The City of Light: How Paris got its glow • FRANCE 24 English

France in Focus shines a light on how Paris went from utter darkness to the illuminated city of today. The team meets a passionate group of electricity enthusiasts to discover some of the most famous lamps that have lit up the French capital. They also speak to the granddaughter of Fernand Jacopozzi, the engineer who famously illuminated the Eiffel Tower in the 1920s. Lastly, they explore how Paris’s iconic monuments stay in the limelight today.

Eiffel Tower illuminations: © SETE Tour Eiffel. Lighting designer: Pierre Bideau.
#Paris #history #Eiffel tower

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With thousands of lights bubles and glittering Christmas trees decorating the shaiz there’s no mistaking that the festive season is underway but did you know that the French capital is in fact never short of impressive light displays paris’s love of light has a dazzling history allow us to Enlighten

You hello and welcome to this edition of France in Focus now Paris is renowned for its magical light displays and for very good reason a simple stroll around the city reveals that it’s not just the capital’s most famous monuments that are illuminated so too are its elegant Avenues districts

And squares let’s take a look at paris’s history with Light in 1665 under Louis 14th the first public lighting appeared in Paris in the form of Street lanterns the objective was to stop crimes often perpetrated in the badly lit areas of the capital as well as Street lanterns parisians were also asked to place candles on their window sills

From there on in public lighting evolved candles were replaced by oil lamps and gas lamps by electricity the first public electric lights appeared on the Avenue de lope in the 19th century so to find out more about how Street lighting has evolved here in Paris I’m joined by Jean jaac L hello to

You Jean jaac if I understand correctly Jean Jack this is one of the first examples of public Lighting in Paris walk us through how it works if you Street Lighting in Paris began under Louis the 14th with lanterns like this one that were lit up with candles and

Then with oil so gradually streets in Paris started being lit up with this type of lamp so after this uh we moved on to gas lamps or gas lighting how did these uh how were these lit up in 1829 the was the first streets lit up with gaslighting with this type of candelabra

Lamp every evening lamplighters would use their blowtorch filled with fuel to ignite a flame every evening so a lot of work in terms of lighting these up after the gas lamp Jean jaac there was the uh Ark lamps that you might say that were found

On the Avenue de L how did that all work yes Avenue de L was the first street to be lit up using electricity with lamps like this one but it created a really white light that people found too harsh Al the lamp didn’t run for very long only 150 hours so when Thomas

Edison created the incandescent light bulb we dropped this system now as a a lighting engineer you worked on a lot of projects to help light up Paris joh Jack what would you say that is the project that stood out the most to you in your uh long

Career I’ve done a lot of projects lighting monuments in Paris the big project that we’re most passionate about is lighting the courtyards of the Lou which started in 1992 okay and what about this huge projector here what was its kind of main job if you will that was the 1950 Mazda info

Spotlight 3,000 wats in 115 volts and with this we lit up the Eiffel Tower we had 170 on the shond m to light up the eiel tower we also lit up the notam the trium all the monuments in Paris were l L up using this model there you go wow very

Bright it went as far as 300 M and was the best lens back then John Jack thank you very much indeed for showing us around See what followed the testing of electric lighting would be nothing short of spectacular the Italian engineer fernan jaapi also known as the lightning magician began Illuminating paris’s greatest monuments including the old trium PL conord and the oper not to mention the Eiffel Tower so here’s the final result of what

The Eiffel Tower looked like there were nine different lighting designs which lit up in a random way someone was changing the lighting but they had no idea what sort of design would come up next and people watching were very happy because it was constantly changing so veronique your grandfather

Is known became famous if you will for lighting up the Eiffel Tower how did he manage to do that it all happened in 1925 so I don’t know exactly how it all came about because I wasn’t around then my grandfather was well known for lighting up department stores so we know

That he was skilled enough to work on lights that were 30 m High and he was capable of using cables that were many meters long so he was asked to work on the Eiffel Tower project and he obviously really liked it but the problem was that

