PARIS has known many ages and civilizations.  Some fashions have past through it in the blink of an eye, while others have remained.  Some, such as the Gothic style, have been imitated all over the world many centuries after they were first new.  The sturdy round Roman vaults of baths, temples and aqueducts give way to Gothic pointed arches reaching toward heaven, only to be obscured by Baroque spirals and columns and Modern asymmetry and exposed utilities.

Freud once compared the great city of Rome to the developmental process of the human psyche: on the ruins of each civilization and experience, new things are built.  The old leaves shapes and traces, and these are recycled and incorporated into the next stage.

Through these maps, explore some of the pasts upon which Paris’ present has been built. 

Visit the Paris of the High Middle Ages, when the great university was born, when the New Art of the Gothic Style was still experimental, when kings, clerks, merchants and poets were dreaming up a better city life.