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federico cinquepalmi
Bonaparte’s dream: Paris during the Empire Napoleon I began the modern urban transformation of the French capital with the intention of giving his own imprint to the city. The Rue de Rivoli project, the starshaped layout of the square around the Arc de Triomphe and the planned Palace of the King of Rome were the prodromal elements of this project86, where the Quarter of the King of Rome was conceived as a new ‘imperial city’, dedicated to administration, knowledge and the armed forces87. But it would be Napoleon I’s nephew, Louis Napoleon88, the first elected president of the Second Republic and later Emperor under the name of Napoleon III, who between 1852 and 1870 would initiate the process of modernising Paris under the Second Empire, with the help of the prefect Georges Eugène Haussmann89.
Design: Saint Petersburg Case Study, «Architecture: Material and Imagined», vol. 64, pp. 250-254. 86 “...Napoleon wanted to create a real administrative city, connected to the right bank by the new Jena Bridge and which would be dominated by the Palace of the King of Rome, the imposing building built on the hill” Buclon R. 2013, Du Foro Bonaparte de Milan au Quartier du roi de Rome de Paris. Continuités et divergences d’une utopie républicaine à une vision impériale, January 2013, Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome Italie et Méditerranée vol. 125, n. 2, Roma, p. 2. 87 Ivi, p. 8. 88 Charles-Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, called simply Louis-Napoleon, born on 20 April 1808 in Paris and died on 9 January 1873 in Chislehurst (United Kingdom) president of the Second French Republic from 1848 to 1852 and Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870. Son of Louis Bonaparte (Brother of Napoleon I) and Hortense de Beauharnais (Firstborn daughter of Empress Josephine and adopted daughter of the Emperor). 89 Georges Eugène Haussmann, better known with the imperial title of Baron Haussmann, (1809 - 1891) Prefect of the Seine from 1853 to 1870, he directed the transformation of Paris under the Second Empire by further elaborating the vast plan of renewal desired by Napoleon III.
