Napoleon Paris Renovation

Cities are interesting palaces. Some cities are carefully planned and built for a reason and reflect the needs of the people as it grows, others are less consciously designed. Paris, for example, was originally founded in the third century as a small village and with every passing generation it grew in size and importance.it grew from medieval city to a modern city but the transition was not always smooth. Emperor Napoleon had to hire someone to oversee the rebuilding of Paris. The man he chose was houseman.in 1853 Haussmann began the process of renovating France's capital city. His basic instructions were to bring the light and air into the central district. Improve the sanitation and living areas and make Paris a more modern beautiful city. Not your average weekend renovation, Haussmann s project includes the destruction of old medieval neighborhood, widening of streets, building large parks and public squares, and addition of fountains and sews lines.to add all this, the size of Paris had to be increased, doubled actually and the napoleons issued official decree annexing nearby suburbs to make them part of the city.one of the main priorities of the massive renovation was to connect all the districts together. If we think of Paris as a house, each district was its own room, existing essentially independently of the other districts, napoleons wanted to be easier to travel between the most important districts and to create a sense of being one unified city, not a series of independent neighborhoods. so Haussmann created a large avenue that connected districts, more than that he made all the avenues look roughly the same. Buildings on Major Avenue were required to be roughly the same height and style and even used the same color stones for the facade. The result was to remove any local characters and create a uniform Paris. For the first time, the city has a specific look, a style that people began to associate not with the districts but with Paris itself.