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00:09it's the collision the meeting between big ideas and big violence that have actually made france
00:17what it is today throughout its tumultuous history paris has been sacked occupied multiple times
00:24and endured a bloody revolution it's got this history of popular uprising from the Middle Ages
00:30right through the 16th century that the front in the in the 17th century and the French Revolution
00:37obviously then the revolution of 1830 1848 and 1871 this whole of that way through you've got
00:48these these explosions if you like of popular violence and and resistance egality fraternity
00:56liberty the spirit of the revolution lives on in the city of Paris nearly 250 years later but despite
01:04this much remains of this most creative of cities what has survived is treasured and admired not just
01:12by Parisians themselves but by people the world over Paris as the fashion capital of the world is
01:20born in the 12th century and becomes known throughout Europe in the 13th visually of course it has never
01:27been destroyed like that of the Greeks in the ancient world the culture of France is regarded
01:34with prestige its language became one of international diplomacy it is a polished city it's it's the city
01:43of culture it dominates the country in a way that many other capital cities don't France's reputation for
01:49high culture has meant even its invaders have regarded its capital with fascination and all its contents
01:57to be treasured and not destroyed throughout French history Paris has been at the center of it all
02:04it's a city that's been very carefully designed to have a kind of a unified architecture and often
02:10when foreigners come here for the first time this is often called the Japanese effect because it
02:14happens to Japanese tourists they can't believe when they get here what they've seen on YouTube or
02:19on Instagram it's all real the feeling that France is a great power to be reckoned with it's something
02:25that never goes away previously Paris in the age of revolutions saw the dismantling and even
02:37destruction of what had been created over centuries by its Christian kings the so-called ancien regime it
02:46then reinvented itself again through its reconstruction by the Napoleonic emperors
02:53but after their overthrow the city now faced fresh challenges to reinvent itself again Emperor Napoleon
03:02the third had self-destructed after declaring war on the emerging German state which not only defeated
03:09his army but took him captive and then besieged Paris it was a humiliating defeat for the French they
03:17suffered 750,000 casualties including 140,000 dead against 40,000 for their opponents nearly half a
03:28million more French were captured Harris was besieged an old-fashioned siege surrounded by German
03:35trenches bombarded by German cannons all of its supplies cut off including its water supplies
03:41its fuel supplies and in the end people were eating whenever they could get horses largely Paris had a
03:50lot of horses of course pulling buses and pulling carts they were largely eaten and anything else that was
03:57was edible elephants from the zoo rats from the sewers dogs and cats fish from the Seine
04:04the only thing they had plenty of apparently was Coleman's mustard so that was probably quite useful if you're eating
04:11rat Napoleon the third himself was captured and forced to abdicate and then sent into exile to
04:19England he never returned to be associated with such a massive defeat in national memory as the as this
04:27it really there's no coming back for the bonapartist regime after that well Paris had been a fairly
04:34turbulent city for a long time it was France's biggest city biggest working-class population
04:39biggest industrial center and France had been an unstable country there was no general agreement on
04:46on its form of government so you could say well you know Paris was a bit of a handful to
04:50put it mildly
04:51but what really made it disastrous in in 1871 was that during the siege by Germany the previous year
04:59they'd armed the population so early in 1871 you had first of all a hundred thousand plus men with guns
05:07who couldn't be pushed around and you had a divide political divide between a city of Paris that was
05:16overwhelmingly republican and democratic and the rest of the country that was overwhelmingly monarchist
05:22and not terribly democratic so that was a recipe for almost certain conflict and as it as it turned
05:31out a real civil war and with two big armies fighting on each side riots and revolution known as the
05:40Paris
05:40Commune then broke out before being suppressed two months later 200,000 Frenchmen who defended the
05:48Republic were trapped in the city and were no longer paid they went on the rampage it was then that
05:55the
05:55famous Tuileries Palace was burnt down the Paris residence of French monarchs for three centuries and a symbol
