Paris during the Bourbon Restoration

The commerce in luxury goods had suffered greatly during the Revolution, as the chief buyers, the aristocracy, had been driven into exile. Their return during the Restoration and especially the rapid growth of the number of wealthy Parisians revived the business in jewelry, furniture, fine clothing, watches and other luxury products. The finest shops of Paris were lined up along the Rue Saint-Honoré. The most prominent fashion designer was LeRoy, whose clients included the Duchess of Angloulème and other aristocrats. At the beginning of the Restoration he removed the stone carving of the bees, the emblem of Napoleon, from the facade of his shop, and replaced them with the fleur-des-lys, the emblem of the Bourbons.[12]

in October 1824 a merchant named Pierre Parissot opened a store called La Belle Jardiniére, which offered a variety of women's clothing already made in different sizes, at a time when women traditionally had each dress made to their measurements, as well as jewelry, lingerie, and fabrics. The new kind of retail store was made possible by another innovation, the omnibus, which allowed customers to come to the store distant neighborhoods, instead of shopping only in their own neighborhood. It was soon followed by two similar stores, Aux Trois Quartiers (1829) and Le Petit Saint Thomas (1830). These are considered by historians the ancestor of the modern department stores, which appeared in Paris the 1840s and 1850s. Another retail innovation took place in December 1824, when the store la Fille d'honneur at 26 rue de la Monnaie became to first store in France to put price tags on items.[16]

The Théâtre des Variétés and the Panoramas (1829)

The Passage des Panoramas, opened at the very end of the 18th century, was a model for the new Parisian covered shopping street, where shoppers did not have to contend with the rain, lack of sidewalks, or traffic on the narrow streets. At the entrance of the Passage on boulevard Montmartre was a café called Véron, next to a candy shop called A la duchesse de Courtlande which sold not only bonbons but also fresh peaches, cherries and grapes, even in winter. Next door was a paper shop, Susse, with business cards and fine writing paper; then the shop of a famous modiste, Mademoiselle Lapostolle, whose speciality was straw hats. There were pastry shops, chocolate shops, shops selling coffee and tea, music, counters for changing foreign currency, and many other speciality shops, and the panoramas themselves, large-scale realistic paintings of Paris, Toulon, Amsterdam, Naples, and other cities, to be viewed for a small price. Unlike the dark streets outside, the Passage was brightly lit by gas lights, one of the first places in Paris so equipped. [12]

Rue Neuve-Notre-Dame in 1828

Paying to cross a muddy Paris street (1817)

While Paris during the Restoration had many beautiful monuments and majestic squares, the neighborhoods of the city between the monuments were dark, crowded and crumbling. An English traveller who visited Paris in 1814, at the very beginning of the Restoration, wrote: "The ordinary buildings of Paris, as every traveller has observed and as all the world knows, are in general mean and uncomfortable. The height and gloomy aspect of the houses; the narrowness of the streets, and the want of pavement for foot passengers, convey an idea of antiquity, which ill accords with what the imagination had anticipated of the modern capital of the French Empire."[17] Upper class Parisians began moving to new residential neighborhoods that were created in the north and west; the Quartier Francois I near the Champs-Élysées in 1823, and the quartier Saint-Vincent-de-Paul and quarter de la Europe built in the north in 1824. They had wider streets, sidewalks, and houses modeled after the squares and town houses of London. They also moved to some of the villages outside the edge of the city, particularly Passy, and Beaugrenelle. By 1830, the village of Passy had become part of the city, a main street, rue de Passy, lined with three and four story buildings. At the same time, the older neighborhoods of the city, in the center the east. and grew more crowded every year. The neighborhoods of Arcis and Saint-Avoye, in the modern third arrondissement, had a population density of eight hundred persons per hectare in 1817, eight hundred fifty and 1831, and nine-hundred sixty in 1851, which amounted to nearly one hundred thousand persons per square kilometer.[18]

During the Restoration, the center of economic and social activity in Paris also moved gradually north, away from Les Halles and the Palais-Royal. The commercial and financial activity of the city took place on the right bank between the Madeleine and the Temple, where the stock market and banks were located, while the Grand Boulevards, built on the old ramparts of the city, became the home of the city's new theatres and restaurants, and the place to promenade.[19]

