ABSTRACT
Paris, according to German literary critic and sociologist Walter Benjamin, was ‘the capital of the 19th century’. During the years spanning the Second Empire to World War I (1852–1914), Paris became not only a leading cultural and intellectual centre – the birthplace of the avant-garde and the capital of pleasure – it also emerged as the most modern city in the world, especially during what the French call the belle époque, roughly from 1880 to 1914. It boasted arguably the world’s largest department store as well as its largest press. The recently transformed city was also home to wide tree-lined boulevards, housing shops, cafés and theatres, which attested to a vibrant boulevard culture. Around this time, Paris also gained notoriety as a place of pleasure and hedonism, or for some, a place of debauchery and depravity, especially in Montmartre. This chapter explores the history of Paris’s role as the capital of modernity, tracing not only the evolution of Paris during this key period, but also examining the role it occupied in the cultural imaginary, both as an emblem of French identity and of modernity.
