Architectural Posters of Paris

Paris Architecture: Gothic, Classicism and Modernity

These eleven motifs span more than eight centuries of Parisian architectural history. Sacred buildings on the Île de la Cité appear beside royal palaces and private town houses; monuments of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries stand alongside two radical constructions in iron, glass and steel. The carefully drawn elevations reveal not only celebrated landmarks but changing ideas about representation, public life and the modern city.

AP 560, AP 018 and AP 233 · Notre-Dame and Sainte-Chapelle

Construction of Notre-Dame began in 1163 under Bishop Maurice de Sully. The west front shown in AP 560 and the smaller AP 018 was largely built between 1208 and 1250: three sculpted portals, the Gallery of Kings, the great rose and two unfinished towers form a lucid display front of French Gothic architecture. A short distance away, Louis IX had the Sainte-Chapelle built in less than seven years to house the Crown of Thorns and other Passion relics. AP 233 presents the slender two-storey palace chapel, whose buttressed structure permits the upper chapel’s fifteen tall stained-glass windows.

AP 108 and AP 109 · Classical Paris

Paris à l’âge classique (AP 108) arranges churches, domed buildings, gateways and public façades of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a comparative architectural history. Repeated orders, projecting central bays and symmetrical wings show how ancient forms were reinterpreted for monarchy, church and city. AP 109 focuses on the hôtels particuliers, private town houses of the aristocracy and wealthy bourgeoisie. Their street fronts often conceal a sequence of entrance, forecourt, principal residence and garden – a Parisian building type that fitted representative living into the dense urban fabric.

AP 393 and AP 394 · The Louvre as Palace and Museum

The Louvre’s east front was developed under Louis XIV through the collaboration of Louis Le Vau, Charles Le Brun and Claude Perrault. Its long freestanding colonnade unites paired columns, a temple-like centre and rigorously symmetrical end pavilions into a masterpiece of French Classicism; AP 393 makes the complete rhythm legible. AP 394 sets the nineteenth-century palace fronts of the Cour Napoléon against I. M. Pei’s glass Pyramid. Opened in 1989, the Pyramid lights a central underground entrance hall, while exceptionally transparent glass keeps the historic façades visible.

AP 711, AP 021, AP 392 and AP 016 · Panthéon and Arc de Triomphe

Jacques-Germain Soufflot originally designed the Panthéon as the church of Sainte-Geneviève for Louis XV. Its foundation stone was laid in 1764, and Soufflot’s collaborators completed the building in 1790. In 1791 the Revolution first transformed it into a national hall of fame. AP 711 and AP 021 show the Greek-cross, domed structure with its Corinthian temple portico. Napoleon commissioned the Arc de Triomphe in 1806, and the monument was completed after designs by Jean-François-Thérèse Chalgrin in 1836. AP 392 and AP 016 combine its monumental single arch with great relief groups that translate military commemoration and national history into stone.

AP 561 and AP 017 · The Palais Garnier

Charles Garnier won the competition for the new Paris opera house in 1861 and worked for fourteen years on the building, which opened in 1875. The main front layers arcades, paired supports, coloured marble, gilded sculpture and a high attic into a festive stage within the city. AP 561 and the smaller AP 017 show how the façade announces both the Opera’s social status and the interior progression from entrance to staircase, foyers and auditorium.

AP 395 · The Eiffel Tower

The 300-metre tower was developed for the 1889 Exposition Universelle. Engineers Maurice Koechlin and Émile Nouguier formulated the initial idea in 1884; architect Stephen Sauvestre refined its appearance, while Gustave Eiffel directed the company and construction. Between January 1887 and March 1889, more than 18,000 prefabricated iron parts were assembled with approximately 2.5 million rivets. AP 395 isolates the structure’s logic: four curved lattice piers absorb the wind loads, spread at ground level and rise through three platforms towards a single summit.

AP 396 · Centre Pompidou

Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers won the international competition for the Centre Pompidou in 1971, and the cultural centre opened in 1977. To create large, freely adaptable floors inside, they moved structure, services, lifts and escalators to the exterior. Colour-coded pipes and the glazed “caterpillar” escalator consequently become the façade itself. AP 396 presents this deliberately exposed technical infrastructure as a long, animated counterpoint to the stone monumentality of the older Paris motifs.