Amazing Vintage Photographs of Streets of Paris From the 1860s

Beginning in the mid-1850s, Paris experienced a grand transformation. At the orders of Napoleon III, old, narrow streets made way for wide boulevards, thousands of gas lamps lit the streets at night, and a host of other public projects thoroughly modernized the city. Charles Marville, a photographer employed by the city, was charged with documenting those changes.

Banks of the Bièvre River at the Bottom of the Rue des Gobelins (Fifth Arrondissement), 1862

Passage Saint-Guillaume Toward the Rue Richilieu (First Arrondissement), 1863–65

Cour Saint-Guillaume (Ninth Arrondissement), 1866–67

Rue de Constantine (Fourth Arrondissement), 1866

Top of the Rue Champlain, View to the Right (Twentieth Arrondissement), 1877–78

Impasse de la Bouteille, Fom the Rue Montorgeuil (Second Arrondissement), 1865–68

Rue de la Bûcherie From the Cul de Sac Saint-Ambroise (Fifth Arrondissement), 1866–68

Lamppost, Entrance to the École des Beaux-Arts, 1870

Urinal, Jennings System, Plateau de l’Ambigu, 1876

Spire of Notre Dame, Viollet-le-Duc, Architect, 1859–60

(via Slate)