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00:00and big violence that have actually made France what it is today.
00:05Throughout its tumultuous history, Paris has been sacked,
00:09occupied multiple times and endured a bloody revolution.
00:13It's got this history of popular uprising from the Middle Ages
00:17right through the 16th century, the Fronde in the 17th century
00:23and the French Revolution, obviously.
00:24Then the revolution of 1830, 1848 and 1871.
00:31There's a whole of that way through.
00:34You've got these explosions, if you like, of popular violence and resistance.
00:41Egality, fraternity, liberty.
00:44The spirit of the revolution lives on in the city of Paris nearly 250 years later.
00:50But despite this, much remains of this most creative of cities.
00:55What has survived is treasured and admired not just by Parisians themselves,
01:01but by people the world over.
01:03Paris as the fashion capital of the world is born in the 12th century
01:08and becomes known throughout Europe in the 13th.
01:11Visually, of course, it has never been destroyed.
01:16Like that of the Greeks in the ancient world, the culture of France is regarded with prestige.
01:23Its language became one of international diplomacy.
01:26It is a polished city. It's the city of culture.
01:30It dominates the country in a way that many other capital cities don't.
01:34France's reputation for high culture has meant even its invaders have regarded its capital with fascination and awe.
01:43Its contents to be treasured and not destroyed.
01:46Throughout French history, Paris has been at the centre of it all.
01:51It's a city that's been very carefully designed to have a kind of unified architecture.
01:57And often when foreigners come here for the first time,
01:59and this is often called the Japanese effect because it happens to Japanese tourists,
02:03they can't believe when they get here what they've seen on YouTube or on Instagram, it's all real.
02:07The feeling that France is a great power to be reckoned with is something that never goes away.
02:21Previously, from its beginnings as a Roman settlement on the Seine,
02:25Paris became a European medieval power under the zealot Christian King Louis IX.
02:32400 years later, the nation-building Louis XIV, the longest-serving monarch in European history,
02:40had equally grand visions for his capital and beyond as France became Europe's superpower.
02:48Then, at the end of the 19th century, the Ancien Régime crumbled
02:54and the French Revolution changed both Europe's greater city and the wider world.
03:06Before the revolution, Paris had this worldwide reputation as the most civilised city in the world, essentially.
03:15And it was politeness and culture and civilisation that one went to Paris for.
03:21It sort of felt throughout much of the 18th century that they ought to be able to dominate Europe the
03:27way that Louis XIV had,
03:30even in the face of the rise of new powers,
03:34like Great Britain, which has arised to be a major power during the last decades of Louis XIV, really.
03:42And then, in the 1740s, Prussia and Russia as well is establishing a European presence during those first 20 years
03:54of the 18th century.
03:56But the French feel they should somehow, they have a right to dominate Europe.
04:01Philosophers and authors such as Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot fostered the Enlightenment,
04:08creating a need for a socio-economic equality that led to the revolution and the decline of the divine right
04:16monarchy.
04:17It's military overstretch, above all, which triggers the collapse of the old regime.
04:23The monarchy goes bankrupt.
04:26It spends the whole of the 1780s trying to stave off bankruptcy,
04:31but the level of debt which it's incurred ever since the Seven Years' War,
04:36and then increased enormously in the American War of Independence,
04:41is such that they've got to keep thinking of new expedients,
04:45ways in order to stave off bankruptcy, maybe increase revenue one way or another, and so on.
04:52And eventually, the whole thing collapses because none of these schemes work.
04:57And ultimately, the markets desert them as well.
05:01The people who normally lend money to Louis XVI in 1788 eventually withhold the money.
05:10And that means that the government can no longer pay its way,
05:13and it goes bankrupt in August 1788.
05:17And once it goes bankrupt, that's the end of the old regime.
05:26Ever since the era of Louis XIV, the royal family had been based at the Palace of Versailles,
05:32but the luxurious lifestyle of King Louis XVI courtier had made the royal family increasingly unpopular,
05:39especially his famously spendthrift wife, Marie Antoinette.
