railway between Porte Maillot and Porte‐de‐Vincennes.

From the second half of the 19th century until the beginning of World War II, Paris became the arts centre of the West; French and foreign writers and artists congregated around Montmartre, relocating to Montparnasse on the left bank between the wars. Their communities inspired the arts movements of Impressionism, post‐Impressionism, art nouveau, fauvism, cubism, surrealism, and Symbolism. Paris was also the cradle of cinematography, a new art form pioneered by the Lumière brothers. The world's first cinema was opened in Paris in 1895. Other venues established for the performing arts included the Opéra (1875); the Trocadéro (replaced by the Palais de Chaillot cultural centre in 1937); and the Moulin Rouge dance hall (1900), immortalized in the paintings of Henri Toulouse‐Lautrec.

Early 20th‐century Paris
Political organizations on the extreme left and right developed in the years leading up to World War I; the Socialist Party was formed in 1905, and the Camelots du Roi, an early fascist movement, appeared. During World War I Paris suffered air raids and was threatened with attack in August 1914. A military government was appointed and its seat removed to Bordeaux the following month. From 6–9 September 1914 the first Battle of the Marne drove the Germans away from the capital; General Gallieni sent reinforcements to the battlefield in the city's taxicabs. The government returned to Paris in December 1914, but from 1916–18 the city was bombarded by Big Bertha, a large‐calibre howitzer gun. In July 1919 an allied victory march through the streets celebrated the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, and on 11 November 1920 the body of an unknown soldier was buried under the Arc de Triomphe.

In 1920 the political identity of the Parisian working class was weakened by the failure of a general strike and a split in the Socialist Party, its offshoot being the French Communist Party led by Léon Blum. During the 1930s depression, fighting took place between the communists and fascists outside the Chamber of Deputies in 1934, an event which united the various parties of the left in the Popular Front. In the 1936 elections Blum became the first socialist prime minister, with a sound Popular Front majority in the Chamber. Their success sparked off a series of strikes and led to extensive reforms in working conditions, but when Blum resigned over the defeat of his measures for currency control, the Popular Front returned to the opposition, and most of their achievements were reversed.

The 1930s were also a period of Roman Catholic revival, evidenced by the building of around 30 new churches. Another feature of the period between the two world wars was the construction of numerous blocks of luxury flats and large areas of detached residences in the west of Paris, although vast slums remained – a third of the city's housing had no sewerage in 1925. Lareg areas of rather ordinary suburban housing were built around the city, with areas to the north and east being known as the ‘red belt’, by virtue of the inhabitants' voting patterns.

The German occupation
In June 1940 German troops occupied Paris, the French having withdrawn to spare it from devastation, and in May 1941 a German municipal councillor was appointed commissioner. Curfews, garrisons, and an SS headquarters were established. In July 1942 the Germans, with French aid, rounded up over 113,000 Parisian Jews and shipped them to Auschwitz, especially from the northern railway years of Drancy; fewer than 2,000 survived the Holocaust. Allied aircraft made numerous raids on the factory suburbs, notably a heavy night raid by RAF bombers on the Renault works at Billancourt in March 1942, but the city suffered relatively little damage. In August 1944 General von Choltitz surrendered Paris to General Leclerc, after bitter fighting between the FFI (armed Resistance fighters) and German troops.

Reconstitution and revolution in post‐war Paris
Although the city survived the war relatively intact, it was nevertheless faced with a severe housing problem in 1945; building had ceased after 1939, and many people came to Paris with the general displacement of population after the war. Temporary shanty towns developed on the outskirts, later the residence of North African immigrants, and vast housing estates of apartment blocks such as Sarcelles to the north and Massy‐Antony to the south were hastily thrown up in the 1950s and 1960s.

Occasional street battles persisted into the post‐war years, both as a feature of social and economic unrest, and as a result of racial and cultural tension after the influx of former colonial subjects from North Africa and Indo‐China. In 1947 the communist withdrawal from the coalition government gave rise to violent protests. Colonial wars in Algeria and Indo‐China brought left‐wing activists onto the streets in the 1950s, and in 1961 between 90 and 200 native Algerians were killed by the police during a demonstration over the imposition of curfews. In May 1968 the leftist sentiments of a students' revolt against the bureaucracy of the Parisian universities were echoed throughout France, developing into a much wider protest about social, economic and political conditions, and resulting in a general strike which paralyzed the country and almost overthrew the government. Barricades were thrown up in the Latin Quarter on the left bank, and a series of vicious street battles rocked the capital, but elections called in June returned the right to power with a landslide majority.

Expansion and redevelopment in the late 20th century
In the 1960s sweeping plans for Paris were published, including radial and ring motorways, an express métro system, large service centres in the suburbs, a wholesale market at Rungis to replace Les Halles, an airport at Roissy‐en‐France, and large urban renovation schemes in inner Paris. In the 1970s conservation became a feature of city planning; the Musée d'Orsay was created in 1986 by transforming a railway station originally designed for the 1889 exhibition. In the 1980s extensive plans to revitalize the east of Paris, including the restoration and building of thousands of dwellings, were unveiled, along with ‘banlieues 89’, a suburban redevelopment scheme incorporating much publicly‐owned housing. Examples of futuristic architecture now enhance the city's skyline, including the Grande Arche de La Défense (1989), a 110 m/360 ft‐high hollow cube; and the Pompidou Centre, Beaubourg (1977), a transparent building.

Many great projects have been developed to change the inner city since the early 1980s. The Institute of the Arab World has been built alongside the Seine, close to the Île‐St‐Louis; a little upstream the new National Library, with its four great towers, has been built on the left bank on former railway land at Tolbiac‐Massena. On the opposite bank of the river the former wine market of Bercy has been replaced by a vast sports centre, a new public garden and housing. The Museum of Science and Technology is surrounded by a new park at La Villette in northeast Paris, while the André Citroën park occupies the site of a former car factory in the western part of the city. Urban conservation and gentrification have transformed the historic quarter of the Marais from a run‐down area into a highly sought‐after one. The process has been intensified by the construction of the new Opera House at the Place de la Bastille just to the east.

Recent political developments
Paris elected its first left‐wing mayor in 130 years in March 2001. Socialist Bertrand Delanoi's victory also broke the 24‐year electoral success of President Jacques Chirac and his centre‐right allies. Chirac was at the time facing investigations into financial irregularities of party funding during his time as mayor (1977–95).