06:03of royal power it had been attacked and occupied in the revolutions of 1789 1830 and 1848 now finally
06:14during the Paris Commune's time this massive palace part of the Louvre complex which dominated the center
06:21of the city was burnt down fires raged for days it was finally demolished 10 years later in 1880
06:34the area west of the Louvre today which is where it stood is now a garden the Tuileries garden
06:41the communards embodied and sought to redirect some of the values of the French revolution empowering rights
06:49of the citizen their two-month control of Paris was finally put down by the army
06:58in may 1871 famously the so-called bloody week less men sang glance the troops come in for the regular
07:06troops come in sweeping into Paris from the southwest from the direction of Versailles where the government
07:11is based and just go through the streets and start massacring people the last remaining communal the last
07:18remaining sort of rebels on the streets in the Père Lachaise cemetery to the east cemetery put in place
07:25really in find the first Napoleon in fact in the early 19th century and famously there's the last
07:31communard put up against the wall which is now called the Munich and shot and this really goes
07:37global goes worldwide you know people people see it as a sort of enormously uh violent and uh uh
07:44shocking uh shocking event um it's really important for the French left uh every mayday for
07:51well it's still going on but i think it's declined in the last 20 or 30 years but certainly
07:56well well into the 20th century every mayday the left in France or in Paris get on the streets and
08:04they march to Père Lachaise it's one of the great uh working class uh festivities if you like of Paris
08:11and uh it's obviously important you know the Russian revolution uh is very sick you know looks back to
08:17the commune um i think it's said that when the first Russian spaceship uh goes up with Yuri Gagarin i
08:25think
08:25he's got some bit of the commune in his uh space capsule you know so it's really important in
08:30terms of the left on the right it's seen as something that's utterly utterly shocking that
08:34this violence uh of the of the communard because there is violence both sides in particular they
08:40shoot the um uh Archbishop of Paris who's taken hostage uh this is seen as you know the bad side
08:47of
08:47the revolution uh bad side of rebellion and uh it polarizes uh French politics for generations
08:54uh to come the uprising and the defeat in the Franco-Prussian war would greatly affect the policies
09:02of the new third republic to rub salt into the wounds symbolically the new Prussian leader of a unified
09:10Germany Otto von Bismarck would declare the new state at Versailles Bismarck decided that they would
09:20proclaim a new German empire a unified German empire at Versailles fair enough but as a special extra
09:27humiliation to the French they'd do it in the hall of mirrors in Louis XIV's great hall of mirrors in
09:34the
09:34in the the palace of Versailles and that's where Germany was proclaimed and it was rubbing the French
09:41noses in their humiliating defeat which they didn't forget it will mean that uh the uh Franco-German
09:48rivalry will absolutely dictate European and in a way world politics for the next 100 years it's only
09:55in 1945 really uh that that chapter ends but between uh uh 1871 down to 1945 the axis France Germany
10:04and the
10:05hostility and the opposition between these two will really dictate the way in which European and world
10:10politics looks this is the pantheon perhaps more than any other building in the city
10:18it represents the changing fortunes and conflicting loyalties of Paris like many other grand structures
10:24here it looked to ancient Rome for inspiration modeled on the building of the same name in Rome
10:31it was originally a church to the patron saint saint genevieve turned into a public building for the people
10:39during the French Revolution it was restored to a church by Napoleon before becoming a public building
10:46once more the great writer turned artist and politician Victor Hugo was laid to rest here
10:56millions lined the streets of Paris for Hugo's funeral in 1885 the author of literary masterpieces
11:05les miserables and the hunchback of Notre Dame which addressed the stories of the poor and downtrodden
11:13Hugo was a political creature he lived in exile during the reign of Napoleon III whom he hated when
11:21he returned to Paris after Napoleon was exiled he became a member of parliament and sympathized with the
11:27Paris commune the term pantheon comes from it's it's based on the roman pantheon which is the pantheon of
11:33heroes and these are the people who have made a civilization now it's very important that this
11:38is a secular place because this is a secular uh civilization there's a division between state
11:44and church this comes into play more effectively in 1905 with the laws on near city but in the 19th
