"In Old Paris" presents five descriptions of the city from 1323 to 1790. These include A Treatise of the Praises of Paris by Jean de Jandun (1323), The Description of the City of Paris by Guillebert de Mets (1407-34), A Description of Paris by the Venetian Ambassadors Secretary (1577-79), Giovanni Paolo Maranas Pleasant Critique of Paris (1692) and Letters from Paris by the Russian traveller Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin (1790).

Paris was changed forever by the upheaval of the French Revolution during the last decade of the eighteenth century and by the physical transformation of the city in...