1. If you’ve been wandering in Paris, you’ve probably come across one (or several!) of these green painted fountains. Known as Wallace Fountains, they were added to the cityscape in the 19th century by Englishman Richard Wallace. Wallace added them, in large part, because the 19th century poor in Paris had little to no access to clean drinking water. This lack of water is actually one of the main reasons Paris looks the way it does today – but first, a bit of background.
2. While Paris was first settled by the Parisii Gauls thousands of years ago, the oldest structures in Paris date to the times of the Romans: then, the city was known as Lutetia or Lutèce. The Romans lived principally on the Left Bank of Paris, in the current 5th and 13th arrondissements. The modern street of rue Saint-Jacques was one of the cardi maximi of the Roman city. Evidence of this settlement can still be found in the area: Roman baths form the base of the structure of the Cluny Museum, and a Roman amphitheater still stands on rue Monge (depicted above).
3. The fact that any evidence remains at all, however, is an enormous feat: for years, conserving evidence of the past – what we’d know call cultural heritage or patrimoine in French – was unheard of. In fact, most of modern Paris was built after the destruction of the medieval city by Napoleon III, the second emperor of France and nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte. This was part of a plan to modernize the city developed for Napoleon by Eugene Haussmann, whose likeness is immortalized in the statue above.
In developing a plan for a new Paris, Haussmann had two major missions: create an aqueduct system bringing clean water into the city (a mission that earned him the nickname “the Aquaduke”) and create a series of wide avenues with lots of green spaces. The beautification project was designed as such (at least in part) to prevent more uprisings from taking place amongst the Parisians; the uprisings had been facilitated in the past by the narrow, serpentine streets of the medieval city, immortalized forever in Les Misérables.
4. While the city was being modernized, there was a simultaneous movement to preserve the past, for the first time ever. The man whose likeness is etched into the side of the Hôtel de Ville was one of the most instrumental leaders of this movement: Eugene Viollet-le-Duc was a neo-Gothic architect whose handiwork can be seen in nearly every medieval building that is still conserved in Paris today, most notably Notre Dame Cathedral.
Viollet-le-Duc was inspired at least in part by Victor Hugo’s vision of the Cathedral at the height of its popularity: as described in Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris, the Cathedral was covered with intricate gargoyles and filled with beautiful statues – none of which would have still existed in the 19th century, when he was writing. These, along with Viollet-le-Duc’s spire, make the Cathedral what it is today.
5. Modernization in the city has taken a different route, these days: our current mayor, Anne Hidalgo, has been making moves to help slow things down in Paris, specifically adding pedestrian spaces to touristic areas including the quais of the Seine and even the Champs-Elysées: every first Sunday of the month, the famous avenue is closed to cars, making it the perfect place to enjoy the city on-foot.