Paris

In 1994 I got the lucky chance to visit Paris probably one of the most important European capitals with London and Rome.
I spent there regretfully just a week but the charm of Paris is undeniable, also after few hours.
I have to say that is quite similar to my hometown Turin that somehow can be described as a small Paris after all.
I was totally free so I spent all day to look around. I started here in Paris to take more seriously photography and architecture and also the traveling concept.
I tried here in Paris to explore the images that come out in my mind. Here in Paris I started definitely to look for something special while I was shooting, I was not anymore just looking for snapshot.
I just had with me in Paris a point and shot camera but it did quite a good job and the pictures to be shared are here.
I started to look around mainly for churches as there are so many of them in Paris, and the results in the photos are not bad at all.
I wish to visit Paris one more time, this time with a serious camera so I can at least get some of the amazing photographic potential of a city like that.

Paris is the capital and largest city of France. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France. Paris is an important settlement since more than two millennia, today one of the world’s leading business and cultural centers.

The earliest archaeological signs of permanent habitation in the Paris area date from around 4200 B.C..
The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic, inhabited the area near the river Seine from around 250 B.C.. The Romans conquered the Paris basin in 52 B.C.. The Gall-Roman town was originally called Lutetia, but later Gallicised to Lutèce.

It expanded greatly over the following centuries, becoming a prosperous city with a forum, palaces, baths, temples, theaters, and an amphitheater.
The collapse of the Roman Empire and the fifth-century Germanic invasions sent the city into a period of decline.
By A.D. 400, Lutèce, by then largely abandoned by its inhabitants, was little more than a garrison town entrenched into the hastily fortified central island. The city reclaimed its original appellation of “Paris” towards the end of the Roman occupation.

The Frankish king Clovis I established Paris as his capital in A.D. 508.
Paris’s population was around 200,000 when the Black Death arrived in A.D. 1348, killing as many as 800 people a day.
Paris lost its position as seat of the French realm during occupation of the English-allied during the Hundred Years’ War, but regained its title when Charles VII of France reclaimed the city from English rule in A.D. 1436.

Parisians rose in rebellion and the royal family fled the city (1648). King Louis XIV then moved the royal court permanently to Versailles in 1682. A century later, Paris was the center stage for the French Revolution, with the Storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789 and the overthrow of the monarchy in September 1792.

The greatest development in Paris’s history began with the Industrial Revolution creation of a network of railways that brought an unprecedented flow of migrants to the capital from the 1840s.
The city’s largest transformation came with the 1852 Paris’ narrow, winding medieval streets were leveled to create the network of wide avenues that still make much of modern Paris; the reason for this transformation was twofold, as not only did the creation of wide boulevards beautify and sanitize the capital, it also facilitated the effectiveness of troops and artillery against any further uprisings and barricades that Paris was so famous for.

France’s late 19th-century Universal Expositions made Paris an increasingly important center of technology, trade and tourism.
Its most famous were the 1889 Universal Exposition to which Paris owes its “temporary” display of architectural engineering prowess, the Eiffel Tower, a structure that remained the world’s tallest building until 1930 and became the symbol of the city.

During World War I, Paris was at the forefront of the war effort, after that the city became a gathering place of artists from around the world, from exiled Russian composer Stravinsky and Spanish painters Picasso and Dalí to American writer Hemingway.

On 14 June 1940, five weeks after the start of the Battle of France, Paris fell to German occupation forces, who remained there until the city was liberated in August 1944.
Luckily the German General von Choltitz did not destroy all Parisian monuments before any German retreat, as ordered by Adolf Hitler, who had visited the city in 1940.

In the post-war era, Paris experienced its largest development since the end of the Belle Époque in 1914. The suburbs began to expand considerably, with the construction of large social estates known as cités and the beginning of the business district La Défense.
A comprehensive express subway network, the RER, was built to complement the Métro and serve the distant suburbs, while a network of freeways was developed in the suburbs.

Posted on January 1, 2000

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