Napoleon in Paris

Summary

---

Podcast Summary: Dan Snow's History Hit

Episode: Napoleon in Paris (August 17, 2025)

Host: Dan Snow
Guest: Stephanie Paul, Parisian historian and tour guide

---

Episode Overview

Dan Snow takes listeners on an immersive, on-foot exploration of Paris, uncovering how Napoleon Bonaparte shaped the city and how Paris, in turn, molded Napoleon himself. Joined by historian Stephanie Paul, the episode reveals the enduring marks of the Napoleonic era found throughout the city—the urban planning, monuments, institutions, and mindset that helped define modern Paris. Together, they trace Napoleon’s journey from awkward Corsican outsider to master city-builder and emperor.

---

Key Discussion Points

---

1. Paris as the “Capital of the Universe”

(02:31-05:17)

• Napoleon’s Ambitions: After taking power in 1799, Napoleon set out to transform Paris into a city befitting his imperial aspirations, often drawing inspiration from Ancient Rome.
• Signature Projects:
  • Creation of elite universities.
  • The Louvre as a museum showcasing looted art.
  • Monuments like the Arc de Triomphe and Vendôme Column (modeled on Trajan’s column).
  • Urban planning: "Long, straight boulevards, the straight shooting, straight marching, straight talking approach he took on and off the battlefield.” (Dan Snow, 03:48)
• Theme: Napoleon’s self-image and imperial vision were inextricably linked to the physical transformation of Paris.

---

2. Formative Paris: How the City Shaped Napoleon

(05:18-11:47)

• The Palais Royal:
  • Site of “political intrigue” and Napoleon’s “formative experiences.”
  • Formerly a royal, decadent hub, turned into a center for vibrant political debate and even Napoleon’s first sexual escapades.
  • “It is here that after a night at the opera next door... he was initiated into the somewhat, slightly, should we say murky...experiences of sexuality.”
    — Stephanie Paul (06:59)
• Early Hardships:
  • Bullied as a student at the Ecole Militaire for his accent and outsider status.
  • Involvement with Corsican independence before ultimately embracing Frenchness and setting his sights on leadership in Paris.

Quote:
“Isn’t that interesting? So he tries to brand himself initially as a...Corsican patriot, a separatist. That doesn’t really go that well. So he goes to the other extreme, becomes a passionate believer in France.”
— Dan Snow (09:52)

---

3. Paris as a Political and Social Cauldron

(10:38-14:31)

• Paris’ cafés became epicenters for revolutionary debate and political ferment.
• “When you read about Desmoulins, Danton, in the cafes, those ferocious debates—That was where we are now, 14th of July, 1789. This is where it’s happening.”
  — Stephanie Paul (10:41)
• Political instability post-Revolution: the rise and fall of governments bred dissatisfaction and opportunity for Napoleon.

---

4. Napoleon’s Social Policies and Urban Innovations

(14:32-19:18)

• Bread and Social Democracy:
  • Napoleon ensured citizens’ access to basic food, allowing anyone to sit for "water and bread," blending the classes and fostering social mobility in cafés and public spaces.
• Baguette Origin Story:
  • Military necessity led to portable, flute-shaped bread (predecessor to the baguette).
    “They would put it down their trousers and eat on the march.”
    — Stephanie Paul (14:32)
• Urban Cleanliness and Order:
  • Napoleon detested the grime and chaos of old Paris. He introduced wider streets, pavements, public fountains, and systematic urban planning for hygiene and military efficiency.
  • “He saw this and loathed it. He felt that it was the symbol of an animalistic society. So...he starts opening up the streets.”
    — Stephanie Paul (16:16)

---

5. Military Mindset in Urban Design

(19:18-26:32)

• Rationalization of the City:
  • Paris’ new boulevards were intended both as emblems of modernity and as mechanisms for military control, preventing barricades and aiding troop movement.
  • “So the idea was that during any form of uprising, the streets would be wide enough that you couldn’t build barricades across them...and enough...space for armies to move down them very easily.”
    — Stephanie Paul (23:29)
• Building Height and Revolution:
  • To hinder revolutionary snipers and rooftop escapes, Napoleon raised building heights, making them less useful for urban warfare.

