DBWI make Paris a tourist destination

Though it is the largest city in France, Paris is widely regarded as a dump? What can you change to make it regarded as a place that people really want to come to visit?

I think you need a pre-1900 POD for this so I am putting this here.
 
Though it is the largest city in France, Paris is widely regarded as a dump? What can you change to make it regarded as a place that people really want to come to visit?

I think you need a pre-1900 POD for this so I am putting this here.
Prevent Napoleon III's reconstruction. Or have him settle on something, anything, other than a grid plan.
 
Well, technically Versailles is part of the Paris Metropolitan Area, so you could say OTL qualifies; but somehow, I think you meant the Old City of Paris (where the Notre Dame, Academy of Art, and what have you can be found).
 
Prevent Napoleon III's reconstruction. Or have him settle on something, anything, other than a grid plan.

Plus, when he became suspicious of Bismarck's unification efforts, he constructed the famous Parisian Line, which made France unconquerable during all three pan-European wars, but this meant the Germans pretty much flattened the city in all their efforts to conquer France, and no administration since has been enthusiastic about rebuilding it since they already have Monaco as their big tourist city
 
Though it is the largest city in France, Paris is widely regarded as a dump? What can you change to make it regarded as a place that people really want to come to visit?

I think you need a pre-1900 POD for this so I am putting this here.

Prevent the two sieges of Paris (1914-1915; 1936-1939) during the World Wars; while the city might be bombed or shelled, it won't see much fighting and the unique cultural heritage of the French capital might be saved.
 
You’d also want to clean up the French government’s own attitude toward foreigners. When you need a passport check when crossing between departments, Germany starts to look really nice.

This might also have a nice feedback loop—more tourists would bring in incentive to rebuild the city more completely, instead of the half-finished job it got IOTL.
 
You also need a more stable French Government. It spent the last half of the 19th century and he first half of the 20th flipping from Imperial to Republic and back again.
 
Yeah pretty much prevent it from getting wrecked twice in 25 years and you'd have more people coming to admire the architecture.

Kind of sad that today its biggest tourist attraction is literally the giant pile of bones deposited in the catacombs beneath the city and even that suffered some damage when the Germans went underground in 1944 and had to be rooted out.
 

Kaze

Banned
Hijack some holy relics during the middle ages put them in Notra Dame and then have the King occasionally live there and build the Louvre to hold his art collection.
 
Have it remain outside the Iron Curtain. And have Von Choltitz disobey orders and not burn the city down, pre-war Paris was beautiful. Or at least don't put Le Corbusier in charge of the rebuilding...
 
Maybe if the Eiffel Tower hadn't been dismantled in 1909 (and hopefully survived the World Wars) it would have some kind of tourist draw still.
 
I dunno...most of the rest of France is a lot nicer than Paris. People always said it was romantic - puh-leeeeez. Rome is much more romantic.
 
I dunno...most of the rest of France is a lot nicer than Paris. People always said it was romantic - puh-leeeeez. Rome is much more romantic.
I'm not sure whether or not to interpret that as a pun.

Also, Rome aside, you don't even need to leave France to find a more romantic city, Marseille is actually a pretty nice city, and its not that much smaller than Paris. Actually isn't it even set to overtake Paris within the next decade?
 
Getting shellacked in three pan-European wars, several government overthrows, both successful and attempted, and more or less torn down and rebuilt according to the whims of whatever regime is in power did a number on Paris.

You'd have to change or prevent most of that to make this remotely possible.
 
No atomic blast in the downtown area would also help. The Eiffel was half-molten when they disassembled it for scrap almost 50 years later.
 
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