Paris. Portrait of a City

Truly beautiful photographs telling the story of Paris from the first days of the camera. Full of insights into the social history of the Parisians as well as fantastic insights into the evolution of the city we know today eg the stages of building the Eiffel Tower. It made a brilliant present for someone who has only just fallen in love with Paris and wants to get to know it better.

A Joy to read and to look at the great photos of this wonderful city.

What a wonderful book - magic on every page, a real treasurehouse of Paris history. Each picture tells a moving story.

The book has got excellent pictures which I like & also the pull out regarding how the Eiffell Tower was constructed

Stunning coffee table book well worth the price

Astonishing value and such excellent quality of content and print.

Stunning book

This book is a fine illustrated and written coverage of Paris from 1800 to the present days. I enjoyed it a lot.

Jamás había adquirido un libro de colección y sin duda Taschen no me decepcionó. El libro llegó perfectamente empaquetado y ni un rasguño tiene. Volvería a comprarlo y lo recomiendo ampliamente.

Excelente livro. Mostra diferentes aspectos de Paris ao longo do tempo. Fotos muito bonitas. O livro tem um grande porte e é pesado. Ele chegou com um pequeno amassado em sua capa. Uma excelente peça de decoração e cultural também.

Un libro che ci ricorda il nostro viaggio a Parigi, sta lì, sul tavolino vicino al divano. Sempre presente e corposo per ricordare la bellezza della città romantica. È meraviglioso!

Last night, I spent about half an hour with this book. I was awed. Its photos and illustrations filled me with the same level of wonder, curiosity, and admiration that I feel for Paris itself. And it manages to do it without going overboard with gaudy fetishism of the city. Most images are impossibly mind-blowing, like the 1895 photo of a train that smashed through the second-story wall of a train station, which Antonin Neurdein executed with beautiful composition and technical perfection. Others tell how the Paris we know today came to be. An 1860 image depicts swaths of demolished medieval homes, buildings razed to make way for Haussman's renovation. The three-decade period remade the cramped, disorganized city with wide boulevards and the harmonious architecture of cream-colored stone buildings that now rise to uniform heights. Other photos add to the book's honest and not-too-romanticized vision of the city. Innovative fashion photos delight. Henri Cartier-Bresson's images appear, but not to serve a now-clichéd ideal of Paris. Instead, a handful of his lesser-known photos enrich the book without hard-selling the fanciful fairy tale of the city. "Paris. Portrait of a City" isn't the book I intended to buy. When a friend described an extraordinary book about Paris -- without providing the title -- this is what I purchased. It wasn't what I was looking for, but I fell in love. I can't wait to spend more time with it.

This is not a guide book. This book shows you different times of France, and captures everyday moments of different époques.