The Halle du Blé, the central grain market of Paris (now the Chamber of Commerce)

According to the 19th century French historian and academician Maxime du Camp, the "primordial elements" of the Paris diet were bread, meat, and wine. [20] Maintaining a steady bread supply for the Parisians was a major preoccupation of the French government during the Restoration; no one had forgotten the consequences of a bread shortage during the Revolution. Bakers were the most strictly regulated of all Paris businessmen; they had to show the police that they had lived a correct and moral life, and to pass a long apprenticeship. They were required to always have bread available, with a three-month reserve of flour; to give notice if they were going to be on vacation, or six months in advance if they intended to close. They were also forbidden to sell bread outside their shop. The price of bread was strictly regulated by the Prefect of Police; as of 1823, a special commission met every fifteen days to set the price. Because the price was fixed artificially low, bakers could not make a living selling bread alone; the designed a wide variety of "fantasy breads" and pastries, from which they earned most of their income.

The wheat for Paris bread was usually grown in the regions of Beauce, Brie and Picardy. They had slightly different tastes and characteristics, and were usually blended by the bakers. The grain was milled outside of Paris and brought to the Halle au Blé, or Wheat Hall, built by Napoleon in December 1811 (The building is now the Paris Chamber of Commerce). The bakers came to the Hall to buy it, then worked, often all night long, to bake it. The baguette had not yet been invented; the standard loaf was crusty outside and white inside: Parisians, even in times of bread shortages, refused to eat dark bread.

The Halle aux Vins (left), arrival point of all the wine brought in bulk to Paris

Meat was the second base of the diet Parisians consumed an average of sixty kilos of meat a year. The wealthy and middle-class Parisians consumed the better cuts of beef, lamb and veal; poorer Parisians ate mutton, pork and the less-expensive cuts of beef, brains, and tripe, either in soups like bouillon or in sausages and other charcuterie. Until the Restoration the animals were usually brought to the butcher shops and slaughtered in the courtyard; the sound was terrible and the streets outside ran with blood. Napoleon ordered the construction of five slaughterhouses, or abbatoires, three on the right bank and two on the left, around the edges of the city. They were constructed between 1810 and 1818 at Montmartre, Menilmontant, Roule, Grenelle, and Villejuif.[21]

Wine was the third essential part of the Parisian diet. The daily alcohol consumption of the Paris working class was high; in times of economic difficulty, the consumption of other food products decreased, but the consumption of wine increased; it was consumed to relieve stress and to forget difficulties. Low-quality and inexpensive wines were made a vineyards just outside the city. The best quality wines were brought by wine merchants from the chateaux of Burgundy and Bordeaux. By far the largest quantity of wine arrived by boat at the Halle aux Vins, which was located on the quai des Bernardins between rue Cuvier and Place Maubert, next to the Jardin des Plantes. The Halle aux Vins had been started in 1808 and finished in 1818; it occupied fourteen hectares, and had 159 wine cellars at street level and another forty-nine caves. All bulk wine, spirits, oils and vinegars were required to pass through the Halle, where the alcohol level was measured and taxes were collected; wine and spirits with more than eighteen percent alcohol paid a higher tax.

The wine was delivered in large barrels from vineyards in Beaujolais, Cahors, Burgundy, and the Touraine; they could be told apart because each region had a different size and shape of barrel. The wines were frequently mixed to make an ordinary table wine. These were the wines commonly served in homes, the taverns and less-expensive eating places of Paris. In 1818 the Halle took in and taxed 752,795 hectoliters of wine, or about one hundred liters per year for every resident of Paris.[22]

