This is Paris.
A city of romance and adventure,
from the buzz of its cafes to its swinging street life.
Right from the very start, it's been a city of extremes.
Love and hate.
Cathedrals and brothels.
Mean streets and gilded palaces.
At the heart of it all, the unique spirit of Paris,
always inventive, always at the forefront of change,
from high fashion and sexual freedom
to the radical ideas that transformed the way we all live.
It's a city where the spirit of revolution never dies.
(RAPPING LA FRANCE IN FRENCH)
Welcome to my city.
(ACCORDION PLAYING)
(SINGING IN FRENCH)
Today is the vendange,
a celebration of the ancient tradition of wine-growing in Paris
which dates back to the Roman times.
Though it's a day of fun and frivolity,
for Parisians, wine is always a serious business.
No one connects wine-growing with Paris any more,
but 2,000 years ago that's what it was best known for.
This small vineyard is one of the very few that remain.
The grape harvest every October is still a crowd-puller.
We love to party in Paris.
The festival is all rather eccentric and quaint.
Even in Paris, people can't be cool all the time.
A lot of us wouldn't dream of dressing up like this,
but we are all proud of our history.
In Paris, history means change.
The city is dynamic and always has been.
We've always thrived on new ideas, new ways of living and loving.
No wonder Paris is known as the City of Light
and the home of revolution.
(WOLF-WHISTLES)
Much of our history is there for all to see.
But to really understand what makes Parisians tick,
you need to dig a little deeper.
(PEOPLE CHEERING AND CLAPPING)
In Paris, everything begins and ends with the River Seine,
which flows right through the centre of the city.
The Celtic Parisi tribe, which gave Paris its name,
settled here more than 2,000 years ago, and the Romans followed.
Nobody knows the Seine better than the Brigade Fluviale,
or River Police.
Major Alain Roux patrols the waters saving lives and solving crimes.
Actually, if you can see, with the scaffoldings,
that's the oldest house in Paris. That's great.
I just love water, too,
and it's a different way to see Paris. I love it.
This is the Notre-Dame Bridge. That was the very last inhabited bridge.
(SPEAKING FRENCH)
With a windmill at the corner.
Now a museum of course,
for centuries the Louvre was the centre of political power.
But the river shaped Paris in other ways, too.
There is a saying which says that...
(SPEAKING FRENCH)
So, ''The Right Bank spends and the Left Bank thinks.''
The Right Bank is the trading side
while the Left Bank is the intellectual side,
and in the middle, the Ile de la Cite, where it all began.
There's something you need to know to understand Paris,
the way it looks and the way it feels.
Over the centuries, Paris always lacked space,
trying to push the city walls outside
and building on top of the other buildings, always changing.
And it's what I like, as a curator,
to seek out the past and try to understand the old Paris.
The place to start is the Ile de la Cite.
From medieval times until the 1 9th century,
it was packed with disease-ridden slums.
But now all those narrow old streets have made way for a huge square
in front of the magnificent Cathedral of Notre Dame.
This is officially the centre of France, kilometre zero.
Distances around the country are measured from this point.
There could be no better place
because Notre Dame is the spiritual and mythical heart of France.
Work on Notre Dame began in the 1 2th century
and it took 1 70 years to complete it,
by far the tallest building Paris had ever seen.
Today it's one of the great cathedrals,
a Gothic masterpiece and a wonder of the world.
Notre Dame established Paris as one of the holiest cities in Europe,
a centre of culture and creativity.
But it had another side to it, one of debauchery, violence and mystery.
For centuries, the cathedral played host to the Fete des Fous,
or Festival of Fools,
an astonishing spectacle of lust, violence and drunkenness
within the sacred walls of Notre Dame.
This weird and wonderful place
has inspired some great literary creations,
including Victor Hugo's Hunchback.
It's quite magical climbing up the towers of Notre Dame.
It reminds me of coming here as a kid.
I was maybe nine, I was a bit scared
because I wasn't sure about what I would find at the top.
Maybe the Hunchback.
Yeah, here's the prize.
The frightening gargoyles, the guardians of Paris.
They're surveying the city sprawling off into the distance.
The grotesque faces are supposed to ward off evil spirits
and look after the cathedral.
