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Stylus Productions

908 DVD

6 lectures on DVD

$40.00

A HISTORY OF PARIS

From "the Marshland" to the "City of Lights"

VIDEO LECTURES by Dr. William J. Neidinger

LECTURES

“. . . Cara Lutetia . . .”
Gothic Paris.
Catastrophes and Triumphs.
From the Grand Siècle to the Terror.
Revolutionary and Imperial Paris.
Modern Paris.

Few cities boast so many famous and identifiable landmarks as Paris: the Louvre, Notre-Dame, the Bastille (in memory, at least), the Champs-Élysées, and the Eiffel Tower. Yet the Parisians have been rough on their own monuments: the Louvre has been demolished and rebuilt a number of times; the Bastille is gone; Notre-Dame was ransacked during the Revolution; and the Eiffel Tower, much maligned at the time, was supposed to have been only a temporary structure. When Baron Haussmann laid out many of the wide and splendid boulevards of the city in the nineteenth century, he was lambasted for having destroyed “the charms of medieval Paris.”

These six lectures will trace the history of Paris from its humble beginnings as a crossing station in the marshes along the Seine, to its foundation as a fortified capital city, to its rise as a center of learning, to its role as exporter of revolution, and finally to its position in the vanguard of the avant-garde. The lectures will not only focus on the surviving monuments of the city, but also on some of the more flamboyant characters who have graced the pages of the city’s history.

The lectures are richly illustrated with images, and course materials include detailed lecture notes and an extensive syllabus with maps and ground plans.