05:44One of the many things that made her so unpopular was the outrageous amount of money that she was rumoured
05:51to have spent
05:51on creating this fantasy model village in the grounds of Versailles.
05:58Yet here, accompanied by a few of her most favoured courtiers,
06:03Marie Antoinette indulged her fantasy of living like a normal villager.
06:12This is seen as expensive, you know, fiddling while Rome burns in some ways,
06:16while the sort of problems of the country become more acute.
06:20They're just sort of play-acting this sort of artificial world of frivolity out of Versailles.
06:27Of course, the way that Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI and the rest of the French court was behaving
06:34wasn't that different to the frivolities and luxuries enjoyed by all European royal families over the past centuries.
06:42But by the end of the 18th century in France, public expectations had changed.
06:49There's a growing intellectual movement linked to the Enlightenment,
06:54more rational, much more critical view of the way in which society and politics is organised.
07:00So this sort of thing, basically just doing what kings and queens have done forever in the past,
07:06suddenly is looking very different.
07:08And the sort of criticism that the king and queen are getting definitely reflects
07:12a change of perception, if you like, of what's going on as much as a change of what is actually
07:17going on.
07:19Isolated out here in tranquil Versailles from the rebellious public mood in Paris,
07:25it was Louis XVI misjudged attempt to raise more money by introducing new taxes
07:31that finally sparked a full-scale uprising in 1789.
07:37The French Revolution.
07:42Marie Antoinette's dream world fell apart.
07:45Thousands of impoverished women marched to Versailles and stormed the palace,
07:51demanding that the monarchy move back to Paris to address their poverty at close quarters.
07:57Initially, the royal family lived fairly easily in Paris under house arrest at the Tuileries Palace.
08:03But on the 14th of July 1789, Parisians stormed the Bastille, symbol of the royal authority, setting off the revolution.
08:18The wealthy parts of Paris are the areas which are now around the Champs Elysées or the Boulevard Saint-Germain.
08:25They still are the 7th arrondissement, the 15th arrondissement, the 1st arrondissement, those areas.
08:31But the others in the eastern part of Paris are still popular areas.
08:37And these are the areas where the Saint-culottes came from in the French Revolution, both north and south of
08:43the river.
08:44The Bastille sits there, staring over the most populous parts of Paris.
08:49So it's quite easy, or relatively easy, to mobilise hostility to this symbol of royal power.
09:02Probably the biggest changes, and in some ways they're changes which will only really be evident in the early 19th
09:08century,
09:09that you get the nationalisation of much property belonging to the nobility,
09:16and in particular, a lot of property, because there is a lot of property belonging to it, belonging to the
09:22church.
09:23These are nationalised and will be sold off in the 1790s and thereafter,
09:27and allow a sort of remodelling of the city afterwards.
09:33Mobs stormed the Tuileries Palace too, now the new home of the royal family.
09:38Many of the grand aristocratic buildings of the era of the Ancien Régime would soon be taken over and occupied.
09:46The National Archives building today and the Elysee Palace were just two of these former grand residences.
09:55One of the key buildings, though, in the period would be the Palais Royal, just behind the Louvre,
10:01and that was really a hub of revolutionary activity.
10:04It was a big publishing place, people went there, people stood on chairs or tables,
10:07and did revolutionary orations, crowds gathered there, then they marched off to the streets and everything like that.
10:14When you go in there now, you think it's one of the oases of calm and tranquillity in the centre
10:19of Paris.
10:20But at the time, it was a really important centre of change.
10:23Many of the big mansions, the city mansions, the urban mansions of the high aristocracy, were actually turned into bureaucratic
10:32offices.
10:33So there's an enormous growth of bureaucracy in the French Revolution actually,
10:37and many of those private dwellings are turned into government offices essentially for the different ministries.
10:43By 1793, once the revolutionary mood had hardened, Louis XVI was executed, and Marie Antoinette was imprisoned,
10:54awaiting trial in the revolutionary's most fearsome prison of all.
