‘Let's have some sun!’: post-Gaullism and the Mitterrand years

Abstract

T he modernization of Paris went on apace during the presidency of de Gaulle's successor, Georges Pompidou (1969–74). This period saw grandiose modernization projects, many though not all reviled by defenders of traditional Paris: the destruction of the main Paris market at Les Halles, replaced by an underground shopping-mall, the building of the skyscraper Tour Montparnasse, next to and overshadowing the new rail station of the same name, and, less infelicitously, the construction of the Centre Beaubourg (renamed Centre Georges Pompidou after his death and opened in 1977). ‘Beaubourg’ is a major cultural centre housing an immense public library – now rather upstaged by the Bibliotheque Nationale de France on the Left Bank – Europe's largest museum of modern art, two cinemas and, in an annexe, the centre for musical technology IRCAM. Its planning and execution marked the first step in the growing cultural prominence of the Right Bank over the past thirty-five or so years, of which the Bastille Opera and consequent changes in the area are the most recent example. Pompidolian modernization had little direct effect on the Faubourg / Bastille – I use a compound form the better to emphasize the hybrid nature of the area at this time – though things might have been very different had the plan to honeycomb the city with high-speed urban expressways been fully realized. One of these – the radiale de Bagnolet – was to have cut a swathe through the 20th and 11th arrondissements , complete with a flyover in the boulevard de Charonne, near Nation.