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THEODORE VACQUER AND THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MODERNITY IN HAUSSMANN'S PARIS*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2007

Colin Jones
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Abstract

Théodore Vacquer (1824–99) was an archaeologist who excavated, directed excavations in and visited all archaeological sites in Paris between the 1840s and his death. In the latter part of his career, he served as assistant curator at what became the Musée Carnavalet, specialising in the Roman and early medieval history of the city. Taking advantage of the reconstruction of the city in the nineteenth century associated with the work of Paris prefect, Baron Haussmann, he was able to locate far more of Roman Paris than had been known before. His findings remained the basis of what was known about the Roman city until a new wave of archaeological excavations after 1950. Vacquer aimed to highlight his discoveries in a magnum opus on the history of Paris from earliest times to ad 1000, but he died with virtually nothing written. His extensive archive still exists, however, and provides the substance for this essay. The essay seeks to rescue Vacquer from the relative obscurity associated with his name. In addition, by setting his life and work in the context of the Haussmannian construction of Paris as the arch-city of modernity it aims to illuminate the history of archaeology, conservation and urban identity in nineteenth-century Paris.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 17 , December 2007 , pp. 157 - 183
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 2007

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References

1 Vacquer seems to have slipped the attention of just about all historians of Haussmann's Paris. I stumbled across him and his archive while writing Paris: Biography of a City (2004). There is a brief but well-informed account of his life by his friends F. G. de Pachtère and C. Sellier: ‘Théodore Vacquer, sa vie, son oeuvre. Le fonds Vacquer à la Bibliothèque de la Ville de Paris’, Bulletin de la Bibliothèque des travaux historiques, 4 (1909), which is the introduction to the catalogue of his manuscripts in the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris [hereafter BHVP]. The epithets I have used and and the photograph are drawn from this article, which draws on oral as well as a wide range of now unfindable manuscript materials (see esp. p. 10). The admirer is Seymour de Ricci, in a brief note, ‘Paris à l'époque romane’, in the Revue archéologique (1914), 112. For the present article, I have used in particular Vacquer's autobiographical sketches to be found in Carton 248 of the Fonds Vacquer. The latter was re-catalogued in the 1970s and the class-marks indicated by Pachtère and Sellier were altered. For the current organisation, see Vasseur-Depoux, M., Catalogue des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France. T. LIX. Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris (Paris, 1975)Google Scholar.

2 On the Haussmannisation of Paris, the bibliography is too vast to recount in a footnote. See esp. D. Jordan, Transforming Paris. The Life and Labors of Baron Haussmann (1955); D. H. Pinkney, Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris (1958); F. Loyer, Paris Nineteenth-Century: Architecture and Urbanism (1988); Gaillard, J., Paris, la ville, 1852–70: l'urbanisme parisien à l'heure de Haussmann (Paris, 1976)Google Scholar; A. Sutcliffe, The Autumn of Central Paris. The Defeat of Town Planning, 1850–1970 (1970); and N. Evenson, Paris: A Century of Change, 1878–1978 (1979). See too Haussmann, G., Mémoires, ed. Choay, F. (Paris, 2000)Google Scholar.

3 For an overview of these inter-related issues, see Choay, F., The Invention of the Historic Monument (Cambridge, 2001)Google Scholar; The section on ‘Le Patrimoine’, in Les lieux de mémoire, ed. P. Nora (3 vols., paperback re-edn, Paris, 1997 – work in this series first appeared in 1984), ii (esp. A. Chastel, ‘La notion du patrimoine’); E. Gran-Aymerich, Naissance de l'archéologie moderne, 1789–1945 (Paris, 1998); Schnapp, A., La Conquête du passé. Aux origines de l'archéologie (Paris, 1995)Google Scholar; Poulot, D., Une histoire du patrimoine en Occident, XVIIIe–XXIe siècle (Paris, 2006)Google Scholar.

4 Pachtère and Sellier, ‘Vacquer’, 2; BHVP 248, fo. 301v. In the biographical account, I am drawing essentially on these sources unless otherwise stated.

5 Dulaure, J. A., Histoire physique, civile et morale de Paris, 2nd edn (Paris, 1825)Google Scholar.

6 Pachtère and Sellier, ‘Vacquer’, 2ff; BHVP 248 esp. fo. 301.

7 N. Papayannis, Planning Paris before Haussmann (2004). See too La modernité avant Haussmann: formes de l'espace urbain à Paris, 1801–56, ed. K. Bowie (Paris, 2001). For the continuation of his legacy after 1870, see Sutcliffe, The Autmn of Central Paris; Evenson, Paris: A Century of Change; Loyer, Paris Nineteenth-Century; Jones, Paris: Biography of a City, etc.