The street lighting in Paris between 1814 and 1830 was provided by 4,645 oil lamps, called reverbères. They were spaced far apart and provided only a dim illumination. The gas lamp had been patented in 1799 and first installed in a Paris residence on rue Saint-Dominique in 1800, and the first gas lamps were installed in the Passage des Panoramas in January 1817 by a German businessman named Winsor. He received a commission to install gas lights in one of the legislative chambers of the Luxembourg Palace, but opponents of gas lamps warned of a risk of explosions, and blocked the project. Only two establishments took the risk of lighting with gas; a bathhouse on rue de Chartres and a café near the Hôtel de Ville, which boldly took the name Café du gas hydrogène. The first four municipal gas lamps were illuminated on the place du Carrousel on 1 January 1829, along with twelve more on the rue de Rivoli. The experiment was judged a success, a design for a lamppost was selected and gas lamps appeared the same year on rue de la Paix, place Vendôme, rue de l'Odeon and rue de Castiglione. [23]

A floating bath at Place du Châtelet (1830)

Before the arrival of the railroad, the Seine was still the main artery for the delivery of goods to Paris; huge rafts of firewood arrived daily for heating and cooking; barges of wine, grain, stone and other products were unloaded at the ports along the river. It also was a place where Parisians bathed. Only the wealthiest Parisians had bathtubs at home. There were numerous public baths, but they had a generally scandalous reputation. With the arrival of fresh water from the Ourq canal, steam baths became popular; there were sixty-seven in Paris in 1832. But for ordinary Parisians in the 19th century, the most popular bathing places were the floating baths anchored along the Seine between the Pont d'Austerlitz and the Pont d'Iéna. They were composed of a large barge with a basin in the center surrounded by wooden galleries with dressing rooms. There were separate baths for men and women. The price was four sous, or twenty centimes, and bathing costumes could be rented for an additional charge. They were extremely popular in summer, and remained until the end of the 19th century. [24]

A bateau-lavoir, or laundry boat, near the Hôtel-de-Ville during the July 1830 Revolution

Another Seine institution was the bateau-lavoir, or floating laundry, where lavandrieres, or laundry women, came to wash clothing and bed linen. They were mostly located on the right bank, where they profited from the sunshine for drying the laundry. By the Restoration, they were very large, and generally had two levels the lower deck had benches or tables close to the water, where the washing was done, and then clothes were taken to the upper deck to dry in the sun. The lavandrieres paid a charge to the owner of the barge for each visit. The last bateau-lavoir closed in 1937. [25]

Napoleon had begun the construction of a new sewer system for Paris in 1805, under the direction of Emmanuel Bruneseau, named Inspector of Sewers. He built a network of 26 kilometers of tunnels, with eighty-six separate lines under the streets. By 1824 the sewers had been expanded to 25 kilometers of covered sewers on the right bank, 9.5 kilometers on the left bank, and 387 meters of sewers on the islands. There were an additional two kilometers of open sewers, not counting the Rivier Bièvre, where much sewage and industrial waste was dumped. These were the sewers that became famous in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, The sewers were primarily for carrying away rain water and mud; very few homes in Paris had toilets or indoor plumbing or were connected to a sewer. The human waste of the Parisians went into outdoor latrines, usually on the courtyards of the buildings, or cesspools and was carried away at night by laborers called vidangeurs to large dumps created for this purpose at the Buttes des Chaumont and other sites around the edge of the city.

Until late during the Restoration, Paris had no public toilets; people simply relieved themselves wherever they could; the hedges of the Tuileries Gardens were popular for this purpose. The Duke of Orleans was the first to install a dozen public toilets, called cabinets d'aisances, at the Palais-Royal, with a charge of two sous for each seat, and toilet paper free. By 1816, public toilets for a fee could also be found on Rue Vivienne, across from the public treasury, and in the Luxembourg and Tuileries gardens. An 1819 guidebook praised the toilets at the Palais-Royal; "Cabinets of an extreme cleanliness, an attractive woman at the counter, doorkeepers full of enthusiasm; everything enchants the senses and the client gives ten or twenty times the amount asked." .[26]

In the spring of 1830 the city government decided to install the first public urinals, called Vespasiennes, on the major boulevards. These structures served both as urinals and supports for posters and advertising. They were put in place by the summer, but in July they were put to a completely different purpose; providing materials for street barricades during the 1830 Revolution.[26]

A Dame Blanche omnibus (1828)