Now I'm going to take you to a place that visitors never get to go.
Wow.
This is the perfect way to experience Paris.
Of course, it has changed a lot since the Middle Ages.
I can see the Sainte-Chapelle.
That's one of the very last masterpieces in the Middle Ages which survived.
It used to be the chapel of kings, part of the city's original palace.
It is famed around the world for its stunning stained-glass windows,
which cover an amazing two thirds of the surface area of the chapel.
There's another medieval building which is much less well known
but every bit as important to getting to know the lost city.
It's the house we saw from the police boat.
I've been keen to visit it ever since Major Roux pointed it out.
It's the scene of the most romantic story in the history of Paris,
the story of Abelard and Heloise,
our very own Romeo and Juliet set in the 1 2th century.
It's quite amazing being here, and quite unique,
'cause there are so few rooms left from the Middle Ages in Paris.
And it's where the scholars used to live and study,
very close to the cathedral.
You can see the wooden panels still sculpted.
This is fantastic.
Abelard was a very brilliant philosopher in the Middle Ages
and Helo.ise was the niece of Fulbert, who was the Canon of Notre Dame.
And they met, they fell in love, they married secretly, they had a child,
and Fulbert was really mad with anger
and had Abelard castrated and Helo.ise sent to a convent.
The blighted couple never met again, though they exchanged many love letters.
Their passion had brought them disgrace and the most vicious punishment.
Medieval Paris was a city of extremes, a hotbed of culture and violence.
The centuries to follow were times of war, disease and turbulence.
Several rulers tried to turn the tide against chaos but failed.
Paris was waiting for my favourite king, Henri IV,
who came to the throne in 1 589.
Henri IV is the archetype of the good king
because he brought the peace, the tolerance and wealth to the country,
and he also had a great vision for the city.
We call the 1 7th century our greatest, le grand siecle,
and it's partly thanks to him.
Like so many French rulers,
he wanted to ring the changes in a big way.
But this wasn't just about making Paris look good.
It was about bringing culture
and creating jobs and homes for his subjects in style.
To see what Henri was trying to do,
just head to the Place des Vosges in the Marais district.
Henri IV wanted to make Paris one of the jewels of Europe,
so he gave us this magnificent square.
It's one of the city's hidden glories,
just off the beaten track and easily missed.
It was inspired by the colonnaded squares
of Italy's great Renaissance cities.
Henri was determined to rid Paris of its medieval image,
so the builders were not allowed to use timber, only stone and brick.
When it was first built, it must have looked so modern and imposing
among all the timber-framed hovels.
No wonder it soon became
the most glamorous and fashionable place to live.
Here, it's one of my favourite places in Paris.
I used to come here with my friend,
who used to live in Rue Saint-Paul, not far away from here.
And we used to come here, you see,
reading, just chatting away, just having a sandwich,
and it hasn't changed.
I often come back, and it's the perfect Sunday promenade.
It's one of those few places in Paris which are very peaceful,
and I like them.
Just talking about those buildings, they're absolutely elegant.
I've never been inside.
Our fantasy, I think, has been always to have a place here,
but, as you can expect, it's very expensive,
and I think none of them are on sale.
So I guess I will have to win the lottery, then.
The most sought-after location in the square
has always been the house Henri IVreserved for himself.
Today the top-floor apartment is the home of a doctor, Pablo Goldsmith.
Wow. This is an absolutely amazing view. Come on.
I've never seen such a view like that.
GOLDSMITH: Yes, we have the whole view
because it's the highest point on the Place.
Do you have, like, a special bond to this place to decide to live here?
Yes, I was very lucky to get it, and...
-To get it? -Yes.
It's very interesting the way that
if you are here in the middle, you see the Place like a mirror,
so you can reflect one part on the other.
-Absolutely. -And also, you see...
-Perfect symmetry, yeah? -Yes. But it's not a square.
-Not square... -It's divided,
in the sense that if you look from here, none of the houses are the same.
If you start from the middle to the left and you see the roof,
all the windows are different in the roof,
but if you see also the first floor and the second,
the height of every window is different.
It's interesting, because they're all different,
but when you look at them all together, they look so...
The atmosphere makes, like you say, homogeneous...
