Paris in the Belle Époque

Apaches was a term that was introduced by Paris newspapers in 1902 for young Parisians who engaged in petty crime and sometimes fought each other or the police. They usually lived in Belleville and Charonne. Their activities were described in lurid terms by the popular press, and they were blamed for all varieties of crime in the city. In September 1907, the newspaper Le Gaulois described an Apache as "the man who lives on the margin of society, ready to do anything, except to take a regular job, the miserable who breaks in a doorway, or stabs a passer-by for nothing, just for pleasure."[11]

May Day battles between socialist workers and police on the Place de la Concorde (1890)

The Belle Époque was spared the violent uprisings that brought down two French regimes in the 19th century, but it had its share of political and social conflicts and occasional violence. Labor unions and strikes had been legalized during the regime of Napoleon III. The first labor union congress in Paris took place in October 1876,[15] and the socialist party recruited many members among the Paris workers. On May 1, 1890, the socialists organized the first celebration of May Day, the international day of labor. Since it was an unauthorized celebration, it led to confrontations between police and demonstrators.

The majority of political violence came from the anarchist movement of the 1890s. The first attack was organized by an anarchist named Ravachol, who set off bombs at three residences of wealthy Parisians. On April 25, he set off a bomb at the Restaurant Véry at the Palais-Royal and was arrested. On 8 November, anarchists planted a bomb in the office of the Compagnie Minière et Métallurgique, a mining company, on the Avenue de l'Opéra. The police found the bomb, but when it was taken to the police headquarters, it exploded, killing six persons. On 6 December, an anarchist named Auguste Vaillant set off a bomb in the building of the National Assembly that wounded forty-six persons. On 12 February 1894, an anarchist named Émile Henry set off a bomb at the café of the Hôtel Terminus next to the Gare Saint-Lazare that killed one person and wounded seventy-nine.[16]

A transit strike in 1891

Another political crisis shook Paris beginning on 2 December 1887, when the president of the republic, Jules Grévy, was forced to resign when it was discovered that he had been selling the nation's highest award, the Legion of Honour. A popular general, Georges Ernest Boulanger, had his name put forward as a potential new leader. He became known as "the man on horseback" because of images of him on his black horse. He was supported by ardent nationalists who wanted a war with Germany to take back Alsace and Lorraine, which were lost in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War. Monarchist politicians began to promote Boulanger as a potential new leader who could dissolve the parliament, become president, recover the lost provinces and restore the French monarchy. Boulanger was elected to parliament in 1888, and his followers urged him to go to the Élysée Palace and declare himself president; but he refused, saying that he could win the office legally in a few months. However, the wave of enthusiasm for Boulanger quickly faded away, and he went into voluntary exile. The government of the Third Republic remained firmly in place.[17]

Policemen helping a lost little girl in the painting La petite fille perdue dans Paris by Charles-Gustave Housez (1877)

The Paris police force was completely re-organized after the fall of Napoleon III and the Commune; the sergents de ville were replaced by the gardiens de la paix publique (Guardians of the Public Peace), which by June 1871 had 7,756 men under the authority of the Prefect of Police named by the national government. Following a series of anarchist bombings in 1892, the number was increased to 7,000 guardians, 80 brigadiers and 950 sous-brigadiers. In 1901, under the prefect Louis Lépine, in order to keep up with the technology of the time, a unit of policemen on bicycles (called the hirondelles after the brand of the bicycles) was formed. They numbered 18 per arrondissement and reached 600 by 1906 for the whole city. A unit of river police, the brigade fluviale, was organized in 1900 for the Universal Exposition, as well as a unit of traffic police who wore a symbol of a Roman chariot embroidered on the sleeve of their uniform. The first six motorcycle policemen appeared on the streets in 1906.[18]

In addition to the gardiens de la paix publique, Paris was guarded by the Garde républicaine under the military command of the Gendarmerie Nationale. Gendarmes had been a particular target of the Commune; 33 had been taken hostages and were executed by a (Communard) firing squad on Rue Haxo on 23 May 1871 in the last days of the Commune. In June 1871, they provided security in the damaged city. They numbered 6,500 men in two regiments, plus a unit of cavalry and a dozen cannon. The number was reduced in 1873 to 4,000 men in a single regiment, called the Légion de la Garde républicaine (Legion of the Republican Guard), with its headquarters on the Quai de Bourbon and troops quartered in several barracks around the city. The Republican Guard was given the duty of providing security for the president of the republic at the Élysée Palace, the National Assembly and the Senate, at the prefecture of police, and also at the Opéra, theaters, public balls, racetracks, and other public places. A unit of bicyclists was formed on 6 June 1907. When World War I began, the entire unit of Paris gendarmes was mobilized and fought at the front during war; 222 of them lost their lives. [19]

By a decree of 29 June 1912, to assure the security of Paris by fighting organized criminals such as the Apaches and the bande à Bonnot, a criminal section called the Brigade criminelle was created.[20]

The Republic, a statue in the Place de la République (1883)

Triumph of the Republic by Jules Dalou on the Place de la Nation (1899)

Most of the notable monuments of the Belle Époque were constructed for use at the Universal Expositions, for example the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Palais, the Petit Palais, and the Pont Alexandre III. The chief architectural legacy of the Third Republic was a large number of new schools and local city halls, all inscribed with the slogans of the republic and statues of allegorical symbols of the republic; representations of scientists, writers and political figures were placed in parks and squares. The largest monument was an allegorical statue of the republic erected in the center of the Place du Château-d'Eau, renamed the Place de la République in 1879. It was an enormous bronze figure 9.5 meters high of the republic holding an olive branch and standing on a pedestal 15 meters high. On 14 July 1880, the Place du Trône was renamed the Place de la Nation, and a group of statues by Jules Dalou, called Triumph of the Republic, was placed in the center. In the middle was Marianne in a chariot drawn by two lions surrounded by allegorical figures of Liberty, Work, Justice and Abundance. A plaster version was put in place in 1889, the bronze version in 1899. A 29-meter tall monument with a statue of another republican hero, Leon Gambetta, surmounted by a pylon crowned by a winged lion, was placed in the Cour Napoléon of the Louvre in 1888. It was taken down in 1954 after destructions during World War II, but some remaining sculptures including that of Gambetta himself were placed in 1982 in the Square Édouard-Vaillant (20th arrondissement) by the socialist president François Mitterrand.[38]

