How Paris Looked Like 100-300
Years Ago (Paintings)

How Paris Looked Like 100-300 Years Ago (Paintings)

Paris is one of the most beatiful cities I ever been to. I especially love it for 2 reasons. The first one is that my favourite writer, Alexandre Dumas, lived and worked in this city and a great number of his books very vividly describe the life, streets, people and events of this city throughout its history. The Countess of Montsoro describes the Paris of the 16th century, in the Three Musketeers Chevalier D’Artagnan acts as a guide of Paris in the 17th century, the Queen’s Necklace is about the 18th century, and the Count of Monte Cristo shows what Paris was like in the 19th century.

In all these books a great number of events take place in the Louvre, on the Champs-Élysées, in the Bois de Boulogne, on the Bridge of Change, on the New Bridge, near the Hotel de Ville and other places. The author spends a lot of time describing how Paris looked like in those times. And, when you find yourself in Paris and start replay in your head all those events from the books, you get a double aesthetic-historical pleasure.

The second reason why I love Paris is the Impressionism. The movement that originated in the Café Guerbois in Montmartre was aimed to oppose then popular strict, conservative style of academism. Unlike academism, which appealed more to the intellectual component forcing a viewer to ‘read’ the picture, the Impressionists’ paintings appealed to our deepest feelings rather than to our knowledge.

In this post I am going to show how Paris looked like 100-300 years ago, namely how it was seen by artists at the time, among others, on the paintings of famous Impressionist artists.

Montmartre

Avenue de L’Opera

Pont Neuf

Louvre – Pavillon de Marsan

Arc de Triomphe

Boulevard Des Capucines

les Champs-Élysées

Boulevard de Sébastopol

les Champs-Élysées

Step 1 – Identify Which Side of the
Building You Prefer.