11:04Located on the Ile de la Cité in the middle of the Seine, the Conciergerie had originally been the main
11:11royal palace of the medieval kings of France.
11:14Inside the Conciergerie, little remains of the original medieval palace, except for the remarkable Gothic vaults of the Salle de
11:24Gendarmes, constructed in 1302,
11:27as a huge dining room for the king's 2,000 or more staff and servants.
11:33Ever since medieval times, the palace had its own dungeons to imprison the king's enemies.
11:40But its fame as a much feared prison rests on the leading role it played during the revolution.
11:47Apart from Marie Antoinette, thousands of other political prisoners were incarcerated here,
11:53while awaiting trial before the revolutionary tribunal.
12:00In 1793, when she's there, it's sort of extraordinary sort of human zoo of suffering and extremes, really,
12:08because you've got very, very grim conditions for people, psychological mood of just, you know, rock bottom morale,
12:16you know, people are expecting to not to survive, essentially.
12:22Today, one of the rooms in the Conciergerie commemorates those who were imprisoned here,
12:27during the so-called Reign of Terror that lasted from 1793 to 1795.
12:35In these walls, you have the name of the more 4,000 people who have been judged by the revolutionary
12:42court.
12:42In red are inscribed the names of people who have been sentenced to death,
12:49and in black, the names of people who have been condemned to prison or released.
12:55Most of them were ordinary people, but of course,
12:58former nobles and former members of the clergy who didn't accept the constitution were targets.
13:10At the beginning of the Reign of Terror, the proceedings were quite just and democratic,
13:16because the judges had to respect the laws, even if hard ones.
13:21But at the end, these proceedings became less and less just,
13:25because the people who were judged by this revolutionary court
13:29couldn't have any lawyers, they couldn't defend themselves,
13:34so more and more have been sentenced to death.
13:40Before they were taken for trial at the revolutionary court,
13:44the accused were imprisoned in tiny cells like this one,
13:48which were often very overcrowded.
13:51In this kind of cell, you could get about 10, maybe 15 persons at the same time.
13:57You had to share it with rapists, thefts or murderers.
14:02So that was very uncomfortable for people.
14:06In fact, you had several cells.
14:09The poor went to modest and small cells,
14:14with a lot of diseases, and it was very cold during the winter,
14:20while the wealthy could pay for some furniture,
14:26so a little bit of comfort.
14:30The commanders of the prison profited hugely from this.
14:34As the reign of terror escalated, a prisoner might pay for a bed
14:38and be executed just a few days later, freeing the bed for a new inmate,
14:43who would then pay as well.
14:44One person described the conciergerie at this time as the most lucrative furnished lodgings in Paris.
14:53Surprisingly, perhaps, a significant proportion of those who were imprisoned in the conciergerie were women.
15:00So we are now in the women's courtyard of the conciergerie.
15:04This place hasn't much changed since the end of the 18th century.
15:10At night, women used to sleep in their cells, but during the day, they came here gathering,
15:15walking, talking, washing their clothes, and eating, of course.
15:27On the first floor, wealthy women were kept because the cells were bigger,
15:33while on the ground floor there were other poor women, except for Marie Antoinette.
15:39You can see the window of our last cell there.
15:45When they were sentenced to death, the women had to gather there,
15:50at the bottom of this yard, just before leaving for the guillotine.
15:56So that was quite dramatic, because they could see the other women
16:00who were themselves waiting for being judged before the tribunal court.
16:14Today, Marie Antoinette's cell looks totally different to when she was imprisoned here.
16:20So we are here now in the expiatory chapel, which was built after the French Revolution,
16:26in honor of Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France.
16:3220 years or so after her death, during a brief period when the French monarchy was temporarily restored,
16:39her brother-in-law, Louis XVIII, transformed the cell into a chapel in her memory.
16:45Behind me, there was her bed, and you can see on the walls that all is dark, all is very
16:54sad.
16:55You have some silver tears on the walls, and her initials, M and A,
17:00to remember that she sacrificed herself for the French nation.
17:07Marie Antoinette stayed a very long time compared to other prisoners here,
17:12because she was a very special prisoner.