The Hotel Lutetia (1910), with its Art Nouveau façade, reflected the abandonment of the strict façade uniformity of Haussmann's Paris

The construction of the new boulevards and streets begun by Napoleon III and Haussmann had been much criticized by Napoleon's opponents near the end of the Second Empire, but the government of the Third Republic continued his projects. The Avenue de l'Opéra, Boulevard Saint-Germain, Avenue de la République, Boulevard Henry-IV and Avenue Ledru-Rollin were all completed by 1889 essentially as Haussmann had planned them before his death. After 1889, the pace of construction slowed down. The Boulevard Raspail was finished, the Rue Réaumur was extended, and several new streets were created on the left bank: the Rue de la Convention, Rue de Vouillé, Rue d'Alésia, and Rue de Tolbiac. On the Right Bank, the Rue Étienne-Marcel was the last of the Haussmann projects to be completed before the First World War.[37]

While the streets planned by Haussmann were completed, the strict uniformity of façades and building heights imposed by him was gradually modified. Buildings became much larger and deeper, with two apartments on each floor facing the street and others facing only onto the courtyard. The new buildings often had ornamental rotundas or pavilions on the corners and highly ornamental roof designs and gables. In 1902, maximum building heights were increased to 52 meters. With the advent of elevators, the most desirable apartments were no longer on the lowest floors, but on the highest floors, where there was more light, nicer views and less noise. With the arrival of automobiles and the beginning of traffic noise on the streets, the bedrooms moved to the back of the apartment, overlooking the courtyard.[39]

The façades also changed from the strict symmetry of Haussmann: undulating façades appeared, as did bay and bow windows. Eclectic façades became popular; they often mixed the styles of Louis XIV, Louis XV and Louis XVI, and then, with the advent of Art nouveau style, floral patterns could be incorporated. The most striking examples of the new architecture were the Castel Béranger on the Rue La Fontaine and the Hôtel Lutetia. Between 1898 and 1905, the city organized eight competitions for the most imaginative building façades; variety was given precedence over uniformity. .[39]

The interior of the Bon Marché department store (1875)

The architectural style of the Belle Époque was eclectic and sometimes combined elements of several different styles. While the structures of the new buildings were resolutely modern, using iron frames and reinforced concrete, the façades ranged from the Romano-Byzantine style of the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur on Montmartre, to the strange neo-Moorish Palais du Trocadéro, to the neo-Renaissance style of the new Hôtel de Ville, to the exuberant reinvention of French classicism of the 17th and 18th centuries in the Grand Palais, Petit Palais and Gare d'Orsay, decorated as they are with domes, colonnades, mosaics and statuary. The most innovative buildings of the period were the Gallery of Machines at the 1889 exposition and the new railroad stations and department stores: their classical exteriors concealed very modern interiors with large open spaces and large glass skylights made possible by the new engineering techniques of the period. The Eiffel Tower shocked many traditional Parisians, both because of its appearance and because it was the first building in Paris taller than the cathedral of Notre-Dame.

Art Nouveau became the most striking stylistic innovation of the period in architecture. It is associated particularly with the metro station entrances designed by Hector Guimard and a handful of buildings, including Guimard's Castel Béranger (1889) at 14 Rue La Fontaine and the Hôtel Mezzara (1910) in the 16th arrondissement.[40] The enthusiasm for Art Nouveau metro station entrances did not last long; in 1904 it was replaced at the Opéra metro station by a less exuberant "modern" style. Beginning in 1912, all the Guimard metro entrances were replaced with functional entrances without decoration.[41]

A revolutionary new building material, reinforced concrete, appeared at the beginning of the 20th century and quietly began to change the face of Paris. The first church built in the new material was Saint-Jean de Montmartre, at 19 Rue des Abbesses at the foot of Montmartre. The architect was Anatole de Baudot, a student of Viollet-le-Duc. The nature of the revolution was not evident, because Baudot faced the concrete with brick and ceramic tiles in a colorful Art Nouveau style with stained glass windows in the same style.

The Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (1913) is another architectural landmark of the period, one of the few Paris buildings in the Art deco style. Designed by Auguste Perret, it was also built of reinforced concrete and decorated by some of the leading artists of the era: bas-reliefs on the façade by Antoine Bourdelle, a dome by Maurice Denis, and paintings in the interior by Édouard Vuillard. It was the setting in 1913 for one of the major musical events of the Belle Époque: the premiere of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.

• 
  The Romano-Byzantine style of the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur (1873-1919)
• 
  The Gallery of Machines from the Universal Exposition of 1889
• 
  The Castel Béranger by Hector Guimard (1899)
• 
  The Grand Palais (1900)
• 
  The Church of Saint-Jean-de-Montmartre (1894-1904), the first church built of reinforced concrete
• 
  The Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (1913) in Art Deco style

The Pont Alexandre III and the Grand Palais, legacies of the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900

Eight new bridges were put across the Seine during the Belle Époque. The Pont Sully, built in 1876, replaced two foot bridges that had connected the Île Saint-Louis to the Right and Left Bank. The Pont de Tolbiac was built in 1882 to connect the Left Bank with Bercy. The Pont Mirabeau, made famous in a poem by Apollinaire, was dedicated in 1895. Three bridges were built for the 1900 Exposition: the Pont Alexandre-III, dedicated by Czar Nicholas II of Russia in 1896, which connected the Left Bank with the grand exposition halls of the Grand Palais and Petit Palais; the Passerelle Debilly, a foot bridge that linked two sections of the Exposition; and a railroad bridge between Grenelle and Passy. Two more bridges were dedicated in 1905: the Pont de Passy (now the Pont de Bir-Hakeim), and the Viaduc d'Austerlitz, crossed by the metro.[42]

At the Exposition Universelle of 1878, the Gardens of the Trocadéro displayed the full-size head of the Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World) before the statue was completed and shipped to New York City.

