France famed for its art romance and food they have a very particular relationship to their food it caused the French Revolution why did the baguette cause a nation to revolt how did the guillotine helped invent restaurants you kind of sit there with your jaw on the ground just looking at the thing how do the pharmacist give the world french fries the French certainly knew how to fry how did the city with a little help from Hitler give the world dance clothes that world of the DJ begins in Paris why was half the city deliberately knocked down a great vision comes by letting the past go yeah it's almost like they knew that Paris would be the number one destination in the world this is Paris and you'll never look at it the same way again in the countryside over northern France hot air lifts a balloon 3,000 feet above the outskirts of one of the most beautiful cities in the world it's amazing to fly in the Paris Area to get these beautiful views Paris this amazing city which offers everything that the modern city will offer but you get all the history it's a beautiful city Paris is a city of innovation it was here in 1783 that the first recorded balloon flight took place the Montgolfier brothers balloon flew 3,000 feet above Paris for a distance of one and a half miles to be one of these guys the Montgolfier brothers flying higher than anyone had ever gone before to look below you and note you could drop like a stone how scary is that the story goes that the first balloonists they took along three bottles of champagne because they thought wherever they would land the farmers would think there were aliens and might stab to the death with pitchforks obviously people have no idea what's going on in the signaling in the sky and so we still have this tradition nowadays we still have a few bottles with us after landing imagine what these guys were looking at I mean for the first time above the sin the Royal Palace Notre Dame Cathedral these iconic structures but seen from the above for the first time every time I go to parents it just gets more more magical that always imagined that Paris would be a beautiful city and when I got there it delivered on every single aspect home to two and a quarter million people construction in the city center fiercely controlled for over a century the lifeblood of the city a river called the sin my favorite views of the sea is when I'm walking along the river because wherever you look its extraordinary beauty for 2,000 years the river has fueled the growth of a metropolis 300 BC a Celtic tribe called the Parisi I built a wold settlement on an island in the middle of the river with bridges linking the left and right banks of the sin Paris is quite an important spot for strategical reasons because it is one of the few places on the Seine River where it was easy to build a bridge the Ile de la Cite a remains the heart of Paris where the Parisi I built a temple to their gods now stands the 12th century Cathedral of nutri Dom all across Paris the combination of history architecture and culture has the effect of reducing romantic inhibitions as a romance to being able to enjoy the environment it is so overwhelming that all of your little daily where it is kind of melt away with all this love in the air it's not surprising that one of the greatest culinary couplings happened here steak and fries could you imagine a time where a stake in a potato were not paired together and yet four thousand years that was they were never even in the same room with each other in the 1600s when the first potatoes arrived in Europe from South America people weren't impressed in fact potatoes were viewed as evil the potato has looked down upon by everyone the potato was a bad food it was a work of the devil it supposedly carried disease in 1748 the French parliament bans the cultivation of the potato because they believe it causes leprosy they're used instead as pigswill crazy-crazy but in Paris one man would stop at nothing to get humans eating potatoes his name and Tuan Parmentier and a mattr pharmacist from NTA studied the potato and saw it was safe nutritious and easy to grow now all he had to do was convince everyone else he wasn't mad he is trying to figure out how do we sell the Parisian public on this notion of the potato so guys this idea to use a little reverse psychology he digs up a portion of the twee laries garden right the gardens that had been the pleasure ground of the royal family for years and years digs it up plants his potatoes then keep stations a couple of guards outside his potato patch he tells them you know if some peasants come by and they want to bribe you to get that potatoes just let him potatoes become a Parisian staple but the real game-changer was when a French genius chopped them up dropped them into hot oil and created the first french fry history never recorded his name but when Thomas Jefferson was the US ambassador to France in the late 1700s he scribbled down the recipe and brought it back to the States and he has his cook make them in Monticello and it becomes this American thing right because Thomas Jefferson is doing it let's have some french fries too every traveler to France you know the first night they show up and they go to the hotel and drop their bags and go out to eat they're probably having a steak frite in a bistro somewhere but steak frites isn't the food that defines Paris that is the baguette you see people on their bicycles with their little basket with their baguette or maybe it's in their backpack and you're like oh my gosh it's true my cartoons were right the baguette is everywhere and the Parisians love of the baguette is so strong that when they couldn't buy it they took to the streets in their thousands they have a very particular relationship to their food so much that had caused the French Revolution in Paris