He was the Parisian who ripped up his home city; one of the most famous and controversial urban planners in history. Even now, 125 years after the death of Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, France remains divided over whether the man who transformed Paris into the City of Light was truly a master planner – or an imperialist megalomaniac.
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.
To his republican compatriots, however, Haussmann was an arrogant, autocratic vandal who ripped the historic heart out of Paris, driving his boulevards through the city’s slums to help the French army crush popular uprisings.
Historian and Haussmann expert Patrice de Moncan is exasperated by the century’s worth of criticism that has been levelled at this hugely influential figure. “Sometimes I don’t know where to start; it’s bullshit from beginning to end,” De Moncan says. “But it’s a view many people still hold in France.
“Haussmann has been portrayed as this almost sinister figure, only out to enrich himself and with his fingers in the till. His critics accused him of filling Paris with cobbled streets, bland buildings with stone facades, and wide, dead straight avenues so the army could repress the masses.”
De Moncan, who is writing a new biography of Haussmann, smarts with the injustice of what he sees as the ongoing maligning of his hero. “Some said he was austere, but from what I have discovered he liked a good party and threw great ones. Others accused him of chasing the girls – it’s true he had a mistress [the opera star Francine Cellier] with whom he had a child, but unlike others at that time, he accepted, recognised and educated the girl.”
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.
Haussmann was an imposing figure both physically – at 6ft 3in – and intellectually. Born into a bourgeois military family with strong Lutheran ties, he had been a brilliant student at elite Paris colleges, and personified the Protestant work ethic. Portraits show a tall, solid, often studious figure with a not unkind face, often sporting a chin-strap beard and, in later years, thinning hair.
France’s interior minister, Victor de Persigny, believed Haussmann to be the ideal candidate for the job of Prefect of the Seine and overseer of Napoléon III’s plan to transform the city. “He is one of the most extraordinary men of our time; big, strong, vigorous, energetic and at the same time clever and devious,” wrote De Persigny to the emperor. “He told me all of his accomplishments during his administrative career, leaving out nothing: he could have talked for six hours without a break, since it was his favourite subject, himself.”
Haussmann got the job. A week after his appointment in the summer of 1853, he was summoned to the emperor’s official residence at the Palais des Tuileries, where 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.
“This is what I want,” Napoléon III told Haussmann. 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.
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.
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.
On his orders, 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”.
In his Dictionary of the Second Empire, Josephy Valynseele wrote of Haussmann: “During his career he showed a maniacal ambition, an impudent opportunism and was, whatever he did, a genius of showmanship.”
But republican opponents criticised the brutality of the work. They saw his avenues as imperialist tools to neuter fermenting civil unrest in working-class areas, allowing troops to be rapidly deployed to quell revolt. Haussmann was also accused of social engineering by destroying the economically mixed areas where rich and poor rubbed shoulders, instead creating distinct wealthy and “popular” arrondissements.
Critics also accused him of destroying the city’s medieval treasures, citing the enduring charm of the narrow winding streets of the Marais: the city’s oldest district and one which escaped Haussmann’s razing.
There was additional outrage at the staggering 2.5bn franc bill for the work – around €75bn today. By 1869 the attacks had become deafening, and Haussmann was forced to vigorously defend himself before MPs and city officials. In the hope of salvaging his own flagging popularity, Napoléon III asked Hassmann to resign. He refused.
“Haussmann had a great belief in public service and had spent his whole career in the service of the king and then the emperor,” De Moncan says. “He believed if he resigned it would be assumed he had done wrong, when in fact he was very proud of what he had done. Napoléon III offered him all manner of inducements but he still refused, so the emperor sacked him.
“The Second Empire and Napoléon III were despised by republicans, and Haussmann was the victim of this political backlash. Victor Hugo hated him, and because everyone in France regarded what Hugo wrote as the word of God, they hated Haussmann too. Hugo, the man who wrote Les Miserables about how desperate conditions were in Paris, accused Haussmann of destroying the city’s medieval charm!”
De Moncan observes this was the same “charm” that had brought epidemics to Paris; the charm that “had 20 people living in one room with no light and no toilets, just a common courtyard into which they did their business. People like Hugo forgot how truly miserable Paris had been for ordinary Parisians.”