At the beginning of the Restoration, Paris had no public transport system. Wealthy Parisians had their own carriages, kept within the courtyards of the town houses. Wealthy visitors could hire a carriage by the hour or by the day. For those with a more modest income, taxi service was provided by fiacres, small boxlike four-wheeled coaches which could carry up to four passengers, hired at designated stations around the city, where passengers paid by the time of the journey. In 1818, there were 900 registered fiacres in Paris. There were 161 fiacre companies in Paris in 1820, most with one or two coaches each. Those without the means to hire a fiacre or carriage travelled by foot. [27]

On 28 April 1828, a major improvement in public transportation arrived; the first omnibus began service, running every fifteen minutes between La Madeleine and la Bastille. Before long, there were one hundred omnibuses in service, with eighteen different itineraries. A journey cost twenty-five centimes. The omnibuses circulated between seven in the morning and seven in the evening; each omnibus could carry between twelve and eighteen passengers. The busiest line was that along the Grand Boulevards; it ran from eight in the morning until midnight.

The Paris omnibus was created by a businessman named Stanislas Baudry, who had started the first omnibus company in Nantes in 1823. The name was said to come from the station of the first line in Nantes, in front of the store of a hat-maker named Omnes, who had a large sign on his building with a pun on his name, "Omnes Omnibus" ("All for everyone" in Latin). Following his success in Nantes, Baudry moved to Paris and founded the Enterprise des Omnibus, with headquarters on rue de Lancre, and with workshops on the quai de Jemmapes. The omnibus service was an immediate popular success, with more than two and a half million passengers in the first six months. However, there was no reliable way to collect money from the passengers, or the fare collectors kept much of the money for themselves; In its first years the company was continually on the verge of bankruptcy, and in despair, Baudry committed suicide in February 1830 [28] Baudry's partners reorganised the company and managed to keep it in business.

In September 1828, a competing company, les Dames-Blanches, had started running its own vehicles. In 1829 and the following years, more companies with poetic names entered the business; les Citadines, les Tricycles, les Orléanises, les Diligentes, les Écossaises, les Béarnaises, les Carolines, les Batignollaises, les Parisiennes, les Hirondelles, les Joséphines, les Excellentes, les Sylphides, les Constantines, les Dames-Françaises, les Algériennes, les Dames-Réunies, and les Gazelles. The omnibus had a profound effect on Parisian life, making it possible for Parisians to work and have a social life outside their own neighborhoods.[29]

For those travelling greater distances, to other cities or the Paris suburbs, several companies ran diligences, large enclosed coaches which could carry six or more passengers. Smaller coaches, called Coucous, departed from the Place Louis XVI and from place d'Enfer to Sceaux, Saint-Cloud, Versailles and other destinations. [30]

The American inventor Robert Fulton had tried without success to interest Napoleon in his invention, the steamboat, but the innovation finally arrived in Paris in 1826, with the opening of the first regular steamboat service on the Seine between Paris and Saint-Cloud.[31]

The early 19th century was the great age of the canal, both as a source of drinking water and as a means of transportation, and the government of the Restoration actively promoted their construction. The canal de l'Ourcq, decreed by Napoleon in May 1801, was completed in 1822. It was 108 kilometers long, and became a major source of the drinking water for the Parisians. It was also useful for navigation. In 1821 it was connected by the canal Saint-Denis, 6.5 kilometers long, to the basin at la Villette, which became a major commercial port for barges and boats bringing goods to the city. The Canal Saint-Martin, finished in 1825 and 4.5 kilometers long, completed the city's canal network; it joined the basin of the Arsenal and the Seine with the basin of La Villette. The canals allowed large boats and barges to bypass the center of Paris and avoid having to navigate under the bridges. [32]

The Palais-Royal, with its arcades and gardens, shops, cafes and restaurants, remained the most famous destination for amusement in Paris. Originally constructed as the residence of Cardinal Richelieu, It became the property of the Orleans family, close relatives of the King. In the 1780s, Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, badly in need of funds, Created arcades and galleries around the garden, rented them out to small shops and the first luxury restaurants in Paris, and opened the Palais-Royal it to the public. In 1789 he actively supported the French Revolution, renamed himself Louis-Egalité, renamed the Palais-Royal the Palais-Egalité, and voted for the death of his cousin Louis XVI, but nonetheless he was guillotined during the Reign of Terror. His heir was Louis-Philippe I, who lived in exile during the Revolution and the Empire. He returned to Paris with the Restoration, and took up residence in one wing of what was again called the Palais-Royal.