The work of creating parks, squares and promenades during the Belle Époque continued in the Second Empire style. The projects were managed at first by Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand, who had been the head of department of parks and promenades under Haussmann and was elevated to the post of Director of Public Works of Paris, a position he held until his death in 1891. He was also the director of works of the 1889 Universal Exposition, responsible for building the exposition's gardens and pavilions.[43] Alphand finished several of the projects begun under Haussmann: the Parc Montsouris (1869–1878), the Square Boucicaut (1873), and the Square Popincourt (later renamed Parmentier, and still later Maurice-Gardette), which replaced a demolished slaughterhouse and opened in 1872. Alphand's first major project of the Belle Époque was the Jardins du Trocadéro, the site of the Universal Exposition of 1878 that surrounded the enormous Palais de Trocadéro, which served as the main building for the exposition. He filled the park with a grotto, fountains, gardens and statues (the statues can now be seen on the parvis of the Musée d'Orsay). The park also displayed the full-sized head of the Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World) before the statue was completed and shipped to New York City. The grotto and much of the park are still preserved as they were. It was used again for the Universal Exposition of 1889 Exposition, and with new fountains and a new palace added, it was also used for the Universal Exposition of 1937.[43]

During the exposition of 1878, Alphand used the Champ de Mars as the site of a huge iron-framed exhibit hall, 725 meters long, surrounded by gardens. For the 1889 exposition, the same site was occupied by the Eiffel Tower and the huge Gallery of Machines, plus two large exhibit halls: the Palace of Liberal Arts and the Palace of Fine Arts. The two palaces were designed by Jean-Camille Formigé, the chief architect of Paris. The two palaces and the Gallery of Machines were demolished after the exposition, but in 1909, Formigé was given the task of transforming the exposition site around the Eiffel Tower into a park with broad lawns, promenades and groves of trees in the form it is today.[43]

The Serres d'Auteuil (1898), next to the Bois de Boulogne, provided trees, shrubs and flowers for all the parks of Paris

Between 1895 and 1898, Formigé created another Belle Époque landmark, the Serres d'Auteuil, a complex of large greenhouses designed to grow trees and plants for all the gardens and parks of Paris. The largest structure, one hundred meters long, was designed to grow tropical plants. The greenhouses still exist today and are open to the public.

Other than the parks of the expositions, no other large Paris parks were created in the Belle Époque, but several squares of about one hectare each were created. They all had the same basic design: a bandstand in the center, a fence, groves of trees and flower beds, and often also statues. These included the Square Édouard-Vaillant in the 20th arrondissement (1879), the Square Samuel-de-Champlain in the 20th arrondissement (1889), the Square des Épinettes in the 17th arrondissement (1893), the Square Scipion in the 5th arrondissement (1899), the Square Paul-Painlevé in the 5th arrondissement (1899) and the Square Carpeaux in the 18th arrondissement (1907).[43]

The best-known and most picturesque park of the period is that composed of the Squares Willette and Nadar on the slope directly below the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur on Montmartre. It was begun by Formigé in 1880, but not completed until 1927 by another architect, Léopold Béviére, after the death of Formigé in 1926. The park features terraces and slopes dropping eighty meters from the Basilica to the street below, and has one of the best-known views in Paris.

The first electric street lights in Paris, on the Avenue de l'Opéra (1878)

At the beginning of the Belle Époque, Paris was lit by a constellation of thousands of gaslights that were often admired by foreign visitors and helped give the city its nickname La Ville-Lumière: the "City of Light". In 1870, there were 56,573 gaslights used exclusively to illuminate the streets of the city.[44] The gas was produced by ten enormous factories around the edge of the city that were located near the circle of fortifications. It was distributed in pipes installed under the new boulevards and streets. The street lights were placed every twenty meters on the Grands Boulevards. At a predetermined minute after nightfall, a small army of 750 uniformed allumeurs ("lighters") carrying long poles with small lamps at the end went out into the streets to turn on a pipe of gas inside each lamppost and light the lamp. The entire city was illuminated within forty minutes. The Arc de Triomphe was crowned with a ring of gaslights, and the Champs-Élysées was lined with ribbons of white light.[44]

One of the major urban innovations in Paris was the introduction of electric street lights to coincide with the opening of the Universal Exposition of 1878. The first streets lit were the Avenue de l'Opéra and the Place de l'Étoile around the Arc de Triomphe. In 1881, electric street lights were added along the Grands Boulevards. Electric lighting came much more slowly for residences and businesses in some Paris neighborhoods. While electric lights lined the Champs-Élysées in 1905, there was no electric lines for any households in the 20th arrondissement.[45]

Aerial view of the Universal Exposition of 1878

The Universal Exposition of 1878, which lasted from 1 May to 10 November 1878, was designed to advertise the recovery of France from the 1870 Franco-German War and the destruction of the period of the Paris Commune. It took place on both sides of the Seine, in the Champ de Mars and the heights of Trocadéro, where the first Palais du Trocadéro was built. Many of the buildings were made of new inexpensive material called staff, which was composed of jute fiber, plaster of Paris, and cement. The main exposition hall was an enormous rectangular structure, the Palace of Machines, where the Eiffel Tower is located today. Inside, Alexander Graham Bell displayed his new telephone and Thomas Edison presented his phonograph. The head of the newly finished Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World) was displayed before it was sent to New York City to be attached to the body. Important congresses and conferences took place on the margins of the exposition, including the first congress on intellectual property, led by Victor Hugo, whose proposals led eventually to the first copyright laws, and a conference on education for the blind, which led to the adoption of the Braille system of reading for the blind. The exposition attracted thirteen million visitors, and was a financial success.

