Napoleon in Paris

Napoleon Bonaparte dreamed Paris would be the 'capital city of the universe' and much of what we see - and love - about Paris is thanks to him. The long straight boulevards, the fountains, the galleries and museums- even the bread that comes with European cuisine were brought in by Napoleon. He wanted to make it a city that reflected his imperial ambition. But this city shaped him too - Paris is where he went through his most formative experiences as a young man, where he first tasted power, seduction and revolution. Dan joins historian and expert guide Stephanie Paul in Paris to explore the story of Napoleon's early life here, how the city shaped him and how he created the Paris we recognise today. Click here for Stephanie's Napoleonic Paris Tour https://paris-trip.com/en/products/small-group-napoleon%27s-legacy-tour-with-the-dome-of-the-invalides?category=PARIS&subcategory=Museums. This episode is part of our 'Dan Snow's Guide to Europe' Series. Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore. The production manager was Beth Donaldson. Join Dan and the team for a special LIVE recording of Dan Snow's History Hit on Friday, 12th September 2025! To celebrate 10 years of the podcast, Dan is putting on a special show of signature storytelling, never-before-heard anecdotes from his often stranger-than-fiction career, as well as answering the burning questions you've always wanted to ask! Get tickets here, before they sell out: https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/words/dan-snows-history-hit/. We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on. You can also email the podcast directly at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Snow?

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• 0:32Speaker 01

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• 2:24Dan Snow?

  Hi folks, welcome to Dan Snow's History. If you're a follower of this podcast, then you'll know that this August, this podcast is taking you on a whirlwind trip around Europe's greatest historical sites. What says summer more than travel, escapism and history? Nothing, that's what. We start at Notre Dame in Paris a few weeks ago. We whizzed over to Edinburgh to have a look around its magnificent medieval castle. Now, we're back to Paris.

• 2:52Dan Snow?

  Because whilst I love a medieval cathedral, there's no way I'm going to Paris without indulging my passion for the Napoleonic era.

• 3:05Dan Snow?

  And Paris is a metropolis with Napoleon's fingerprints all over it. He was absolutely determined to make Paris "the capital city of the universe", as he called it. After he took power in 1799, he began to transform the city into a great symbol of his of his self, really, certainly his imperial ambitions. Always with an eye to teasing out the parallels between Paris and ancient Rome, which he was, of course, obsessed with. Did Napoleon think about ancient Rome every hour of every day? Yes, yes, we can be sure he did. He established elite universities, he opened museums like that in the Louvre, where he displayed looted art from all over Europe, intending to awe visitors. And enthroned Paris as the greatest city on earth.

• 3:51Dan Snow?

  He built great monuments, you'll have seen the Arc de Triomphe, there's also the Vendôme Column, which he modeled on Trajan's Column in Rome. Even the urban planning of the city came to reflect Napoleon's military mindset. There were the long, straight boulevards. The straight shooting, straight marching, straight talking approach he took on and off the battlefield.

• 4:14Dan Snow?

  So in this episode, we're going to join a guide and local historian, Stephanie Paul, to walk Napoleon's Paris. See how he shaped this city. He created it as a vision at the centre of his empire. An homage to his military victories. But also, we're going to look at how the city itself shaped him. How these streets turned that young, unconfident Corsican student into the ruthless megalomaniac he became. It was here in Paris that he went through his formative experiences. As a young student, he was mercilessly bullied at military school. But it was here also in this city where he first tasted power, seduction and the chaos of revolution. This can be a real treat, folks. Get those walking shoes on. Here we go.

• 5:09Dan Snow?

  Stephanie, bonjour.

• 5:10Speaker 04

  Bonjour, Dan.

• 5:12Dan Snow?

  Nice to meet you. Thank you very much for doing this. Why have you brought me here to start? What's this got to do with the young Napoleon?

• 5:17Speaker 04

  Well, I've started off at the Palais Royal because I simply... Arriving here, we're at a real apex between old and modern Paris. Between us, on the right-hand side, we have the Louvre. On the left-hand side, as we enter into the Palais Royal, we have a place which is going to go from being a royal den of iniquity and lechery to being a centre for political intrigue. Where young Napoleon Bonaparte is going to become a man, should we say. But also where he's going to found the first directory. And really redesign his role as a political leader at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century.

• 6:01Dan Snow?

  So we've got, so the Louvre, we just left the Louvre. People will be familiar, that's the famous art gallery now. But that was the Palace of, well, Louis XIV and the great kings of France the 18th century.

• 6:10Speaker 04

  Exactly. It was originally the palace started in 1541. France of the First. Extended and developed by the Henrys and the Louis and the Francis's 1500s. And then becoming a museum during the French Revolution. Napoleon Bonaparte. ...in the eighteen hundreds, extending it out to showcase, to a certain extent, his militaristic and colonial victories.

• 6:31Dan Snow?

  Right, and because he nicked all the art from around the world and put it in there, didn't he?

• 6:34Speaker 04

  Absolutely. For this first time, this young man wanted to showcase

• 6:38Dan Snow?

  Oh, of course.

• 6:39Speaker 04

  his passion

• 6:40Dan Snow?

  Yes!

• 6:41Speaker 04

  for the world that was under his control.

• 6:44Dan Snow?

  Bring it all together, exactly, completely right. So, what's, and we've moved into this beautiful colonated area now, the Palais Royal. So what was this place?