---

6. The Enduring Civilian Side of Napoleon

(18:07-19:42)

• From Would-Be Novelist to City Builder:
  • Napoleon’s personal dreams included writing romantic novels, underscoring his complex character beyond the battlefield.
  • “He was very sentimental, very emotional. And then of course, with his dealings with women...this is going to be the great passion of his life, but also perhaps one of the most destructive forces.”
    — Stephanie Paul (19:43)
• Josephine:
  • His passionate, tumultuous relationship with Josephine is described as transformative and toxic.

---

7. Napoleon’s Lasting Impact: Institutions & Innovation

(21:13-22:22; 29:28-30:53)

• Street Signs & Numbering:
  • Standardized, rational naming and numbering of Paris’ districts and streets.
  • Introduction of the now-famous green-and-blue street signs, inspired by Corsican mosaics.
• Civic Monuments:
  • Place Vendôme’s column and the Arc de Triomphe as explicit echoes of Roman imperial grandeur.
  • Standardization reaches even to the metric system: “This is the original meter.” (Dan Snow, 38:38)

---

8. Napoleon and the Heart of Paris

(34:26-39:41)

• Integration of Public Space:
  • Changed royal spaces into symbols of shared citizenship.
  • “The revolution let people back in... It’s Napoleon. And the revolution let people back in.”
    — Dan Snow (34:26)
• Place Vendôme and Triumph:
  • The Vendôme Column: Cast from enemy cannon post-Austerlitz, modeled on Roman designs, embodies the glory narrative Napoleon sought.
• Metric System:
  • Standardization for national unity and efficiency.

---

9. Legacy: The Modern Paris We Know

(41:13-53:10)

• The Grand Boulevards:
  • Napoleon’s projects (completed by his nephew Napoleon III) gave Paris its famed radial design.
  • “Paris is now one of the world’s most desirable cities...Napoleon got some way towards his goal, didn’t he, of making this the center of the universe?”
    — Dan Snow (41:13)
• Continuation Under Napoleon III:
  • Napoleon’s nephew completed the transformation—wider streets, grand layouts, standardized architecture—drawing on lessons from London and modern industrial processes.
  • “It’s essentially the world’s first IKEA flat pack city.”
    — Stephanie Paul (51:26)
  • Both are credited for turning post-monarchy chaos into European power and prestige.

Quote:
“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 heir, Napoleon III.”
— Dan Snow (53:00)
“It’s their city 100%.”
— Stephanie Paul (53:10)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote | |-----------|----------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:48 | Dan Snow | “He was absolutely determined to make Paris the capital city of the universe, as he called it.”| | 06:59 | Stephanie Paul | “He was initiated into the somewhat, slightly, should we say murky...experiences of sexuality.”| | 10:41 | Stephanie Paul | “That was where we are now, 14th of July, 1789. This is where it’s happening.” | | 14:32 | Stephanie Paul | “They would put it down their trousers and eat on the march.” [on the military baguette] | | 16:16 | Stephanie Paul | “He saw this and loathed it. He felt that it was the symbol of an animalistic society.” | | 19:43 | Stephanie Paul | “He was very sentimental, very emotional...this is going to be the great passion of his life.”| | 23:29 | Stephanie Paul | “The idea was...the streets would be wide enough that you couldn’t build barricades across them."| | 34:26 | Dan Snow | "The revolution let people back in... It’s Napoleon. And the revolution let people back in.” | | 38:38 | Dan Snow | “So this is the original meter.” | | 51:26 | Stephanie Paul | “It’s essentially the world’s first IKEA flat pack city.” | | 53:00 | Dan Snow | “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 heir, Napoleon III.”| | 53:10 | Stephanie Paul | “It’s their city 100%.” |