Out of a job and persona non grata in Paris, Haussmann spent six months in Italy to lift his spirits. He returned and was given a management post with the military – which lasted less than a week before Napoléon III was defeated.
Haussmann lived out his final days in rented accommodation on a paltry 6,000-franc pension, the equivalent of €20,000 a year today, paying regular visits to his three beloved daughters. In his memoirs, he seems stoic rather than bitter about his fall from grace:
“In the eyes of the Parisians, who like routine in things but are changeable when it comes to people, I committed two great wrongs. Over the course of 17 years I disturbed their daily routines by turning Paris upside down; and they had to look at the same face of the prefect in the Hôtel de Ville. These were two unforgivable complaints.”
Some of Haussmann’s harshest critics, including the politician and philosopher Jules Simon, later changed their view of him: “He tried to make Paris a magnificent city and he succeeded completely,” Simon wrote in 1882. “He introduced into his beautiful capital trees and flowers, and populated it with statues.”
Today, Haussmann is remembered by the grand boulevard that bears his name, on which the Palais Garnier sits, and a statue on its corner with Rue de Laborde in the 8th Arrondissement. But according to De Moncan, Haussmann’s vital contribution to modern Paris is still not fully appreciated.
“Haussmann was never forgiven or recognised in his lifetime in France, and still isn’t. If I give a conference here, people groan when I talk about him. Right up until the 1980s, his buildings were dismissed as rubbish and as many as possible were destroyed, so that all those unlovely 1970s glass and concrete structures could go up.
“But what he did was phenomenal; he was the world’s first modern urban developer. Everyone who came to Paris for the universal exhibitions, including Queen Victoria, was astonished by the transformation of the city. In 1867, there was a meeting of European architects in Germany at which Haussmann was hailed as a pure genius; a brilliant modern urban developer. Yet all that was said about him back home was that he was a crook.”
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There's a film called Swann in Love which shows Haussmann's Paris as it must have looked when new. It exemplifies a confidence of a newly arrived wealthy class enjoying the revivals of wealth and power under the reign of the Napoleons and embodied in the architecture of Haussmann with it's stress of sensual apartments organised around new gardens and parks for the benefit of a new social order.
However, in the modern age of the motor car and piecemeal urban development, Haussmann's vision was so enormous that it has in the long run homogenized Paris, leaving it looking bland and repetitive. What once stood for world class taste and sensuality is now judged as at times vulgar with questionable motives. Further, we learn what was swept away by Hausmann; the real Paris, a centuries old phantasmagorical maze of buildings whose history stretched way back to the city's medieval roots.
Hausmann gave Paris & France a century of world dominance but now that epoch is over, what now for Paris ?
Bland? Maybe to some. Not to me, but I won't argue about that.
However, I'd argue what you deem repetitive ties in perfectly with the French inclination towards logic and coherence.
What has homogenised Paris more than anything else is gentrification. Long after Haussmann, there were still artisans that used to concentrate in certain areas according to their trade, and sometimes you can still see it (furniture shops abound in the rue du Faubourg St. Antoine, for instance). You also had neighbourhoods of people who had come to Paris from the same provinces and settled together, often near the station whence they had arrived in the capital.
This obviously has been squeezed out in various bouts of real estate speculation, capital and investment influx, and further population growth. Paris is a great city to live in if you are very rich. If you aren't, you'll have to squeeze in where you find space, or simply move out into the banlieue. It's not a recipe to give any larger sense to the way people live where they do, and to make the city any more vibrant. The amount of character and residual diversity that Paris manages to preserve is astounding, given the circumstances.
You're calling bland a city that contains La Défense, Montmartre, the 6th, the Ile-de-la-Cité, many of the world's most exquisite churches, the Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay, the Musée Picasso, the Centre Pompidou, the Marais, the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, the Pont Alexandre III, the Esplanade des Invalides, the Jardin du Luxembourg, the axe historique, the Grand and Petit Palais, the Musée National du Moyen-Age and its Lady and the Unicorn tapestries, the Sorbonne, two operas, countless theatres, ...
you probably already know the rumour that Kingston Ontario has a fort built facing the 'wrong way' because it was designed for Kingston Jamaica. any insight?
There are lots of similar stories in Ireland; strange-looking police stations which, it's said, were designed for the north-west frontier. The plans got 'mixed up'.