The Café des Aveugles in the basement of the Palais-Royal

During the Restoration, the Palais-Royal had, in and around its former gardens, three large arcades, one of stone (still existing), one of glass and one of wood (popularly known as the Campe des Tatares. In 1807, shortly before the Restoration, they contained 180 shops, including twenty-four jewelers, twenty shops of luxury furniture, fifteen restaurants, twenty-nine cafes and seventeen billiards parlors. Shops in the galleries sold, among other things, perfume, musical instruments, toys, eyeglasses, candy, gloves, and dozens of other goods. Artists painted portraits, and small stands offered waffles. The Palais-Royal attracted all different classes of Parisians, from the wealthy to the working class. [38]

In the evenings, the shops closed and a different life began at the Palais-Royal. The basements had cafes which served drinks and inexpensive food, and had entertainment, ranging from music to ventriloquists and costumed "savages" dancing. The best-known was the Café des Aveugles, famous for its orchestra of blind musicians. The more elegant restaurants on the arcade level had extensive menus and wine lists, and served a wealthier clientele. Upstairs, above the shops, were card rooms, where Parisians went to gamble.

Besides shopping and restaurants, the Palais-Royal was also famous as the place to meet prostitutes; as the evening advanced, they filled the galleries. Between 1816 and 1825, the merchants of the Palais-Royal complained about the number of prostitutes, and asked that they not be allowed to do business between December 15 and January 15, when Parisians did their holiday shopping. In 1829, the Prefect of Police finally closed the Palais to prostitutes.[39]

The first roller-coaster at Parc Beaujon (1817).

The Amusement park, or Parc d'Attractions, had appeared in Paris in the 1860s and continued to be popular through the Restoration. They were gardens which, in summer, had cafes, orchestras, dancing, fireworks and other entertainments. The most famous was the Tivoli, which remained in business on 27 rue de Clichy from 1777 until 1825. A similar park, Idalie, on rue Quentin-Bauchart, was in business until 1817. The Parc Beaujon, at 114-152 Champs-Élysées, opened in 1817, offered the most spectacular attraction; the first Montagnes Russes, or roller coaster.[40]

The Belle Limonadière in a café (1827)

The first luxury restaurants in Paris had opened in the Palais-Royal in the 1780s. By the time of the Restoration, new restaurants had appeared close to the theatres, along the Grand Boulevards and on the Champs Èlysées. The best-known luxury restaurant of the Restoration was the Rocher de Cancale, at the corner of rue Mandar. The elaborate dinners there were described in detail in the novels of Honoré de Balzac. The restaurant Le Veau on the Place de Chatelet was famous for its pieds de mouton. Other famous gastronomic restaurants of the time were Le Grand Véfour in the Palais-Royal and Ledoyen the Champs-Élysées (both still in business), La Galiote and le Cadran bleu on the Boulevard du Temple. [41]

The café was an important social institution of the period, not as a place to eat but as an establishment to meet friends, drink coffee, read the newspapers, play checkers and discuss politics. In the early 19th century, cafés diversified; some, called cafés- chantant, had singing; others offered concerts and dancing. During the Restoration, many of the cafés began serving ice cream.[42]

The bistrot was another kind of eating place that appeared during the Restoration. It was said to take its name from the Russian word for "quickly", because during the occupation of the city Russian soldiers had to hurry back to their barracks. They offered simple and inexpensive meals, usually in a congenial atmosphere. The guinguette was a type of rural tavern, usually located just outside the city limits, particularly in Montmartre, Belleville, and other nearby villages. Since they were outside the city limits, the taxes were lower and the drinks were less expensive. They usually had musicians, and were very popular places for dancing on the weekends. They suffered from the stricter rules of the Restoration, which banned amusement during the day on Sundays. In 1830 there were 138 within the city, and 229 just outside the city limits. [43]

François-René de Chateaubriand

Victor Hugo in 1829

The dominant literary movement in Paris was romanticism, and the most prominent romantic was François-René de Chateaubriand, an essayist and diplomat. He began the Restoration as a committed defender of the Catholic faith and royalist, but gradually moved into the liberal opposition and became a fervent supporter of freedom of speech. The prominent romantics of the time included the poet and politician Alphonse de Lamartine, Gérard de Nerval, Alfred de Musset, Théophile Gautier, and Prosper Mérimée.