---

Timestamps for Major Segments

• [02:31] – Introduction: Napoleon’s Influence on Paris
• [05:17] – Meeting with Stephanie Paul
• [06:59] – Palais Royal: Napoleon’s Youthful Adventures
• [10:41] – Revolutionary Cafés and Political Discourse
• [14:32] – Bread, Democracy, and the Origins of the Baguette
• [16:16] – Urban Planning: Napoleon’s Vision for Paris
• [19:43] – Napoleon’s Personality: The Romantic and the Reformer
• [23:29] – Military Strategy Imprinted on the City
• [29:28] – The Jacobin Quarter and Napoleonic Political Roots
• [34:26] – Integration and Transformation of Royal Paris
• [36:00] – Place Vendôme and the Column
• [38:38] – The Original Meter: Metric System Innovation
• [41:13] – Paris as a Tourist City: Lasting Legacy
• [51:26] – Napoleon III’s Completion of the Vision
• [53:10] – Paris as “their city”: Final Reflections

---

Conclusion

This episode presents a vivid, street-level portrait of Napoleon’s Paris. Through energetic dialogue, historical anecdotes, and architectural observations, Dan and Stephanie show how Paris modernized under Napoleon’s hand—through rationalized streets, iconic monuments, and visionary urban policy. The conversation elegantly ties the city’s physical form to the aspirations of a leader who, in seeking to create the “capital of the universe,” left an indelible imprint on the world’s perceptions of Paris.

---

For more Paris history tours and details on Stephanie Paul's work, see the episode show notes.

Transcript

[Dan Snow]

Hello folks. Dan Snow here. I am throwing a party to celebrate 10 years of Dan Snow's history. I'd love for you to be there. Join me for a very special live recording of the podcast in London in England on 12th September to celebrate the 10 years. You can find out more about it, get tickets with the link in the show notes. Look forward to seeing you there.

[BetterHelp/Ad Announcer]

BetterHelp Online Therapy bought this 30 second ad to remind you right now, wherever you are, to unclench your jaw, relax your shoulders, take a deep breath in and out. Feels better, right? That's 15 seconds of self care. Imagine what you could do with more. Visit betterhelp.com randompodcast for 10% off your first month of therapy. No pressure, just help. But for now, just relax.

[Stephanie Paul]

Hey everybody, it's Nicole Byer here with some hot takes from Wayfair. A cozy corduroy sectional from Wayfair. Um, yeah, that's a hot take. Go on and add it to your cart and take it. A pink glam nightstand from Wayfair. Scalding hot take. Take it before I do. A mid century modern cabinet from Wayfair that doubles as a wine bar. Do I have to say it? It's a hot take. Get [e-mail] and enjoy that free shipping too. Wayfair Every style, Every Home ACAST helps.

[BetterHelp/Ad Announcer]

Creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts.

[Dan Snow]

Everywhere acast.com.

[Maddie Pelling and Anthony Delaney]

Hey, do you want to hear the next big new tech podcast hit before anyone else? Just check out the daily tech news show Experiment Week. We're swapping out our normal shows to try out some new ideas. We've done this before and launched big hits like behind the Data, the Tech John and more. This year we have exclusive Android faithful reactions to the Pixel 9 event. It's all on the DTNS feed starting August 11th. Don't miss it.

[BetterHelp/Ad Announcer]

Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere.

[Dan 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 because whilst I love a medieval cathedral, there's no way I'm going to Paris without indulging my passion for The Napoleonic era. 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. He built great monuments. You'll have seen the Arc de Triomphe. There's also the Vendome 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. 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 center of his empire, 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 could be a real treat, folks. Get those walking shoes on. Here we go. Stephanie. Bonjour. How are you?

[Stephanie Paul]

Bonjour then.

[Dan 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?

