Paris has been a dream for two thousand years. In this evocative history written in 1904, Thomas Okey traces the city's transformation from a muddy Gallic trading post called Lutetia into the luminous capital that captivated the world. Written with the tender admiration of a devoted francophile, Okey interweaves hard historical facts with the romantic legends that give Paris its mythic quality - the pageant of Roman conquerors, medieval kings, revolutionary crowds, and imperial glory that built a city unlike any other. He shows how a settlement on a muddy island became the crucible of Western art, philosophy, and revolution, surviving Viking raids, plagues, and the terror of its own making to emerge as something transcendent. This is history as love letter, full of the particular affection an Edwardian Englishman felt for the City of Light.