• 6:52Speaker 04

  So originally, this section here was the residence of the Orleaniste, Louis XIV's brother. However, by the time we get to the late seventeen hundreds, the Orleanistes have extended it out to turn it into the centre of cafes, clubs, bars, brothels. And it is here that after a night at the Opera next door, that eighteen-year-old Napoleon, rather inexperienced, awkward, and perhaps a little bit aware that he was not yet a man, decides to come here, strolling through to see the ladies of the night. Catching the eye of one, he engages her in conversation, which tragically she finds rather boring, suggesting they get down to it.

• 7:36Speaker 04

  And it is here, finally, that he was initiated into the somewhat slightly, should we say, murky, or as he would go, mucky, experiences of sexuality.

• 7:47Dan Snow?

  So this is late eighteenth-century Paris's sort of Soho, the West End?

• 7:50Speaker 04

  Exactly, very much so. Today, it's a little bit different. Today, we have the Ministry of the Navy going on here, and also the Conseil d'État, the Council of State, which was also founded by Napoleon in the early eighteen hundreds, where his new government could come together, both his Senate and the Assemblée Nationale, linking together both his empirical, but also democratic, powers.

• 8:15Dan Snow?

  How did this city shape him, a child from the absolute fringes of the French world at the time, from Corsica?

• 8:23Speaker 04

  Well, Napoleon Bonaparte actually, in his youth, grows up as a sort of partisan. On the one hand, he has this great passion for Corsica, which, in his early youth, he was deeming sort of wild, an ancient place where people stuck to the old values. And France was this sort of dissolutionary monarchy. At the same time, however, his father Carlo, who could see the potential that the monarchy had, really wanted to step forward and embrace being French for all that it could give. But we've got to remember that at the very beginning of the French Revolution in France, Napoleon was not here. He was not actually even fulfilling his military duties to France, though he wore a French uniform.

• 9:06Speaker 04

  He was in Corsica, fighting for Corsican independence, fighting for it to become either free or, going one step further, to be fully integrated into France and have all those advantages. He wasn't getting it. And also, Bauly, the head of the Corsican independence movement at the time, is sidelining our little Napoleone Bonaparte. And so perhaps his return to France and reinvention of himself in the chaos of the French Revolution and here in Paris is going to put him on the trajectory to focus on becoming, as he does in his own words, the greatest Frenchman that's ever lived.

• 9:46Dan Snow?

  Isn't that interesting? So he tries to brand himself initially as a Corsican patriot, the separatist. That doesn't really go that well, so he goes to the other extreme and becomes a passionate believer in France.

• 9:57Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 9:58Dan Snow?

  And that transition takes place on these streets and these arcades that we're walking along now.

• 10:02Speaker 04

  And I would also say very much in the institutions that were here, because you've got to remember that by the time we get to the middle of the 1790s, this area has become a centre for cafes where political discussion is taking place. And even before the revolution, the examples of leaders such as Camille de Mullin giving their speeches here and picking up and writhing around with the political turmoil of the time, this was very much the place to launch those discussions.

• 10:31Dan Snow?

  Really, that was all happening right?

• 10:33Speaker 04

  Absolutely, absolutely.

• 10:34Dan Snow?

  So when you read about Desmoulins, Danton in the cafes, those ferocious debates, that was where we are now.

• 10:40Speaker 04

  Fourteenth of July, seventeen eighty-nine, this is where it's happening. Those early morning discussions where Camille Desmoulins stands on a table, riling up the people of Paris, telling them that the monarchy is coming to defeat them. It's literally happening here. And so after the fall of the monarchy, as France is trying to re-establish itself, once again, these cafes and locations become centres for discussion. But also, most importantly, under the new shifting governments, there's also a sense of, an undercurrent of instability. The governments are not lasting for more than sort of six, eight weeks at a time. If ever there was a political system more hated, Napoleon didn't know one. Because he was looking for order, he was looking for sense,

• 11:25Speaker 04

  and no one seemed to be able to provide it. So he starts coming through these arcades, listening to what people want, listening to the conversations. And perhaps the seedlings of coming into his mind is, I could do this. I could be the man to do this.

• 11:40Dan Snow?

  Seems like an age where anything's possible, but why not me?

• 11:43Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 11:43Dan Snow?

  And so he makes a reputation for himself, well, at Toulon as an artillery officer. He's going to given a job in northern Italy, he does very well there. And he comes back a rock star.

• 11:53Speaker 04

  Exactly, and this is a young man who essentially graduated from the Ecole Militaire as a lieutenant. And one which didn't speak French very well, had quite an atrocious accent, had been bullied all the way through, but seemed to have this personal drive that he would be able to push forward, that he would be able to conquer in the end. And so, yet, it is surprising that even as we get to the dawn of what would be his coup d'etat, if you like, in seventeen ninety-six, that even as he's being presented to the people with his lank hair, his thin demeanour, his somewhat sickly visage,

• 12:37Speaker 04

  that he's still got this notion that he could take France to the next level. He was unprepossessing, he was somewhat shy in public. Yet underneath all of that, himself in his heart, if you will, he's got this really fervent belief that he's the next Julius Caesar.

• 12:55Dan Snow?

  And it's all coming together here over a glass of wine.

• 12:58Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 12:59Dan Snow?

  Where people are still drinking today. I wonder how many people around us fancy they'd be the next Caesar in these bars today.

