Baron Haussman
Baron Haussmann, appointed a prefect of Paris by the Emperor Napoleon III and
nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, was a city planner of genius. He was also granted
draconian powers of demolition, and the shape of modern Paris with its broad,
straight, tree-lined boulevards and avenues radiating like wheel spokes is a consequence
of his singular vision. It was he who joined the Tuileries to the Louvre by destroying
the intervening slums and extending the Rue de Rivoli. He built new bridges across
the Seine, gave Paris a modern sewerage system and turned the Bois de Boulogne
into a Parisian Hyde Park. In his projected layout of the new city, which he imposed
over the street pattern of the ancien regime, he anticipated the presence of a
great opera house worthy not only of the capital of France and the Second Empire,
but of the culture of the world.