Paris through Time
A Chronological Guide to the City, from Deep Prehistory to the Present
Buy on AmazonEvery street in Paris is a door. History is the key.
When archaeologist Dawn Youngblood was given a birthday trip to Paris, she read the histories and the guidebooks and found nothing that joined them: grand narratives on one shelf, the best croissant on another. So she built the companion she could not find.
Paris through Time walks forward through the city era by era, from Paleolithic flint workers in the gravels of Levallois to the cathedral that reopened its doors in December 2024. Twenty-one chapters move through Gaulish Nanterre, Roman Lutetia, the Viking siege, Gothic Paris, revolution and empire, Haussmann’s rebuilding, the Belle Époque, occupation, and liberation. Each chapter closes with “Walking This History Today”: real addresses where you can stand in front of what you have just read.
Between the chapters, short Interludes step outside the calendar: the five walls that ringed and re-ringed the city, the spiral of the arrondissements, the fleur-de-lis, who paid for Versailles, onion soup, the baguette that UNESCO added to its heritage list in 2022, and fifty Parisians who changed how the world thinks.
Inside:
- Twenty-one chronological chapters, anchored to addresses you can visit
- The Neolithic canoes of Bercy, the Pillar of the Boatmen, and a stretch of Philippe Auguste’s 1190 wall you can still walk beside
- Religion treated as a driving force, from the Gaulish Parisii to modern pluralist Paris
- Contested dates and death tolls given as the range historians actually debate, without false precision
- A five-day itinerary balancing museums, walks, dining, and evenings out
- Site selections by era and a guide to museum tickets and passes
Read it on the plane, in the museum line, or over morning coffee. Be the connoisseur, not the invader.