THE TOPOGRAPHICAL EVOLUTION OF THE 
CITY OF PARIS' 
By Edward R. Smith, B.A. 
Reference Librarian, Avery Architectural Library, Columbia University 
IV.— Royal Paris 
T HE fortuitous arrangement of medieval 
cities does not arise from an inherent 
lack of the sense of symmetry in the medi¬ 
eval architectonic scheme. The chief cathe¬ 
drals of the thirteenth century in France are 
superbly symmetrical. They have as defi¬ 
nite axes as the classical monuments of later 
times. If the civilization of the thirteenth 
century had continued, these axes would 
doubtless have been prolonged into the sur¬ 
rounding regions and the older maps would 
have been much firmer in their disposition. 
But the thirteenth century, like the fifth 
century B. C. in Greece, never attained its 
full fruition. The men who built Notre- 
Dame doubtless expected that succeeding 
generations would give their work a fair set¬ 
ting, but the fourteenth century was too 
busy fighting to remember the magnificent 
1 Continued from the October number of House and Garden. 
expectations of its predecessor. Later Gothic 
architects huddled their decadent buildings 
together wherever there was space, with an 
entire lack of symmetrical arrangement. 
This, being the final result of the medieval 
period, has given to the work of that period 
its total effect; extremely picturesque and 
charming, but entirely accidental. 
The Renaissance architects in France 
simply followed the previous period. So far 
as Paris is concerned, except for the futile 
projects of Francis I., there was no attempt 
to rectify the plan. But the Renaissance 
had in it the germ of a different state of af¬ 
fairs. The architectonic style which bears 
that name was based on the classic scheme, 
and in the classic scheme, symmetry, balance 
and order are fundamental. I he period in¬ 
cluded in the seventeenth* and eighteenth 
centuries, which followed the Renaissance, 
the pont-neuf and ile de la cite 
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