[Stephanie Paul]

Well, I've started off with the Ballet Royale. Because of 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 center 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, the 18th and beginning of the 19th century.

[Dan Snow]

So we 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.

[Stephanie Paul]

Exactly. It was originally the palace started in 1541, Francis the first, extended and developed by the Henry's and the Louis and the Francis, 15, 1600s and then becoming a museum during the French Revolution. Napoleon Bonaparte in the 1800s, extending it out to showcase to a certain extent his militaristic and colonial victories.

[Dan Snow]

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

[Stephanie Paul]

Absolutely. For this first time, this young man wanted to showcase his passion for the world that was under his control.

[Dan Snow]

Bring it all together. Exactly. Completely. Right. So but Watson, we've moved into this beautiful colonnaded area now, the Palais Royale. So what was this place?

[Stephanie Paul]

So originally this section here was the residence of the Orleanist, Louis XIV's brother. However, by the time we get to the late 1700s, the Orleanist have extended it out to turn it into the center of cafes, clubs, bars, brothels. And it is here that after a night at the opera next door, that 18 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. 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.

[Dan Snow]

So this is late 18th century Paris is sort of Soho, the West End.

[Stephanie Paul]

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', Etat, the Council estate, which was also founded by Napoleon in the early 1800s, where his new government could come together. Both his Senate and the assembly national, linking together both his empirical but also democratic powers.

[Dan Snow]

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

[Stephanie Paul]

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, 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 Pauli, the head of the Corsican independence movement at the time, is still sidelining our little Napoleon Buonaparte. 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.

[Dan Snow]

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

[Stephanie Paul]

Absolutely.

[Dan Snow]

And that transition takes place on these streets, in these arcades that are walking along now.

[Stephanie Paul]

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 center for cafes where political discussion is taking place. And even before the revolution, the examples of leaders such as Camille Desmoulins 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.

[Dan Snow]

That was all happening right here.

[Stephanie Paul]

Absolutely, absolutely.

[Dan Snow]

So when you read about Des Moulin Danton in the cafes, those ferocious debates.

[Stephanie Paul]

That was where we are now, 14th of July 1789. 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 centers for discussion. But also, most importantly, under the new shifting governments, there's an also 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, 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.

[Dan Snow]

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

[Stephanie Paul]

Exactly.

[Dan Snow]

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

[Stephanie Paul]

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 still 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 1796, that even as he's being presented to the people with his lank hair, his thin demeanor, his somewhat sickly visage, 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.

[Dan Snow]

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

[Stephanie Paul]

Exactly.

[Dan Snow]

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

[Stephanie Paul]

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 balings 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 have previously been working for 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 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. 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 and 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. Which way are we going to go? This way now?

[Dan Snow]

Right, lead on.

[Stephanie Paul]

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 17 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 flute of bread. They would put it down their trousers and eat on the march. They were called piccolo in the time, like a little flute 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, so.

[Dan Snow]

It would have been granary, but granary baguettes.

[Stephanie Paul]

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 du 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 the 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 recognized in this period would have had narrow streets, dirty roads, no sewers. 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 mark off your shoes. We call them in French, les des Craters. 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 Palais 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.

[Dan Snow]

Okay, here, much wider.

[Stephanie Paul]

Exactly.

[Dan Snow]

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

[Stephanie Paul]

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

[Dan Snow]

Oh, look at this.

[Stephanie Paul]

Exactly.

[Dan Snow]

A big public, huge public drinking fountain.

[Stephanie Paul]

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.

[Dan 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 100%.

[Stephanie Paul]

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 Care le Suq. 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.

[Dan Snow]

In Paris, this whole civilian side of Napoleon is fascinating, which gets overlooked.

[Stephanie Paul]

I think one things that we have to remember about Napoleon is that if you put 100 historians in a room, there's going to be a hundreds 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 come to nothing. Whereas Napoleon, to fulfill 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. He even wanted to join the ill fated voyage of La Perouse. Just imagine if he had gone on that. History would have been totally different. Of course that's going to end with poor leperouse being cannibalized in Vanuatu. So we might not have had Napoleon and that totally would have redesigned the history of Europe.