-The harmony, yes. -It's a homogeneous structure,
but they're absolutely different.
God, you know, I didn't know all those things.
I didn't realise all those things.
I used to come here as a student with a friend
and just, you know, blah, blah, blah, talking on the benches.
Yes.
It's amazing because, actually, there are so few green spaces in Paris,
and you're at the heart of Paris, but also, look at that,
you're just having a superb square in front of you.
Sadly, Henri never did move into his new home.
He died just before the building was completed.
His plans for Paris were driven by the need to reunite the city
after it had been torn apart by the wars of religion
between Catholics and Protestants.
He literally needed to build bridges.
The Pont Neuf was the great icon of Paris,
in a way, the Eiffel Tower of its time.
It was modern, elegant and the symbol of unity.
Completed while Henri was still alive,
the Pont Neuf became a vital link between the Right and Left Banks.
Now it's one of the most romantic places in Paris.
I don't know what it is about the bridges of Paris
that makes them so romantic.
Perhaps it's the way the sun rises and sets along the river.
It's long been the perfect place to fall in love.
But even the Pont Neuf is changing.
Over the past 1 2 years it has been under continuous restoration,
overseen by engineer Ambroise Dufayet.
Many of the 384 mascarons were so badly weathered
that they had to be replaced with new copies.
In fact, over the centuries, almost all the bridge has been rebuilt.
Paris' oldest bridge, called the ''New Bridge':
is now, well, a new bridge all over again.
Soon after it opened, the area around the Pont Neuf
became known for wild parties.
It was always the place to have fun. Comedians,jugglers and singers.
(PLAYING TRADITIONAL FRENCH MUSIC)
Parisian street entertainment has a long and rich history
dating back as far as the Middle Ages.
My friends play in a modern street band called Borsalino.
But there was a sinister side to Henri's Paris,
its crime-ridden slums.
His biggest challenge was to impose law and order
on the streets of his capital.
Even today, there are areas in the city that make me feel very uneasy at night.
I wouldn't normally walk around here.
In Henri's time, you really would have been asking for trouble.
There was really no excuse to be ripped off or robbed
because the street names told you exactly what to expect.
Rue de la Grande Truanderie, Big Rascals' Street.
La Rue des Mauvais-Garcons, Bad Boys' Street.
Rue Mouffetard, Stench Street.
There were a lot of stinky streets,
Rue Merde de l'Air, Rue Chieur, Rue Chiard et Rue Merdeur.
They were all streets smelling of excrement.
But these weren't the worst.
There were even more graphic and vulgar names
that have long since been changed.
Rue Coupe-Gueule, Cutthroat Street.
Rue Putimeuse, Strolling Whore Street.
Rue du Petit Cul, Rue du Gros Cul, Rue du Gratte-Cul.
Small Bum, Big Bum, Scratchy Bum Street. Whatever takes your fancy, really.
Henri did his best to clean up the streets.
He increased the city guard and tried to feed and protect the poor.
In the end, the mean streets devoured the King himself.
On the 1 4th of May, 1 61 0, Henri IV was travelling in his carriage
along Rue de la Ferronnerie over there.
Lying in wait in the shadows was a religious zealot
called Francois Ravaillac, hell-bent on killing the King.
His chance came when Henri's carriage had to pull up.
(HORSE NEIGHING)
Ravaillac pounced and plunged his dagger three times in the King's heart.
Nobody would believe he was a lone maniac,
but even under the torture,
he wouldn't admit he was working for Henri's Catholic enemies.
So that's how the beloved Henri met his bloody end.
But he had done the important work.
He'd laid the foundations, and now others followed.
Paris' reputation was transformed as it became famous
for its countless new palatial homes.
They were mainly built in the 1 7th century
in an area called the Marais,
and known as the hotels particuliers, they belonged to the city's aristocrats.
But don't be confused, they weren't hotels as we know them now,
because back then it meant a grand city mansion.
Of all the hotels of the Marais,
the Hotel Carnavalet is the most elegant and the most fascinating.
With its idyllic gardens and courtyards, this was aristocratic chic at its best.
The Hotel Carnavalet is now the Museum of Paris,
but there is something else which draws me here.