• 13:05Speaker 04

  What's really interesting about this area, particularly as we come to the post-French Revolution, is that, believe it or not, British cuisine was considered to be one of the greatest in Europe at the time. I mean, you wouldn't think bannings and mash today would compare to foie gras. But actually, one of the things that happens during the French Revolution is that a lot of the chefs that had previously been working for the nobles are free, let loose, and now can open up their own restaurants, as is going to happen here. But Bonaparte is also incredibly clever in that respect. Because we've got to know one thing about the French Revolution, is partly it was caused by famine. So what does Napoleon Bonaparte do? One of the first things he does when he actually takes control is he makes sure that French people will never go hungry again.

• 13:50Speaker 04

  He is going to introduce a law which says "Any citizen can sit down at a table for water and bread." And so, in fact, these institutions become a real melting pot for different social quarters. You've got the bourgeoisie drinking coffee in political discussion. You've got the poor coming in to see how the other half live, allowed to have their bread. And you've got, to a certain extent, a real sense of democracy coming in. Because now you've got that coming together of the classes in a way never really seen before.

• 14:23Dan Snow?

  Which way are we going now?

• 14:24Speaker 04

  We're going to go this way now.

• 14:24Dan Snow?

  Right, lead on.

• 14:25Speaker 04

  Well, also, you should thank him for the baguettes. Because the traditional and humble baguette that we have today is actually something which was inspired later on by Napoleon Bonaparte's military campaigns, when they were having to walk up to seventeen miles a day. This means that they didn't really have time to stop for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So every morning they would be given a little flut of bread. They would put it down their trousers and eat on the march. They were called piccolo in the time, like a little flut bread, like the military-style flutes. And so afterwards, as a sort of style of bread, it became popular. Though, of course, being white bread is only relatively recent, from the 1920s.

• 15:07Dan Snow?

  So it would have been granary, but granary baguettes.

• 15:09Speaker 04

  Exactly. So. Coming down this way, we're also seeing a little bit of a contrast of the architecture as we come down the Rue de Louvre. On the left-hand side, we have the 1600s constructions. And then on the right, the beginning of Napoleon Bonaparte's vision. Now, when you're walking through Paris, you always want to look up at the buildings, because that is going to tell you how old a structure is. If you see buildings which have got no shutters on the front of them, they're coming from the 16, 15, 1400s. And so the Paris that Napoleon would have recognised in this period would have had narrow streets, dirty roads, no sewers.

• 15:51Speaker 04

  People were having to lift up their skirts to wade through this gunk. There were literally people who were employed to take the mud and the muck off your shoes. We call them in French, les décrouteurs. And Napoleon Bonaparte saw this and loathed it. He felt that it was the symbol of an animalistic society. So when he finally takes power, we're going to see what he starts doing. And that is opening up the streets. And so from Paris Royal, as we make our way back down to the Rue Rivoli, what we can see is a sudden widening. Because if you see the wooden shutters, this is Napoleon Bonaparte.

• 16:29Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 16:30Speaker 04

  Here.

• 16:31Dan Snow?

  Much wider.

• 16:31Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 16:33Dan Snow?

  And so this is about bringing light and cleanliness and order.

• 16:36Speaker 04

  Exactly. First pavements are being brought in so that the travellers weren't having to jostle with carts and buggies going through the streets, so they would be safe. So he actually is looking to clean Paris, to open it up. And also, water.

• 16:53Dan Snow?

  Oh yeah, look at this.

• 16:54Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 16:55Dan Snow?

  It's a big public, huge public drinking fountain.

• 16:58Speaker 04

  Napoleon Bonaparte wants to make sure that disease does not spread through the city, once again causing revolutions, unhappiness. What he wants is that modern Paris would be clean, salubrious. Bringing together the people to enjoy their city.

• 17:18Dan Snow?

  So in the same way, I suppose he regards himself as sweeping away medieval, anachronistic institutions, he's literally sweeping away the medieval fabric of a city.

• 17:26Speaker 04

  One hundred percent. And also, you mentioned earlier that he was going to other countries and invading those countries. Well, he's also going to get a lot of influence from those countries. In Paris today, we have the Rue du Caire, les Souks. So he's seeing the way the streets are in Egypt. He's seeing how we have the great pavements and the great roads and the boulevards in Italy. And so his vision, if we're going to say to create the new Rome, is actually perhaps to create a new capital that brings together all of the advantages that these cities have, to make them just perfect in Paris.

• 18:01Dan Snow?

  This whole civilian side of Napoleon is fascinating, which gets overlooked.

• 18:07Speaker 04

  I think one thing that we have to remember about Napoleon is that if you put a hundred historians in a room, there's going to be a hundred's opinions. And this is because at various periods in his life, he is a very shifting and transitory sort of figure. In his youth, he was shy. He was always under the shadow of his older brother, on whom everything was placed. Napoleon was the fourth child for whom they didn't really know what to do with. His brother was supposed to go into the church, become a bishop, have great orders. There was a future planned out for him, of course, which would come to nothing. Whereas Napoleon, to fulfil to a certain extent his father's ambitions, is going to head off to the military. He didn't want to be a soldier, most importantly. He dreamed of being an explorer in the navy. He thought there was more military advancement that he could get there.

• 18:52Speaker 04

  He even wanted to join the ill-fated Voyage de l'Apéro. Just imagine if he had have gone on that, history would have been totally different. Of course, that's going to end with poor Laperes being cannibalised in Vanuatu. So we might not have had Napoleon, and that totally would have redesigned the history of Europe.

• 19:11Dan Snow?

  Because I spend a lot of time thinking about Napoleon's military campaigns. It's nice for me to come to Paris and think about him doing things in the, you know, the civil space.

