a brief history of Paris, revealed through its monuments and urbanism

Driven by a passion for history and a deep affection for Paris, the author set out to place more than two hundred Parisian monuments in perspective alongside the historical circumstances that gave rise to them, with the aim of enabling a broader public to achieve a clearer understanding of the city. To this end, he adopts an original approach: each monument is allowed, as it were, to recount in the simplest possible terms how it came into being and why, at a particular moment in history, its emergence—under a specific form and set of influences—appeared natural and almost inevitable. The text is complemented by approximately one hundred high-quality illustrations produced by the author. These drawings, arguably more effectively than photographs, isolate each monument and highlight both its distinctive silhouette and its principal characteristics. Taken together, the work forms a broad explanatory panorama of the historical evolution of Paris.