[Dan Snow]

Because I spent 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.

[Stephanie Paul]

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?

[Dan Snow]

Yes, he was a frustrated novelist.

[Stephanie Paul]

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 1795, 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 1796, he's at a party given by Barras, and a woman's side was up to him. Older, beautiful, suave, sophisticated. Exactly. And this is Rose Tascher, 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 Louvreine, towards the Rue Rivoli. One of the most important things that Napoleon Bonaparte gives us is the street signs and the street numberings that we have. So I live in the 19th district of Paris, outside of the old medieval city. Now, historically, Paris has been a city enclosed by walls, Les Encintres. 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 Germain, Latin Quarter and the Marais, etc. Now, starting in 1726, there had been a desire to sort of add more organization 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 the street, you'd see house number two, and then there's number 19 sat bang next to it. So what Napoleon did when he first comes into power, starting in 1804, is to reorganize 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. Yeah. There was something that hints he first created as well as they were heavily influenced by the mosaics and the color traditions of his home in Ajaccio.

[Dan Snow]

Oh, really?

[Stephanie Paul]

Yeah. And it's incredible that it 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 1810, 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. But it's Napoleon III from 1858 onwards who's going to succeed in doing that.

[Dan 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.

[Stephanie Paul]

Exactly. And we've really got to imagine that in the 1800s, revolutions and uprisings are constant. In fact, between 1789 and 1871, we're going to have two emperors, three kings, three republics and four revolutions. So what he needs to do is create a city which is going to make it easier for an army to move around. So we have the creation of the etoiles 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 etoiles are a little bit different. We have these long boulevards, these long straight roads coming to a. Well, for want of a better word, a place 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. 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.

[Dan Snow]

And after all, Napoleon had really, really 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 the fields of fire.

[Stephanie Paul]

Well, very much. And 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's 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 height of the buildings. 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, occurring 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.

[Dan Snow]

Oh, really?

[Stephanie Paul]

Yeah.

[Dan Snow]

Wow. You listen to Dan Snow's history hit. The best is yet to come. Stick with us.

[BetterHelp/Ad Announcer]

BetterHelp Online Therapy bought this 30 second ad to remind you right now, wherever you are, to unclench your jaw, relax your shoulders, take a deep breath in and out. Feels better, right? That's 15 seconds of self care. Imagine what you could do with more. Visit betterhelp.com randompodcast for 10% off your first month of therapy. No pressure, just help. But for now, just relax. When you think of skyrocketing brands like Aloe Allbirds or Skims, it's easy to credit their success to great products, sleek branding and brilliant marketing. But here's the overlooked secret. The real magic lies in the engine behind the scenes, the business powering their business. For millions of brands, that engine is Shopify, making selling seamless for them and and shopping effortless for us. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout Alo Yoga uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.comretail all lowercase go to shopify.comretail to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.comretail.

[Maddie Pelling and Anthony Delaney]

Summer is finally here. But for those of you just like me who are counting down the days until the leaves turn Golden. The nights start drawing in and it's finally acceptable to spend a whole week and binge watching true crime in your PJs. After dark myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal can transport you there right now, twice a week, every week.

[Stephanie Paul]

Tudor murder, Ancient ghosts, Victorian mysteries. Our podcast has you covered. I'm Maddie Pelling.

[Maddie Pelling and Anthony Delaney]

And I'm Anthony Delaney. And we are friends and historians who love to find out about the darker side of history.

[Stephanie Paul]

Join us on the scaffold for Anne Boleyn's final moments. Step inside Tutankhamun's tomb, which is apparently cursed.

[Maddie Pelling and Anthony Delaney]

Watch a jury deliberate the fate of the three women to be hanged for witchcraft in England.

