These urban reconfigurations, along with their socio-political and stylistic repercussions do not ring new. The exhibition’s title ‘Ceci tuera cela’ in fact borrows its name from Victor Hugo’s novel, Notre-Dame de Paris. 1482 (1831) which bears witness to the same city’s modernisation in the medieval times. The phrase is pronounced by the archdeacon of Notre-Dame as he looks up at the cathedral’s facade, his hand resting on a book. By uttering these words, he asserts that the circulation of knowledge through printed texts will mark the end of religious obscurantism, contributing to the disappearance of a feudal society governed by the Catholic Church. The sta- tement has another meaning which reflects Hugo’s intuition: if Gothic architecture — which nar- rates biblical stories on its stained glass windows and frescoes — played a crucial role in educating the people, the invention of the printing press would strip it of this function. The illustrated book would become the preferred conduit for education and, more generally, for spreading the word. Whilst the Haussmannian style, characterised by its wide boulevards and uniform buildings and became dominant in the 19th century, initially responded to concerns about hygiene, and later to the demands for rationalisation brought on by modernity.