17:15In her cell, you had two guards who kept an eye on her day and night,
17:20which was very difficult for a Queen.
17:25Finally, after more than two months in prison, on the 14th of October 1793,
17:32Marie Antoinette was taken for trial before the Revolutionary Court.
17:37The trial of Marie Antoinette lasted three days long,
17:41which was very long compared to the other people's trial,
17:46because she was a very special prisoner.
17:48She was the former Queen of France.
17:50So, Fouquier-Tainville, who was the atonant general state,
17:55had to gather all the proofs to make sure that her trial would be alright
18:00and would respect the laws, even if these laws, during the reign of terror,
18:05were very special laws, of course.
18:10Primarily, Marie Antoinette was accused of high treason
18:14for conspiring against the Revolution
18:16and collaborating with the rulers of her native land, Austria,
18:20now France's enemy.
18:22But she was also charged, probably very unfairly, with more domestic crimes.
18:30She was accused of being a bad mother, an incestuous mother too.
18:34And in the French political culture, it made sense at that time,
18:38because the King and the Queen were considered as the father and the mother of French people.
18:45So, accusing her of being a bad mother was the equivalent of accusing her of being a bad queen, in
18:55fact.
18:58And found guilty of treason, Marie Antoinette was sentenced to death
19:02and almost immediately taken from the court, in an open cart, through the streets of Paris,
19:08amidst jeering crowds, to be executed in the Place de la Concorde, then known as the Place de la Revolution.
19:16according to legend she was bravely stoic as she faced her death after accidentally stepping on the
19:24toe of her executioner she apparently said i'm sorry monsieur i didn't mean to do it
19:30her last words before the guillotine fell
19:41apart from marie antoinette around 17 000 people are believed to have been executed during the
19:49french revolution's reign of terror and another 20 000 or so are thought to have either died in
19:55prison or being killed without trial nonetheless the founding principles of the french revolution
20:01as outlined in the revolutionary's famous declaration of the rights of man had a massive
20:08inspirational effect on the subsequent development of constitutional democracies across europe and
20:14worldwide even today the french revolutionary slogan of liberty equality and fraternity is still the
20:23french national motto the excesses of the revolution also meant the grand medieval cathedral of notre
20:33dame would be converted during the terror to a temple for the people the saint chapelle actually turned
20:41into a granary in this period it was disaffected as a church notre dame itself was disaffected as a catholic
20:49cathedral and uh was converted into a temple of reason uh because of the sort of emphasis on
20:56a more um deistic sort of former form of worship the acceptance by their subjects of their monarchs
21:03divine spiritual connection to roman catholicism the divine right of kings was over symbolized by the
21:11sacking of the cathedral of saint denis throughout the french revolution there was a lot of targeted
21:18iconoclasm not just of course at the aristocracy or members of the ancien regime but also at the
21:25buildings and the artworks and the artifacts that seemed to give power to those systems um so of course
21:31there were many organized instances of iconoclastic attack at the basilica church of saint denis
21:39this included the destruction of many royal tombs um dozens still survive and even the desecration of
21:46some royal bodies for us art historians as well and this the destruction at saint denis includes the
21:53the ruination of the facade so that most of the sculpture you see when you visit the church exterior
21:58today has been restored in the 19th century and like at notre dame cathedral where many attackers would
22:06cut off the heads of gothic statues in a way that resembled the guillotine of french kings and queens
22:13um they cut off the heads of these medieval statues of kings and queens at saint denis so aligning the
22:20symbolism in a really interesting way outside all of the public statues of the kings and queens were
22:25effectively beheaded they disinterred the the bodies and they were kicked around uh we we still have
22:33what is thought to be henry the fourth head because that was rescued from use as a football but generally
22:39they were chucked into a common grave to to all rot together but there were attempts to recover the
22:48the bones after the revolution and to try to distinguish who was who
22:55after so much destruction a new king would emerge his name was napoleon bonaparte he would even crown
23:04himself emperor in notre dame which he would make a church once more located in the heart of paris the
23:20extremely grand louvre palace was the french monarchy's main residence during much of the 16th and 17th
