The role of lighting in the change of the city scenario.

Paris has been one of the first European capitals to realize an illumination system on the streets, earning the nickname of ‘la Ville des Lumière’, the City of Light. The public street lamps of the French capital have become characteristic and appear as protagonists of the photographs of many glimpses of the city, such as the Montmatre staircase, or in the paintings of many great artists, including Vincent Van Gogh.

The beginning of the french public illumination system can be collocated in the middle of the XVII century. The King Sole, Luigi XIV, increased the enlightenment throughout Paris in an attempt to reduce the crime rate.
Lanterns were placed on the main streets and to the citizens were asked to place lighted candles on their windows. 

At the end of 1800s, after the ambicious project of renovation by Georges-Eugene Haussmann, which updated the infrastructure of the city, previously medieval, and thanks to the use of gas lamps, in 1870, in Paris there were more than twenty thousand street lamps.
Placed among trees on tidy avenues and perched next to benches, these lamps quickly became icons of the city.

Paris entered a period of rapid modernization and urbanization. That was a time characterized by a sense of prosperity and optimism among its population, also caused by the advent of one of the main innovations of the period, the invention of the electric bulb.

Electric light began to be installed throughout Paris in the late 1870s. From the faint glow of gas lamps, we move on to a new light, white and intense.

In 1881, the International Esposition of the electricity (Exposition Internationale de l’Electricité) was organised in Paris. During those days, the city became the world capital of electricity. The electric current was rapidly spreading, and the excitement that surrounding the fair was palpable.

However, the actual transition to the electric light still took a long time to complete. The last gas lamps, of the tens of thousands that illuminated the city, remained in place until 1962 before being discarded.