Held in the Roger-Viollet archive, this image offers a window into Paris around 1900, a city at the height of its Belle Époque splendor. During this era, Paris was a global cultural capital, its cobblestone streets alive with the energy of the Industrial Revolution, Impressionist art, and the 1900 Universal Exposition, which celebrated the city’s modernity with landmarks like the Eiffel Tower.

Neighborhoods like the 2nd arrondissement thrived with merchants, workers, and artists, while Baron Haussmann’s urban renovations continued to transform the city, blending tradition with progress and setting the stage for the 20th century’s cultural dynamism.

The Roger-Viollet photo agency, founded in 1938 by Hélène Roger-Viollet and Jean Fischer, has preserved this image as part of its vast collection, which spans over 150 years of photography and includes more than 2 million works. The agency represents a diverse array of photographers, both renowned and anonymous, who documented Parisian life, including possible contributors like Eugène Atget, Charles Marville, or Jacques Boyer, known for their meticulous records of the city’s streets and daily life around 1900.

Roger-Viollet’s archival mission has been to compile an encyclopedic visual history, drawing from Parisian collections, foreign archives, and the works of early photographers, making it a key repository for images like this one. The photograph likely reflects the techniques of its time, using large-format cameras and glass plate negatives to create detailed, high-contrast black-and-white images, capturing Paris’s historic charm with natural light and careful composition.

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