Despite limitations on press freedom, the Restoration was an extraordinary rich period for French literature. Paris editors published the first works of some of France's most famous writers. Honoré de Balzac moved to Paris in 1814, studied at the University of Paris, wrote his first play in 1820, and published his first novel, Les Chouans, in 1829. Alexandre Dumas moved to Paris in 1822, and found a position working for the future King, Louis-Philippe, at the Palais-Royal. In 1829, at the age of 27, he published his first play, Henri III and his Courts. Stendhal, a pioneer of literary realism, published his first novel, The Red and the Black, in 1830.

The young Victor Hugo declared that he wanted to be "Chateaubriand or nothing". His first book of poems, published in 1822 when he was twenty years old, earned him a royal prize from Louis XVIII. His second book of poems in 1826 established him as one of France's leading poets. He wrote his first plays, Cromwell and Hernani in 1827 and 1830, and his first short novel, The Last Days of a Condemned Man, in 1829. The premiere of the ultra-romantic Hernani (see theatre section below) caused a riot in the audience.

François-Joseph Talma, the most famous Parisian dramatic actor, between 1821 ad 1823

Mademoiselle Mars of the Comédie-Française on stage

Napoleon distrusted the theatres of Paris, fearing that they might ridicule his regime, and had the number reduced to eight. Under the Restoration, the number gradually grew; besides the Opera and the Théâtre Française at the Palais-Royal, the home of the Comédie-Française, there was the Odéon, inaugurated by Marie Antoinette, and famous during the Restoration as a musical theatre, with an orchestra of Italian musicians. It burned in 1818 and was replaced by the present structure, designed by the architect of the Arc de Triomphe, in 1819. Other theatres remaining from the Empire included the Vaudeville, the Variétés, the Ambigu, the Gaieté, and the Opera Buffa. To these were added the Théâtre les Italiens, Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin (1814), and the Gymnase (1820). Most theatres were on the right bank, near the grand boulevards, and this neighborhood became the entertainment district of the city.[44]

The most famous dramatic actor of the period was François-Joseph Talma of the Comédie-Française, who had been a favorite of Napoleon. His version of MacBeth, according to an English visitor who saw it in 1814, his performance had some notable differences from the usual English version. The witches and ghosts in the play never appeared on the stage, since, in Talma's view, they existed only in his imagination; he simply described them to the audience. Mademoiselle George was the most famous female dramatic actress, Abraham-Joseph Bénard, known as Fleury, was the most famous comic actor, and Mademoiselle Mars was the leading comic actress on the Paris stage. The English visitor commented that, while British audiences went to the theatre primarily for relaxation, Paris audiences were much more serious, seeing plays as "matters of serious interest and national concern." .[45]

The most famous theatre premiere of the Restoration was the opening on 25 February 1830 of the play Hernani by the young and little-known author Victor Hugo. The highly-romantic play was considered to have a political message, and the premiere was continually interrupted by shouting, jeering and even fights in the audience. It catapulted Hugo to immediate fame.

One of the most important musical events of the Restoration was the opening of The Barber of Seville, by Gioachino Rossini, at the Théâtre-Italien in 1818, two years after its premiere in Rome. Rossini made modifications for the French audience, changing it from two to four acts and changing Rosina's part from a contralto to a soprano. This new version premiered at the Odeon Theatre on 6 May 1824, with Rossini present, and remains today the version most used in opera houses around the world.

At the beginning of the Restoration, the Paris Opera was located in the Salle Montansier on rue Richelieu, where the square Louvois is today. On 13 February 1820, the Duke of Berry was assassinated at the door of the opera, and King Louis XVIII, in his grief, had the old theatre demolished. In 1820-21 the opera performed in the Salle Favert of Théâtre des Italiens, then in the sale Louvois on rue Louvois, then, beginning on 16 August 1821, in the new opera house on rue Le Peletier, which was built out of the material of the old opera house. It remained the opera house of Paris until the opening of the Opéra Garnier.