He had to find a sponsor because people running the decorative Arts exhibition didn’t have the money for that so he turned to Citroen who after looking at the project said okay let’s do it he started working on it two months after the opening of the decorative Arts exhibition there were 250 thousand light

Bulbs that were three different colors but you needed electricity for that can you imagine the hundreds of thousands of wires that were 300 M high he asked his usual team of electricians to work on it and they said no we’re not climbing up 300 M so he thought of sailors who go up

Boat M and also circus acts who are used to climbing up high so with this new team he managed to illuminate the Eiffel Tower in two months very little time so once he’d managed to light up the Eiffel Tower that led him to lighting up other famous monuments in

Paris I think what happened was that as he went up to the first second and third floors of the eiel tower he realized that all Paris monuments were in the dark and I think the mayor of Paris at the time saw that the Eiffel Tower was

Lit up but not the other monuments so towards 1927 and 1928 they began to light up areas around The Monuments that had been in the dark up until 1928 one thing that’s really interesting is that during the first world war your grandfather was asked to create a kind

Of false Paris uh a little bit away from the capital to trick the Germans in 1918 German bombs were causing a lot of Destruction and killing people so the French army decided they couldn’t just do nothing the war wasn’t over yet and they realized that German soldiers

Dropped bombs during the night on the lit up areas in Paris so as the soldiers were waiting for Paris to be in the dark to drop the bombs they wanted to create another Paris on another loop of the river sen that looked exactly the same as the Parisian one so that’s where the

Idea of a fake Paris to the north of the city came from but the war ended before being put in place so your grandfather was really well known uh during his life less so uh after his death how do you feel about the fact that there hasn’t been a street

Named after him for example it’s sad because Paris is called the city of light partly thanks to my grandfather and it’s a shame that he’s still in the shadows that’s why I’ve been trying to put him back in the spotlight for 10 years now I would love for a street to be

Named after him it’s been talked about now since I started working on it an exhibition on the Eiffel tower lights and the Li on Paris monuments could also be in the works but I’m hoping with all my heart that we can get a street named after him thanks very much veronique

Today the City of Paris is still responsible for Street lighting and many of the capital’s historic monuments as well as Artwork so Teddy we are here inside the shiz Gardens we’re right next to this sculpture uh created by Jeff entitled the bouquet of tulips we understand that Paris Town Hall is in charge of lighting it up what kind of lights are you using placed three sets of two LED

Strips around the monument in each light one of the two strips illuminates the hand with a warm white for the skin and then the other strip illuminates the Tulips with a much colder white which makes the colors stand out better now it looks beautiful but the issue of light pollution has become a

Big issue what’s Paris doing to tackle that in Paris we’re setting up a Parisian nighttime Network which aims to limit light pollution in the most sensitive areas to protect biodiversity these spaces are 100% equipped with LEDs and we use orange yellow tones which have less impact on biodiversity

And we’re also thinking about gradually dimming or turning off lights particularly in the two big parks the bu bu and the bad vanen now in 2018 there was a national light pollution policy was introduced since then dimming has also been an option yes so light dimming is very

Complicated to implement in a city as dense as Paris but despite everything we are getting there by doing it with a little finesse we still manage to implement it in places I talked about the parks we can also talk about green spaces and the banks of the sen which are also

Sensitive for wildlife aquatic fora in particular we’re getting there little by little well Teddy it’s no secret that uh the Olympic games are just around the corner what do Paris got in store in terms of lighting up the city when it comes to the Olympic Games

There will be three major groups of work to plan for firstly refurbishing the lighting of monuments there will also be the refurbishment of public lighting for example right next door you have the plas Concord you have the Lou sector just behind their Heritage is very rich and will be updated for the

Games and then finally there will be what’s called mapping the very spectacular projection of video onto supports on monuments and I can’t tell you any more about that at this stage we can’t wait to see what Paris has in store for the Olympic Games thanks very much for speaking to us

Today thank you for you at home for watching that brings us to the end of this episode we’ll see you again next Time