11:50century
11:50the schism is already there and the schism is already happening and Hugo um was not a convinced atheist
11:58necessarily but he believed in France as a civilization a new form of civilization which went beyond the old
12:06roman model because Paris was always in competition with Rome as a religious center up until the 18th century
12:11the 19th century so the new Rome that Hugo invented was was a a a new Rome where God and
12:20the church did
12:21not dominate it was humanity it was the people who made the heroes and it was the heroes were the
12:27heroes
12:27of the people in the pantheon it became the final resting place not of religious heroes but secular ones
12:34including the great philosophers of the enlightenment Voltaire and Russo
12:41before going into exile hugo a republican somewhat ironically lived here on the distinctly royal place
12:49des vosges a 16th century square laid out by louis the 13th whose statue still stands at its heart
12:59hugo's apartment was part extravagant part eccentric decorated in his own image displaying his own works of
13:08art you can walk through its drawing room and bedroom recreated as it was when he died
13:15in the decades after the paris commune resurrections
13:18paris would once again as it had done before rebuild and re-establish itself on the world stage
13:26you would think well the republic will go against the napoleon the third model because it's an imperial model
13:32it's very grand you know full of grandeur etc it'll be more you know prosaic if you like but they
13:38accept the haussmann model and the haussmannization of paris as we call it continues right down to 1914
13:46in fact there are more houses and buildings of the haussmann model built between 1871 and 1914 far more
13:54actually than were built between 1850 and 1870 france's gift for innovation translated into other
14:07spheres notably the creative arts it became a very free city all censorship was abolished it was much
14:15freer than london or new york and i guess most or perhaps all great european cities you could write
14:23things you could paint things you could do things that you weren't allowed to do in other places
14:28and that certainly was a big attraction impressionism originated with a group of paris-based artists
14:35whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s
14:42at the time when victorian england was buttoned up and prudish and much of the rest of europe similarly
14:48conservative paris was a bohemian hub free and easy and artistic types and creatives loved it
14:57in london you're not allowed to draw nudes you could draw statues but not not real people naked people
15:04and there's a story of a young british woman art student who went to paris and the first time she'd
15:11ever seen a naked man was in the in the drawing studio so she had to rush out and go
15:16to the loo and
15:16be sick that wouldn't have happened in london because she it wouldn't have been her experience
15:21at the slade for example but in paris that was perfectly normal um even for even for women in paris
15:29you could you could make a living as an experimental artist as so many did it became the center of
15:34the
15:34avant-garde and i don't think that's imaginable in any other european city today it's a hugely popular
15:42tourist site montmartre is home to one of the city's most famous cathedrals sacré coeur it was built to
15:50honor the french dead in the franco-prussian war from here you can gaze out at the city below
15:57near the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th during the belle époque many soon to
16:04be
16:04famous artists lived worked or had studios in or around montmartre they included pierre august renoir
16:14claude monet edgar dega henri toulouse la trek rosario and vincent vancourt
16:24it's windmill ground flower from its hilltop bakery today souvenir shops pay homage to its
16:31artistic history the building which was home to the studios of many artists from this period is now
16:38a museum one of the most famous of the early impressionists renoir designed a garden here which
16:45proved the inspiration for his paintings dancing at the moulin de la galette in 1876 and the conversation
16:53d'un jardin in the same year i think the idea that paris is a very bohemian place where people
17:01come and
17:02they want to make a reputation for themselves is there i mean uh la bohème the great uh opera which
17:09was
17:09actually uh based on a a a novel based on real life if you like about the bohemian culture of
17:15the
17:15latin quarter in the uh in the middle of the uh century establishes this idea that you paris is
17:21where you go to make it and you make it as a as a painter must also be put in
17:25the context of the
17:26educational system which france introduces particularly napoleon actually more than anyone else
17:32really centralizes higher education and research on paris and so the the the the top most um uh