early morning the smell of freshly baked baguettes fills the streets I've had the privilege of standing there at 4:00 in the morning watching the Baker's doing their first loaves it's a holy place it's a shrine it's its mecca for bread lovers baguette literally translates as wand and the French certainly believe in their magic consuming around 10 billion loaves a year for breakfast lunch and dinner 5,000 for the Normandy and 10,000 for Big Dipper forget you need to be crispy outside and soft inside you need to have a nice color why does a Parisian baguette taste so good is the secret to water is the way they handle the flower is it the rise master baker Eric Kaiser took 10 years to perfect his craft even longer than it takes to become a doctor or lawyer it's labor intensive but Parisiens would have it no other way to sit in a cafe in the morning have a cafe au lait and get a big basket with back getting it and crack that open boy oh boy do I love that first back end in the morning I eat them every day when I'm there and they just are delicious and crunchy in the morning with coffee to spread all over it with cafe au lait you know you're in Paris the smell I'm there now the baguette is so important to French life that for 300 years bread production has had its own laws the ingredients weight and size are strictly controlled you see every baguette is between 5560 some tomato even their holidays are dictated by law owners are forced to stagger their vacations so there's always a bakery open these laws date back to the late 1700s when a shortage of bread sent the Parisians into meltdown they have a very particular relationship to their food so much that it caused the French Revolution in the 1700s the French aristocracy and royalty lived in opulent luxury with personal chefs creating lavish dinners but the rest of the population barely had enough to eat in 1788 after a poor grain harvest the price of bread skyrocketed the population faced starvation there's the famous story it's probably not true but symbolically it is true enough when Marie Antoinette's advisors found out that people are starving that there is enough bread for the people of Paris she flippantly says well if there isn't enough bread well let him eat cake the people have a better idea storm the palaces and overthrow the monarchy Marie Antoinette's and king louis xvi meet the guillotine when you let one of those blades drop it's an incredibly brutal thing but the guillotine was actually invented to be a humane way to kill people the device was the brainchild of dr. Joseph Agnes guillotine in the spirit of the Revolution he believed a pain-free beheading was the right of all condemned citizens not a privilege reserved for the rich and powerful before you had different penalties based on your class so if you were a noble and you committed a heinous crime your head would be chopped off with an axe or sword if you were a peasant and you committed the same crime you would be hanged hanging is a much worse way to go than decapitation so guillotine be says ah all right now on everybody gets decapitated and we're going to do it with this new invention guillotine failed to take into account the efficiency of the well intended invention in under a decade over 40,000 heads rolled but while france's new leaders chucked their way through the old guard another group of revolutionaries sharpened their own blades paris has always been a center of revolt i mean people have been rising up in that city for centuries but this time the revolution won't be on the streets but in the kitchens Paris France home to the world's finest dining from patisserie to fancy restaurants restaurant culture in the Western sense came from France the word restaurant comes from the French verb rester a to restore to make whole again and when I first came around in the food world as a young culinarian Paris was the be-all and end-all the Parisians invented food as an experience people built vacations around certain restaurants you know you don't do that just anywhere you do that in Paris a Chicago native Daniel Rose first came to Paris in search of girls and a good time but found his calling in the kitchen today he was diners at his restaurant called spring chefs and France are part of a kind of a pantheon of of cultural heroes in a way that they're not necessarily in other cultures this high regard for chefs stems from the late 1700s when the French Revolution brought about the first restaurants restaurants didn't exist before they happen in Paris which is hard for us to imagine today before the Revolution Frances finest chefs worked exclusively for the aristocrats but when their employers started losing their heads chefs found themselves losing their jobs to earn a living they started cooking for the people of Paris you have to remember that in previous eras people ate at home or they took food at home but there was no place to come and sit and be served what happened during the Revolution was everything came out from behind closed doors you had very wealthy people who would have chefs at home who suddenly were unemployed and at the same time you had all these new political movement happening people would gather together and of course they need a place to gather so it was cafes it was a new social scene as well eating out became the hottest trend in Paris ten years after the Revolution there were 500 restaurants within 30 years 3,000 perhaps we should be thankful for the French Revolution for them shutting the chef's arch the big houses and making them a living feeding the poor into this new world of restaurants comes a young boy who will inspire a culinary revolution Anthony Corinne I'm one of those that dislikes the term celebrity chef but he was the first great publicly applauded chef of the modern era and you can actually trace chef's back to him