The Eiffel Tower was the gateway of the Universal Exposition of 1889

The Universal Exposition of 1889 took place from 6 May until 31 October 1889 and celebrated the centenary of the beginning of the French Revolution; one of the structures on the grounds was a replica of the Bastille. It took place on the Champ de Mars, the hill of Chaillot, and along the Seine at the Quai d'Orsay. The most memorable feature was the Eiffel Tower, 300 meters tall when it opened (now 324 with the addition of broadcast antennas), which served as the gateway to the exposition.[46] The Eiffel Tower remained the world's tallest structure until 1930.[47] It was not popular with everyone; its modern style was denounced in a public letter by many of France's most prominent cultural figures, including Guy de Maupassant, Charles Gounod and Charles Garnier.[48] The largest building was the iron-framed Gallery of Machines, at the time the largest covered interior space in the world. Other popular exhibits included the first musical fountain, lit with colored electric lights that changed in time to music. Buffalo Bill and sharpshooter Annie Oakley drew large crowds to their Wild West Show at the exposition.[49] The exposition welcomed 23 million visitors. [50]

the Universal Exposition of 1900 included events at the Grand Palais and Petit Palais as well as the Eiffel Tower and Chaillot

The Universal Exposition of 1900 took place from 15 April until 12 November 1900. It celebrated the turn of the century and was by far the largest in scale of the Expositions; its sites included the Champ de Mars, Chaillot, the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais. Beside the Eiffel Tower, it featured the world's largest ferris wheel, the "Grande Roue de Paris", one hundred metres high, that could carry sixteen hundred passengers in forty cars. Inside the exhibit hall, Rudolph Diesel demonstrated his new engine, and one of the first escalators was on display. The Exposition coincided with the 1900 Paris Olympics, the first Olympic games held outside of Greece. The Exposition popularized a new artistic style, the Art nouveau, to the world.[51] Two architectural legacies of the Exposition, the Grand Palais and Petit Palais, are still in place in the city.[52] Though it was a great popular success, attracting an estimated forty-eight million visitors, the 1900 exposition lost money and was the last such exposition in Paris on such a grand scale.[50]

Victor Hugo (1876)

During the Belle Époque, Paris was the home and inspiration for some of France's most famous writers. Victor Hugo was sixty-eight when he returned to Paris from Brussels in 1871 and took up residence on the Avenue d'Eylau (now Avenue Victor Hugo) in the 16th arrondissement. He failed to be re-elected to the National Assembly, but in 1876, he was elected to the French Senate.[56] It was a difficult period for Hugo; his daughter Adèle was placed in an insane asylum, and his longtime mistress, Juliette Drouet, died in 1883. When Hugo died 28 May 1885 at the age of eighty-three, hundreds of thousands of Parisians lined the streets to pay tribute as his coffin was taken to the Panthéon on 1 June 1885.

On 1 June 1885, crowds line the streets of Paris as Victor Hugo's remains are taken to the Panthéon.

Émile Zola was born in Paris in 1840, the son of an Italian engineer. He was raised by his mother in Aix-en-Provence, then returned to Paris in 1858 with his friend Paul Cézanne to attempt a literary career. He worked as a mailing clerk for the publisher Hachette and began attracting literary attention in 1865 with his novels in the new style of naturalism. He described in intimate details the workings of Paris department stores, markets, apartment buildings and other institutions, and the lives of the Parisians. By 1877, he had become famous and wealthy from his writing. He took a central role in the Dreyfus affair, helping win justice for Alfred Dreyfus, a French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish background, who had falsely been accused of treason.

Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) moved to Paris in 1881 and worked as a clerk for the French Navy, then for the Ministry of Public Education, as he wrote short stories and novels at a furious pace. He became famous, but also became ill and depressed, then paranoid and suicidal. He died at the asylum of Saint-Esprit in Passy in 1893.

Other writers who made a mark in the Paris literary world of the Third Republic's Belle Époque included Anatole France (1844-1924); Paul Claudel (1868-1955); Alphonse Allais (1854-1905); Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918); Maurice Barrès (1862-1923); René Bazin (1853-1932); Colette (1873-1954); François Coppée (1842-1908); Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897); Alain Fournier (1886-1914); André Gide (1869-1951); Pierre Louÿs (1870-1925); Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949); Stéphane Mallarmé (1840-1898); Octave Mirbeau (1848-1917); Anna de Noailles (1876-1933); Charles Péguy (1873-1914); Marcel Proust (1871-1922); Jules Renard (1864-1910); Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891); Romain Rolland (1866-1944); Edmond Rostand (1868-1918); and Paul Verlaine (1844-1890). Paris was also the home of one of the greatest Russian writers of the period, Ivan Turgenev.

• 
  Guy de Maupassant (1888)
• 
  Paul Verlaine (1893)
• 
  Stéphane Mallarmé (1896)
• 
  Marcel Proust (1900)
• 
  Emile Zola (1902)

Claude Debussy (1908)

Paris composers during the period had a major impact on European music, moving it away from romanticism toward impressionism in music and modernism.