23:27centuries after 1682 however once the royal family had moved out of paris in order to live in the even
23:35grander palace of versailles in the countryside the old palace of the louvre in paris was simply used to
23:42house the king's vast private art collection today of course the louvre is renowned as one of the world's
23:50greatest public museums displaying a remarkable 40 000 works of art including numerous world famous
23:58treasures such as leonardo da vinci's mona lisa
24:08but now the great royal art collection in the louvre had been appropriated by the revolutionaries
24:15and opened for public appreciation
24:22initially the number of artworks on public display in the louvre was just 700 or so it wasn't long
24:30however before the museum's collections began to expand dramatically following the coup d'etat in 1799
24:37that led to napoleon now a great military leader being named consul or dictator of france for a period of
24:4610
24:46years
24:50napoleon is a fantastic self-propagandist and quite early on he sees the potential of the louvre to add to
24:58his
24:58glory as the result of a succession of military triumphs abroad which brought him huge popularity and the
25:07title of consul or dictator for life napoleon began filling up the louvre with numerous world famous
25:14artworks that he'd seized as the spoils of war from egypt italy and elsewhere it was at this time
25:22the new director of the museum a man called vivant denon who was also a consummate courtier uh told
25:30napoleon wouldn't it be a good idea if we named this museum after you sir and of course napoleon's
25:36good idea so at that point in 1803 the museum this musée central des arts central museum of arts became
25:44known as the musée napoleon the napoleon museum
25:53by the following year napoleon had decided that the title of consul or dictator for life
25:59was no longer grand enough to match his exalted status
26:04so in december 1804 he had himself crowned emperor of the french amidst great splendor his coronation
26:12took place at notre dame where france's most famous painter of the era jacques louis david was
26:19on hand to paint the official visual record of the occasion napoleon loved this picture uh famously
26:28said wow look at this picture you walk in this picture it's fantastic and it is incredible you
26:33can see all of the individual faces people came in specially to be painted uh each one as a little
26:38portrait in itself uh david famously adds napoleon's mother napoleon's mother wasn't there she was with
26:45his brother lucien it's almost like napoleon has painted his mother in so you can say look at me ma
26:50and then right up at the very top of the painting you can see there's a man with a sketchbook
26:55and
26:55that's david painting himself into the picture which is very charming of course
27:02given that the french revolution had abolished the monarchy just 12 years before napoleon's grandiose
27:09coronation of himself as emperor was widely if secretly disparaged in france too a lot of his
27:18colleagues from revolutionary days are very disappointed because it looks a bit like the
27:22ancien regime looks like the old world coming back and fortunately for napoleon a year later to the
27:27very day the battle of austerlitz happens on the 2nd of december and then napoleon has another uh
27:34another coronation a military coronation this time the great battle the fantastic victory uh
27:39and so in the ceremonies that take place every year on the 2nd of december which is coronation
27:44day and austerlitz day it's austerlitz day which is also coronation day so austerlitz day
27:49takes over as the big uh memory symbol of napoleonic might and napoleonic power
27:58it was to celebrate his great victory in 1805 at the battle of austerlitz over the combined forces of
28:04the russian and habsburg empires that napoleon ordered the building of the famous arc de triomphe
28:10on the avenue de champs-elysees austerlitz was such an important victory however that one triumphal arch
28:17wasn't enough next to the louvre napoleon asked for a second one to be built known as the arc to
28:25triomphe
28:25du carousel in the first years of the 19th century as he was on the march throughout europe napoleon
28:35would soon go on to order other monuments commemorating the military glory of his grand
28:40army why do you know the thing about napoleon as he's as everyone knows he's at war all the time
28:46and he's not in paris very much napoleon symbolically i think admires what louis the 14th particularly
28:54what jean baptiste colbert had tried to do with paris to make it the center of europe if not the
29:01center of
29:02the world napoleon's ambitions for making paris the center of the world are perhaps in the short to
29:09medium term less about great building projects although he does create a triumphal arch they're
29:15more about for example plundering the rest of europe of its great cultural treasures its great archival