[Stephanie Paul]

Find us every Monday and Thursday wherever you get your podcasts. And now on YouTube, After Dark Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal is created by the award winning network. History hit.

[Dan Snow]

Passing the Chateau Voltaire Hotel. Speaking of lighter French philosophers hoping to bring reason to the world.

[Stephanie Paul]

Reason and a certain amount of passion for coffee. The man very famously drank 42 cups a day. Did he?

[Dan Snow]

Voltage.

[Stephanie Paul]

We had to have all that energy to write those 2,000 political tracks.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah.

[Stephanie Paul]

Coming this way. Actually, we're walking through a part of Paris that played a key part in Napoleon Bonaparte's revolutionary development. This is what we call Le Cartier Jacobin. So it's here, here that we had the Jacobin Abbey, which is going to give its name famously to those ultra right wing revolutionaries, the names such as Robespierre, Fouquet, Anville jumping out at us here.

[Dan Snow]

So these are the ultras.

[Stephanie Paul]

Absolutely. Though Napoleon Bonaparte himself perhaps didn't direct, follow, nor was 100% down with their political stance in the French Revolution. Still, he's going to be taking the long view that as long as he picks a winning side in the end, everything will be okay.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, he's a survivor.

[Stephanie Paul]

Exactly. Very much so. But this is an area that Napoleon Bonaparte would have known very well because actually in those first days of the, the Directory, it's in this quarter of Paris that we had the first director.

[Dan Snow]

And it was the first sort of little group, this little gaggle of men that take over the French state.

[Stephanie Paul]

Exactly. And to a certain extent, I think Napoleon played the part of the unwilling bride, the unwilling face of this, because all the rest of them, etc, had been already too tied up in the negative politics of the time. So he was this essentially unprepossessing face which people could rally around. Now one of the interesting myths about Napoleon is that he was always the underdog. You know, you hear these stories that he Came bottom of his class. Well, he was 42nd out of 48, so not quite the lowest possible or you hear these stories, 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, Leticia, was a woman of beauty and drive. So he was actually coming perhaps not from great monetary wealth, but a sense of no business 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.

[Dan Snow]

So the Directory was based around here?

[Stephanie Paul]

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 Levau, 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, a new power system center actually where we have the Musee d' Orsay today. So that Quai d', Orsay, which would later on become a train station, actually was where he was planning to build his brand new temple to governmental success.

[Dan Snow]

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

[Stephanie Paul]

Exactly.

[Dan Snow]

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

[Stephanie Paul]

Exactly right.

[Dan Snow]

So there's the big indoor riding school. School. That's where they met and that's where the revolutionary government was based.

[Stephanie Paul]

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 14 years old. He said that he was a man who loved the fropperies, the fripperies of rulership. Napoleon wasn't down with that. Which is also why I think that his new city, moving away from the, the curls, the twirls, the asymmetry of the Louis XV period is going to be so militaristically organized. He wants a city as straight, as organized and as under control as he was himself.

[Dan Snow]

Well, you say that, you know, the Louvre, the Tuilery Gardens, the Place Fondo. It almost feels like the center of Paris used to be 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.

[Stephanie Paul]

There, 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 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, bringing it back under his control. And we can really see that here, of course, with the Place Vendum. So this gorgeous octagonal square was originally created by Louis xiv. It was his royal square. There was a statue of him nobly on a horse in the center. 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 seat seats here in Paris. Now today, however, it's dominated by this incredible sculpture of Napoleon Bonaparte based on the column of Trajan.

[Dan 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 diorama stretching all the way up showing Napoleon's army, presumably the Grande Arme, doing all sorts of things. And on the top the man himself dressed as a Roman in his.

[Stephanie Paul]

Exactly. It was to celebrate his Battle of Austerlitz. 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 was. Bonaparte is going to single handedly with pluck, daring do and his own sense of a righteous power, defeat his enemies. Now some would say it was his own leadership, some would say that it was the help of his marechal. But at the end of the day, it was a decisive and definitive battle 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 meter, the new system that Napoleon Bonifart is going to include.