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) was born in Paris and admitted to the Paris Conservatory when he was thirteen. When he finished the Conservatory, he became organist at the church of Saint-Merri, and later at La Madeleine. His most famous works included the Danse Macabre, the opera Samson et Dalila (1877), the Carnival of the Animals (1877), and his Symphony No. 3 (1886). On 25 February 1871, he co-founded the Société Nationale de Musique with Romain Bussine to promote French contemporary and chamber music. His students included Maurice Ravel and Gabriel Fauré, two of the foremost French composers of the late 19th- and early 20th centuries.[57]

Georges Bizet (1838-1875), born in Paris, was admitted to the Paris Conservatory when he was only ten years old. He finished his most famous work, Carmen, written for the Opéra-Comique, in 1874. Even before its première, Carmen was criticized as immoral. Furthermore, the musicians complained that it could not be played, and the singers complained that it could be not be sung. The reviews were mixed, and the audience cold. When Bizet died in 1875, he considered it a failure. Nonetheless, Carmen soon became one of the best-known and beloved operas in the repertoire worldwide.[58]

The most famous French composer of the late Belle Époque in Paris was Claude Debussy (1862-1918). He was born at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, and entered the Conservatory in 1872. He became part of the Parisian literary circle of the symbolist poet Mallarme. At first an admirer of Richard Wagner, he went on to experiment with impressionism in music, atonal music and chromaticism. His most famous works include Clair de Lune for piano (written ca. 1890, published 1905), La Mer for orchestra (1905) and the opera Pelléas et Mélisande (1903-1905).[59]

The most revolutionary composer to work in Paris during the Belle Époque was the Russian-born Igor Stravinsky. He first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev and first performed in Paris by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913). The last of these transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about rhythmic structure and dissonance treatment.

Other influential composers in Paris during the period included Jules Massenet (1842-1912), author of the operas Manon and Werther, and Eric Satie (1866-1925), who made his living as a pianist at Le Chat Noir, a cabaret on Montmartre, after leaving the Conservatory. His most famous works are the Gymnopédies (1888).[60]

• 
  Georges Bizet (1875)
• 
  Camille Saint-Saëns (about 1880)
• 
  Jules Massenet (1880)
• 
  Eric Satie
• 
  Maurice Ravel
• 
  Igor Stravinsky, as drawn by Picasso (1920)

The Bal du moulin de la Galette by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1876) depicts a Sunday afternoon dance in Montmartre. Paris became the birthplace of Impressionism and modern art during the Belle Époque.

Paris was the home and the frequent subject of the Impressionists, who tried to capture the city's light, its colors, and its motion. They survived and flourished because of the support of Paris art dealers, such as Ambroise Vollard and Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, and wealthy patrons, including Gertrude Stein,

The first exhibit of the Impressionists took place from April 15 to May 15, 1874 in the studio of the photographer Nadar. It was open to any painter who could pay a fee of sixty francs. There, Claude Monet exhibited the painting Impression: Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant), which gave the movement its name. Other artists who took part included Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, and Paul Cézanne.

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon painted by Picasso in Montmartre (1907)

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) spent much of his short life in Montmartre painting and drawing the dancers in cabarets. He produced 737 canvases in his lifetime, thousands of drawings and a series of posters made for the cabaret Moulin Rouge. Many other artists lived and worked in Montmartre, where rent was low and the atmosphere congenial. In 1876, Auguste Renoir rented space at 12 Rue Cartot to paint his Bal du moulin de la Galette, which depicts a popular ball at Montmartre on a Sunday afternoon. Maurice Utrillo lived at the same address from 1906 to 1914, Suzanne Valadon lived and had her studio there, and Raoul Dufy shared an atelier there from 1901 to 1911. The building is now the Musée de Montmartre.[61]

Luxe, Calme, et Volupté by Henri Matisse (1904)

A new generation of artists arrived in Montmartre at the turn of the century. Drawn by the reputation of Paris as the world capital of art, Pablo Picasso came from Barcelona in 1900 to share an apartment with the poet Max Jacob and began by painting the cabarets and prostitutes of the neighborhood. Amedeo Modigliani and other artists lived and worked in a building called Le Bateau-Lavoir during the years 1904–1909. In 1907, Picasso painted one of his most important masterpieces, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, in Le Bateau-Lavoir. Led by Picasso and Georges Braque, the artistic movement cubism was born in Paris.[62]

Henri Matisse came to Paris in 1891 to study at the Académie Julien in the class of painter Gustave Moreau, who advised him to copy paintings in the Louvre and study Islamic art, which Matisse did. He also made the acquaintance of Raoul Dufy, Cézanne, Georges Rouault and Paul Gauguin, and began to paint in the style of Cézanne. Matisse visited Saint-Tropez in 1905, and when he returned to Paris, he painted a revolutionary work, Luxe, Calme et Volupté, using bright colors and bold dabs of paint.[62] Matisse and artists such as André Derain, Raoul Dufy, Jean Metzinger, Maurice de Vlaminck and Charles Camoin revolutionized the Paris art world with "wild", multi-colored, expressive landscapes and figure paintings that the critics called Fauvism. Henri Matisse's two versions of The Dance (1909) signified a key point in the development of modern painting.[63]

The Paris Salon, which had established the reputations and measured the success of painters throughout the Second Empire, continued to take place under the Third Republic until 1881, when a more radical French government denied it official sponsorship. It was replaced by a new Salon sponsored by the Société des Artistes Français. In December 1890, the leader of the society, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, propagated the idea that the new Salon should be an exhibition of young, yet not awarded, artists. Ernest Meissonier, Puvis de Chavannes, Auguste Rodin and others rejected this proposal and made a secession. They created the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and its own exhibition, immediately referred to in the press as the Salon du Champ de Mars[64] or the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux–Arts;[65] it was soon also widely known as the "Nationale". In 1903, in response to what many artists at the time felt was a bureaucratic and conservative organization, a group of painters and sculptors led by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Auguste Rodin organized the Salon d'Automne.