17:40rung in the uh of educational uh establishments relating to painting is the ecole des beaux art
17:47the impressionists are the first i suppose revolutionary art movement in paris and i think the reason why it
17:54happens in paris is because the under under the um under the second empire and also under previous
18:01monarchical regimes the whole art world had been pretty strictly regulated you know you had to go
18:07to certain schools you had to produce certain kinds of work and above all if you wanted to make a
18:12name
18:12for yourself you had to win state approval state patronage and you had to be you had have your work
18:18shown in the annual official um salon so all this was kind of regulated by the state so if you
18:25wanted
18:25to do something new you got to in a sense be a a genuine rebel so as we know the
18:32um the the the uh
18:33the first impressionists set up their own exhibition called the the salon des refusés the the exhibition
18:40of those who'd been refused from the official art exhibition so because there was an official art exhibition
18:46from which you could be turned down then you would set up your own so the impressionists begin
18:51as rebels against the the art system and some of them as rebels against the whole political system
18:59too like like manet most most famously who was who's who was seen as scandalous um and whose works had
19:07a
19:07certainly a political overtone too of criticism of the of the empire paul cesanne who participated in the
19:15first and third impressionist exhibitions developed a highly individual vision emphasizing pictorial
19:22structure he is more often called a post-impressionist several other young paris-based artists began to
19:30develop different precepts for the use of color pattern form and line devised from the impressionist
19:37example they included van gogh
19:43and paul gauguin
19:47and their work is often known as post-impressionism
19:56they turned instead towards symbolic content and the expression of emotion
20:03these artists also found themselves in the heart of dramatic political societal change radical anarchist
20:12neo-impressionist artists like maximilian loose would champion the struggle of the working man
20:19he produced evocative paintings of the massacres during the paris commune riots three decades earlier and
20:27was even imprisoned having been seen as an anarchist threat his sketches of his incarceration were equally
20:34evocative works by the biggest and best names of the impressionist and post-impressionist art world can
20:42still be viewed today at the musée d'orsay located in one of paris's old giant railway terminals this museum
20:50offers a spectacular setting the station became the world's first electrified train station but it
20:58couldn't accommodate the ever increasing size of trains leading the french government to the ingenious
21:04idea to fill it with art instead among the works from this era displayed in paris museums are those of
21:13francois auguste rodin who is generally considered to be the founder of modern sculpture while living in the
21:20villa de brillance in paris rodin used the hotel brion as his workshop from 1908 and subsequently donated
21:29his entire collection of sculptures to the french state on the condition that they turn the buildings
21:35into a museum dedicated to his works the musée rodin contains the thinker
21:45the kiss and the gates of hell many of his sculptures are displayed in the museum's extensive garden
21:58with the new government an era of economic growth began for the city symbolized by the decision in 1889 to
22:07build the eiffel tower which would become the world wide symbol of paris designed by french engineer
22:14gustave eiffel the eiffel tower is undoubtedly paris's most famous attraction and one of the most
22:22recognizable structures in the entire world an iron lattice tower soaring to over 320 meters or a
22:30thousand and fifty feet in height is held together by two and a half million rivets and 18 000 metal
22:37parts
22:38it was the tallest man-made structure in the world for 40 years before being surpassed by the chrysler building
22:45in new york it was during this nation rebuilding period that the alexander bridge the most ornate of the numerous
22:53bridges
22:53over the seine was constructed while on the other side of the seine the grand palais was built at the
23:00end of the 19th century and next door the petit ballet also constructed at the same time they were built
23:08to hold grand exhibitions promoting france and its global empire spanning countries from africa the middle
23:15east asia and the caribbean there was a whole succession of world fairs held in paris which no other
23:22city has ever equaled i think and which were in fact to show the world that paris was was back
23:28so
23:29they're willing to spend a lot of money on this and make big efforts and it did really i think
23:33work