My condo in Milwaukee was copied detail-for-detail from a condo plan designed for Tampa. Right down to the building materials that can't cope with temperatures below freezing.
It seems that this is a long standing legend about Old Fort Henry in Kingston, and the layout was intended to defend a land invasion tnat could block the St Lawrence Rjver. Interestingly, it eems the legend of a hapless British architect who subesequently was cashiered from the army and comitted suicide may even be an example of a genre of legends where structures were supposedly built the wrong direction and the archktect allegly then committed suicde. See www.snopes.com/college/halls/backward.asp
There's no doubt the guy was an masterful urban planner and organiser. I'm surprised to hear his legacy is not appreciated in his own country. Basically, he turned Paris into the city most people have been loving and admiring for over a century.
Great piece. I'm loving this series. More of this, please, Guardian.
It's not even remotely true. No one knows about that. It must be a discussion between experts.
I agree. I've never heard him described as 'controversial' before, though there was obviously a political side to his great schemes.
By the way, bizarre choice of photo to illustrate street furniture - none of which is actually visible.
Agreed – we've changed it. Thanks for the comment
It's not just the grapeshot that can sweep down Haussmann - it's the bloody rain.
We were in Paris one very cold January. I must say the wind whistling down the wide boulevards made it feel chillier than London.
Maybe for a few days in the worst of winter but I've always found the Paris winter much more tolerable than London which I hate wandering around (even in so-called "summer" it is often a miserable, damp, chilling experience). Somehow in Paris you don't notice it as much and it seems easier to get around without being miserable and damp. Paris has all those cosy cafes including their "winter gardens" out front, protected in the winter. And the arcades.
Great article. I happen to be halfway through Zola's La Curée which is set in the period of Haussmann's reconstruction of Paris. It's a highly satirical book which depicts the rampant property speculation and decadence of the time. I wonder if Zola also influenced the view of Haussmann's legacy?
Is it good? I'm a huge fan of the Rougon-Macquart novels and La Curée is one of the few I haven't read yet. Pot-Bouille is my favourite - if you haven't read it, do!
Yes, I'm really enjoying it. I found the first book in the series (The Fortune of the Rougons) a little bit slow, but not this one. I'm trying to work through them more or less in order, inspired by the recent adaptations on Radio 4.
Good film, too.
Also loving this series. Something worth reading, for a change, which doesn't instantly depress or demoralise!
Haussmann is certainly a unique figure by the sheer size of his achievement, and by the fact that it was done in one of the biggest and one of the most famous cities of its time and age. Many European cities expanded and were partly made over in the 19th century, but few of them to that extent, and none of the same size and importance.
I live in Cologne, which had had extensive fortifications that the Versailles treaty stipulated had to be torn down after the Great War.
Konrad Adenauer, mayor of the city, used this occasion to create a green belt around the town that very few cities have. It is complemented by other parks and green areas more to the centre of town, that allow for nice walks near many living quarters.
The destructions of World War II, by contrast, were used to make the city easier to drive into with cars, something that has contributed to making it rather ungainly in appearance.
Yes. Of course the last walls of Paris (the Thiers Wall) were what the Bvd Peripherique was built on! Though easy to lament, nevertheless it is hard to imagine the transport system of Paris working as well as it does without it, so in the end it was the correct thing to do. Compare to London which doesn't have anything like it (the M25 is an outer Ring road). At the same time there was a lot of green space and sports facilities etc built where the walls were; eg. the whole southern periphery is a green belt inside the Peripherique up to the Boulevardes Marechals; including the Cité Universitaire.
Marvellous. A French teacher once showed us how, if one blocked an Avenue then an adjacent Rue then any Impasses etc., one created a 'corral' and so one could effectively contain a mob : his argument was that Haussman was working for a government that feared the Paris mob more than any external enemy. This series is terrific : I hope it will appear in book form one day.
And it was not the first one. Most of french kings feared the Paris people, that's one of the reasons why Louis the 14th built his caslte so far from Paris, in Versailles.
Rioting is one of our oldest tradition :)
Very good read. Thanks.
Great article, thanks. What a brilliant and visionary man Haussmann was.
Actually, the idea came from Napoleon III who had briefly spent some exile years in London and was impressed with the West city.
