Paris: View of Rue Saint-Honoré, 1865

About the Work

The Rue Saint-Honoré, one of Paris’s oldest thoroughfares, looks dark and abandoned. Like the ramshackle substance of the bleak buildings, the wet cobblestones also reflect the hazy sky. For the last time, old Paris is captured in photographs before it makes way for a modern city on the orders of Napoleon III. Marville’s commission had been to merely document the metropolis, which had become too narrow for its citizens. His evocative photographs far exceeded expectations.