29:21treasures and centralizing them quite literally physically in paris itself in the louvre and in the
29:28french state archives there is nothing more imperial than grabbing other people's possessions
29:33and taking it to your own capital city in 1806 napoleon signed a decree for the construction of a temple
29:42to the glory of the french armies the emperor personally chose a design modeled on the style of the temple
29:51of
29:52olympians youth in aphens later it narrowly escaped being turned into a railway station before later
30:02becoming the church of la madeleine in 1845. this imposing religious building featured monumental bronze
30:11doors and 52 majestic corinthian columns napoleon also had grand ambitions for another royal site
30:20the palace of the louvre he ensured any additions to the palace carried out while he was in power
30:26carried his signature just as previous emperors such as louis the 14th had done
30:33so by moving into that space using the model of architecture and that idiom of control which louis
30:40the 14th has so clearly established in paris the louvre of louis the 14th is almost like a fortress
30:46against the city they are saying we are the heirs of louis the 14th
30:53napoleon commissioned a number of infrastructure projects in paris and took great pride in french
30:59scientific and cultural achievements to connect the louvre then known as the palais des arts and the
31:06collège des quatre nations now the institute of france napoleon decreed the construction of a new kind
31:14a foot bridge the first metallic bridge in france and the third in the world was inaugurated in november
31:211803 today it's frequented by musicians painters and walkers the view of the ile de la cité and the
31:30pont neuf on one side and the louvre and the orsay museums on the other is outstanding the biggest changes
31:39i think associated with him on most important changes in terms of the long-term development
31:43and indeed of the uh the life of the inhabitants is that he has this sense that the revolution has
31:51occurred because people were lacking in decent food and one of the first thing and cheap food well the
31:57first things he does is to improve circulation and particularly the building of canals or the use of
32:04canals to bring grain into paris cheaply and then he sets up and some of these are still in existence
32:10actually these um little markets local markets in the sort of neighborhood level and also water supply
32:17he puts a lot of fountains in so in some ways he wants to keep the parisian people happy because
32:22he
32:22doesn't want them to to revolt and in some ways that's more more important than anything else he does
32:27after the chaotic period following france's defeat in the napoleonic wars the overthrow of napoleon
32:34and the bourbon restoration it was this aristocrat louis philippe who emerged as the compromise candidate
32:42to lead france to rehabilitate napoleon into the collective memory of paris and bring warring
32:49factions together despite his bourbon lineage louis was originally a supporter of the revolution
32:57before fleeing to switzerland his father was guillotined during the terror
33:04louis philippe was in exile for more than 20 years before being made france's last king
33:10in 1830 a further nod to the restoration in the same year at the westernmost end of the champs
33:19elysees louis philippe completed and dedicated and dedicated the arc de triomphe ordered by napoleon
33:27louis philippe also indulged napoleon's love of the cultural and architectural achievements of the
33:33ancient world particularly those of rome and egypt the place de la concorde was further embellished
33:40in 1836 by the placement of the luxor obelisk weighing 250 tons which was carried to france from egypt
33:49on a specially built ship then in 1840 on a bitterly cold december day much like today a barge carrying
33:59napoleon's body made its way up the river seine before a funeral procession through the streets which
34:06would be watched by a crowd of almost a million people to be buried here at les invalides the
34:13military's headquarter in paris napoleon's wish was always to be buried by the seine in the city he
34:20loved and which had always supported him napoleon had always taken great interest in les invalides
34:27as a place and institution organizing ceremonies here re-establishing it as a home for old soldiers
34:35and as a burial place for great military commanders ironically napoleon's final resting place was
34:43inside the vast church of the dome originally built by the sun king louis xiv as a royal chapel napoleon's
34:52tomb here is a massive structure but it was nearly 20 years after his funeral before it was completed
34:59it's been here since 1861 the curator of the tomb napoleon is emil rob this is the place where the
35:08standards
35:09uh taken from the enemy were brought uh and this is the place where napoleon himself made the ashes of
