Despite its traditions, Paris has an appetite for rebellion— just recall 1789, 1848, 1871 and 1968. That sense of constant upheaval extends to the physical appearance of the city itself. It’s easy to forget that the linear uniformity of the Parisian boulevards is itself the result of radical 19th-century bulldozing. This is the city where they put up the initially baffling and controversial Eiffel Tower at the centenary of the revolution and, at the bicentenary, slammed a glass pyramid in the middle of the Louvre’s immaculate neoclassical precincts.
Then and now, the French aren’t as sentimental as they might seem. Paris is tired of being admired as timeless, classic and rather proper, while its peers, London and Berlin, power ahead as zeitgeist- defining hotbeds of creativity. The capital has set about reinventing its image as global, open and quirky (rather than Gallic, static and traditional.) What’s more, with Brexit dampening the spirits of the British capital, Paris could stand to gain from the losses of its sister city (and historic sparring partner).