This is the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo. She's holding what has been called the building block of the city. It's a paving stone, of the kind that covers most of its streets. Each is machine-cut from granite and weighs more than a kilo. For Euros 60, you can own one. The Classic, which she's holding, comes hand-painted with "Mon Pavé Parisien" - My Parisian Cobblestone. A gold-painted version sells for 120 Euros. Definitely a gift for that Man Who Has Everything.
But what's so special about a cobblestone? A great deal, in fact, since without this particular kind of cobble, modern Paris would not exist.
They date back to 1860, when Emperor Louis-Napoleon III ordered Paris rebuilt. There was considerable room for improvement. Only about a fifth of its streets were paved. The rest were dirt. Sidewalks did not exist. The wealthy travelled by coach or on horseback; everyone else walked, braving mud in winter, dust and germs in summer.
City planner Georges-Eugène Haussmann knew the existing form of paving, called Belgian Blocks, would crumble under the heavy traffic on his new wide boulevards. He introduced smaller granite cubes, with two ingenious improvements. Instead of cementing them together, he left them loose. And rather than seating them on gravel, he bedded them in a few inches of sand. The weight of a heavy cart would never rest on more than a few stones at a time, and the sand would absorb the pressure.
Almost no one suspected his ingenuity until students, seeking projectiles to throw at the police and militia during the uprising of 1968, discovered that cobbles could simply be lifted out. As les evenements de '68 were as much about theatre as politics, their delight at having such readily available missiles was soon visible on the city's walls. One poster, showing a girl caught in the act of flinging a stone, shouted "La Beauté est dans la Rue" - Beauty is in the Streets - while their astonishment at the sand below was reflected in the graffito "Sous les pavés, la plage" - Under the cobbles, there's a beach!
There's been no shortage of social unrest since 1968 but demonstrators have never again resorted to throwing cobbles. Nor has public art been as popular, or achieved the same degree of invention. The gilet jaune demonstrators of 2018 pitched tents on the Champs-Elysées and other elegant right bank thoroughfares, lit bonfires, built barricades, set up communities; couples even married there. But nobody threw cobbles or created posters or invented memorable graffiti; it was more about those distinctive yellow safety vests. Did the organisers include a haute couture professional?
And the marchers protesting M. Macron's plans for a higher retirement age? Well, I'm no expert, but hemlines are lower, and long scarves are definitely In.
This was a wonderful read John. I’m currently in San Miguel de Allende and the cobblestones here are so different from Paris - raw, jagged and throughly indomitable. Walking the streets is akin to clambering over a creek bed. A new world vs old world analogy. I’m looking forward to the smooth cobblestones of Paris.