• 19:18Speaker 04

  I would go so further as to say the romantic one. In fact, when we think of Napoleon, we think of a man of great military grandeur, style, pomp, ceremony. But in fact, down beneath all of that, he had a rather romantic soul. Did you know that he used to write romantic novels in his youth?

• 19:35Dan Snow?

  Yes, he was a frustrated novelist.

• 19:37Speaker 04

  Exactly, absolutely terrible. They were rejected at every stop. But he was very sentimental, very emotional. And then, of course, with his dealings with women. We know and understand that from seventeen ninety-five, once he's jumped back into life in Paris, he's very, very much under the pressure from his family to take a wife, to get married, to have children. And so, imagine, seventeen ninety-six, he's at a party given by Barat, and a woman sidles up to him, older, beautiful, soave.

• 20:09Dan Snow?

  Sophisticated.

• 20:10Speaker 04

  Exactly. And this is Rose Tasha, aka the future Empress Josephine. Whether it's love at first sight or not, certainly for him in that case, we're going to see that this is going to be the great passion of his life, but also perhaps one of the most destructive forces. The passion that he has for her becomes toxic, some might even say twisted, by her own infidelities and superiority compared to him. So, just now, we're making our way down towards the Louvre and towards the Rue Révolée. One of the most important things that Napoleon Bonaparte gives us

• 20:52Speaker 04

  is the street signs and the street numberings that we have. So, I live in the nineteenth district of Paris, outside of the old medieval city. Now, historically, Paris has been a city enclosed by walls, les encadrages. Now, before the French Revolution, we had sort of eight sort of little districts within the city. You might know the name of them, such as Saint-Jean, Latin Forte à la Mare, etc. Now, starting in seventeen twenty-six, there had been a desire to sort of add more organisation to the houses, street numbers and things like that. But it had never really been officiated, never really been finished. Sometimes you'd be walking down. Down the street you'd see house number two and then there's number nineteen slap bang next to it. So what Napoleon did when he first comes into power, starting in eighteen oh four,

• 21:37Speaker 04

  is to reorganise completely how we see Paris. From the names of the streets, establishing the, in those days, nine districts. Giving them roads named, bringing together, I should say, the important leaders. Shop signs with a bit of medieval history, but also once again with a focus on the militaristic presence within the city. We're going to walk down the road of Napoleon in a moment. And even the blue and green signs.

• 22:03Dan Snow?

  Oh, they date back, do they?

• 22:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, there was something that he first created as well, as they were heavily influenced by the mosaics and the coloured traditions of his home in Ajaccio.

• 22:15Dan Snow?

  Oh, really?

• 22:16Speaker 04

  Yeah. And it's incredible that it's still stayed with us today. Now, of course, as we walk up the Boulevard d'Opera, we're looking perhaps at the continuation of Napoleon's vision, not that would be succeeded under Napoleon, but under his nephew Napoleon III, who's going to take the Napoleonic desire to knock down, rebuild and reform Paris and turn it into a modern city. Napoleon Bonaparte, of course, by eighteen ten, to a certain extent on the losing foot, is going to have to refocus funds, ideas and planning. So would never complete his vision of the city.

• 22:56Speaker 04

  But it's Napoleon III, from eighteen fifty-eight onwards, who's going to succeed in doing that.

• 23:02Dan Snow?

  So we're walking along a classic Parisian boulevard here. Straight as an arrow, very rational. Now, was this Napoleon's dream because he just liked straight roads and that suited his mind? Or was there a military function as well? He thought that revolutionary activity sort of thrived in little narrow, winding medieval streets?

• 23:23Speaker 04

  Exactly. And we've really got to imagine that in the eighteen hundreds, revolutions and uprisings are constant. In fact, between seventeen eighty-nine and eighteen seventy-one, we're going to have two emperors, three kings, three republics and four revolutions. So what he needs to do is create a system. which is going to make it easier for an army to move around. So we have the creation of the étoiles and boulevards system. Now, this is something that to a certain extent already existed in France. Louis XIV in Versailles. And then, of course, which would then be translated to the American straight line grid pattern road system was already in place. However, the boulevards and étoiles are a little bit different. We have these long boulevards, these long straight roads, coming to a, well, for want of a word, a place

• 24:08Speaker 04

  rather than a square as we would have it in English, but a rounded location where the, like spokes of a wheel, if you like. So the idea was that during any form of uprising, the streets would be wide enough that you couldn't build barricades across them. They would have less street furniture, which might be used for those barricaded ways. And of course, that we would have enough, to a certain extent, space for armies to move down them very easily.

• 24:47Dan Snow?

  And after all, Napoleon had really, really

• 24:52Dan Snow?

  come to the attention of France's rulers when he used cannon on rioting Parisians. So he knew all about sort of lines of sight and fields of fire.

• 25:00Speaker 04

  Well, very much so. We've got to understand that Napoleon Bonaparte during the revolution, he's in a little bit of a difficult position because at the very beginning of the revolution, he's still a French soldier. He wears a French uniform. He is working for the French crown, if you like. However, I don't think there's any doubt that Napoleon was in his heart looking, if you like, away from monarchy towards a more democratic style of government. However, he also very firmly believed that the peasantry needed a guiding hand to help them achieve this. But also what Napoleon is going to do is he's going to raise the heights of the buildings.

• 25:44Speaker 04

  So already in old Paris, normally buildings were between sort of four to five stories. They were predominantly made of wood. They were easy to jump across if you're in a revolution. So firing down on soldiers below and then running away across the rooftops. So that had already been identified as a danger. So Napoleon Bonaparte, with his reconstruction of Paris, as he began it in the early 1800s, has already started this idea of building up, having six, seven stories, so that it would be impossible to get a good angle of your musket to fire down because the bullet would fall straight out of the gun. Oh, really? Yeah. Wow.

