When Paris was the only place to be

For more than 100 years Paris has been as much a symbol and a myth as a geographical reality. The enchantment dates back to the end of the 19th century, when ‘le bordel de l’Europe’, in words quoted by Marie-José Gransard, was transformed into ‘la capitale de l’amour’. In Twentieth Century Paris she traces the growth of the community of mostly foreign artists and writers who created this international brand.

By the 1890s Paris had recovered from defeat by Prussia and the atrocity of Bismarck’s bombardment in 1870 and had become the capital of more than ‘l’amour’.It ran a colonial empire powerful enough to deprive the Kaiser of his ‘place in the sun’. At the same time, it gained the reputation as a centre of individual freedom, a city that was tolerant of eccentricity and behaviour that was elsewhere regarded as immoral or against the law. Samuel Beckett put it best, returning after years of absence: ‘Being back here’, he wrote, is ‘like coming out of jail in April.’