• 
  Portrait of the painter Claude Monet, Claude Monet as portrayed by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1875)
• 
  Self-portrait of Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1876)
• 
  Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
• 
  Henri Matisse (1913)

Monument to Balzac, by Auguste Rodin, on the Boulevard Raspail (1890)

Constantin Brâncuși, Portrait of Mademoiselle Pogany, 1912 Philadelphia Museum of Art

The Belle Époque was a golden age for sculptors; the government of the Third Republic commissioned very few monumental buildings, but did commission a large number of statues to French writers, scientists, artists and political figures that soon filled the city's parks and squares. The most prominent sculptor of the period was Auguste Rodin (1840-1917). Born in Paris into a working-class family, he was rejected for entry into the École des Beaux-Arts and rejected by the Paris Salon. He had to struggle for many years to win recognition, supporting himself as a decorator and later as a designer for the Sèvres porcelain factory. He gradually won attention for his design for the Gates of Hell, a museum of decorative art which was never built; its plan included what became his most famous work, The Thinker. He was commissioned by the city of Calais to make a monument, The Burghers of Calais (1884), to commemorate an event that took place in that city in 1347, during the Hundred Years' War. He was also commissioned to create a Monument to Balzac (now on the Boulevard Raspail), which caused a scandal and made him a celebrity. Rodin's work was exhibited near the 1900 Exposition, which won him many foreign clients. In 1908, he moved from Meudon to Paris, renting the ground floor of a private mansion in the 7th arrondissement, the Hôtel Biron, now the Musée Rodin. By the time of his death, he was the most famous sculptor in France, perhaps in the world.[66]

Other more traditional sculptors whose work won acclaim in Paris during the Belle Époque included Jules Dalou, Antoine Bourdelle (also a former assistant of Rodin), and Aristide Maillol. Their works decorated theaters, parks, and were featured at the International Expositions. The more avant-garde artists organized themselves into the Société des Artistes Indépendants. They held annual Salons that helped set the course of modern art. At the turn of the century, Paris attracted sculptors from around the world. Constantin Brâncuși (1876-1957) moved from Bucharest to Munich to Paris, where he was admitted, in 1905, to the École des Beaux-Arts. He worked for two months in the workshop of Rodin, but left, declaring that "Nothing grows under big trees", and went in his own direction into modernism. Brâncuși won fame at the 1913 "Salon des indépendants" and became one of the pioneers of modern sculpture.[67]

• 1872
  • Population: 1,850,000 [70]
  • 13 January – opening of the École Libre des Sciences Politiques, or Sciences Po.
• 1873
• 24 July – Law passed supporting the construction of the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur on Montmartre, financed by private contributions.
• 1874
  • French government returns to Paris from Versailles. MacMahon, first president of the French Third Republic, moves into the Élysée Palace.
  • 7 May – Société de l'histoire de Paris et de l'Île-de-France founded at the École nationale des chartes.[71]
  • 15 April – First Paris exhibit by Impressionist painters in the studio of the photographer Nadar. [72]
  • 12 August – Opening of canal bringing the water of the Vanne river to Paris.
• 1875
  

  The grand stairway of the Paris Opera (1875)
  • 5 January – Opening of the Palais Garnier opera house.
  • 3 March: Premiere of Bizet's opera Carmen.
  • 15 June – first stone placed of the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur.
• 1877
  • Population: 1,985,000 [70]
• 1878
  • 1 May – Opening of the Universal Exposition of 1878 held at the Trocadero Palace and on the Champ de Mars.
  • 30 May – The first test of electric lighting on the Avenue de l'Opéra and the Place de l'Étoile.[73]
• 1879
  • July – Installation of first telephone system in Paris.
• 1880
  • 3 January – The ice on the Seine thaws suddenly, and the river rises more than two meters in three hours, sweeping away the Pont des Invalides under reconstruction.[73]
  • 10 July – Amnesty for those imprisoned or exiled after the Paris Commune.
  • 14 July – Bastille Day is celebrated officially for the first time since 1802.
  • The Brasserie des Bords du Rhin opens.
  • The Direction Régionale de Police Judiciaire de Paris opens its headquarters at 36 Quai des Orfèvres.
  • The History of Paris Carnavalet Museum opens.
• 1881
  • 15 August (through 15 November) – The International Exposition of Electricity is held, highlighted by the illumination of the Grands Boulevards with electric lights.
  • 18 August – Opening of the Chat Noir, the first modern cabaret, in Montmartre.[74]
• 1882
  • January – Collapse of the Union Générale bank, the cause of the Paris Bourse crash of 1882.
  • 10 January – Opening of the Musée Grévin, the first Paris wax museum, in the Passage Jouffroy.
  • 12 April – Inauguration of the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro.
  • 13 July – Opening of the reconstructed Hôtel de Ville, burned by the Commune in 1871.
• 1883
  • 16 June – The Catholic daily newspaper La Croix begins publication.
  • 14 July – Inauguration of the statue Monument à la République on the Place de la République.
  • August – First municipal summer camp for students of the schools of the 9th arrondissement.
  • 22 September – The opening of the first lycée for girls, the Lycée Fénelon.
• 1884
  • 7 March – Decree requiring the use of trash cans, nicknamed poubelles after the Prefect of Paris Eugène Poubelle, who introduced it.[74]
  • 8 July – Opening of the first municipal swimming pool at 31 Rue du Château-Landon.
  • 23 July – Law allowing construction of residential buildings up to seven stories high.
  • 7 November – Last serious cholera epidemic in Paris.
  • Students' General Association of Paris founded.
  • Les Deux Magots café opens.
  • Samuel Bing art gallery opens.
  • Premiere of Massenet's opera Manon.
  • 2 February – Municipal Council allows women to work as interns in Paris hospitals.
  • 1 June – Huge crowds observe the funeral procession of Victor Hugo, whose remains are placed in the Panthéon.
  • 3 August – First stone laid for the new buildings of the Sorbonne.
• 1887
  • January – Construction begins of the Eiffel Tower. The structure is strongly condemned by leading Paris writers and artists.[75]
  • 25 May – A fire destroys the Opéra-Comique during a performance of Mignon; more than a hundred persons are killed.
• 1888
  • 14 November – Dedication of the Institut Pasteur by Louis Pasteur.
  • Lycée Molière opens.