• 26:29Dan Snow?

  You're listening to Dan Snow's history hit, The Best Is Yet To Come. Stick with us.

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• 30:01Dan Snow?

  Passant le Château Voltaire Hotel, parlant d'un philosophe français éclairé, espérant apporter la raison au monde.

• 30:09Speaker 04

  Reason et une certaine quantité de passion pour le café. Le homme a très bien bu 42 tasses par jour.

• 30:14Dan Snow?

  Il l'a fait, Voltaire ?

• 30:16Speaker 04

  Nous avons eu l'énergie nécessaire pour écrire ces 2000 tracts politiques.

• 30:22Speaker 04

  Nous sommes en train de marcher dans une partie de Paris qui a joué un rôle crucial dans le développement révolutionnaire de Napoleon Bonaparte. C'est ce que nous appelons le quartier des Jacobins. C'est ici que nous avons le Japon des Jacobins, qui va donner son nom à ces ultra-débuts révolutionnaires. Des noms comme Robespierre, Fouquet, and Ville qui nous sortent ici.

• 30:47Dan Snow?

  Ce sont donc les ultra.

• 30:49Speaker 04

  Absolument. Même si Napoleon Bonaparte lui-même n'a peut-être pas directement suivi, ni 100% avec leurs sciences politiques dans la révolution française, il va toujours prendre la longue vue que tant qu'il choisit un side vainqueur, tout va bien.

• 31:13Dan Snow?

  Oui, il est un survivant.

• 31:15Speaker 04

  Exactement, très bien. Mais c'est une région que Napoleon Bonaparte connaissait très bien. Parce que dans les premiers jours du Directoire, c'est dans ce quartier de Paris que nous avons le premier Directoire.

• 31:27Dan Snow?

  Donc c'est le premier petit groupe, ce petit gage de hommes qui prend le contrôle du pays français.

• 31:34Speaker 04

  Exactement. Et à un certain degré, je pense que Napoleon a joué le rôle de la femme désagréable. La face désagréable de cela. Parce que tout le reste de la couronne, etc. avait déjà été trop attaché à la politique négative de l'époque. Il était donc essentiellement cette face indépendant dont les gens pouvaient se rassembler. Maintenant, l'un des mythes intéressants à propos de Napoleon est qu'il était toujours le pote.

• 32:06Speaker 04

  He came bottom of his class. Well, he was forty second out of forty eight, so not quite the lowest possible. Or you hear these stories that he came from an impoverished family. Well, poverty certainly in Corsica was more pronounced than in Paris, but his father was well educated. His mother, Laetitia, was a woman of beauty and drive. So he was actually coming perhaps not from great monetary wealth, but a sense of nobility which always surrounded him. Though whether it was true nobility or not is up for debate, his father was actually accused of purchasing his Bueno Parte inheritance from the Bishop of Tuscany.

• 32:51Dan Snow?

  So the Directory was based around here?

• 32:54Speaker 04

  Yes, literally just at the end of the road. There was actually previously on the site of where we have almost the Olympic balloon today straight ahead of us looming, we have the Tuileries Gardens. Just to the left hand side of that, we had actually the former stables of the French royal family. And this is where they decided, because it had a large enough space, but it was also a quality building, thanks to the creation of Louis Laveau, we had a quality building where they could set up this first government. Now Napoleon Bonaparte actually had another visage, and that was that they would create a new Conseil d'Etat, a new power centre, actually where we have the Musée d'Orsay today. So that Quai d'Orsay, which would later on become a train station, actually

• 33:37Speaker 04

  was where he was planning to build his brand new temple to governmental success.

• 33:43Dan Snow?

  Okay, so we've got the, so we've been still just walking around really the edge of the Louvre, haven't we?

• 33:49Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 33:49Dan Snow?

  So the Tuileries would be the former garden in the royal period, the garden of the Louvre.

• 33:53Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 33:54Dan Snow?

  Right, so there's the big indoor riding school, that's where they met, and that's where the revolutionary government was based.

• 34:00Speaker 04

  Exactly. And also, we've got to remember that Napoleon Bonaparte, he's not going to move back into the Louvre as a palace. He had no intention, even when he was an emperor, of moving and relating and linking himself back up with the monarchy. What he wanted to have was- A sort of safe location, that's going to be the Tuileries actually. So he would be based in the Tuileries Gardens during his time as emperor. But even so, it is, I think, true that Napoleon Bonaparte didn't like the trappings of monarchy. Now, interestingly, he very famously says this about his father, that his father Carlo passed away when he was about fourteen years old. He said that he was a man who loved the frapperies, the fripperies of rulership.

• 34:45Speaker 04

  Napoleon wasn't down with that, which is also why I think that his new city, moving away from the curls, the twelves, the asymmetry of Louis XV period, is going to be so militaristically organised. He wants a city as straight, as organised and as under control as he was himself.

• 35:07Dan Snow?

  Well, you say that, you know, the Louvre, the Tuileries Gardens, the Place Vendante. It almost feels like the centre of Paris used to be like the Forbidden City in Beijing. It was sort of this giant royal area at the heart of it. And it's Napoleon, and the revolution let people back in there.

