published: 2025-08-05

A World from a Century Ago: Paris

Name: A World from a Century Ago: Paris
Start: 2025-08-05

Take a remarkable journey through time to Paris at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, a vibrant city of breathtaking scale, its grandeur endlessly inspiring artists, thinkers, and dreamers from across the world. This exhibition will take you straight onto the streets of the French capital, revealing the city not only in all of its splendour, but also at pivotal and challenging moments in its history.

Black and white photo of the Eiffel Tower and other buildings, with information about the exhibition on the left. - grafika artykułu — exhibition poster

Black and white photo of the Eiffel Tower and other buildings, with information about the exhibition on the left.

Sepia stereo photography: Notre-Dame Cathedral.

Sepia stereo photography: market stalls on the riverbank, near the bridge. In the background, buildings on the other side of the river.

.Sepia stereo photography: Arc de Triomphe.

Stereo photography showing a street lined with horse-drawn carriages and people strolling. Across the street there is a stately building.

Stereophotograph showing a flooded street with buildings on both sides of it. An empty boat in the midle of a flooded street.

The photographs on display depict iconic landmarks that have shaped Paris as we know it today - the Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame Cathedral, the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, and the Panthéon. Equally present are views of buildings that have long since disappeared from the city's landscape. The Tuileries Palace, the Trocadéro Palace, and the grand pavilions erected for international exhibitions will no longer be found by traversing the streets of Paris. The photographs on view include those of picturesque streets, with distinctive awnings featured on shopfronts and cafés, barges lazily gliding along the Seine, and the city's charming bridges and hidden corners.

The exhibition also offers a glimpse into the daily life of Parisians - captured in candid moments of rush, work, leisure in city gardens, or deliberately posed in scenes that evoke the spirit of the age.

The collection is also a record of the transformations and historic events that shaped Paris at the time. Visitors will see images of the destruction that followed the Paris Commune of 1871, and haunting views of the great flood of 1910, when the waters of the Seine engulfed the streets of the metropolis. Many of the photographs document the city's urban development, including the early construction of the Paris Metro.

What makes this exhibition truly unique are archival stereoscopic photographs from the collection of the Musée Carnavalet dedicated to the history of Paris. These images, produced by French photographers and by companies specialising in commercial collections of 3D views, were once immensely popular.

Don't miss this opportunity to travel into a world of a century ago, where history intertwines with everyday life, and photography serves as a vivid witness to a bygone era.

Bon voyage!

translation: Krzysztof Kotkowski

"A World from a Century Ago: Paris" - an exhibition in the Poznań Photoplasticon (Fotoplastykon Poznański)
Centrum Informacji Kulturalnej (Cultural Information Centre), ul. F. Ratajczaka 44
1.08. - 31.10.2025; opening hours: Monday - Friday 10 am - 6 pm, Saturday 10 am - 5 pm, Sunday and holidays closed, last admission 1 hour before closing time
tickets: regular admission - 6 pln, reduced admission - 3 pln, family tickets - 12 pln, group tickets (groups of 10 or more) - 25 pln

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A World from a Century Ago: Paris