Paris
When you think of Paris do you picture the Eiffel Tower? The medieval city of Notre Dame? The elegant boulevards of Baron Haussmann? The Montmartre of Toulouse- Lautrec? The grandeur of the Louvre? The Art Nouveau of the Paris Metro? The Grand Projets of François Mitterrand? Or...? Yes, there is just so much beauty to Paris.
In 150 striking images, Paris celebrates the French capital, from its world-famous landmarks to evocative alleyways and corners that might surprise you. You may have heard, for instance, about the Paris catacombs and sewers that you can visit, but did you know about La Petite Ceinture, a disused 19th century railway line that circumnavigates the inner city?
From the medieval marvels of Sainte-Chapelle to the 1970s Pompidou Centre to the latest pop-up beaches beside the Seine, the book explores a great many sides to the city. In collecting these images of the city today, we come to understand something of its history – from the executions that took place at the Place de la Concorde during the Revolution to the Arc de Triomphe honouring those who served in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars to the skyscrapers of La Défense.
Presented in a landscape format and with captions explaining the story behind each entry, Paris is a stunning collection of images celebrating the world’s most romantic city.
Alastair Horne is a lecturer in Publishing Studies at the University of Stirling, in Scotland. The author of several books including Graveyards, Graves of the Great and Famous, Paris: City of Light, and London: Treasured Capital of the United Kingdom – he is currently completing a doctorate on how smartphones are changing storytelling, and a novel set in an unnamed Parisian cemetery in the early twentieth century.