Legacy of the World Stage

As the Belle Époque progressed, Paris's role as world stage became self-conscious, even anxious. Each exposition had to surpass the last. Each new building needed to astound. The city performed its role as cultural capital with increasing effort as New York's skyscrapers and London's commercial might challenged French supremacy.

Yet something authentic emerged from all this artifice. By performing cosmopolitanism, Paris became genuinely cosmopolitan. By staging democracy, it advanced actual democratic practices. By presenting itself as the city of art, it attracted artists who made it true. The performance became reality.

The thousands of postcards sent from Belle Époque Paris—the Eiffel Tower from every angle, the Moulin Rouge's windmill, the boulevards' perspectives—spread the myth worldwide. Recipients in small towns across Europe and America dreamed of visiting this magical city. Many saved for years to make the pilgrimage. Some found disappointment—the Seine smelled, prices shocked, Parisians proved rude. But most found confirmation that Paris was indeed the world's stage, and they were privileged to walk across it, if only briefly.

This was Belle Époque Paris's ultimate achievement: convincing the world that it was what it pretended to be. The city as theater, life as art, everyone as potential performers—these ideas, born from commercial speculation and political calculation, became lived reality for millions. The stage sets outlasted the performances. The Eiffel Tower still stands. The Grands Boulevards still invite promenades. Montmartre still trades on its bohemian past.

But something was lost when the lights dimmed on the Belle Époque's great show. The innocence that let a city believe it could perform progress into existence, that art and commerce could dance together without stepping on each other's feet, that the world's cultures could meet on equal terms in exposition pavilions—this innocence would not survive the twentieth century's harsh illuminations. Paris would remain a world city, but never again the world's stage with such unselfconscious conviction. The final curtain was approaching, though the performers didn't yet know it. The show, magnificent and flawed, democratic and elitist, genuine and artificial, went on.# Chapter 4: Technology and Daily Life

At 5:47 on the morning of July 19, 1900, the first Paris Métro train departed from Porte de Vincennes station. Engineer Jean-Baptiste Bernier, at the controls, later recalled: "As we entered the tunnel, I felt we were driving into the future itself. Above us, Paris was waking to another day. Below, we were creating a new world." The eight-kilometer journey to Porte Maillot took twenty-seven minutes, shrinking a city that horses had taken an hour to cross. The Belle Époque's technological revolution had gone underground, and with it, daily life would never be the same.