However, Haussmann was certainly the right man for the job, and thought of a lot more things than his masters.
To me, the stand-out point in this is that he got the sewers built, which I hadn't realised. Surely that in itself justifies the changes, from how it's described as being before (no loos, disease rife).
It's hard to imagine how was Paris before 1860's WITHOUT sewers...Maybe I just don't want to imagine...
I presume everything must have just flowed into the Seine :-( Imagine the smell!
The slope would not be steep enough.
By the way, I agree with others that this is a great series. The one on Jamaica was fascinating.
I've been to Paris a few times, but I've never had any affection for place - it all feels a bit samey and anonymous, and any spot with any character is touristed to death.
You have either not properly been to Paris, or you have no affinity for French culture. Paris is less anonymous than other cities of the same size, and while Haussmann certainly has set up a framework that can be sensed all over the city, a lot of very individual and different quartiers exist that have bags of character about them. And not all of them are known to tourists or extensively visited by them.
Feel so sorry for you. Empty is a word that springs to mind.
Too dominated by large roads and traffic for my liking, Turin is very similar in this regard. London however has the opposite problem having abandoned plans to resolve its traffic issues back in the seventies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUEHWhO_HdY
Walter Benjamin wrote a very interesting essay about it: "Hausssmann ou les barricades".
Indeed. It is harder to place barricades on wide boulevards. Paris was a powder keg in those days.
Hardly and area was devoted to green space under Haussmann. The dark courtyards and pollution remain to this day. What cities need are houses with gardens, not apartment blocks
Paris does remain one of the most polluted cities in Europe. London, also one of the most polluted cities in Europe, has its houses with gardens. But it entails spreading the city out, which encourages longer commuting journeys and hence more emission. This holds true for many American suburbs dominated by 'houses with garden'. The paradox, however, is that both Paris (by Haussmann or not) and London have their fair share of green space.
Perhaps, the key to less pollution lies elsewhere, beyond the immeubles haussmanniens, houses with garden, the grand boulevards or urban green spaces.
Haussmann was responsible for a large number of green areas that the 'medieval' quarters already could not have because within the city walls, everything was quickly built up. Haussmann had tens of thousands of trees planted along his avenues and boulevards that wouldn't even have found space in the ancient maze of small streets. Many small parks on squares were included into the planning.
It is pretty obvious you have never lived in such a real city, certainly not Paris. The classic suburbia you are dreaming about long ceased to be available to most people; instead there is exurbia where a tacky McMansion almost fills the small lot, and the residents spend their lives driving: to commute, to school, to shop, for any entertainment and sport etc.
In Paris you have such a density of residents that the urban utility is simply devine. Usually there will be a boulangerie on your block (there was one in my building and I could smell the baking bread early in the morning). And cafes, brasseries, restaurants, bars etc and real fresh food markets (street markets and covered markets). Real owner-run small retail of all descriptions that most in the Anglosphere have forgotten even existed once. And most of all, a city that is wonderful to walk in, and easy to walk almost anywhere; or cycle with the Velib system, or of course the super-efficient Metro. Excellent parks that one actually uses and that exurbanites can only dream of (no matter what may be seen on plans of exurbs their residents rarely use them because they have to drive there and they are usually busy trying to drive somewhere else, like a giant shopping mall that is identikit to a thousand other ones that could be almost anywhere in the world). Incidentally Paris has two huge parks within its city zone: Bois de Boulougne is two and half times the size of NYC's Central park. On top of that, Paris and the Ile de France has some wonderful green public spaces with bicycle paths, large woods (Foret de Compeigne, Foret de St Germaine, Foret de Sennart, Rambouillet, Fontainebleau etc.). Some people actually live close to those areas but I prefer to live in the centre and visit the different bois and forets on weekends.
Try living in Paris for a year (at least), and as Hemingway said, it will stay with you forever. And if you tell me you have lived there, then I don't believe you. Or you are the biggest dumbest philistine on this thread.
I love these stories of cities. Thank you.
It's been suggested that Napoleon III's plans for Paris were influenced by his time in (believe it or not) Southport, Lancashire, where he lived on Lord Street for nearly two years:
It's a little known fact that Prince Louis Napoleon (Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte) lived on Lord Street from May 1846 before becoming Emperor of France in 1851.
