Everyone wanted to be the Paris of the….
Many of the cities I’ve visited have sought to be compared to Paris—Saigon was thought to be the Paris of the East by many (and it still has the greatest baguettes East of Suez); and lShanghai, particularly the French concession, had similar marketing claims. In Europe, several Eastern European cities—Budapest and Lvov come to mind–sought to mimic the leafy boulevards, the wide streets, the victory monuments, and the 6 story buildings with the mansard roofs (go to the Art Institute and see the Impressionist section and you’ll see why Paris caught the fancy of urban planners and urbanites in the 19th century).
Being back for the first time in over a decade reminded me of the envy Paris elicited, and being here, I can understand why. We came from London on the Eurostar, the fast track (literally) train that averages over 120 miles an hour and, we were told, hits up to 180. We came from Saint Pancras station, whose exterior you might recognize from Harry Potter, to Gare du Nord, the train station that is the exit/entrance of railroads from the north, including the one we will be taking to Brussels later in the week.
We spent around 4 hours driving around the city rebuilt in the aftermath of the bitter commune struggle (1871) by Baron Haussmann to surround the foundation laid especially by the great warrior King, Louis XIV, the sun king, whose 60 years or so marked in many ways the zenith of French power in and over Europe, and his martial successor a century later, Napoleon, whose arc de triumph revealed his respect for ancient Rome and an enormous ego. I hadn’t made the connection, but the city along the Seine, and especially the palaces, the Louvre, and the Luxembourg, etc., strongly resemble the palaces Peter the Great constructed along the Neva River in St. Petersburg. Peter in fact visited France in 1717, and the efforts to duplicate Versailles (especially in the Peterhof palace) are much greater than I remembered. (see later)