In February 1828, François Habeneck founded the Société des concerts du Conservatoire, with the first concert taking place on 9 March 1828. It became one of the most important concert venues of the city.

The Venus de Milo entered the Louvre in 1821

King Charles X presents the prizes to artists at the Paris Salon of 1824

Napoleon had filled the Louvre with works of art gathered on his campaigns in Italy and other parts of Europe. After his abdication in 1814, the Allies allowed the works to remain in the Louvre, but after his return and final defeat at Waterloo in June 1815, the allies demanded that the works be returned. More than five thousand works of art, among them two thousand paintings, were sent back; the famous bronze horses that had been atop the Arc de Triomphe of the Carrousel went back to their home at Saint Mark's in Venice.[46] The Venus de' Medici, the most famous work of classical sculpture in the museum, was sent back to Florence, but it was soon replaced by a sensational new discovery, the Venus de Milo, acquired from a Greek farmer by a French naval officer, Olivier Voutier, in 1820. It was purchased by the Marquis de Riviére who gave it to Louis XVIII, who promptly gave it to the Louvre. The Louvre also created a department of Egyptian antiquities, curated by Champollion, with more than seven thousand works.

The Musée du Luxembourg had been the first public art gallery in Paris, displaying works from the royal collection, and then a showcase of art by Jacques-Louis David and other painters of the Empire. It re-opened 24 April 1818 as a museum for the work of living artists. Another new gallery, the Musée Dauphin, opened within the Louvre on 27 November 1827.

The dominant style of art gradually changed from neoclassicism to romanticism. Jacques-Louis David was in exile in Brussels, but Antoine Gros, who had painted portraits of Napoleon's court, made a new career painting the portraits of the restored aristocracy. Dominique Ingres also began his career with a portrait of Napoleon, but achieved great success during the Restoration with his precise and realistic classical style. The other major Parisian painters of the period included Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, and François Gérard. The new generation of painters made their appearance; Théodore Géricault painted one of the most famous works of the romantic period, The Raft of the Medusa, in 1819. In 1822 the young Camille Corot came to Paris and established his studio, and struggled to get his paintings into the Paris Salon. In 1830, Eugène Delacroix, the leader of the romantic painters, made his most famous painting, Liberty leading the People, an allegory of the 1830 Revolution, with Notre Dame and Paris buildings in the background. The new French government purchased the painting, but decided it was too inflammatory and never displayed it; it did not go onto public view until after the next Revolution, in 1848.

• Art of the Restoration
• 
  Pygmalion, by Girodet (1819)
• 
  The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault (1818–1819)
• 
  Daphnis and Chloe by François Gérard (1824)
• 
  The Forest of Fontainebleau by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1824)
• 
  Liberty leading the People by Eugène Delacroix (1830)

• Fierro, Alfred, ed. Historical Dictionary of Paris (1998)
• Jones, Colin. Paris: The Biography of a City (2006) pp 263-99.
• Travels in France during the years 1814-15. Macredie, Skelly and Muckersy. 1816.

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• Héron de Villefosse, René (1959). Histoire de Paris. Bernard Grasset.
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• Le Roux, Thomas (2013). Les Paris de l'industrie 1750–1920. CREASPHIS Editions. ISBN 978-2-35428-079-6.
• Sarmant, Thierry (2012). Histoire de Paris: Politique, urbanisme, civilisation. Editions Jean-Paul Gisserot. ISBN 978-2-755-803303.
• Trouilleux, Rodolphe (2010). Le Palais-Royal- Un demi-siècle de folies 1780–1830. Bernard Giovanangeli.
• Du Camp, Maxime (1870). Paris: ses organes, ses fonctions, et sa vie jusqu'en 1870. Monaco: Rondeau. ISBN 2-910305-02-3.
• Dictionnaire Historique de Paris. Le Livre de Poche. 2013. ISBN 978-2-253-13140-3.