It was home to one of the most extraordinary women
ever to live in Paris, the Marquise de Sevigne.
This was the era of the salon,
literary and artistic gatherings run by cultured and aristocratic women.
The Marquise was one of the most influential.
She was friends with great writers like Moliere and La Fontaine,
and she's remembered for her own writings, too,
particularly her letters to her daughter.
So this is a copy of the letters by Madame de Sevigne.
She wrote to her daughter
about the Parisian high society in the 1 7th century,
and it's quite cracking, actually, sometimes.
It's quite entertaining and gossipy.
She would have sayings like, ''The heart has no wrinkles,''
or, ''Fortune is always on the side of the big battalions.''
One of my favourite bits
is that she used to be absolutely crazy about chocolate, just like me,
and she was absolutely fascinated by it.
She used to write about it to her daughter,
like, ''If you're not feeling well, if you have not slept,
''chocolate will revive you.''
But she also worried that it would cause vapours and palpitations.
Chocolate was the great new fad among the aristocracy.
It was healthy, sexy and very elitist.
And the Parisian love affair with chocolate shows no sign of abating.
The annual Salon du Chocolat is a major event on the city calendar.
Chocolate arrived in France during the reign of Henri's son, Louis xIII.
Soon, the chocolat du roi party
was the must-have invitation among the very rich.
All sorts of chocolate, the posh chocolate,
the bio chocolate, the organic chocolate,
the fun chocolate, the industrial chocolate.
There's even a brand of chocolate named after the Marquise de Sevigne.
I'm going to taste it.
(STAMMERING)
I can't really speak at the same time.
It's 70% of cacao,
and it's very fondant.
I don't know how you say that. Like, very melting.
But it's lovely. Very lovely.
Chocolate was very exclusive.
Cocoa beans and sugar were both so expensive,
only members of the royal court could afford them.
This is the quintessence of the chocolate.
Look at that. It looks like a ring box
and you've got one chocolate inside.
Close to heaven.
Chocolate was thought to be good for you.
Doctors prescribed it for indigestion and even for broken hearts.
Sorry, but I need a glass of champagne to go with the chocolate.
Okay, the chocolate fondue, fontaine de chocolat, over there.
(LADYMARMALADE PLAYING)
The highlight of the evening is a fashion show
featuring celebrities and models adorned with chocolate.
One reason everyone loved chocolate so much
was because it was a great aphrodisiac.
The Marquis de Sade used to serve it at his orgies,
and Casanova called it ''the elixir of love''.
Queen Maria Theresa said only two things mattered to her,
chocolate and the King, in that order.
This was a rather astonishing thing to say,
considering her husband was the most famous French king of all,
Louis xIV, the Sun King himself.
Paris prides itself as being in the avant-garde of many things,
a trendsetter for the world.
If there is one man who laid down the blueprint of modern Paris,
it's Louis XIV, the ultimate absolutist ruler.
The grandson of Henri IV, he planned to make Paris
the greatest city the world had ever known.
During his 72-year reign, Louis built new canals to boost trade
and introduced the grand boulevards, which have come to define Paris.
He demolished the city's medieval walls
and erected triumphal arches, like the Porte Saint-Denis,
as statements of his power and glory.
The poorest of the poor were nowhere to be seen in Louis' Paris.
They lived here on the Left Bank, in the Hospital of Pitie-Salpetriere.
You might recognise the name. It is where Princess Diana died in 1 99 7.
Now it's the biggest hospital in Europe,
but then it was the bleakest place in the city.
When it was built,
this wasn't a hospital in the true sense of the word.
It had less to do with charity and more to do with social control.
The hospital chapel reflects Louis'grandiose plans,
but behind its impressive facade lies a disturbing truth.
Louis was determined to cleanse the streets
of the beggars, prostitutes and mentally ill
who spoilt the glorious image of the Sun King and his capital.
Five thousand lost souls were locked up here in appalling conditions.
The mentally ill were chained to the walls.
This was the city at its most divided and segregated.
A world away, on the other side of the river,
Louis lavishly revamped the royal palace.
The Louvre was given a majestic new facade
emblazoned with his own image.
Inside, he created one of the most flamboyant rooms in Paris.
So we are now in the Galerie d'Apollon.
