How Paris Became Paris by Joan Dejean

How Paris Became Paris by Joan Dejean

"This lively history charts the growth of Paris from a city of crowded alleyways and irregular buildings into a modern marvel."--New Yorker

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Paris was known for isolated monuments but had not yet put its brand on urban space. Like other European cities, it was still emerging from its medieval past. But in a mere century Paris would be transformed into the modern and mythic city we know today.

Though most people associate the signature characteristics of Paris with the public works of the nineteenth century, Joan DeJean demonstrates that the Parisian model for urban space was in fact invented two centuries earlier, when the first complete design for the French capital was drawn up and implemented. As a result, Paris saw many changes. It became the first city to tear down its fortifications, inviting people in rather than keeping them out. Parisian urban planning showcased new kinds of streets, including the original boulevard, as well as public parks and the earliest sidewalks and bridges without houses. Venues opened for urban entertainment of all kinds, from opera and ballet to a pastime invented in Paris, recreational shopping. Parisians enjoyed the earliest public transportation and street lighting, and Paris became Europe's first great walking city.

A century of planned development made Paris both beautiful and exciting. It gave people reasons to be out in public as never before and as nowhere else. And it gave Paris its modern identity as a place that people dreamed of seeing. By 1700, Paris had become the capital that would revolutionize our conception of the city and of urban life.

Since 1988, Joan DeJean has served as a Trustee Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She has taught at Yale and Princeton in the past. She being the author of eleven works on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French literature, history, and material culture, the most recent of which is How Paris Became Paris: The Creation of the Modern City (2014); The Age of Comfort: When Paris Found Casual--and the Modern Household Started (2009); and The Essence of Style: How the French Created High Fashion, Fine Cuisine, Stylish Cafés, Style, and Sophistry (2009). She lives in Philadelphia and, when in Paris, she stays right around the corner from the house where the story begins in 1612.