It seems that the defeat of the Commune was forgotten in the 1900`s because this period became known as the Belle Epoque. Despite a housing crisis the 1900`s marked the introduction of modern conveniences such as electricity, bathrooms, lifts and central heating.
Paris at that time embraced “la Dolce Vita”, lightness and gaiety. Optimism was rife since the success of the International Exhibition of 1889, for which the Eiffel Tower was constructed. National pride also took expression in the constitution of a new colonial empire which offered – so it was believed – every perspective.
Paris was thus the world`s creative capital, of the fashionable plastic arts, not forgetting theatre and cinema. Artists from the whole world, often later naturalised, installed themselves. Writers such as Ionesco, Cioran, Kessel, Troyat, Julian Green, and also painters and sculptors such as Modigliani, Picasso, Dali, Miro, Chagall, Soustine, de Stael, Mondrian, Giacometti, Foujita, and Brancusi…They found themselves alongside French artists such as Bonnard, Braque, Léger, Matisse and Utrillo…
This climate didn`t survive the First World War. There was no longer afterwards in the twentieth century a sole capital for the art of the world. For example, for the cinema Hollywood supplanted Paris during the war.
On 2nd of August 1914 mobilisation was enacted and received with great enthusiasm, for it was the occasion to take revenge for the war of 1870. But from 26th August the German threat arrived at the Marne. Machine guns were mounted on the Eiffel Tower to counter aerial bombardments. On 2nd September the government left Paris for Bordeaux.
Then the counter-offensive of Marshall Joffre liberated Paris from danger for a long while. In 1918 the German menace returned, but without causing the same panic. Meanwhile the front stabilised and Paris became the place where troops came to rest and recover.
During these four years, Paris received 746 bombs, often not large, but which killed or wounded nearly 900 people. To this figure must be added a thousand dead or wounded due to the canon called Big Bertha which had sent 303 shells over Paris. Paris became the supply depot for 4.5 million combatants. Women took the place of men in the armament factories.
Armistice Day was the occasion for a huge fete, despite the memory of the victims of the conflict. The tomb of the unknown soldier – an unidentified French victim – was later installed under the Arc de Triomphe. The ceremony which takes place there every year on 11th November is the occasion for Parisians to remember a war from which the last veteran died in 2000.
The
Between the wars period (1918-1939):
Peace returned, and attempts were made to correct some of the urban problems. The fortifications had become anachronistic – they had proved useless before the cannons - and from 1919 onwards they were removed. In their place was built the first route encircling Paris, known as the boulevard “des Maréchaux” because it was given the names of Marshals of the Empire for the length of its route around the city. It was not finished by 1939. Paris became a city open towards the surrounding suburbs.
Between 1927 and 1934, the first important attempt was made to construct low-cost housing for moderate rent in the city and, above all, in the immediate periphery.
During this period, the architect Le Corbusier, a great admirer of the work of Haussmann , tried to modify the plan for the city. Firstly, by the Plan Voisin and later, in 1937. He wanted to demolish the centre of Paris to establish a great motorway axis North-South/East-West. Sixty-story tower blocks would have housed the Parisians. The districts of Marais and Temple would have been demolished, except for a few churches! These ideas, though they seem like ravings, were presented seriously at that time. They showed a new concept of “the city” and an almost pathological obsession for modernisation.
The Second World War (1939-1945):
During the first nine months of the conflict, France and Germany watched each other, which gave time to protect the monuments of Paris and their collections. On 10th May 1940 the Germans began their campaign in France. They entered Paris on 14th June, and on 17th,Marshal Pétain asked for an armistice.
Between 1940 and 1944, Paris was occupied by the Germans. Parisian opinion became more and more critical of the Vichy government led by Pétain. The round-up of Jews in the Vélodrome d`Hiver in July 1942 and the execution of hostages shocked everyone.
The Resistance was quickly organised, but it was difficult because Paris was closely supervised. But it was in Paris that the different factions of the Resistance were united in May 1943.
