A journey into the depths of Paris is what 'Around and About Paris' is about, an invitation to scratch beneath its surface of dazzling vistas and imposing monuments and to probe into the souls and lives of the restless people, both high and low, who throughout the ages have never ceased to shape it and reshape it.

For Paris is a city of perpetual change, a hectic building site of destruction and reconstruction, of restoration and renovation, a city in perpetual motion. Its rounds of pleasure are periodically broken by maelstroms of social  fury and whose throbbing pulse has always exerted a magnetic power on creative minds from far and wide who have bequeathed to the world great schools of art and thought.

Continual waves of newcomers have come to Paris in search of livelihood, spiritual nourishment or political shelter. As the population of the city grew and craved elbow space, they helped bring down its successive walls — from that built by Philippe-Auguste in 1190 to the last wall built by Adolphe Thiers and demolished in 1919 – always pushing out the boundaries of Paris farther from its original nucleus, l’Ile de la Cité.

The escargot of arrondissements

Thus developed the arrondissements, which spiral outwards clockwise like a snail shell (escargot), keeping Paris conveniently compact, yet endowing it with infinite potential for growth. In 1795 Paris was divided into 12 arrondissements, but in 1860 the number was increased to 20, when Baron Haussmann incorporated the bordering villages into the capital. This change was part of the modernization that had started with the French Revolution.

The Paris created by Baron Haussmann is largely still the Paris of today. Supported by some, deprecated by others, he carved through the medieval city, doing away with many insalubrious streets to make room for the present bright broad avenues. By now, however, Haussmann’s Paris is overlaid with the patina of time, medieval Paris is more of a film set than a reality, and the fragments of ‘villages’ that the sharp observer can still spot here and there tend to blend into the more recent overall unity of their respective arrondissements.

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