The Sun King chose the sun god to represent himself.
As you can see, the architecture here is magnificent, opulent and stately.
Art and architecture for Louis XIV had to serve one purpose,
the glory of the king.
This type of art isn't to everyone's taste.
You might say it's over the top, a bit like Louis himself.
Back then all monarchs believed they were chosen by God,
but he had an especially high opinion of himself.
''L'Etat, c'est moi,'' he famously said, ''I am the State. ''
The gallery turned out to be a prototype
for something much grander in scale and ambition,
the palace of Versailles.
Louis' immense palace, 24 kilometres from Paris,
was the largest and most expensive France had ever seen.
It was a celebration of luxury and extravagance.
Louis wanted the best of everything, art, furniture, carpets and tapestries.
This was a huge boost for Parisian industry.
One of the main beneficiaries was the Gobelins factory on the Left Bank,
which became world-famous for its tapestries.
It was the brainchild of Louis' right-hand man,
/ean Baptiste Colbert, to take over the Gobelins in the name of the crown.
Gobelins' mission was to create fine art on an industrial scale.
Colbert wanted to make Paris the world capital of style and taste.
And this being France,
our industrial revolution specialised in the production of beautiful things.
The Gobelins and the nearby Savonnerie carpet factory
became the pride of the nation, and they still are.
To this day the French government spares no expense to keep these arts alive.
We're inside the manufacture here,
and it hasn't changed since the 1 7th century.
They are using the same techniques. It's quite amazing.
And they're all so diverse.
They carry on doing commissions from the State, so...
When it was for Louis XIV, or even in the 1 8th century,
it was more mythical subjects, and now it's more modern artists.
Colbert had another great scheme for making money for the King.
Fashion.
This is when France's reputation for haute couture began,
and the exotic fashions of Versailles
still inspire some of today's top designers,
among them Christian Lacroix.
In a recent collection, he brought the royal court back to life.
Colbert used to say, ''Fashion is to France
''what the gold mines of Peru are to Spain. ''
I think that he was very inspired, too, by promoting.
It was not just for the sake of fashion or the sake of art,
it was, of course, commercial sake.
During the Colbert period, some people were travelling in the court
in Austria, Germany, Russia, with little dolls
with costumes made by Paris couturiers.
The dolls helped spread Parisian fashions across Europe,
but the industry really took off in the 1 8th century
when Queen Marie Antoinette, the wife of Louis xVI,
became the world's first supermodel.
Portraits of her wearing the latest design
were the equivalent of a Vogue magazine cover.
Is it actually Marie Antoinette who launched this idea
of having a seasonal collection or some events collection?
Yes, it was a daily collection for Marie Antoinette!
Yeah, I heard...
Because she used to change it almost every day.
So, actually, people in Versailles
spent a real fortune to just look like the Queen?
Oh, yes.
And I think that they didn't dare to be exactly the same, but very inspired.
When you look at this, it's like Marie Antoinette embroidery.
I wanted to say, that's taken from Versailles, really.
Almost, yes, and it's very inspired by the Queen.
And this velvet was made as it was during the 1 7th century.
It's not obvious in this dress, but I like to mix and match
modern and ancient, the past and the present and the future.
In this collection I was much more focused on the past.
Versailles may have been the most glamorous court in Europe,
but it was decadent and divorced from reality.
What did that mean for Paris?
It had been abandoned by the King, so it was no longer the centre of power,
but left to its own devices,
the city became a breeding ground for radical new ideas.
For the first time in Paris' history,
change threatened to come not from the top
but from the bottom, from the people.
Paris had its very own alternative court just across the road from the Louvre.
While the King and the Queen preen and pose in Versailles,
the people had their own playground.
Le Palais-Royal was a centre for hedonists and libertines.
The Palais-Royal was the home of the Duke of Orleans,
a playboy and cousin of the King.
He turned it into a pleasure palace, an 1 8th-century shopping mall
famous for its exclusive stores, cafes and gambling dens.
But most of all, it was famous for brothels.
Here's a book actually compiling, in the 1 8th century,
the lists of all the ladies of the night.
So the listing is quite informative
because you've got the complete list of the most beautiful women
and the healthiest
in the Palais de Paris, which is here, Palais-Royal.