• 35:22Speaker 04

  Very much so, and we've got to remember that Paris was the capital of France until 1682. However, from 1682 until 1789, the power of the French kings had shifted and was all going to be in Versailles. So to a certain extent, Paris had become somewhat neglected. Imagine it as a sort of shrubbery that's been left to grow of its own accord, with new districts of wealth popping up, new districts of influence. And Napoleon Bonaparte, seeing that this old royal tree has become somewhat wild, begins to have a bit of a prune, if you will, bring it back under his control. And we can really see that here, of course, with the Place Vendante. So.

• 36:08Speaker 04

  This gorgeous octagonal square was originally created by Louis XIV. It was his royal square, there was a stature of him nobly on a horse in the centre. Now, he's also going to turn it into one of the most desirable residents in the city, with also the Ministry of War coming in, Ministry of Justice having their hot seats here in Paris. Now, today, however, it's dominated by this incredible sculpture of Napoleon Bonaparte, based on the Column of Trajan.

• 36:41Dan Snow?

  So, right there in the middle of the square, or the place, you have, it really is very similar to the Column of Trajan in Rome, isn't it? You've got a, as I said, diorama stretching all the way up, showing Napoleon's army, presumably the Grande Armée, doing all sorts of things. And on the top, the man himself, dressed as a Roman in his toga.

• 36:58Speaker 04

  Exactly, and it was to celebrate his Battle of Ostelitz. Now, during the battle, he captured many, many cannon from the enemy, well over 350 cannon. So, he decided that he was going to melt down 312 of them and turn it into this. So, starting at the bottom, yes, we begin with essentially a Greco-Roman re-representation of how Napoleon Bonaparte is going to, single-handedly, with pluck, daring do, and his own sense of righteous power, defeat his enemies. Now, some would say it was his own leadership, some would say that it was the help of his maréchal, but at the end of the day, it was a decisive and definitive battle,

• 37:41Speaker 04

  which is actually going to give him the necessary power to really take control of France. And, there's one special way that he's going to do that. And for that, we have to see something quite unique in Paris, just over here. This is where we have, today, the only remaining official metre. The new system that Napoleon Bonaparte is going to include.

• 38:03Dan Snow?

  So, Napoleon is going to transition to the metric system?

• 38:06Speaker 04

  Exactly. Well, one of the things he realised when he came to power is that a foot in Paris was not the same as a foot in Bordeaux, that a cup of salt was not the same as a king in Paris as it was in Toulouse. And so, he had this grand vision of creating a system which would, once and for all, unite all of France.

• 38:30Speaker 04

  And so, here it is today. So, basing on the Roman system, the National Convention is actually going to introduce these. So, starting in seventeen ninety-six until seventeen ninety-nine, so under Napoleon's Directory period, we're going to see this standardisation of the metre, centimetres. Now, these used to be all over the city, and they were used for measuring everything, from sausages to materials, and even to bread, which you could buy in the metre as well.

• 39:03Dan Snow?

  There you go, I'm just testing it. My wingspan is two metres and that does feel about right, so that's good to come to the original layout of me. And is this the first metric system in the world? Has anyone else gone to metric by this point?

• 39:15Speaker 04

  No, no, no, Napoleon was the first one who...

• 39:17Dan Snow?

  Wow, so this is the original metre?

• 39:19Speaker 04

  Exactly, the original metre.

• 39:21Dan Snow?

  That is exciting.

• 39:22Speaker 04

  Well, we've got to remember that the Romans themselves also used the measurement of deca manos, so they used the notion of ten hands, which was also rather, well, depending on the size of the hand, should we say, could be a little bit different as well. So, no, he takes that Roman idea of the deca manos and makes it into the ten centimetres, the metre that we have today. We're gonna go this way.

• 39:46Dan Snow?

  Brilliant.

• 39:46Speaker 04

  So, we're gonna go straight down to the Tweedy Gardens. Now I'm finished with that view of Concord and...

• 39:51Dan Snow?

  Oh, Feto!

• 39:52Speaker 04

  Yeah. So, remember that he'd been to Venice, he'd seen the beauties of Venice, and he had a project to create in Paris a single long road running straight the way through the centre of the city. Well, he can't do that because the Louvre is in the way. So, rather than smashing through the Louvre, he decided that he was going to create the Rue Rivoli. And along the Rue Rivoli, he wanted to create a series of beautiful passages and archwayed galleries.

• 40:21Dan Snow?

  Oh, interesting.

• 40:22Speaker 04

  And as we walk down here, look at the beautiful mosaics that we have. This is full-on a copy of what you can see around the Piazza San Marco with these gorgeous polychromatic marbles, and originally even above us in the ceilings, though bland and... Unadorned today, there would have been a plan for mosaics here. Of course, Napoleon Bonaparte would never realise this project, unfortunately. Even the Rue Rivoli itself was going to have its construction stopped around 1812, which is why, as you go down the Rue Rivoli today, though the buildings may look symmetrical and similar all the way down, we're actually going to notice that half of them are missing

• 41:05Speaker 04

  their shutters. Didn't even have time to finish those.

• 41:09Dan Snow?

  Okay, well, that's why they haven't got shutters on. That's interesting.

• 41:12Speaker 04

  Well, I think actually it's even more interesting for the construction of these because later on, this is going to become the centres where we have the grand hotels, the Regina, the Maurice in the 1800s and 1900s. Because what this does is all of a sudden it turns Paris into one of the must come locations on people's grand tours. Believe it or not, really before this period, it had not been top of the list. It was dangerous, dirty, malign. Yeah, everyone wanted to go to Italy. Everyone wanted to see the perfection of those Italian cities. So Napoleon Bonaparte, to a certain extent, might even have contributed to Paris becoming the touristic city that we have today.