8 The classic treatment of this theme is L. Chevalier, Laboring Classes and Dangerous Classes in Paris during the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (1973). The Île de la Cité certainly lay within Lutetia, but there is now some contention among archaeologists that the capital of the Parisii where Caesar first encountered the tribe was further along the river at Nanterre.

9 Pachtère and Sellier, ‘Vacquer’, 7; BHVP 248, fo. 301v.

10 For the archaeology of Roman Lutetia, the key text is Busson, D., Carte archéologique de la Gaule: 75. Paris (Paris, 1998)Google Scholar, esp. Busson's introduction. See too Velay, P., From Lutetia to Paris. The Island and the Two Banks (Paris, 1992)Google Scholar; Carbonnières, P. de, Lutèce, Paris ville romane (Paris, 1997)Google Scholar; P. M. Duval, De Lutèce oppidum à Paris capitale de la France (1993); and Busson, D., Paris ville antique (Paris, 2001)Google Scholar. The first work drawing extensively on the Vacquer papers – but also on oral testimony of the man was F. G. de Pachtère, Paris à l'époque gallo-romaine (Etude faite avec l'aide des papiers et des plans de Th. Vacquer) (Paris, 1912: still worth consulting).

11 The extensive bibliography in Busson's Carte archéologique (40) lists a dozen pieces by Vacquer, extending overall to less than fifty pages.

12 BHVP 248, fo. 301v.

13 Cf. the title of one of the few journalistic notices on Vacquer's death, ‘Un mystérieux sondeur de Paris antique’, cited in Pachtère and Sellier, ‘Vacquer’, 1n.

14 See below, p. 179.

15 Seymour de Ricci, ‘Paris à l'époque romane’, 112.

16 See e.g. S. Legaret, ‘L'interprétation des dossiers de Vacquer: essai de méthode’, Cahiers de la Rotonde, 2 (1979) – mostly in fact devoted to unpicking carton 63 from the Fonds Vacquer.

17 BHVP 248, fo. 310.

18 Higonnet, P., Paris, Capital of the World (Cambridge, MA, 2000)Google Scholar. I thank Professor Higonnet for a helpful conversation on this topic.

19 Barroux, M., Les origines légendaires de Paris (Paris, 1955)Google Scholar; and Babelon, J. P., Paris au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1986)Google Scholar, ch. 1. Also useful is Paris et ses historiens aux XIVe et XVe siècles, ed. A. Le Roux and L. M. Tisserand (Paris, 1867). For the wider mythologisations of France see esp. C. Beaune, The Birth of an Ideology: Myths and Symbols in Late-Medieval France (Oxford, 1991).

20 Babelon, Paris au XVIe siècle, 27–8.

21 See esp. Clark, T. J., The Painting of Modern Life. Paris in the Art of Manet and his Followers, revised edn (Princeton, NJ, 1999)Google Scholar; R. L. Herbert, Impressionism: Art, Leisure and Parisian Society (1988); Benjamin, Walter, The Arcades Project (Cambridge, MA, 1999)Google Scholar; and Stierle, K. H., La capitale des signes. Paris et son discours (Paris, 2001)Google Scholar. One should note that Benjamin, archaeologist of capitalist modernity, showed no interest whatever in the city of Paris's archaeological record.

22 The literature on the flâneur is vast. The works cited in n. 21 are a starting-point.

23 For dégagement as a staple principle of urban renewal through embellissement, see, besides Papayannis, Planning Paris, Harouel, J. L., L'embellissement des villes: l'urbanisme français au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1993)Google Scholar; and L'urbanisme parisien au siècle des Lumières, ed. M. Le Moel (Paris, 1997).

24 For an episode in 1111 based on the independent power base of the comte de Meulan on the St Gervais monceau, see R. H. Bautier, ‘Paris au temps d'Abelard’, in Abelard en son temps (Paris, 1981), 40ff.

25 See the works cited above, n. 3.

26 From Lieux de mémoire, ed. Nora, ii, see esp. D. Poulot, ‘Alexandre Lenoir et les musées des monuments français’, L. Theis, ‘Guizot et l'institution de la mémoire’, and A. Fermigier, ‘Mérimée et l'inspection des monuments historiques’.

27 The antiquarian writer Jollois produced a Mémoire sur les antiquités romaines et gallo-romaines de Paris in 1840 which did something to stimulate interest in early medieval Paris, but failed to turn the tide.

28 Berty's work was published in fragments and was never complete or comprehensive. For an example, see his Histoire générale de Paris. Topographie historique du Vieux Paris. Région du Louvre et des Tuileries (Paris, 1866).

29 Belgrand, E., La Seine. I. Le bassin parisien aux âges préhistoriques (2 vols., Paris, 1869)Google Scholar. Cf. BHVP 248.