in 1792 Paris is in chaos after the French Revolution eight-year-old Karen's life hangs in the balance one of 24 children his parents can no longer afford to feed it so his father abandoned by the city gates he faces a life on the streets but a chef takes pity on and gives him work in one of the world's first restaurants Karam toils in the kitchen and eventually masters techniques once locked away behind palace walls a radical innovator kerim introduces to Europe the idea of food being served in courses rather than all at once and he was also the first person to introduce chef whites to the kitchen just to see the number of people in the different outfits and hats and garments that they wore and it did famously all start with Karim Karim obsesses not just with flavor but also presentation he produces detailed cookbooks that lay out his cake designs and how to make the key sauces of French cuisine so many of the ideas that he wrote down about Roux and stock and liaisons and classic recipes is still being used today without Karim where would we be I don't know Kem's techniques are the basis of oak cuisine which literally means high cuisine and chefs in the city continue to strive for Kem's perfection French culture was always about refinement they've taken eating to the art level they're constantly looking for the more beautiful version or at least that their own beautiful version but that's the summit of culture is the luxury to be able to make things more beautiful than sit back and eat them I mean they really were the first to create a cuisine it's something you have to master it's not just kind of cut things up and throw it in at one-pot meals it's time it's history so when you eat in Paris you definitely want one of those experiences that personifies a serious life's work episodes of travels with the bomb debate Saturday at 6 p.m. Karam was a revolutionary and the city has a habit of producing them one of the greatest was George Houseman who was prepared to destroy 60% of the city to achieve his aims we go there and we look around we're like wow this just looks old but what we're seeing here is really a late 19th early 20th century Paris one that replaced a medieval Paris that was knocked down by Houseman Paris one of the most beautiful cities ever built tourists come from all over the world to see its pristine boulevards and epic monuments but this city has a dirty secret the Revolution freed the people from tyranny but had done little to improve living conditions Paris is an unbelievable dirty city these were horribly overcrowded unsanitary areas the streets were pools of sewage and cholera epidemics would rage through them one man was on a mission to change all that George Eugene Houseman his plan flattened the city center and start all over again now in order to make an omelet you gotta crack some eggs and that destroy about 60% of the city in order to impose this new vision it's a vision shared by France's leader the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte Napoleon the third so Napoleon the third gets this idea that what we're going to do is we're going to rebuild this new Paris can be bigger and better than before which means knocking down huge sections of the old medieval Paris straightening them up creating these grand boulevards in 1853 Haussmann begins building the new city by demolishing the old destroying thousands of buildings including the house he was born in I think there's an interesting blend between being trapped by the past and creating something new and sometimes a great vision comes by letting the past come Houseman enlists one-fifth of the Parisian workforce but even with this vast army of laborers it still takes 20 years to realize his grand vision eighty-five miles of new streets are lined with 100,000 new buildings Haussmann limits the height of buildings to avoid obstructing sunlight Paris is reborn as the City of Light but one innovation gives rise to a new problem the wider streets are perfect for horse-drawn carriages but the added hoofed traffic leads to roads paved in horse manure Haussmann's engineers develop a unique solution along the roads they install 12,000 water outlets fed by water from the Sand River they wash away the waste and keep the streets clean today the horses may have been replaced by cars but it is a daily ritual that continues street cleaners affectionately known as the men in green still turn the river on and off with a key to wash away the leaves and trash the Paris that we love is largely a product of that grand vision of engineering when you are in Paris you feel light on your feet you feel effervescent you feel like you are floating it's an entire ocean of beautiful buildings and people and the most pristine parks and gardens and carousels it's just beautiful for as far as you can see even on dreary day you can walk to any of the big squares and it just feels open and makes you want to run up and just turn around in the street because it's just the beautiful place Haussmann's grand plan transformed Paris but it needed one more visionary to make it the city of today Monsieur Gustave Eiffel who gave us one of the world's most iconic monuments the Statue of Liberty yes that's right the man who built this first made his name by making this we owe a lot to France and to Parisians in general the single greatest American monument in the 50 states is the Statue of Liberty for everything it represents the statue was a gift to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the American War of Independence in which the French had partnered with the Americans against the British you know the the u.s. owes its existence as a free country very much to the assistance that we got from France in the Revolutionary War and and I think that it's a partnership that hopefully you know we return the favor in World