35:18uh very famous military commanders come back such as turen or vauban that you can see here and there so
35:25it's quite logical that napoleon finds himself here right now this script was uh constructed around
35:33a very simple idea all around in the corridor you will find reliefs describing what napoleon did for
35:41france there's ten of these reliefs each and every one of them explaining uh one of his great achievements
35:48uh such as uh the establishment of the legion d'honneur building uh and renovating great buildings
35:56throughout france uh reforming the economy uh trying to make a french education better etc
36:06inside the sarcophagus napoleon's body is encased in six coffins one of marble one of tin one of mahogany
36:14two of lead and one of ebony also buried here members of his family including his older brother
36:22joseph who'd lived the rest of his life in exile having reinvented himself in america before dying
36:29in rome in 1844 when you go closer to the tomb there are all these statues here uh which stand
36:37for
36:37victories and specifically the victories which names are written on the pavement reminding us of the
36:46greatest victories achieved by napoleon's army such as australis the battle of maringo battles of the
36:53pyramids etc long after his entombment the debate in france about napoleon's legacy raged on
37:01he may have been a self-proclaimed man of the people but napoleon was a divisive figure a legacy summed
37:09up in the treatment meted out to one of the many monuments erected in his honor at the place vendome
37:15in the center of paris this cast column depicting the emperor napoleon as a 19th century julius caesar
37:24was erected on the order of napoleon himself in 1810 after arguably his greatest military victory at
37:32the battle of austerlitz in czechoslovakia the shell of the column itself was constructed from metal
37:39salvaged from austrian cannons taken in the battle in 1814 after napoleon's first abdication and exile to
37:48elba the column was torn down it was erected again with a new napoleon on top in 1823 soon after
37:57napoleon's death in the revolution of 1861 it was destroyed again only to be rebuilt for a third time
38:05in 1875 it's this version that survives to this day as for louis philippe who had attempted to bring
38:15the warring factions of paris together he is remembered for the invention in the city of a
38:21global symbol of street protest the barricade if there's a single type of building that i'd associate
38:29with louis philippe it would be actually the barricade the barricade uh is really built up
38:37as a defense in areas of working class militancy is really important in this period when we um
38:46when we look read victoria goes or see the film or the tv show or les miserables you see these
38:52barricades
38:53being built this is the moment that the barricade really enters uh world history as a structure
38:58associated with revolt and obviously you see them in 80 big one in 1832 which is big set of barricade
39:05building and riots in 1832 which is what victor hugo's les miserables starts with but then right
39:11through 1848 1871 and then picked up elsewhere where they were within europe and the wider world as well
39:19they want to stop it off to cavalry and preferably infantry as well and so you basically put everything
39:24you've got into it you draw up a cart and then you go into someone's shop and you pull out
39:29a few tables
39:30a few chairs and you chuck in a bath or something like that some of the pictures that we have
39:35are
39:35really very amusing in that respect and also you pull up the street the street is full of you know
39:41cobblestones you use these cobblestones as well so it's uh it becomes a extraordinary sort of uh
39:47uh spontaneous uh structure of the neighborhood after the overthrow and exile to england of louis philippe
39:56it was napoleon's nephew napoleon the third who would come to power next making himself like his uncle
40:04emperor not just king napoleon was an empire builder in the great french tradition but like napoleon before
40:13him suffered from grand ambition and ultimately overreach ill-advised adventures in mexico where he
40:22tried to install a european emperor in italy where he opposed italian unification and germany where he
40:30tried to squash a new german state sapped french power and prestige in europe but napoleon would also
40:38be remembered as a great builder and patron of paris leaving behind one of the greatest european world
40:45cities of the 19th century much copied across europe and the world napoleon iii is probably the most
40:54significant ruler of modern times for the way in which paris is built and the way it looks and even
41:01the
41:01way it way it looks now he works with his uh prefect of paris baron houseman to totally recreate the
41:09city
41:12and the way in which he recreates it is basically the way in which we know paris now that very
41:16uh
41:17characteristic type of avenue of houses all relatively low you know five six stories um the big straight