Just a year later, no doubt inspired by his stay in the town, he set his Prefect of the Seine, Baron George Haussman, to work redesigning the city of Paris.
Much of the medieval centre of Paris was replaced with broad tree-lined boulevards, covered walkways and arcades, just like Lord Street. [...]
Lord Street, one of Britain's finest boulevards, is the main shopping thoroughfare - straight and wide for almost a mile. Along one side are shops with Victorian glass topped canopies and on the opposite sides are gardens, fountains and classical buildings.
See also this journal article
Strange that any Parisians would still lament the loss of "medieval charm" long after these transformations have passed from living memory. Considering that most of the world seems to be filling its cities with as many American-style glass boxes as possible, the French should consider themselves fortunate to have the capital they do.
And for those who enjoy American-style schlock, La Défense is only a short ride away.
Though the fact that La Defense is only a short Metro ride to Paris (well, 13 stops Line 1; or 3 stops on the RER to Chatelet) makes it infinitely better than any equivalent in the US.
"Medieval charm" = filth and dark. Today, largely thanks to Baron Haussmann, Paris is one of the most beautiful capital cities in the world.
Paris remains a magnificent city, thanks to the designs of Hauptmann. One can also thank his successors, who have tried to keep his vision alive. Perhaps it is too much...the political, cultural and economic center of France. It has certainly survived in recent years, as the political fallout from the Empire plagues Europe with refugees, both cultural and economic.
The Metro has been a model for the worlds great cities, and was successfully upgraded through the 1970's and 1980's. Underground parking improved street life. Les Halles, finally, is being re-developed as a vibrant quartier.
a true genius, paris is all the better for his work
One of his skills, still so much a part of the character of Paris, is managing architectural detail at non-right-angle intersections so that the narrow back streets merge seamlessly into the Boulvardes
Yes, I'd agree that this is one of the crucial thing which distinguishes Hausmanns work from other grand scale visionaries. I'm a relative newcomer to visiting Paris regularly, but what most impresses me is how beautifully the new pattern was imposed over the old medieval streets. There must obviously been a lot of destruction of the old fabric (for me, the avenues are just too wide and big), but I love how you can stroll down a grand imperial avenue, and with just a slight turn of direction walk into a curving and intimate medieval lane almost without noticing it. Its that seamless interface which I think gives Paris its special urban charm and makes it perhaps the most architecturally harmonious of all the great cities.
The main problem is not the Paris drawn by Haussmann but that Paris is not only central Paris with 2.5 million inhabitants, it's a conurbation with 11 million inhabitants.
As usual the poors live outside town, in the faubourgs in past centuries, now termed the suburbs/banlieues (the supposedly no-go areas shown on Fox news) and there's a social, racial, cultural divide that is producing revolts. Investments and planification in the suburbs have been miserable in comparison to the centre of Paris
The wide avenues in Paris wouldn't have existed without the revolts of the 19th century, in 1830, 1848 and 1870. Now young people from the suburbs prone to revolt turn to Daech instead of burning police stations or of throwing steel street architectural elements on police cars. It's the globalisation of rage.
It's not the generic "poor" that live in the suburbs; it's alien populations who have no desire to contaminate their divine purity by becoming French.
If you are born in France, you are French. Even if you habe 'Ben' as your middle name like many Arabs.
Put them on a plane and drop them in the middle of Sahara.
Let them riot there
Good piece by Willsher.
Panting at the heels of Napoleon III and Haussman, as they decreed and bashed a new Paris into being, were opportunistic, philistine speculators in real estate, grabbing what profit they could during l'empire frivole et corrompu - playing fast and loose with what regulations there were and with what scruples were left among the officials of the city and of the national administration.
See La Curée (The Scavenging or The Kill), the novel by Zola that depicts just such decadent chancers of that place and time. (If you read it in English, make sure you choose a modern translation from a well-established publisher, not a bowdlerised job from the late 19th century given a re-tread, its copyright having expired, by a small-time UK publisher on the make.)
Thus is how a city can look if it is created by a man with a plan and by the combination of autists and councillors lurking for bribes. More recent developments in Paris however show that also on Paris the good days are over.
Ie.: This is how a city can look if it is created by a man with a plan and NOT by the combination of autists and councillors lurking for bribes.
The original post probably wasn't that far off either...
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