Paris or London. "Comparison is only acceptable in the superlative degree", wrote Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities, that double-edged tale that took us from the dull London of George III to the frenzied Paris of the French Revolution ("Liberty, equality, fraternity... or death"). Times have changed, for better or for worse depending on how you look at it. The fact is that the two capitals remain entangled in their age-old rivalry as beacons of Europe.
Paris is known as "the City of Light" for being the first to have public gas lighting, a merit that some attribute to the time of Louis XIV, the Sun King. Meanwhile, London boasts of having been the first city with an underground Metro back in 1863, in the midst of the industrial fervor of the Victorian era.
Two hours and 18 minutes is the fastest Eurostar train takes to cross under the English Channel and connect the two cities, separated by just 342 kilometers, as distinct as they are close. And despite the differences, the comparisons are evident: the Seine and the Thames, the Eiffel Tower and Big Ben, Notre-Dame and Westminster Abbey, the Louvre and the British Museum, Dickens and Balzac, Sherlock Holmes and Inspector Maigret, the blitz and the occupation, the City and La Defense...
Comparing the incomparable would give us material for a series or a book. Let's confess from the start, and from personal experience, that Paris is usually a coup de foudre, a lightning strike that enters through the eyes. While London is more of a slow burn love, a love that grows over time.
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Interestingly, in the thread of history, Paris and London are eternally indebted to Rome. In the 1st century BC, under the rule of Emperor Augustus, the occupation of what would become Lutetia began in a swampy area around the Seine where the Gallic tribe of the Parisii settled. In the 1st century, the layout of the Roman city was erected, south of the river and along Cardo Maximus, with its forum and also its amphitheater. Today, children play football there, in Arènes de Lutece, where the amphitheater resurfaced in 1869 during construction work. These are the most important Roman remains in Paris alongside the frigidarium of the Cluny baths, in the heart of the Latin Quarter.
Londinium was the name given by the Romans to the place occupied by the Celtic villages of Llyn Din. In the Museum of London, fragments of the city's Roman wall can still be seen, enclosing the perimeter of what is now the City. Its most visible remains are at Tower Hill, next to the Tower of London. These Roman remains will continue to surface for centuries to come. This year, the ruins of the city's first basilica have come to light on Gracechurch Street.
The straight line versus the meandering city
With a dizzying leap in time, we find ourselves in 1852, when Napoleon III entrusted Baron Georges-Eugéne Haussman with the arduous task of modernizing Paris. Haussman ended up demolishing 60% of the city, tearing down thousands of buildings, displacing the working class to the outskirts, and opening wide avenues to give the city that uniform and bourgeois appearance that accompanies it.
In stark contrast, London never had an urban plan, and its labyrinthine layout remains intact. In a classic of British humor, How to be an alien, Hungarian immigrant George Mikes suggested to Londoners to continue drawing streets in the shape of S or W to maintain the city's harmony. "London was designed by a drunk driver, that's why it's full of bottlenecks", confessed to me on one occasion taxi driver Mark Solomon, author of the original book of proverbs Black Cab Wisdom.
If Paris is the epitome of the straight line Haussmannian design, London is the meandering and multicentric city. Dickens used to wander through it aimlessly at night to combat insomnia, as he depicted in his Night Walks. Balzac, the quintessential flâneur of Paris, would have been hopelessly lost in the British capital.
Carlos Magdalena (Gijón, 1972) has been navigating London for over two decades and never ceases to discover it. He was drawn there by the green call, attracted from afar by the Natural History Museum "with its Harry Potter vibe," Regents Park Zoo and Kew Gardens, the most fascinating botanical garden in the world. As a good Spaniard, he made his way as a sommelier, rising from an intern at Kew to The Plant Messiah (Ed. Debate), with stellar appearances in David Attenborough's documentaries and the honor of being an Officer of the Order of Isabella the Catholic.
"In London, there is as much greenery as asphalt, something that no other major European city can rival," emphasizes the botanist from Gijón. "Beyond Kew, there is Richmond Park, with its herds of deer, and the green expanse of the countryside extends to Hampton Court. Closer to the center are the marshes of the London Wetland Centre, one of over twenty nature reserves in the city. Even the crater left by a bomb dropped by the Germans in World War II has been turned into a pond with ducks (Walthastow Marshes)."