23:34it did re-establish paris perhaps even more than before as europe's cultural center the two really
23:40big uh universal exhibitions are in 1889 in which the eiffel tower is erected uh and then 1900 1900 is
23:49the
23:49is the exhibition which is most associated with the idea that paris is the city of light because
23:54of this extraordinary use of electricity throughout the exhibition the exhibitions take place right in
24:00the heart of of paris and they they showcase paris to the wider world in a way which is uh
24:05extremely
24:06uh alluring and magnetic essentially the british empire was about money and if you wanted to be
24:12controversial about it you could say it was also about theft it was about um you know making a profit
24:18out
24:18out of the colonies and predominantly india for a long period the french had a very different
24:25conception of what the empire meant for the french it was what they called that they were going to
24:33bring a civilizing mission to the world and what they meant by that was that they were going to make
24:38the world french we are bringing the highest form of human civilization to you you're a grateful
24:45colonial people and you better get used to it this noble empire building mission was celebrated
24:51with the redevelopment of what became known as the paris boss this 18th century building originally
24:58had a wooden roof and was the paris wheat exchange it now became france's commodities exchange
25:04and was topped by a huge glass domed roof similar in style to that of the grand palais france's greatness
25:12uh as it tries to project itself to the world is that of obviously paris is a great city but
25:18france
25:18generally is a world city in which its colonists and its commerce are of signal you know tremendous
25:24importance uh uh globally so the just as the uh exhibition showcase um uh paris they also want to
25:32showcase french power so you'll find the idea coming in in the late 19th century in a number of
25:38these exhibitions but it's there in 1889 and 1900 of a of colonial pavilions where where particular
25:44colonists come and they they have um have a building which is often in the style of the the particular
25:50colony and they they showcase goods what is also rather sinister as well uh and um we would not do
25:57it
25:57today is they they they bring in sometimes whole villages or whole groups of of tribes from africa
26:03or east asia etc and put up what historians now called human zoos where you know spectators walk past
26:11and uh admire uh their own sophistication vis-a-vis these uh african tribesmen or whatever the boss's
26:19cylindrical walls were decorated with giant murals reflecting a national pride in the french empire
26:25and its civilizing mission throughout the world in the early 19th century um french history is
26:32rethought they want to go back to roman god that other great civilizing imperial power if you like
26:37uh and um it's it's always a bit of a joke but it did happen that uh the french uh
26:44history syllabuses
26:44always start with nos ancestors our ancestors our ancestors the gauls that's the way people have to
26:51start you know school kids have to think about it well actually school kids are saying this in saigon
26:56in uh setting in dakar in uh in you know port port-au-prince or or whatever uh right through
27:04the world so
27:04there's this sort of centralized model this cultural model of france which i think is is probably fairly
27:09distinctive despite its worldwide colonial reach in the mid-19th century only one percent of france's
27:17population of 30 million were immigrants and european racial stereotype images were common
27:23whether they were depicting english italian spanish turkish or persian immigrants on shop fronts black
27:35immigrants from french colonies were even used as poster boys for wine stores of the era
27:41curiously linking lazy french behaviors in the evenings with blackness and the night
27:50after the end of the great war versailles was the site of the paris peace conference
27:56which ended world war one and punished germany saddling it with harsh reparations
28:02the peace treaty that ended the first world war germany's defeat was the treaty of versailles
28:07and the germans were made to sign this treaty in the same room the the hall of mirrors the galerie
28:13des glaces in which the german empire had originally been proclaimed so this was the french saying to
28:19the germans you did this to us we're now doing it to you in the 1920s a new generation of
28:26modernist
28:27artists bringing influence from the wider world would call paris home and revolutionize once more the paris
28:34art world with wild multicolored expressive landscapes and figure paintings among them were pablo picasso
28:43henri matisse mark chagall giacometti vasily kandinsky and rodigliani
28:57after world war one paris's flamboyant sexy image lived on in its garish and entertaining cabaret the moulin rouge
29:06it's still playing today