For Grosville, piquant brunette,
quite nice, beautiful body,
her price was three livres.
Hortense. ''Hortense, 20-year-old woman, ugly.
''Quite spiritual.''
And she was cheap. She was only one livre, 1 0 sols.
Much more expensive now. ''Mademoiselle Merfie.
''Big blonde, libertine, but not a lot of wit.''
Her price was 1 2 livres.
And on and on and on.
They were kept in brothels, what we used to call le serail.
Some of the serails were among those windows you can see around.
And the men would just visit the serails
and just disappear with one of the ladies.
My only regret is we don't have a similar one for men.
(LAUGHING)
Paris had always been a magnet for people seeking and selling sex,
but now something extraordinary happened.
Sex and politics came together
in a way that would change the way we live and love forever.
The new sexual revolutionaries were known as libertines,
and the most famous of all was the Marquis de Sade.
(SPEAKING FRENCH)
One of the authorities on these outrageous times is Ovidie,
a film director, writer and former porn star,
a modern-day libertine.
De Sade rejected religion to pursue sexual delight.
This might not sound subversive today,
but back then it meant he was rejecting the King, who was chosen by God.
In the 1 8th century, God was coming under attack from all sides.
We call it the siecle des lumieres, the century of light.
You call it the Enlightenment.
There's a very special place on the Left Bank
where Enlightenment ideas really took hold.
What started as a private garden for the King
went on to become the home of French science.
The Jardin royal des plantes had been created
to grow medicinal plants for the court.
But with the King away in Versailles, it became a battleground
between science and religion.
Professor of chemistry Bernard Baudot works here,
where some of the most important scientific discoveries
in the history of mankind have been made.
Diderot was a star of the Enlightenment.
Opposed to the Church and superstition,
his encyclopaedia celebrated reason and science.
A trained chemist, he knew every plant in this garden.
One of them, originally seen as a medicine,
would play a major role in earth-shattering changes to come.
Believe it or not, it's coffee.
(SPEAKING FRENCH)
The Procope cafe on the Left Bank
is an old haunt of mine you really mustn't miss.
Opened in 1 686 by a Sicilian called Procopio,
this was the city's first cafe.
It really set a trend.
Within a few decades there were 200 and eventually 40,000.
Paris, city of cafes.
''Cafe'' is French for coffee.
It was much less exclusive than chocolate
and popular among the middle classes.
(SPEAKING FRENCH)
You wouldn't be a self-respected French person
if you're not having your strong black coffee in the morning.
And cafe culture is very famous here, of course,
in Paris and the rest of France.
And what I like about this cafe culture...
It's what, actually, I miss when I'm abroad.
The first thing, after food, of course,
it's that it's very, at the same time, social, but it can be also private.
And I remember as a student I used to come here
and just staying for hours in a cafe, just paying for one cafe,
and just having all my books and folders and files
all spread like that on the table.
In the 1 8th century,
studies and conversations over coffee would change the world.
The Procope attracted some of the great philosophers of the time,
Diderot, Voltaire and Rousseau,
the forefathers of modern ideas of liberty and democracy.
SANDRINE: So the philosophers would come here,
sit and discuss all the ideas of the siecle des lumieres.
I can just imagine them here.
And all those philosophers
were followed by a much more radical generation of revolutionaries
like Danton, Marat and Robespierre, who plotted the fall of the monarchy.
Paris was about to undergo the most cataclysmic upheaval in its history.
The seeds of revolution were sown on the Left Bank,
but it finally erupted on the Right Bank on July 1 4th, 1 789.
On that day, an angry mob attacked the notorious Bastille prison
in the east of the city.
The Bastille used to stand here.
The outline is... Ooh!
...marked on the road
like a murder victim.
Now, my mission is to go back safely to shore.
(EXCLAIMS NERVOUSLY)
I might just go very quickly before being run down.
So, where I'm sitting now used to be inside the Bastille.
And Bastille is, of course, the symbol of the Revolution,
but it's also a myth.
On the 1 4th of July, only seven people were freed,
and it wasn't destroyed by the crowd
but later on dismantled by a demolition team.
