During the Second French Empire, the reign of Emperor Napoleon III, Paris was the largest city in continental Europe and a leading center of finance, commerce, fashion, and the arts. The population of
Music in the Tuileries Gardens by Édouard Manet (1862)
Napoleon III by Alexandre Cabanel (about 1865)
The new boulevards and parks built by Haussmann during the Second Empire
An editorial cartoon of 1858 illustrates the opposition of many residents of the Paris suburbs to Napoleon III's plan to make them part of the city.
Jacques Offenbach
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Jacques Offenbach was a German-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s to the 1870s, and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. H
Offenbach by Nadar (c. 1870s)
Offenbach in 1846
Offenbach as a young cello virtuoso: drawing by Alexandre Laemlein from 1850
The composer-conductor caricatured, 1858