29:33it's still playing today
29:36it's still playing today with enduring relationships led by a nazi regime consumed by vengeance
29:50they made the french sign an armistice effectively a surrender in the railway carriage in which the german
29:59generals had signed the armistice in 1918 so hitler had this brought wheeled out and the french therefore
30:06had their noses rubbed in it again so they've been rubbing each other's noses in it as much as they
30:10can for quite a long time famously as the collapse of the nazi regime approached and the great
30:18destroyer adolf hitler gave orders for the city to be destroyed the local commandant delayed
30:24implementation and the city and its treasures were saved the allies didn't feel it was strategic
30:32enough to actually uh to actually bomb and it's it's it's only um it's only uh as the allies
30:39approach paris finally in in 1944 that hitler gives that uh that order to actually destroy
30:45paris which even his commander said he wouldn't do um uh and uh by the time uh any sanctions
30:53could have been taken against that commander the allies were into paris anyway but the fact is
30:58you know it was not destroyed in the war the history glory and agony of paris is symbolized by
31:10this a great city of death but also one of the world's largest and most beautiful cemeteries
31:17scattered among the two million graves here you find many famous french men and women including
31:23great writers on the air the famous edith pf and the artist modigliani to the napoleonic war hero michelle
31:30may executed by firing squad after he swapped sides illustrated in manet's famous painting
31:40violence and tragedy has been a theme running through parisian history here too there are the graves of
31:47famous foreigners who ended their lives here disgraced british writer oscar wilde persecuted
31:53in britain for being a homosexual and american rock icon jim morrison of the doors who died in the bath
32:00are among them there are monuments and memorials to nazi concentration camp victims
32:06resistance fighters and the revolutionary paris communards
32:13for the last eight years paris has continued to build create and reinvent in the second half of the
32:2220th century it was the pompidou center a futuristic museum of art erected in the heart of the historic
32:30marais district the unveiling of so-called grand projet shows no sign of slowing down one of the latest is
32:38a
32:38total redesign of the old paris bourse or stock exchange redesigned by a japanese architect for
32:45one of france's richest men who now uses it to house his massive art collection which he displays in
32:52public in a series of exhibitions in the bois de boulogne on the eastern outskirts of the city
32:59where new office towers emerge the louis vuitton foundation part of france's rich luxury goods dynasties
33:07erected the futuristic modern art gallery designed by frank geary
33:14what is also striking about paris is it it does accept sometimes really major changes
33:19i mean when they put the eiffel tower up people say my god what on earth have they've done they've
33:24ruined paris now we think it there's the iconic structure in paris at the time it was seen as
33:29something hideous because it was so unparisian um uh one of the great writers the middle of the
33:35at the end of the 19th century said the place i really like to have my my lunch is the
33:40eiffel
33:40tower because you can't see the eiffel tower when you're actually actually in it or you look at the
33:45pompidou center that would be another great example you look at the pompidou center i'm old enough to
33:50have seen the pompidou center being built i remember when i saw it going up with all those pipes and
33:54those
33:54colors i thought what the heck is that paris can take a risk if you like on its building some
34:01of the new
34:02uh new buildings that have been put up in the last 30 40 years are very much like that they
34:06sort of play against the style rather than go with the style and i think that makes paris a really
34:11interesting unusual uh place as well despite the window dressing paris faces challenges of inequality
34:20like all great cities its great colonial mission wasn't so much built on pragmatic commercial and
34:27trading relationships like the british but on the noble ambition of making french colonies french but
34:34it hasn't worked paris's multicultural dilemma its cultural divide is best demonstrated in its outer
34:47suburbs an area of soulless shopping malls and impoverished estates well one of the unfortunate perhaps
34:55unintended consequences of the french imperial story is what we see in paris now which is the massive
35:00division between what we call the bonnie which are the suburbs which lie outside of paris mainly inhabited by
35:06immigrants and have been for a long time and central paris and there is very little connection between the outside
35:12and the
