Georges-Eugène Haussmann

The other saw a shopper.

Then came Baron Haussmann.

He tore up the narrow, winding soul of Paris to replace it with wide, military-grade boulevards.

By the time the dust settled, the flaneur's natural habitat was gone.

With his new imperial powers, Napoleon III was soon in a position to launch the transformative changes in France that he planned.

One of the most enduring legacies of the Second Empire was the transformation of Paris under the direction of Baron Georges Haussmann, whom he appointed as city prefect in June 1853.

Over the next 17 years, Haussmann implemented the emperor's plans to demolish much of the medieval city, replacing the narrow streets with large parks, expansive squares, and a ring of wide boulevards named after the marshals of La Grande Armée in Napoleon I's time.

A few months after his appointment, Haussmann announced plans to build a grand thoroughfare named the Avenue Napoleon III, now the Avenue de l'Opera, which led to a magnificent new opera house constructed by the architect Charles Garnier between 1861 and 1875.

Pierre L'Enfant.

And that happened prior, about 60 years before Haussmann's intervention in Paris.

Yes.

The reasons were quite different.

By Broadway.

And then Paris, 60 years after L'Enfant's Washington.

Haussmann, in a sense, did to Paris what L'Enfant had attempted to do in Washington.

But let's move away from those two examples.

He just took it from the prison viewing to an actual building dedicated for that.

So then, as Paris changed, as all cities do forever and ever, there's a fellow named Baron Haussmann, which sounds German to me, not French.

But he had this older morgue building replaced with a large, better-known morgue behind Notre Dame, and this is actually the morgue that we're gonna be discussing.

This is called Musée Carnavalet, and it dates the replacement building to 1868, so from about 1904-ish to 1868.

Napoleon III, he appoints

the Baron Haussmann to widen this road.

We're going to create a boulevard here.

But the Baron Haussmann knows that it's going to be very difficult to get through these neighborhoods.

So what he does is he offers very generous compensation.

He says, I'm going to give you more than what your land is worth.

He's going to compensate them according to the new value.

Moreover...

The boulevard, the barricades are across the same streets where they were in many cases in 1792 and in 1789.

And the problem, in 1968 it was very hard to build a barricade across the Boulevard Saint-Michel, which was built by Haussmann at this time.

So, the troops come pouring in.

This is down the Rue de Rivoli, which was completed in the 1850s and 60s, and the damage is staggering.

There are now just two correct answers separating him from the million-pound jackpot.

He's asked, quote, "Baron Haussmann is best known for his planning of which city?"

Oh, I know this one.

No.

Yeah, I mean, there's a direct link because Arthur Gilman, who was one of the major planners of Back Bay, had studied in France.

He knew Baron Haussmann's rebuilding of Paris, which was happening simultaneously to the creation of Back Bay.

So in the 1850s, Paris is being completely redesigned in the same way that Boston is being redesigned.

And what results, yes, is something that looks very French.