Edition Axel Menges GmbH Esslinger Straße 24 D-70736 Stuttgart-Fellbach tel. +49-711-574759 tel. +49-172-7114276 fax +49-711-574784
[email protected] Andrew Ayers The Architecture of Paris 416 pp. with 312 ill., 161,5 x 222 mm, soft-cover, English ISBN 3-930698-96-X Euro 39.00, sfr 59.00, £ 28.00, US $ 39.00, $A 72.00 The City of Light has long been an architectural innovator and showcase for France and her rulers. A site of strategic importance since the 3rd century BC, Paris flourished under the Romans, but subsequent Barbarian invasions meant that comparatively little re- mains of her Antique splendour. In the 6th century AD the Merovin- gian kings made Paris the seat of the realm, a status the city has retained bar the odd interruption throughout the centuries. By the 12th century, Paris was established as a political, economic, relig- ious and cultural capital. Each epoch has left its mark on Paris: the churches of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the aristocratic hôtels particuliers of the 17th and 18th centuries, and the apartment, railway, industrial and office buildings of the 19th and 20th. A centralization of power in the capital long ensured that Paris received more than its fair share of attention from princely »architectes manqués«, from the Bour- Distributors bons through the Napoléons to Président Mitterrand. Baron Hauss- mann’s recasting of the city in the image of Napoléon III became Brockhaus Commission the model of its age for urban development, and the phenomenon Kreidlerstraße 9 of the presidential »grands projets« in the 1980s and early 1990s D-70806 Kornwestheim provoked comment the world over.