35:13inside now in some ways this is a prison idea that goes back to the middle ages where they talk
35:18about
35:18intramuros within the walls and extramuros outside the walls and anybody was outside the walls with
35:25either a bandit and outlaw or would be prey to wolves and things like that this barrier between the inner
35:31and
35:31outer cities goes back to the 19th century when a series of forts and fortress walls were built to protect
35:38the city from invasions paris was a fortress um i think mainly because another european war was expected
35:48and indeed it nearly happened in 19 in sorry in 1840 and that's when these walls and forts were built
35:56paris had not previously been fortified and therefore it had surrendered in 1814 without a fight
36:01so the french french governments thought you know if we are going to be a great power in europe we
36:06have to
36:06be able to defend our capital so the the whole city was surrounded by a huge wall with a little
36:13railway
36:13line behind it to supply it and about a dozen or so forts were built on further out in in
36:22the outskirts
36:22of the city what is now the boulevard peripherique runs where the old city walls were and you can see
36:30where the city of paris sort of stops but these days the bonia which comes from the latin banal yoga
36:38outside the limits is full of a population that feels disconnected and in some ways very dispossessed
36:45it's always very disappointed by coming to france so there are lots of different tensions they're almost
36:51like separate micro cities with different cultures almost different economies criminality delinquency and so
36:58on um you know i could talk about marseille i could talk about lyon but here in paris i sometimes
37:04feel
37:05that if you step out of line and if you step into the wrong place at the wrong time in
37:08the bonia you're
37:09in a very different country the rise of the national front and the immigrant ghettos of paris outskirts
37:16a testimony that two faces of paris survive to this day france legislated more than a century ago
37:24and imposed some say totalitarian secularism because up until the 18th century up until the
37:31enlightenment this is possibly the most religious there was important religious center in europe the
37:36sorbonne was founded on religious principles we have notre dame of course and and the whole city is
37:41supposed to radiate the meaning of christianity up until that point and the revolution turns that on its
37:46head this hardened in 1905 with the laws of what were called laicite which is a very difficult word to
37:52translate into english but basically means a kind of imposed secularism now you wouldn't have thought
37:58the law of 1989 1905 was still politically loaded in 21st century in france but it is because of the
38:06high muslim population who find that the law of laicite is impacted on their lives and this is why one
38:12of the reasons they find it difficult to be a citizen or citoyen and fully participate in french life
38:17because the laws of laicite say that you must separate religion and and state and for many
38:23muslims that's a very very difficult almost impossible thing to do in france today you know it's illegal to
38:30to wear the muslim headscarf it's and it's illegal to to flaunt your religious affiliations um and and
38:38that goes back to the revolution doesn't go back further of course laicite was directed above all against
38:43the catholic church but nevertheless it's a religious principle or an anti-religious principle and and
38:49when you've got a huge influx of of muslims and practicing muslims then you know that applies to
38:56them technically but they take it in a rather different way from the way the catholic church has
39:00had to take it hundreds of years ago this was the countryside in the heart of this now impoverished
39:08district you find the cathedral of saint denis where all but three of french monarchs in the
39:14course of the last thousand years were buried during the french revolution the cathedral was
39:20like so many other royal institutions or seats of power a target and attacked many of its graves and
39:27crypts were sacked nowadays most graves or tombs no longer contain their royal remains
39:35during the revolution the remains of royal dynasties were scattered and lost some still exist notably
39:43the remains of louis the 16th and his wife marie antoinette both beheaded during the revolution
39:49this grand location of the kings and queens of the great european empires tells the story of france
39:57and its capital a place of high culture divisive politics and dramatic protest the french sense of
40:06superiority you know if you feel that it's it's a big thing if you want to be french and you
40:12ought to
40:12do do it the french way this is where the modern world was created in lots of ways from architecture
40:23to
40:23art of philosophy to literature um it's where modern revolution was was invented it's where freedom was