War one and World War two but it's a partnership that goes deep into history in 1875 Eiffel and sculptor Frederic Bartholdi began the construction of the statue made in the biggest workshop in Paris she's assembled outside her face is modeled on bartholdi's mother and she's held up using the same iron frame eiffel would later use for his tower he's really the reason it stands so strong today because he was an expert on building a structure and not have it blow down in the first storm on completion she's dismantled shipped to New York and reassembled on Liberty Island fitted with size 879 sandals she stands as tall as a 22 story building and at the time she was the tallest statue in the world now we have this symbol of the Statue of Liberty that we can look at every single day and remember what it took for so many Americans to get here and I think it's a wonderful reminder of not only our own country but our friendship with this other place called Paris in 1888 a 1/4 scale model of the statue was erected on the river sand it looks westward to her big sister but for Eiffel the Statue of Liberty was just a starter his main dish would be the tower that carries his name Paris has plenty of iconic structures but what is the one that defines it the Arc de Triomphe the Louvre not read on or is it this 1000 foot iron tower the Eiffel Tower is the Statue of Liberty of Paris no matter where you are in Paris you can see it and what's interesting is then when you get to the Eiffel Tower and you get on top of it you start taking pictures you're like what's missing helping you Landy AFA you really want widget code in Zed the idea for eiffel's tower goes back over 130 years paris wants a monument to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution some of the proposals are head-turning one design is for a 300 foot tall guillotine it seems to me to be one of those great like how could even I would even get to be the considered stage it would make for a terrible keychain the guillotine gets cut from the shortlist till one design is left it's the brainchild of Gustave Eiffel hell-bent on building the tallest structure in the world Gustave Eiffel was like the Steve Jobs of the late 19th century and more he was constantly innovating and the Eiffel Tower was meant to demonstrate what you could construct with iron and how tall you could make it a thousand feet tall no one had ever done anything like that Eiffel originally offered it to Barcelona for the grand exhibition but they rejected it it was too expensive and too ugly the Paris authorities have similar concerns but Eiffel won't take no for an answer so much so was he convinced of its success that he volunteered to invest 80% of the cost to have this built eiffel Gamble's everything he has and makes a deal with the city the tower will belong to Paris but in return he gets 20 years of revenue from ticket sales two years later his tower is complete standing 1,000 feet high it will be the tallest building in the world for over 40 years the funny thing about the Eiffel Tower is that when it first went up Parisians thought this is the worst thing ever it's totally ugly it's totally out of keeping it's totally not about Paris most of the city's elite the intellectuals and artists they eat in it they thought was ugly it wasn't decorative and they couldn't wait for it to be torn down in their beautiful style I would come back but the French public loved it in its first year it attracted almost 2 million visitors Gustave Eiffel was a very shrewd customer in beef he knew that he would attract a lot of visitors the Eiffel Tower paid for herself within three years the next 17 years I'll leave you to do the back for Eiffel it adds up to over 100 million dollars the best way to see the view and avoid the lines is to go straight to the Jules Verne restaurant at 410 feet above street level you can see for miles it's amazing walking here always the view is very exceptional the change of the season banks and snow the Jules Verne has a Michelin star a sign that it's one of the very best restaurants in the world people have lived and died literally by the pen of the Michelin inspector the infamous restaurant guide was born here in Paris in 1920 and sold in gas stations it soon became the final word in restaurant criticism at the height of its power a poor review and a Michelin Guide or a downgrade from a three to a two or a tutor to one could mean millions of dollars in revenues there is the difference been staying open and closing but recently there has been a new revolution in Parisian cooking young Chefs there are abandoning the Michelin star system they have looked to America and other parts the world and said hey casual is great being hung up on a star system less great and yaki ice patate is a luminary who has risen above the stars of old without a Michelin star to its name his restaurant Chateaubriand celebrated as among the world's 50 best he's replaced the rigors of formal dining with the relaxed atmosphere of a French bistro a welcoming place with affordable price stripped of all pretension to bistro always a creative fruit the substance of a gnocchi style is in the food he creates if the decor appears unrefined his cooking is inspired by the ODE cuisine started by Antoine Karen on wooden benches among relaxed company diners savor world-class cuisine once reserved for the wealthy upper crust it was maybe a new proposition to make seasonal kind of gastronomic food in a bistro very Parisian with place this restaurant movement like the original French Revolution stands for equality it's all about democratic dining after 9:30 you can come here with they make way to youth I remember 20 years ago there was not a place like that in Paris and now there are hundreds of great ones and in fact it's the predominant style of restaurants opening it's