41:25boulevards cutting through uh cutting through uh paris in fact the prefect of public works george haussmann
41:33had entire districts of old narrow streets in the city center demolished replacing them with the grand
41:40wide boulevards that give paris its distinctive appearance today one of the big ideas he has about
41:47paris is let's let's drive big boulevard right through the historic heart of paris he has very little
41:54um concern for history actually i mean he's he's sometimes called the the alzation he's houseman his
42:01prefect rather sometimes called the alzation attila because comes through like a sort of a dose of
42:07salt through the city today houseman is simultaneously remembered as the man who destroyed the beautiful
42:14medieval paris and the man who created the beautiful modern paris when you look at paris and compare it
42:21with other big world cities is you think what a low place it is in that you don't have these
42:27uh huge
42:28skyscrapers or if they're one or two uh within the city they really stand out like a sore thumb and
42:34that's because over the years you know starting with houseman they've been very strict regulation
42:39on on height and that gives a sort of homogeneity uh in in types of terms of building type uh
42:47to paris
42:47which you know the tourist remarks straight away the apartments created by housemen are all at a
42:53certain you know eye level no apartment is allowed to go or no building is allowed to go from a
42:57certain
42:57eye level so everything hits you at the level of the street it's an easy city to walk around and
43:03not
43:03be alien you're not like in new york or you know with the skyscrapers or chicago the individual really
43:09counts here and the individual is not you know intimidated or oppressed by all that kind of thing so
43:16this visual democracy is an architectural phenomenon when we go to paris we think of those four to five
43:22story buildings in that lovely creamy parisian stone you know ground floor and then the piano noble with a
43:30sort of balcony all said in the same way you know very very similar uh that's really the triumph of
43:37uh
43:37of napoleon third and and uh and his prefect of paris baron houseman napoleon's redesign with its grand
43:45boulevards lined by apartment blocks became a signature look for many 19th century cities and was inspired by
43:53the city's layout in nearby london he spends a lot of time in london and actually in london one of
43:59the
43:59things which really he likes about london is the is green space uh and one of the things which he
44:04brings to
44:05um uh to paris is actually green space new parks he wants the city to breathe and indeed one of
44:11the
44:11ways in which he wants paris to breathe is building these boulevards letting air flow flow through the
44:17uh through the city the houseman model is a model for export is for paris for the very specific reasons
44:25we've been talking about to turn uh what was a dirty unkempt unhygienic but also rebellious city into
44:31something that's calmer uh more beautiful but uh more hygienic uh will attract tourists and all those
44:38those sorts of things and that model just as i say is is the one to follow for the next
44:4450 maybe even
44:45100 years depending what you're talking about throughout the late 19th century you find it uh
44:50infiltrating its way into all the big uh provincial cities of france but it's also picked up uh across
44:56europe and of course also in the uh in the um empire if you go into um a french former
45:04colonial
45:05big city now and you go into a british one what strikes you about britain is it's it's still a
45:10jumble you go into uh into one uh it could be marrakesh or or or one of the big moroccan
45:17cities or
45:17it could be actually saigon or whatever and you see these boulevard you think oh this is like provincial
45:22paris in some way so that parisian model the house model napoleon the third model is a model for
45:27export which really changes the way in which the world thinks about its cities for the next couple
45:32of generations napoleon iii commissioned this grand opera house palais garnier in 1861 at the height of his
45:42powers but it wasn't completed until 1874 three years after napoleon had been exiled like his uncle
45:51after a series of disastrous military adventures next time napoleon the third may have been a great
45:59builder of paris but his catastrophic wars led to the city being occupied by prussian troops in its
46:06aftermath his glorious creation was set on fire during the paris commune riots which set citizen against
46:14citizen another french republic would be born it would create a vastly different tone and would impact
46:23paris like never before paris would reinvent itself once more this time not as a religious city but as a
46:32secular one
46:33so
47:01It's the collision, the meeting
47:03between big ideas
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