[Dan Snow]

So Napoleon is going to transition to the metric system?

[Stephanie Paul]

Exactly. Well, one of the things he realized 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 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. And so here it is today. So basing on the Roman system, the National Convention is actually going to introduce these. So starting in 17, 1796 until 1799, so under Napoleon's Directory period, we're going to see this standardization of the meter 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 meter as well.

[Dan Snow]

There you go. I'm just testing it. My wingspan is 2 meters, 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?

[Stephanie Paul]

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

[Dan Snow]

So this is the original meter.

[Stephanie Paul]

Exactly, the original meter.

[Dan Snow]

That is exciting.

[Stephanie Paul]

Well, we've got to remember that the Romans themselves also used the measurement of deca manus. 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 decumanus and makes it into the 10 centimeters, the meter that we have today. We're gonna go this way. So we'll go straight down to the tweed of the gardens now and finish with that view of concord and valleys and everything like that. 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 center 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 archway galleries.

[Dan Snow]

Oh, interesting.

[Stephanie Paul]

And as we walk down here, leave 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 realize this project. Unfortunately, even the Rue Rivoli itself itself was going to have its construction stopped around 1812. Which is why as you go down the Rue Riverley today, though the buildings may look symmetrical and similar all the way down, we're actually going to notice the half of them are missing their shutters. Didn't even have time to finish those.

[Dan Snow]

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

[Stephanie Paul]

Well, I think actually it's even more interesting for the construction of these because later on this is going to become the centers where we have the, the grand hotels, the Regina, the maurice in the 18 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.

[Dan Snow]

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 center of the universe?

[Stephanie Paul]

Without a doubt. And I particularly think that for a young man from Ajaxio 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. But this is the Ruby Villier. 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.

[Dan Snow]

You listen to Dan Snow's history. Don't go anywhere. There's more to come.

[BetterHelp/Ad Announcer]

Betterhelp Online therapy bought this 30 second ad to remind you right now, wherever you are, to unclench your jaw, relax your shoulders, take a deep breath in and out. Feels better, right? That's 15 seconds of self care. Imagine what you could do with more. Visit betterhelp.com randompodcast for 10% off your first month of therapy. No pressure, just help. But for now, just relax.

[Maddie Pelling and Anthony Delaney]

Summer is finally here. But for those of you just like me who are counting down the days until the leaves turn golden, the nights start drawing in, and it's finally acceptable to spend a whole weekend binge watching true crime in your PJs, after dark myths, Misdeeds and the paranormal can transport you there right now, twice a week, every week.

[Stephanie Paul]

Tudor murder, ancient ghosts, Victorian mysteries. Our podcast has you covered. I'm Maddie Pelling.

[Maddie Pelling and Anthony Delaney]

And I'm Anthony Delaney and we are friends and historians who love to find out about the darker side of history.

[Stephanie Paul]

Join us on the scaffold for Anne Boleyn's final moments. Step inside Tutankhamun's tomb, which is is apparently cursed.

[Maddie Pelling and Anthony Delaney]

Watch a jury deliberate the fate of the last three women to be hanged for witchcraft in England.

[Stephanie Paul]

Find us every Monday and Thursday wherever you get your podcasts. And now on YouTube, After Dark Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal is created by the award winning network History hit. So entering into the Tuileries Gardens, we're going to head down this gorgeous, gorgeous corridor just here.

[Dan Snow]

And so we wouldn't have been able to come in here back in the ancient regime, when the kings were on the throne. Was this exclusively for the Royal?

[Stephanie Paul]

Not necessarily. Actually, the garden itself was created in the 1500s by Catherine de Medici. 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.

[Dan Snow]

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

[Stephanie Paul]

Absolutely.

[Dan Snow]

That's nice.