• 41:54Dan Snow?

  Well, in a way, given that Paris is now one of the world's great, most desirable cities, millions of people come here, in a way Napoleon got some way towards his goal, didn't he, of making this the centre of the universe?

• 42:07Speaker 04

  Without a doubt. And I particularly think that for a young man from a Jaxeo, with, let's say, in his youth, nobody believed that this is what he could become. What he achieved is nothing really short of a miracle.

• 42:22Dan Snow?

  Sure.

• 42:23Speaker 04

  But this is the Rue Rivoli, and so this is Napoleon Bonaparte's grand route that he would create in the end. It's actually, if you put it together, the single longest selection of roads that we have in the city, running right the way from Nation to even the end of Paris at Porte Maillot. Key features, of course, being the Louvre and the ever-important Arc de Triomphe. So let's head this way.

• 43:03Speaker 02

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• 43:33Speaker 01

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• 44:15Speaker 01

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• 44:30Speaker 04

  So entering into the Tuileries Gardens, we're gonna head down this gorgeous corridor just here.

• 44:34Dan Snow?

  And so we wouldn't have been able to come in here back in the Ancien Régime, when the kings were on the throne? Was this exclusively for the royal?

• 44:40Speaker 04

  Not necessarily, actually. The garden itself was created in the 1500s by Catherine de Mitye. It was her sort of hunting ground, if you will, where she could enjoy herself letting loose pigs, rabbits, and the odd baby deer, and do a little bit of hunting. But public gardens were a very, very important part of Parisian life. Going for strolls, les promenades, was very much part of the culture at the time.

• 45:05Dan Snow?

  You could come for a promenade in here, and the Queen might dash past chasing some rabbits.

• 45:09Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 45:10Dan Snow?

  That's nice.

• 45:11Speaker 04

  The joys of the 1500s. But before that, it gets its name because this is originally outside of the city. And it's where we have the tile factories, which were making the red tiles for old Paris. Imagine the 1500s, the city was known as the city of white walls and red tiles.

• 45:28Dan Snow?

  Really?

• 45:28Speaker 04

  So completely different from the grey slurfs and the beige walls that we have today.

• 45:35Dan Snow?

  Isn't that strange? Total rebrand. Because this would have been outside the medieval heart of Paris.

• 45:40Speaker 04

  Exactly, yeah. And in fact, even at the time of the French Revolution, the Place de la Concorde was outside of the city. That's actually why we're going to have Madame la Guillotine placed here in all her ferocious glory. Principally because the bloodshed as we get to the height of the terror is threatening disease in the city with so many heads rolling, the blood congealing. It was a danger of it getting into the water system. So Napoleon Bonaparte would have been very familiar with this part of Paris. Of course, very famously, it would be here on Place de la Concorde, 16th of October, 1793, that he would stand in what is today the Hôtel de la Marine on the balcony and watch the Queen be beheaded.

• 46:24Dan Snow?

  Right, so he witnessed that, did he?

• 46:25Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 46:27Dan Snow?

  And here it is, this is Place de la Concorde, which I think was called Place de la Révolution at the time.

• 46:32Speaker 04

  Well, originally it was called Place Royale, then of course Place de la Révolution, and then of course Place de la Concorde under Napoleon Bonaparte.

• 46:39Dan Snow?

  And this is where the guillotine was set up?

• 46:41Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 46:42Dan Snow?

  So as a young man, so the height of the terror, 1793.

• 46:47Speaker 04

  To 94, yeah.

• 46:47Dan Snow?

  To 94, he was here in Paris watching that upheaval, was he?

• 46:52Speaker 04

  Exactly. And I would also say that perhaps witnessing the execution of people who had been considered monarchs, chosen by God, might perhaps have been the decision why he decided to become an emperor rather than a king. Anvil is just over here.

• 47:12Dan Snow?

  Just over there.

• 47:13Speaker 04

  Eiffel Tower, we've got the Assemblée Nationale just there as well.

• 47:17Dan Snow?

  So this huge place here, what importance did Napoleon attach to it?

• 47:22Speaker 04

  So for him, this was the halfway point, if you like, for his great triumphal march of.

• 47:31Speaker 04

  Eighteen oh nine. Because Napoleon Bonaparte has won the Battle of Ostelitz. He's victorious. He promises his troops a triumphal march in that great style of the Emperors of Rome. Now, of course, if you're going to have a triumphal march, you need a triumphal arch. Now, the whole point and focus of triumphal arches was to purify troops coming back into the city. And so Napoleon Bonaparte perhaps sees it in the same way. That he's allowing troops to return to their families, shocking their violence and death of the military, bringing with them only the glory that this battle entailed. So, starting in eighteen oh five, we're going to have the beginning of the construction of the Arc de Triomphe.

• 48:17Speaker 04

  Based on, once again, the Arc of Trausen. He's going to have this single arch fifty-five metres a high, fifty metres wide, for his army of almost a quarter of a million to march through in its glory. Victorious soldiers returning home. Tragically, it wouldn't quite end like that. By eighteen oh seven, when he arrives to oversee the construction, they've done about six feet.