The salvage was sold off as souvenirs, but despite all the mythmaking,
what happened here in 1 789 didn't just change Paris.
It changed the whole world.
This is where the modern age began.
On August 26th, 1 789,
the French National Assembly, or Parliament,
drew up the epoch-making Rights of Man.
Let me see.
So this is the Declaration des droits de l'homme,
made in the 3rd of September, 1 791 .
It goes...
(READING ALOUD)
So, ''Men, all men, are born and remain free and equal in rights.''
It's interesting to see that all over the world,
this declaration of the human rights
is considered like the touchstone of individual freedom.
And I'm really proud of that.
Paris will always be known as the first world capital of revolution.
Some of us take it for granted. I certainly don't.
You have to defend your liberty if you want to enjoy it.
(ALL CHANTING IN FRENCH)
Some things never change.
The issues are different, but Parisians still don't hold back
when it comes to venting anger and frustration.
Sometimes things get violent.
(LA FRANCE PLAYING)
In November 2005,
there were riots in the suburbs of Paris which spread all over France.
While some burned cars and fought the police,
others, like rap band Sniper, turned to music,
calling on young people to stand up for their rights.
(RAPPING IN FRENCH)
The French government sued Sniper
for allegedly racist and insulting lyrics
which incited violence.
After four trials, the band was acquitted.
In the wake of 1 789,
almost every single landmark in Paris was reinvented,
courtesy of the Revolution.
Notre Dame became a warehouse and had its statues beheaded.
Sainte-Chapelle became a grain store.
The Louvre became a museum for the people.
Le Jardin royal des plantes
was reinvented as the Natural History Museum.
The original statue of Henri IV on the Pont Neuf
was melted down to make cannons.
The condemned awaiting execution
were imprisoned at the Conciergerie. One of them was Marie Antoinette.
Marie Antoinette was guillotined here, Place de la Concorde,
along with her husband, Louis XVI, and thousands of others.
The guillotine is named after Dr Guillotin, a Parisian.
Today you can find one of these deadly machines
in the most unlikely of settings,
a jazz bar on the Left Bank.
The guillotine was used for the first time in 1 792,
but it's actually not Dr Guillotin who invented it.
It was used by the Italians before then.
And, yeah, it's quite chilling, actually, to be next to it,
but cheers.
Marie Antoinette and Louis xVI were finally buried
at the Basilica of Saint-Denis in the northern suburbs of Paris.
(DELIVERING MASS IN FRENCH)
It's a bit of a journey from the city centre,
but well worth the effort.
This is one of the city's treasures, the resting place of French kings.
The monarchy is long dead and gone, but whatever you think about it,
it's still an important part of our past.
The most touching thing is the Chapel of the Princes.
In those caskets are some of the remains of French kings,
including Louis xIVand Henri IV,
the two men who did so much to build Paris,
now side by side in death.
But it wasn't just the great and good who suffered.
People from all walks of life lost their heads
during the bloodiest phase, the Terror,
which was unleashed by Maximilien de Robespierre in 1 793.
Many of the victims ended up in the catacombs in the south of Paris.
(READING ALOUD)
''Stop. This is the empire of death.''
This could be a good metaphor for Paris during the Terror.
This is the most macabre gallery in the world,
over one kilometre of eerie passageways stacked high with skulls and bones.
The catacombs had been created just before the Revolution
to clear the city's overcrowded cemeteries.
The Terror brought wave after wave of corpses of people from all classes.
One victim famously asked,
''Freedom, how many crimes are committed in your name?''
This was the Revolution gone most horribly wrong.
Robespierre ended up here, too, after he was guillotined.
Poetic justice.
As well as Robespierre,
there are his fellow revolutionaries, Marat and Danton.
Don't ask me to introduce them to you
because they are among six million nameless Parisians here.
The French Revolution changed Paris and the world forever.
The city faced a very uncertain future, but it would triumph against the odds
and become the world's first modern city,
a magnet to people the world over.
Next time, bohemia, cinema, the metro, the occupation and new horizons.
Paris in the 20th century and today.
For a free bilingual guide
featuring one of my favourite walks in Paris
and more about Open University programmes on the BBC,
call 0870 900 958 1
or go to bbc.co.uk/paris.