The Eiffel Tower under construction (August 1888)

• 1889
  • First Paris telephone book published.
  • 30 January – First cremation in France at Père Lachaise Cemetery.
  • 2 April – Opening of the Eiffel Tower. Guests must climb to the top by the stairs, because the elevators are not finished until May 19.[75]
  • 6 May – Opening of the Universal Exposition of 1889. Before it closes on 6 November, the Exposition is seen by twenty-five million visitors.[75]
  • 14 July – Socialist Second International founded in Paris.
  • 5 August – Opening of the grand amphitheater of the new Sorbonne.
• 1890
  • 1 May – First celebration of May 1 Labor Day by socialists in France, leading to confrontations with police.
• 1891 – Population: 2,448,000 [70]
  • 15 March – One time zone, Paris time, is established for all of France.
  • 20 May – First professional cooking school founded on the Rue Bonaparte.[76]
• 1892
  • Le Journal newspaper begins publication.
  • First use of reinforced concrete to construct a building in Paris, at 1 Rue Danton.
  • 4 October – Launch of the first weather balloon from the Parc Monceau.
• 1893
  • 7 April – Café Maxim's opens.
  • 12 April – opening of the Olympia music hall on the Boulevard des Capucines.
  • 3 July – Disturbances in the Latin Quarter between students and supporters of Senator René Bérenger over supposedly indecent costumes worn at the Bal des Quatre z'arts. One person is killed.[76]
  • December – Opening of the Vélodrome d'hiver cycling stadium on the Rue Suffren, in the former Galerie des Machines from the 1889 Exposition.
  • 9 December – the anarchist Auguste Vaillant explodes a bomb in the National Assembly, injuring forty-six persons.
    

    Poster for the first public screening of a motion picture at the Grand Café, Paris (1895)
• 1894
  • 10 to 30 January – The Photo-Club de Paris, founded in 1888 by Constant Puyo, Robert Demachy and Maurice Boucquet, holds the first International Exposition of Photography at the Galeries Georges Petit,[77] 8 rue de Sèze (8th arrondissement), devoted to photography as an art rather than a science. The exhibit launches the movement called Pictorialism.
  • First championship of France football tournament between six Parisian teams.
  • 12 February – The anarchist Émile Henry explodes a bomb in the café of the Gare Saint-Lazare, killing one person and wounding twenty-three.
  • 15 March – The anarchist Amédée Pauwels explodes a bomb in the church of La Madeleine. One person, the bomber, is killed.
  • 22 July – The first automobile race, organized by Le Petit Journal, from Paris to Rouen.
  • Asile George Sand (women's shelter) opens.
• 1895
  • Opening of the first Galeries Lafayette department store[78]
  • 22 March – first projected showing of a motion picture by Louis Lumière at a conference on the future industry of cinematography at 44 Rue de Rennes.[79]
  • 10 August – The founding of the Gaumont Film Company, the first major French film studio.
  • Le Cordon Bleu cooking school opens.
  • Maison de l'Art Nouveau art gallery opens.
  • 12 November – French Automobile Club is founded.
  • 28 December – First public projection of a motion picture by the Lumière Brothers in the basement of the Grand Café on the corner of Rue Scribe and the Boulevard des Capucines. Thirty-eight persons attend, including future director Georges Méliès.
• 1896
  • 6 October – Czar Nicholas II of Russia lays the first stone for the Pont Alexandre III.
  • 7 December – the Municipal Council approves the project to build the first Paris Metropolitan subway line.
• 1897
  • The Théâtre du Grand-Guignol opens.
  • The Parc des Princes velodrome opens.
  • 4 April – The first women are allowed to attend the École des Beaux-Arts.
  • 13 July – The opening of the Musée de l'Armée (Army Museum) at Les Invalides.
  • 3 September – opening of the first movie theater, in the Théâtre Robert-Houdon on the Boulevard des Italiens. The theater is rented for three months by Georges Méliès to show films.
  • 4 December – The first Paris automobile show held as part of the "Salon du Cycle" at the Palais des Sports on the Rue de Berri.
• 1898
  • 13 January – Émile Zola publishes his open letter to the President of France on the Dreyfus affair, J'accuse in L'Aurore newspaper.
  • 20 April – The first motorcycle race at Longchamp Racecourse.
  • 19 September – The work begins on the Paris Métro.
  • 20 October – The first wireless communication made between the Eiffel Tower and the Panthéon by Eugène Ducretet and Ernest Roger.
  • The Hôtel Ritz Paris opens.
  • Le Dôme Café opens.
• 1899
  • Inauguration of the monumental statue Triomphe de la République by Jules Dalou on the Place de la Nation.

1905 map of Greater Paris, with the city centre still largely confined within the city walls.

