Photos Document The Modernization Of Paris

In the mid-1850s Emperor Napoleon III commissioned Baron Haussmann to direct the modernization of Paris. Old, narrow medieval streets were replaced with the wide boulevards that we see today, thousands of gas lamps lit the streets at night, and a host of other public projects thoroughly modernized the city.

Charles Marville, a photographer employed by the city, was charged with documenting those changes.

Banks of the Bièvre River at the Bottom of the Rue des Gobelins
 (Fifth Arrondissement), 1862

Passage Saint-Guillaume Toward the Rue Richilieu
(First Arrondissement), 1863–65

Top of the Rue Champlain, View to the Right
(Twentieth Arrondissement), 1877–78

You can see some of these photographs at the exhibit “Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris” currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.