• 48:46Speaker 04

  He wasn't that impressed. So actually, what he's going to do, he's going to close down the construction of the Arc de Triomphe, and he's going to order the construction of the smaller tri-party arch, based on Septimus Severus, here, which is in front of his new museum of the Louvre, as it was. Of course, the troops aren't going to be able to walk under that because it's only twenty metres high. So it was called the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel because the troops were able to go around it. That was the idea. But in the very centre here, there was a military band playing, there was paper mache creations of the great triumphs of Napoleon Bonaparte. And this was really the moment when this young man, I think,

• 49:32Speaker 04

  takes on to himself not only the role of general, not only the role of emperor, perhaps even in his own mind now, there's that whispering of the demi-god.

• 49:46Dan Snow?

  Well, unfortunately, he was all too mortal, wasn't he? Because we're now also looking over here at Les Anvilles, where he would eventually, well, he was exiled after the Battle of Waterloo, he was imprisoned on Saint Helena, he was buried there, but his body was returned and ended up in Les Anvilles.

• 49:59Speaker 04

  It did, much to, I think, his chagrin. Napoleon Bonaparte never wanted to be buried in the Grand Tomb in Les Anvilles. That was something which was totally fabricated later. What his greatest desire was, was that his ashes would be scattered in the Seine at the heart of the people that he loved the most. Because perhaps even after everything, Napoleon Bonaparte was still a man of the people, if you like. And in death, liberty, equality and brotherhood was how he wanted to, perhaps remind them of that. So, yes, unfortunately, after his death in 1821, he would be laying in repose in Saint Helena until the 1840s,

• 50:43Speaker 04

  when ironically, not his own nephew, Napoleon III, but Louis Philippe, the last king of the French, the elected monarch from 1832, is going to come in and wanting to make a symbol, not out of his own family, with the Spennefest, the revolution, the over decadence and the unending hatred of the people, but by putting Napoleon on that pedestal. And perhaps he's the one who's going to create that vision, with its seven tombs, with its glorified statuary. It's not just a tomb, it's a temple to Napoleon.

• 51:23Dan Snow?

  And I suppose, and I suppose after that last king, Louis Philippe, you get Napoleon's nephew comes back and forms the Second Empire. He, in many ways, finishes or continues a lot of the work Napoleon had begun in Paris. He gives it this classic street pattern that we recognise and love today.

• 51:42Speaker 04

  Very much so. Napoleon III comes in and this time he's had a wider influence on his life, and that is principally London.

• 51:50Dan Snow?

  Oh, yes.

• 51:51Speaker 04

  He's spent his formative years, if you like, in exile in London. He'd seen the new city and also to a certain extent, he'd seen the stability of the reign of Queen Victoria. And so that's to a certain extent what he wants to replicate, is he wants to come back and rather than creating the modern Rome, perhaps he wants to create the new, better London. And so he's going to now create a system with standardisation, going even further than the liberty, equality and brotherhood, with the buildings with their standard height, with their standard design, but he's also going to industrialise the process. The buildings of Paris that we see today, laid out in this organisation, is essentially the world's first Ikea flat pack city.

• 52:35Speaker 04

  And I think Napoleon Bonaparte would have, if he'd have had the technology of the time, absolutely embraced that. Because Napoleon was a man not afraid of technology. He built the first metal bridge in Paris. He also was the one who first really focused on this idea of symmetry with his buildings. As we can see on the right hand side with the Madeleine, with its dedication to military glory that would become a church later. And on the left hand side, the Assemblée Nationale, with its timpani of great leaders, both of them in the Roman style. This idea of order, speed, efficiency, militarism, he would have been 100% down with his nephew's innovative measures.

• 53:17Dan Snow?

  So it sounds to me, you've convinced me that the Paris that the world knows and loves today is a product of the mind of Napoleon and continued by the man who saw himself as a Napoleon III. It's their city.

• 53:28Speaker 04

  100%. And I think today, perhaps, history has given both of these men more of a negative touch, because of course we are going to see France's major colonial endeavours. We are also going to see both the return and abolition of slavery. We are going to see France under Napoleon III continue Napoleon Bonaparte's movements into North Africa, into the Middle East. And maybe in today's politics, that is something which we can look back on on the negative front. But what are we looking at on the positives here is that these men took a France which

• 54:11Speaker 04

  had known a chaos of a monarchy and turned it into the pinnacle of power in Europe.

• 54:19Dan Snow?

  Thank you so much for showing me around. If people want to replicate this tour or go on many of the other tours you offer, we'll put the links in the show notes below the podcast.

• 54:28Speaker 04

  Fabulous. Thank you very much.

• 54:32Dan Snow?

  That's a huge thank you to Stephanie. We're just sheltering in the shade here. It is now a touching 40 degrees centigrade in Paris. That's well over 100 Fahrenheit, folks. And that means the time has come to retreat to a little shady spot and have a cool, refreshing beverage. So we're going to go and do that now. This day might be coming to an end, but the European trip certainly isn't. Here, follow on your podcast player so you don't miss it. Au revoir, folks.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  This is a paid partnership with Apple Card. The coolest flex at brunch these days is not the Bloody Mary with the bottomless gold flake caviar topping. It's not whipping out your wallet to pay. It's not having a wallet at all. Jack's been an Apple Card user since 2019. That's the same year he tossed his wallet in the trash. Because Apple Card holders earn 2% daily cash back on purchases made using Apple Pay. It's the only credit card designed for the iPhone. I tap to pay with Apple Card at the grocery store, at the gas station, at restaurants. And yes, I use it at my second home, the farmer's market. Jack tapping to pay with his Apple Card with Apple Pay is his favorite thing to do. And the pleasant vibration and chime sound? Means I just got 2% daily cash back on my latest purchase. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval.

• 56:00Speaker 01

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• 56:38Dan Snow?

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