Paris Map 1872 City Plan Print - Île de la Cité, Notre-Dame, Louvre, Left Bank, Right Bank

Edward Stanford of 6 and 7 Charing Cross, London, published this composite map of the Western and Eastern Divisions of Paris in 1872 in The Family Atlas, a collection of eighty maps engraved on steel under the supervision of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and including the geological map of England and Wales, the star maps and the plans of London and Paris. The catalog calls this issue a somewhat updated version of the 1865 one, and the sheet is hand-colored at 1:16,200, measuring 37 by 43 centimeters, with small drawings of prominent buildings along the bottom edge. It shows Paris in 1872, the year after the siege and the Commune, in a city whose streets Haussmann had remade.

The two divisions together give one view of the city, with the districts tinted so that the quarters can be told apart. The Seine divides the sheet, and the Île de la Cité, where Notre-Dame stands, sits in the river between the Left Bank and the Right Bank. The drawings of landmarks include Notre-Dame and the Louvre, and the labels name streets, districts and notable sites in detail. The scale of 1:16,200 is large enough to follow the long boulevards that Haussmann had cut through the old medieval quarters. The map therefore works as both a guide for visitors and a record of a city rebuilt in the previous two decades.

A Parisian, a student of Haussmann's city, or anyone who has walked from Notre-Dame to the Louvre will recognize a favorite route in this hand-colored plan, which makes it a fitting gift for a traveler or a Francophile. TheMapVault's 1955 Paris and Environs from The Times Atlas covers the region at 1:100,000 and shows the suburbs, while this 1872 Stanford sheet is the street-level view of the center, drawn at 1:16,200 and colored by hand. It is the updated issue of a plan that Stanford first published in 1865. Like every print in the collection, it ships unframed and is available in a full range of sizes, from a compact desk piece to a large-format statement print.