Navigating through the astonishing aquatic plants of the Waterlily House, Carlos imagines an imaginary bridge with Giverny in France, where Claude Monet's famous garden is located. His mind also wanders to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, which once rivaled Kew Gardens in specimens.
London's other magnet for Carlos is music. South of the Thames, "there has been a curious convergence of vegetation and music," he says, because in Richmond are the Olympic Studios. Jumping north, the Beatles' Abbey Road Studios are a stone's throw from Regents Park, from where a canal leads to Camden, the ultimate music district, where hundreds of fans follow the trail of Amy Winehouse.
For painter Alberto Reguera (Segovia, 1961), with a studio on rue de Chabanais near the Palais Royal gardens, Paris continues to exert a powerful magnetism: "Sometimes I have wondered why I chose it over New York. I would say it was because of how I identified with its professionals and collectors, but also because of the beauty of the city, which gives a unique light and charisma to everything you do."
"Its secret is that it blends contemporary projects very well with the city's own painting history," warns the Segovian, who once exhibited his object-paintings in the Louvre square. "You walk along the well-known rue de Seine, where the most prestigious art galleries are crowded, and suddenly you come across the Delacroix museum." "Paris constantly renews itself without turning its back on history, and that is part of the magic of this city," he asserts.
Masculine City, Feminine City
Enrique Rubio, who has been head of Efe's delegations in both cities, arrived in post-Brexit London and has a very peculiar view of their rivalry: "London is a masculine city, and Paris is the feminine counterpart. I heard a Parisian friend say this. In Paris, there's a drive toward beauty in everything: in the buildings, in the shops, in the flirtatiousness of the people. It's a very hedonistic city where you can enjoy the most mundane pleasures: eating well and in good company, sitting down to drink wine in a bistro, strolling through streets that are monuments..."
"I always felt closer to the French way of life than the English," he admits. "But London has ended up cultivating me for other reasons. It's less hedonistic. People get straight to the point and rush from one place to another; the distances are enormous, and that limits and complicates social life. On the one hand, it's overwhelming, but you don't feel the pressure of the big city and you end up enjoying a lot of neighborhood life."
Let's finally say that Paris is experiencing post-Olympic delirium this summer, with the floating cauldron rising every night over the Tuileries Garden. The Champs-Élysées has once again ceded the spotlight to Montmartre, with the second Tour de France climb down the emblematic Rue Lepic.
The enduring momentum of the Games has been joined by that of Notre-Dame, which saw six million visitors parade through in the first half of the year. The ¤700 million restoration, which involved 2,000 artisans, has both dazzled and disappointed the tourists who return to visit it for free. The cathedral has a surprising luminosity, in contrast to its previous gloom.
It's rained a lot in Paris this summer, but it hasn't been to everyone's liking. In the last decade, under Anne Hidalgo's leadership, the city has undergone an accelerated ecological transition. Bicycle use has increased from 2% to 12%, Parisians have supported the creation of 500 garden streets, and the concept of the "15-minute city" is being exported to many other cities. Swimming in the Seine is the final legacy of the Andalusian mayor, who will be stepping down in March.
London had its own Olympic momentum in 2012, with Boris Johnson hanging from the zip line and the forgotten east of the city riding the wave of the times. But the former mayor insisted on delivering a deadly blow to the city four years later with Brexit.
Summer in the British capital is essentially musical, with concerts in Hyde Park and festivals like All Points East in Victoria Park. Although the biggest street event was once again the Notting Hill Carnival with its Caribbean plumage. There are also free museums—the British Museum, the Natural History Museum, the National Gallery, the Tate Modern—and the West End theaters, with a new record of 17.1 million spectators.
There's nothing better to round off summer in London than a climb to Hampstead Heath, an urban forest with three year-round swimming pools (men's, women's, and mixed). From Parliament Hill, in the heart of the park, London emerges beneath the parade of clouds (something it has in common with Paris), with distant glimpses of the skyline and the pinnacle of the Shard marking the horizon.