Hauss style

Joanna Leggett learns all about Georges-Eugène Haussmann – the man who designed the Paris that we know and love

- Joanna Leggett

One of my favourite Impressionist paintings contains a snapshot in time of the Avenue de l’Opéra, one of the new boulevards created by Napoleon III in the mid-19th century. While pedestrians and horse-drawn vehicles come and go along the wide street, the elegance and space of what was, in effect, a new cityscape, has the charm and character which is so definably Paris. I never tire of looking at this masterpiece by Camille Pissarro, one of several he made of the Avenue.

But our story begins a little earlier than this work, which was painted close to the turn of the 19th century. When Napoleon I’s nephew got himself elected as France’s first president in 1848, and then declared ‘Emperor of the French’ four years later, he set out to leave his mark upon the country and Paris in particular.

He’d had a long time to think about how to do this, having been exiled from France for many years (another story altogether). Back home and in power, he worked swiftly to modernise the economy, expand France’s overseas empire, engage in a few wars (as one would) and, most importantly for our story, commissioned a grand reconstruction of Paris. For this he engaged a Parisian-born official with a career in public administration, GeorgesEugène Haussmann.

MAN WITH A PLAN