The occupiers quickly made their presence felt: bronze statues were almost all melted down to recuperate the metal. Street signs in German were erected everywhere because the French misled them. The Occupation was for Paris a period of stagnation, and there was no development at all in the City.
In August 1944 the city was liberated. The battles continued from 19th to 30th August 1944. They were for a long time indecisive because Paris was not an objective of priority for the Americans, who would have preferred to make straight for Berlin. The perspective of a long street battle did not encourage them to intervene to support the Parisian Resistance forces. However, the argument concluded with Eisenhower changing his mind, because the French would never have forgiven the Americans if they had allowed Paris to be destroyed. The Americans and their allies who liberated France took on the extra burden of feeding the population of Paris.
The armoured division led by General Leclerc was authorised by the Allies to enter Paris, which decided the outcome of the battle. General de Gaulle, head of the refugee French forces in London, gave a celebrated oration at the Hôtel de Ville on 25th August. Then he travelled along the Champs-Elysées with the leaders of the Resistance the next day, among indescribable joy and gaiety.
Hitler had ordered the destruction of the city. The German commander Dietrich Von Choltitz, charged with the Defence of Paris, refused. Paris was very lucky not to have suffered destruction like London, Berlin, Tokyo, Warsaw, etc…
The post-war years to the present day (1945-today):
At the end of the war, the city was in a state of stagnation. The population had fallen to the level of 1936, and the reconstruction of the whole country of necessity took precedence over that of Paris until 1949. There was a latent housing crisis up to 1954, because the stock of buildings had aged during the war and the population grew by 600,000 between 1946 and 1954.
In 1954 was launched the great reconstruction of low-cost housing, from now on called HLM (Habitations a Loyer Modéré) in the inner suburbs. In size the project was comparable with that of Haussmann and completed his work because he had done nothing for popular housing or for the suburbs.
Meanwhile, it was in the 60`s that Paris took on the appearance of an international metropolis. On 6th August 1960 the Master-Plan for the general planning and organisation of the Paris region was adopted (known as the PADOG), followed by the Schéma Directeur in 1965. These plans limited the administrative region of Paris, and provided for the construction of main routes, the establishment of administrative and business centres and they designated zones where major facilities should be constructed as a priority. Eight towns in the Paris Region's were created or developed to serve to structure the region.
The Schéma Directeur established routes for rapid circulation in Paris. The Boulevard Periphérique was undertaken, doubling the Boulevard des Maréchaux around Paris, but to motorway standard, often underground. The verges of the right bank of the Seine were also given over to motor traffic.
During the 1960's, Paris was endowed with facilities worthy of a great modern city: motorway links, international airports at Orly and later at Roissy (Charles de Gaulle), and hotel infrastructure to respond to the nascent demands of mass tourism.
The project to give Paris a huge business and financial centre at La Défense began in 1958. Since the 1920's offices had developed in Paris, despite a significant lack of space. We have seen that Haussmann had not foreseen any particular zone for economic activities. The first building in glass, the Montparnasse Tower, was inaugurated in Paris in 1973. It is still today the only large building constructed in the interior of Paris. A complex of offices and a railway station were built around it, but the necessity for a large business quarter remained.
The plan was adopted in 1968 for the biggest European business centre, which was constructed on a paved area of 40 hectares within the most prestigious area of Paris, the Champs-Elysées. Above the concrete paving, towers for offices and blocks of flats were built, and below were placed all the services – railways, motorway, parking, and all the pipework to carry drainage, electricity, gas, water etcetera – making the underground exchange the largest in the world. Even though these arrangements were installed very quickly - the CNIT (exhibition centre) was opened in 1958; the University of Nanterre opened behind the Défense in 1967 - the oil crises of 1973 and 1978 slowed the works. After 1977 development of the paved area resumed: shopping centres, new towers, sculptures, green spaces. La Grand Arche, a cube of 110 metres, open in the centre, and designed by the Danish architect Johan Otto von Spreckelsen was inaugurated in 1989. It linked the site beautifully with the route of the Champs-Elysées.
