Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Gae Aulenti: An Independent, International Architect

One of the best-known female architects to come out of Italy, Aulenti found fame with her transformation of a dated Parisian train station into the Musée d’Orsay.
The French police arrest the Jews on the orders of the German occupiers and take their personal details, Paris, 1941

Policing the Holocaust in Paris

Unlike in the rest of Nazi-occupied Europe, the arrest of Jewish people was largely in the hands of ordinary policemen in France, especially in Paris.
Bal Masqué by Charles Hermans, 1880

Paris’s Wild Costume Balls

As urban growth brought rich and poor Parisians closer together in the 1830s, masked balls encouraged class mixing and costumes that crossed gender lines.
Eiffel Tower, August 1888

The Artists Who Hated the Eiffel Tower

Now an icon of modernism and avant-garde design, the Eiffel Tower was once seen by Parisian writers and artists as a blight on the cityscape.
At La Souris, Madame Palmyre, 1949 by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Palmyre’s Belle Époque Lesbian Bar

By providing sexualized entertainment to tourists, the bar owners of Montmartre made visible and even celebrated the quarter’s queer culture.
Officers Blois, Godot and Catin and their dogs, Black, Job and Dick, in Neuilly-sur-Siene, 1900

Dogs, the Four-Legged Crime-Fighters of Paris

Now a familiar part of policing, the partnership between canines and cops developed in an unpredictable fashion.
A Parisian evening gown

Can You Copyright a Dress?

Fashion houses in 1920s Paris used copyright laws to protect their designs. In New York, not so much.
Paris, France, 1900

Graffiti: Jaytalking in 19th Century Paris

The files of Paris police from the late nineteenth century reveal the tumultuous politics of the time through the graffiti recorded in them.
Façade of the cabarets Le Ciel and L'Enfer, 1909

The Cabarets of Heaven and Hell

In 1890s Paris, cabarets in bohemian Montmartre gave visitors a chance to tour the afterlife.
A barricade in the Paris Commune, March 18, 1871

The Fancy Concerts of the Paris Commune

To the barricades! And then...to the opera!