40:32invented the parisians still have plenty of reasons to feel smug and superior their grand city may no
40:40longer be the center of europe and the world but it's the world's most touristed city even over
40:47tourists did attracting 30 million visitors a year from way back it's been a tourist city when tourism
40:55really comes in in the uh 18th century people want to go to paris they want to do the grand
41:01tour down
41:01to italy but they'll they'll make sure they go by uh paris as well with mass tourism as well you
41:07get
41:07paris really building itself up and paris then establishes itself as the biggest tourist city in the
41:12world i think it still is in the 21st century urban planners talk about reinvigorating inner cities
41:20it's called the 15-minute city where the local store cafe shops of all types and markets are all
41:28within 15 minutes walk for everybody paris has been a 15-minute city for the past two centuries
41:38we talk a lot these days about the 15-minute city and big cities like new york or los angeles
41:43or
41:43or or london it's an aspiration here it's a reality and the reality is that you know for example a
41:49little
41:49quartier where we're sitting which is called parity in the south of paris you don't have to go to the
41:54supermarket if you don't want to you can get your bread around the corner you can get your wine
41:57around the corner you can get a good meal here in this cafe you can get a roast chicken ready
42:02prepared
42:02you can live like it's the 19th century or the 18th century where i think it's all very human
42:07and the quality of the produce is good you don't have to be processed foods you can you put cheese
42:13wine and so on this is a cliche about friends but it's also a reality and i think for most
42:18french people
42:19they would say that's what defines who they are it's also the quality of of what they consume
42:25and the way that they consume it um it's life lived on the street uh cafes terrace it's a very
42:31you know convivial democratic society in that way but it's also one which it's more important to
42:38you know actually participate in daily life daily life's really important here and not be atomized
42:44into you know apartment blocks and you know off the alienation we find in big anglo-american cities
42:51will paris become a museum to its grand and beautifully preserved past or will it reinvent
42:57itself as before and remain an active vibrant and contemporary city as it has been throughout its
43:052000 year history i walk around and i see you know the most amazing fashion stores but then i look
43:13up and i see
43:14a building that's almost a thousand years old that has stained glass in it
43:18and i think of the effort and the talent and the vision of the the people who created those spaces
43:26and
43:27the their endurance today and i marvel at the engineering of what houseman achieved in the 19th
43:35century um you know the invention of photography by daguerre um all of the science we think of mary curie
43:43and if i think back to the middle ages it's it's the beginning of how how you make a building
43:51beautiful um so i'm interested in how paris continues to attract ingenuity and especially when it comes to
44:00creativity we're really familiar with paris there's a very interesting um 19th century tourist an italian
44:08tourist who came to paris in i think the 1870s 1880s and he said you know you know you never
44:14see paris for
44:15the first time because you've seen it before and paris is actually one of the most reproduced cities
44:21of paris pictorially that in in the world the ability to attract and support thousands of craftsmen
44:29and there's something of a nice connection here to the present day because if we think about how
44:34quickly uh builders were able to reconstruct notre dame after the fire of 2019 it's almost like the
44:41kind of the boom of experimental artisan work all over again paris attracts the best and it was ever
44:49thus one of my favorite words in the french language isn't actually french at all it's very old word
44:55arguably it's britain um paulish maybe it's the word pluk doesn't sound french but if you're a pluk
45:02that means you're you're you're you're hopeless hapless outsider to the city and what amazes me
45:09that you know it's probably 2 000 years old but it's still used every day now to describe someone
45:14who's wearing the wrong socks got the wrong haircut doesn't have to tie a scarf you know just now just
45:20he doesn't know what the latest books are just what the latest films are so if they take the order
45:24of the wrong thing in about pluk pluk pluk and it sounds nasty if i was i would be i've
45:29never been
45:30called a pluk because i'm a foreigner but if i was i'd be deeply offended but it's meant to be
45:33defensive pluk get out of the city
45:37so
46:04so
46:04so
46:04so
46:04so
46:05so
46:05so
46:06so
46:07so
46:09so
46:09so
46:10so
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