[Stephanie Paul]

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 had the tile factories which were making the red tiles for old Paris. Imagine in the 1500s, the city was known as the city of white walls and red tiles. So completely different from the gray roofs and the beige walls that we have today.

[Dan Snow]

That's strange. Total rebrand. Because this would have been outside the medieval heart of Perth, Exactly.

[Stephanie Paul]

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 Hotel de Marie de la Marine, on the balcony and watch the Queen be beheaded.

[Dan Snow]

Right, so he witnessed that, did he?

[Stephanie Paul]

Exactly.

[Dan Snow]

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

[Stephanie Paul]

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

[Dan Snow]

And this is where the guillotine was set up.

[Stephanie Paul]

Exactly.

[Dan Snow]

So as a young man, you. So the height of the Terror, 1793-94. To 94. He was here in Paris watching that upheaval, was he?

[Stephanie Paul]

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. Ambolides. Just over here, just over there, Eiffel Tower. We've got the Assomme Nacional just there as well.

[Dan Snow]

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

[Stephanie Paul]

So for him, this was the halfway point, if you like, for his great Triumphal March of 1809. Because Napoleon Bonaparte has won the Battle of Austerlitz, he is 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 1805, we're going to have the beginning of the construction of the Arc de Triomphe, based on, once again, the Arc of Trajan. He's going to have this single arch, 55 meters high, 50 meters 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 1807, when he arrives to oversee the construction, they've done about six feet, 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 this mortar tripartite 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 20 meters 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, takes onto 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 demigod.

[Dan Snow]

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

[Stephanie Paul]

It did much to, I think, his chagrin. Napoleon Bonaparte never wanted to be buried in the grand tomb in Lis Invalides. 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 I, after his death in 1821, he would be laying in repose in St. Helena until the 1840s, 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 spendthrift, 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.

[Dan 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 recognize and love today very much.

[Stephanie Paul]

So Napoleon III comes in and this time he's had a wider influence on his life and that is principally London. He's spent his formative years, if you like, in, 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 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 stuff standardization 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 industrialize the process. The buildings of Paris that we see today laid out in this organization, it's essentially the world's first IKEA flat pack city. 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 Assemble national with its tympanum 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.

[Dan 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 heir, Napoleon III.

[Stephanie Paul]

It's their city 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 endeavors. 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, 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 had known a chaos of a monarchy and turned it into the pinnacle of power in Europe.

[Dan 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.

[Stephanie Paul]

Fabulous. Thank you very much.

[Dan 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 them, but the European trip certainly isn't Hit following your podcast player so you don't miss it. Au revoir, folks.

[Stephanie Paul]

You know that thing called AI supposed to make the workplace super efficient?

[BetterHelp/Ad Announcer]

Well, there's something DI Delicious Intelligence. It's tech that helps make work efficient and yummy. Leading the DI Revolution Ezcator, A workplace food platform that connects you to tons.

[Stephanie Paul]

Of favorite restaurants with tools to save time and stay on budget. Need tacos for 20? Falafel for 40?

[BetterHelp/Ad Announcer]

A variety of vegan breakfast sandwiches? Now that's a tasty prompt.

[Stephanie Paul]

Join the DI Revolution.

[BetterHelp/Ad Announcer]

Order [e-mail] Acast helps creators launch, grow.

[Dan Snow]

And monetize their podcast everywhere acast.com hey.

[Maddie Pelling and Anthony Delaney]

Do you want to hear the next big new tech podcast hit before anyone else? Check out the daily tech news show Experiment Week. We're swapping out our normal shows to try out some new ideas. We've done this before and launched big hits like behind the Data, the Tech John and more. This year we have exclusive Android faithful reactions to the Pixel 9 event. It's all on the DTNS feed starting August 11th. Don't miss it.

[BetterHelp/Ad Announcer]

Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize.

[Dan Snow]

Their podcasts everywhere acast.com.