Name commonly given to the transformation of Paris undertaken, under the aegis of Napoleon III, by Baron Georges Haussmann (1809-91), prefect of Paris from 1853 to 1869. Under Haussmann's direction, the overcrowded central quartiers of the city were demolished, and a system of rectilinear boulevards—notably the boulevards de Strasbourg, de Sébastopol, Saint-Michel, and Saint-Germain—was constructed, which for the first time bound the city together as a single structural entity. Other structural innovations included the radiating circles of the place de l'Étoile (place Charles-de-Gaulle), place du Château d'Eau (place de la République), and place d'Italie; the construction of new bridges over the Seine (notably the ponts de l'Alma, des Invalides, and de Solférino); the transformation, by the landscape-gardener Alphand, of the Bois de Boulogne and the construction of new parks (Parc Monceau, Parc des Buttes-Chaumont); and the creation, by the engineer Belgrand, of a modern sewage and water system. New wings, designed by Visconti, were added to the Louvre, the Halles Centrales were completely reconstructed using cast-iron and glass by Baltard, and work was begun on Garnier's new Théâtre de l' Opéra. Haussmannisation divided Paris into a preponderantly middle-and upper-class west and an overwhelmingly working-class east (Belleville, Ménilmontant, La Chapelle, La Villette), and this redistribution of population is generally thought to have contributed to the Commune of 1871. Its effects are evoked in Zola's La Curée (1872), Le Ventre de Paris (1873), and Au Bonheur des Dames (1883) and, most movingly, in Baudelaire's poem ‘Le Cygne’.
[Richard Burton]