the modern bistro I think turned on its ear thanks to this new democratic way of looking at food Paris's culinary establishment has been shaken by this new food revolution but it's this rebellious spirit that keeps Paris fresh and 100 years ago it's what attracted some of the greatest artists the world has ever known Picasso Dali Monet van Gogh all flocked to the hill of Montmartre topped by the Basilica of the sacre-coeur this area has long been the home of creative types it probably helped that it was once outside the Paris city limits and exempt from city tax on alcohol the kind of the center of the world was fully in Paris like that was where all the culture where the creativity was going on and a lot of alcoholics like F scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway they hightailed it to Paris painters singers writers poets everybody was here he is how momart developed with a lot of cabaret cafes restaurants Olivier's grandfather pablo picasso was one of the many legends who sought inspiration and fun on these streets sometimes he had more fun than his wallet could cover so they only they could do is to paint in maybe two pays rent or to paint people with paintings one painting is here at the la Panaji the oldest cabaret club in Paris in 1905 Picasso gave it to the owner Fred a to pay off his bar tab it shows Fred a playing the music and Picasso dressed as a Harlequin drinking with his girlfriend so you have all of the atmosphere organs finishing in this important painting this painting is a copy the original was sold by Fred a in 1912 for 20 bucks tubes they introduced jazz to Paris and momart became its center but when Nazi Germany invaded the Paris dance scene had to go underground and that gave birth to the discotheque and nightclubs as we know them today Paris in 1940 Nazi Germany invades the sin among the spoils of war the Eiffel Tower stands out for a Dolf Hitler when he arrives in Paris he wants a photo of himself on top of his gleaming prize but the French Resistance has other plans and tower becomes such a symbol of Parisian pride and French pride that when Hitler makes his journey in his tour of Paris after the conquest of France members of the resistance cut the cables so he can't take the elevator up for his proud moments of glory there's another way to the top but 1,700 stairs is a long way to goose-step for once he compromises and like a tourist without a ticket the Fuhrer settles for a photo at the bottom of the tower Parisians have few avenues to carry out resistance to the Nazi occupation except perhaps one Jess under the Nazis the playing of jazz music has been banned anyone caught can be imprisoned and even executed the people who create a jazz for a big problem for the Nazis black people Jewish people people who they viewed as not worthy so if you have this kind of floating underground party right that is kind of gotta be passed through word-of-mouth you can't arrange for bands to play in this cellar somewhere but what you could do is you could bring a record player or a disc player as they refer to and so we get the word discotheque combination of bibliothèque the French word for library with disk with record spinning defiantly discotheques became sweaty bastions of French resistance but it would take more than an underground movement to save disco may 1944 Allied forces are closing in on Paris with defences crumbling Hitler knows the city is slipping from his grasp but there's one prize he's unwilling to relinquish at the Nazi headquarters in the hotel Maurice general von colt its receives a frantic order from Hitler destroy the Eiffel Tower if he can't have it no one can you got the Nero decree you know burn it destroy it blow it up to the ground soldiers rigged the tower with explosives but as the Allies get closer cult it's ignores Hitler's order and refuses to press the button insane amount of courage to do that he must have liked Paris before we kind of celebrate this guy's some great hero of history keep in mind he's got the Allies coming he knows he obeys that order he gets caught which he will he's gonna be dead so he decides to you know ignore the Fuehrer's order and maybe save his hide you know by preserving Paris French resistance fighters surround the hotel Maurice and Colt it surrenders after a brief firefight today visitors to the five-star hotel probably don't notice the bullet hole in the crest above the main entrance a lasting reminder of the hotel's dramatic past if Hitler's order had been followed through on and and made actionable the world would have lost when the great monuments it would be horrific and shameful with its Eiffel Tower left standing the city of love conquered all like the smell of morning baguettes in Paris romance is always in the air an affection is on public display for years couples came to the pond desire to seal their love with a lock-and-key the transformed the pool desire into the lovers bridge and they coveted with plenty of locket and the idea is that you attach a locket with your loved one at the grills and then you throw the key into the river you make a wish and supposed to make your wealth last forever but Paris's bridges have been straining under the sheer weight of commitment recently part of the Pont des Arts railing collapsed from nearly a million padlocks weighing an estimated 45 tons to save the landmark the city banned the locks and in June 2015 brought down the collection but if there's any disappointment among couples it's sure to be brief because Paris is all around when you look at an extraordinary piece of architecture and I cannot read up nothing else can occupy your mind about time and that's like being in love which is why for Saraland Paris was meant to be experienced its unto itself the most beautiful city ever created that continues to show itself off to the world