• 1900
  • 13 February – Whistles are issued to Paris traffic policemen.
  • 24 February – The first newsreel films, of the Boer War, are shown at the Olympia Theater.
  • 14 April – The opening of the Universal Exposition of 1900 that involved the building of the Grand Palais, the Petit Palais, and the Pont Alexandre III. Before it closes on 12 November, the Exposition attracts more than fifty million visitors.[80]
  • 13 May – Right-wing candidates win the municipal elections after twenty years of domination by the left.
  • 14 May – The opening of the 1900 Summer Olympics, Olympiad II, the first Olympic games held outside Greece.
  • 19 July – The opening of the first line of the Paris Métro, between the Porte de Versailles and Porte Maillot.
  • 15 September – Automatic ticket gates for the metro are replaced by ticket agents due to the high number of people jumping the gates.
  • 4 December – Law passed permitting women to practice law.
• 1901
  

  The Quai Saint-Michel and Notre-Dame, by Maximilien Luce (1901)
  • Population: 2,715,000[70]
  • The Pathé opens a film production studio in Vincennes.
  • April 1 – The opening of the new Gare de Lyon train station, including the restaurant Le Train Bleu.
  • 1 July – The opening of the first electric train line in Europe between Les Invalides and Versailles.
  • 28 September – First European lawn tennis championship held in Paris.
• 1902
  • 26 January – First Gitanes cigarettes go on sale.
  • 16 October – First use of fingerprints by Paris police to identify a murderer.
  • Première of the Georges Méliès film A Trip to the Moon.[81]
  • Première of the opera Pelléas et Mélisande by Claude Debussy.[82]
• 1903
  • 1 July – Start of the first Tour de France, which ended on 19 July with a parade of the winners at the Parc des Princes.
  • 10 August – The first serious Métro accident at Couronnes station, with eighty-four persons killed.
  • 4 September – Opening of the haute couture fashion house of Paul Poiret.
  • The first Vélodrome d'hiver cycling stadium opens in the former Galerie des Machines of the 1900 Paris Exposition.
  • Première of Octave Mirbeau's play Business is Business.
• 1904
  • 6 February – Opening of the Alhambra music hall on Rue de Malte.
  • 18 April – The socialist (later Communist) newspaper L'Humanité begins publication.[83]
  • 8 May – Socialists and radicals win the Paris municipal elections.
  • 23 November – Consecration of the first Paris church built of concrete, Saint-Jean-l'Évangéliste de Montmartre.
  • 20 December – The first automobile taxis go into service.
• 1905
  • After viewing the boldly colored canvases of Henri Matisse, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck and others at the Salon d'Automne of 1905, the critic Louis Vauxcelles disparages the painters as "fauves" (wild beasts), thus giving their movement the name by which it became known, Fauvism.[84]
  • The Gaumont Film Company's Cité Elgé studios opens at Buttes-Chaumont.
  • First underground public toilets open at the Place de la Madeleine.
• 1906
  

  First Paris flight by Santos Dumont in 1906.
  • Population: 2,722,731.[85]
  • 22 March – First England-France Rugby match played at the Parc des Princes.
  • 11 June – The first motorized bus line begins service between Montmartre and Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Horse-drawn omnibuses continued to run until January 1913.
  • 23 October – First airplane flight in Paris by Santos Dumont, who flew sixty meters at an altitude of three meters at the Parc de Bagatelle.
• 1907
  • 22 February – First woman receives a license to drive a taxi in Paris.
  • 25 March – The first traffic roundabout created in Paris at the Place de l'Étoile.
  • Summer. Pablo Picasso, living in the Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre, paints Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, a major turning point in modern art.
  • The Kahnweiler art gallery opens.
• 1909
  • 1 March – First escalator installed in a Paris Métro station.
  • 29 May – Opening of the Luna Park amusement park at the Porte Maillot.
  • 2 June – Paris première of the ballet Les Sylphides by Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, with Vaslav Nijinsky and Anna Pavlova in the leading roles.
  • 13 December – Creation of first one-way streets in Paris on the Rue de Mogador and Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin.
• 1910
  

  The Quai de Passy during the 1910 Great Flood of Paris
  • January 21–28 – Great flood of Paris. The Seine rises 8.5 meters, the highest level since 1658, and overflows its banks. The flood affects one sixth of the buildings in Paris.[86]
  • 13 February – Opening of the Vélodrome d'hiver cycling stadium on the Rue de Grenelle.
  • 3 December – First use of neon lights on the Grand Palais. The first neon advertising sign appears on the Boulevard Montmartre in 1912.
  • Coco Chanel opens her first boutique, called Chanel Modes, at 21 Rue Cambon.[87]
  • First Gauloises cigarettes go on sale.
  • According to Robert Delaunay, Salle II of the 1910 Salon des Indépendants is "the first collective manifestation of a new art (un art naissant), known two years later as Cubism.[88]
  • At the Salon d'Automne of 1910, held from 1 October to 8 November, Jean Metzinger introduces an extreme form of what would soon be labeled Cubism.[89]
• 1911
  • 24 January – Departure of the first Paris-Monte Carlo automobile race.
  • 22 August – The Mona Lisa is stolen from the Louvre. It is recovered in Florence in December 1913.[90]
  • Gaumont-Palace cinema opens.
  • Fictional Fantômas crime series begins publication.[91]
  • The 1911 Salon des Indépendants officially introduces "Cubism" to the public as an organized group movement.
• 1912
  

  Dancers from Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring (1913).
  • 15 February – Opening of the "Maison de Beauté" salon of Helena Rubenstein at 255 Rue Saint-Honoré.[90]
  • 4 May – Criminal Brigade of the Sûreté formed to deal with major crimes and criminals.
  • 1 June – First world tennis championship held at the Stade de la Faisanderie in Saint-Cloud.
  • 29 May – Premiere of Nijinsky's ballet Afternoon of a Faun.
  • The Cubist contribution to the 1912 Salon d'Automne creates a controversy in the Municipal Council of Paris leading to a debate in the French Chamber des Deputies about the use of public funds to provide the venue for such art. The Cubists are defended by the Socialist deputy Marcel Sembat.[92][93]
• 1913
  • 31 March – Opening of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.
  • 29 May – Première of Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring.[94]
  • 1 October – First collection of trash by motorized trucks instead of handcarts.
  • 24 December – First presidential Christmas tree, placed at Trocadéro, is lit by President Raymond Poincaré.

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