30 Viollet-le-Duc, E., Dictionnaire raisonné de l'architecture française (10 vols., Paris, 1867–70)Google Scholar, viii, 14. On this highly influential figure see B. Foucart, ‘Viollet-le-Duc et la restauration’, in Lieux de mémoire, ed. Nora, ii.

31 See the illustration in Lieux de mémoire, ed. Nora, i, 1624.

32 For a comparative glance at Ruskin, see Choay, The Invention of the Historic Monument, 92ff.

33 Formigé, Les Arènes de Paris (Paris, 1918). The works cited above, n. 10, provide more recent analyses.

34 See the materials at BHVP 518: ‘Campagne pour la sauvegarde des Arènes’.

35 Cited in de Carbonnières, Lutèce, 101.

36 On this phase of the movement for Parisian conservation, the work of Anthony Sutcliffe is particularly useful: The Autumn of Central Paris and Paris: An Architectural History (1993).

37 The demolition of the Second Empire market buildings at Les Halles in the 1970s comes closest.

38 BHVP 521: ‘Rapport sur les fouilles et la conservation des ruines des arènes de la rue Monge’, fo. 119.

39 Pachtère and Sellier, ‘Vacquer’, 10 and n.

40 BHVP 248, fo. 302v.

41 See above, p. 163.

42 BHVP 248, fo. 310v.

43 Cited in Velay, P. and Godeau, J., Les premiers mots de Paris (Paris, 1997), 27Google Scholar.

44 Grenêt-Delacroix, M. C., ‘Etat et patrimoine sous la Troisième République. De l'amateur au professionnel dans la gestion du patrimoine national’, in L'esprit des lieux. Le patrimoine et la cité, ed. Grance, D. and Poulot, D. (Grenoble, 1997)Google Scholar.

45 BHVP 248, fo. 310v.

46 Lieux de mémoire, ed. Nora.

47 E.g. the Eiffel tower, the Pantheon, Notre-Dame cathedral, the Louvre, the Palais-Bourbon, the Collège de France, Sacré-Coeur de Montmartre, Parisian statues.

48 Critical appreciations of this project include B. Taithe, ‘Monuments aux morts? Nora's Realms of Memory and Samuel's Theatres of Memory’, History of the Human Sciences, 12 (1999), and H. T. Ho Tai, ‘Remembered Realms: Pierre Nora and French National Memory’, American Historical Review, 106 (2001).

49 See the excellent article by Alain Schnapp, ‘France et Allemagne: l'archéologie en jeu dans la construction nationale’, Mélanges de l'Ecole française de Rome, 113 (2001); and K. Pomian, ‘Francs et Gaulois’, in Lieux de mémoire, ed. Nora, ii.

50 Cf. O. Buchsenschutz and A. Schnapp, ‘Alésia’, in Lieux de mémoire, ed. Nora, iii, 4132ff.

51 P. Citron, La poésie de Paris dans la littérature française de Rousseau à Baudelaire (2 vols., Paris, 1961), ii, 112.

52 Classical and neo-classical references for the First Empire are picked up well in the relevant volume of the series, Nouvelle Histoire de Paris: Tulard, J., Le consulate et l'empire, 2nd edn (Paris, 1983)Google Scholar. For Napoleon III's fascination with the battle-site of Alesia, see Buchsenschutz and Schnapp, ‘Alésia’.

53 See above, p. 171.

54 For early photography and the city, see S. Rice, Parisian Views (1997).

55 Thanks to Simon Ditchfield for this helpful comparison. See e.g. Bocquer, D., ‘L'archéologie dans la capitale italienne: Rome 1870–1911’, Mélanges de l'Ecole française de Rome, 113 (2001)Google Scholar; M. Tarpin, ‘La Rome antique de Mussolini: actualité des fouilles et restaurations d'avant-guerre’, in L'esprit des lieux, ed. Grance and Poulot, esp. 97ff.

56 The Musée National du Moyen-Âge was established by Alexandre Sommerard in 1843, in the hôtel of the abbés of Cluny, constructed in and over the Thermes de Julien in the fifteenth century.

57 F. G. Pachtère, ‘Préface: légendes et traditions sur la ville antique: les débuts et les progrès de son histoire. État de la question’, in Paris à l'époque gallo-romaine, xxv.

58 Cf. Oulebsir, N., Les usages du patrimoine. Monuments, musées et politique coloniale en Algérie (1830–1930) (Paris, 2004)Google Scholar. Thanks to Bryan Ward-Perkins for putting me on this track.

59 I have drawn especially on Busson, Paris, ville antique.

60 Cf. above, p. 169.

61 Busson, Carte archéologique, 44.

62 Latour, B. and Hermant, E., Paris ville invisible (Paris, 1998), 109Google Scholar.