Other projects built with the same principle of different functions at different levels, saw the light of day in the course of the years 1970-80 such as the Front de Seine and the Forum des Halles (The market halls).
As we have seen, the centre of Paris has been the object of architectural projects which brought destruction in their wake. Fired up by this prospect, the writer and Minister André Malraux had the Marais quarter classified as a conservation area to prevent any destruction. The protection of numerous sites in Paris made waves among those wanting to modernise. If everything became classified they ran the risk of living in a museum where nothing could change. The film producer Fédérico Fellini expressed the idea that he preferred Rome to Paris for the same reason.
It is that, perhaps, which decided President George Pompidou – a lover of modern art – to construct in the centre of Paris a centre of art and culture of ultra-modern appearance. Beaubourg, or the George Pompidou Centre was inaugurated in 1977. It is a block of metal and glass 160 metres x 60 metres by 42 metres high. It scandalised people at that time, but nowadays it is one of the most visited buildings in Paris. If the opinion raised then by Fellini was interesting (though at heart not far from the opinion of the nation, let us be frank!), nowadays it is no longer truly significant, even though the listed sites have multiplied. In fact, those who want to see true novelty can go to La Défense or look at the last constructions of President Mitterrand.
Francois Mitterrand wanted to make his mark on the Paris landscape. During his fourteen years in power, he had instigated numerous projects. The most successful are those which were designed in a simple form in a beautiful material: the glass Pyramid in the Louvre, the Geode at the Museum of Science and Industry at la Villette (a mirrored sphere), the hollow cube of the Arche de la Défense, and the Institute of the Arab World.
Others are more debatable as regards their aesthetic qualities but not for their function: l`Opéra de la Bastille, and the National Library of France.
At present, there are no more large projects works in Paris but the Renault site in Billancourt is the object of great plan. On this 52 hectares site, part of which is on the Ile Séguin, a Renault museum is planned, university building and a fondation for Contemporary Art.
Paris today, and a few figures:
Paris and its region, which has been called l`Ile-de-France since 1976, represents 11 million inhabitants in 2002, 19% of the population of France in 2.2% of the area.
The city of Paris contained 2,125 million inhabitants in 2001. It has been directed by a Mayor since 1977. Paris is a very important pole for the French economy: the city includes 40% of the senior grades in France and has the least unemployment. Of the workforce, 80.7% are employed in the service sector and 19% in manufacturing.
In 2000, the Ile-de-France received 36.4 million tourists –a third of them French (source ORTIF). A third of the 75 million foreign tourists who came to France in 2000, 24.6 million, came to the Paris region, placing it in the first rank of tourist destinations in the world. More than 14 million foreign tourists stayed in officially recognised hotels in 2000.
The principal foreign clients in the hotel sector are British (19%), American (18%), Japanese (8%), Italians and Greeks (8%) and other nationalities (39%). To welcome them the Ile-de-France has a bed capacity of 317,000, of which nearly 279,000 are in hotels, without counting camp sites.
The
six most visited cultural sites in France are in the Ile-de-France (in millions
of visitors):
2000 1999
Eiffel Tower 6.32 6.37
Louvre Museum 6.10 5.27
Château
de Versailles
2.58
2.43
Museum at the Pompidou Centre 1.60 closed
Musée
d`Orsay
1.58
1.63
Cité
des Sciences
1.53
1.59
Visitors to Notre-Dame are not counted, but are estimated at 12 million.
The 22 principal theme parks of the Ile-de-France welcomed more than 23 million visitors.
The first five parks in the Ile-de-France (in number of visitors):
2000 1999
Disneyland,
Paris
12,000,000
12,500,000
Aquaboulevard
4,950,297
4,440,000
Jardin
d`acclimatation
1,200,000
1,200,000
Parc
Zoologique de Paris
794,502
817,540
Text: PJ - Director History Department of www.parisrama.com
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