Places, museums, monuments

As a result of the law of 23rd Prairial (21st June) year XII (1804)prohibiting burial in churches, convents and cemeteries within thecity walls, Nicolas Frochot, who had been prefect of the Seine since 1800, decided to create four Parisian necropolises situatedoutside the walls and at the four points of the compass. Onlythree of the necropolises […]

Paul Marmottan (1856-1932) could have had a brilliant career in industry, administration or politics, but on the death of his father he chose otherwise. He became an historian, collector and patron of the arts and devoted himself and his entire fortune to one end, his passion for the first Empire.He travelled frequently to Belgium, the […]

Situated in the La Muette neighbourhood between the Parc du Ranelagh gardens and the Bois de Boulogne, the Marmottan Museum has its home in alarge town house built in the Empire style. Once a hunting lodgebuilt for the maréchal Kellermann, the house was purchased in 1882by Jules Marmottan who saw it as the ideal place […]

Work on the construction of the Bois de Vincennes (the forest of Vincennes) from the last remains of the forest to the East of Paris known as the Silva Lanchonia began in 1860. It was Napoleon III's desire to offer a place of recreation to the working class inhabitants of the XIIth and XIIIth arrondissements […]

It was on the immense 62.5-acre (25-hectare) stretch of wasteland between Belleville and La Villette that Haussmann and Alphand chose to construct one of the most extraordinary Parisian parks of the Second Empire, the “Parc de Buttes-Chaumont”. The name, derived from a contraction of the French words Monts chauves (bald hills), aptly describes the bare […]

The decision to build the Trinité church was made in the Assemblée on the 22nd September 1855. The church, built in a neighbourhood turned upside-down by Haussmann's reconstruction of central Paris, was designed by the architect Théodore Ballu and building work lasted from 1861 to 1867. In fact, the clearing of the present-day place d'Estienne-d'Orves, […]

During the second Empire, this neighbourhood, known as 'little Poland', underwent significant redevelopment following construction work by Haussmann – broad straight avenues were laid out and people flocked to live in the new houses built there, greatly increasing the population. A parish was therefore established and a church built, and great care was taken that […]

It was as a result of Napoleon III's policy of creating, in Paris, urban green space at the four points of the compass that the Montsouris park was built on the plain of the same name between 1867 and 1878. The name Montsouris is a corruption of the word Moquesouris (mouse mocker), the ancient name […]

In 1860, the old village of Monceau (or Mousseaux) near Paris was annexed to the capital along with eleven other communes. The Monceau plain, which in those days was an immense wasteland, bordered on its outer sides by the Fermiers généraux farmland, was soon to become a giant housing development – not even “la Folie […]

Created during the Empire, the Bois de Boulogne was a milestonefor garden and park construction in the French capital. In fact itmarked the starting point, in 1852, of the policy of the developmentof the green spaces in Paris. And the instigator of the project wasNapoleon III himself. The emperor took an interest in all the […]