Architecture as Statement

Belle Époque Paris rebuilt itself as a stage set for modern life. The new apartment buildings lining Haussmann's boulevards created uniform facades hiding diverse interiors. From the street, equality; inside, hierarchy from aristocratic piano nobile to servants' chambres de bonne.

The new hotels particuliers built by industrial fortunes rejected both classical restraint and medieval revival. The chocolate manufacturer Émile-Justin Menier commissioned a mansion featuring Aztec motifs—cacao's origin celebrated in stone. The banker Moïse de Camondo built a perfect eighteenth-century palace filled with period furniture, living in his own museum. These houses staged their owners' self-presentations.

Public architecture grew ever more grandiose. The Opéra, finally completed, contained more space for staging social life than actual performances. Its grand staircase, where audiences performed for each other, occupied more volume than the auditorium. Charles Garnier understood that in Belle Époque Paris, everyone was both actor and audience.

Churches struggled to compete with secular spectacle. The Sacré-Cœur, rising on Montmartre's summit, was conceived as expiation for the Commune's sins but became another tourist attraction. Its Romano-Byzantine white dome, visible across Paris, competed with the Eiffel Tower for skyline dominance. Radical republicans saw it as clerical provocation; Catholics as faith's fortress; tourists as another photo opportunity.