The palette
Light, cool values held close together: an ivory ground for the limestone, a faintly blue grey for the mass of the roofs, and very dark water. In a weave this even, the Seine has to carry all the contrast.
Maps · Collection 01
Paris poster, drawn from the real map
48.8535°N / 2.3484°E · France
Paris is recognisable without its name written on it. The drawing alone is enough, and that is what makes it a print.
You choose the framing, the palette and the words of the caption. The work is drawn from real data, then printed to order in the workshop closest to you.
A river like a sash, and three rings where the walls stood
A curved line of water cuts the drawing in two, entering from the south-east and leaving to the north-west over thirteen kilometres, with only two real islands, set almost halfway along. Around it, the city reads in rings: three nested belts of boulevards, doubled by the closed ribbon of a former railway.
Read on
To the north-west, one shape is recognisable before you read any name: twelve avenues radiating from a single point. The rest is a dense weave where the avenues of the Second Empire cut long straight lines across a tangle of medieval streets, and where the two woods hang at the eastern and western ends like two lungs outside the circle.
What suits Paris
The framing
Paris within its walls is an oval, wider than it is tall. Landscape holds both woods, which give the drawing its scale. In portrait, you have to accept cutting them and centring on the river and the rings.
The caption
The title, a line beneath it, the coordinates. An address, a date, a word that belongs to no one else: that line is what turns a city plan into your city plan.
The sheet
- Subject
- Paris, France
- Palette
- Zinc et Seine
- Map style
- Clean and Detailed
- Layout
- Overlay
- Typeface
- Minimal
- Framing
- Zoom 11.0
- Fade at the edges
- 50%
- Format
- Portrait
Zinc et Seine
Sixteen inks, in the configurator’s order. It is not in the catalogue, but you will find it in the palette library, filed under its material.
- Background
- Water
- Greenery
- Built-up areas
- Roads
- Buildings
- Text
- Motorways
- Main roads
- Secondary roads
- Minor roads
- Streets
- Service roads
- Paths
- Railways
- Borders
Compose with this paletteStart from it to make your own
Opens the colour workshop with these 16 inks in place: change one, keep the rest.
It will wait in your account, ready for any piece.
Three facts you can see on the plan
1670The rings are scars
Each of the three belts of boulevards follows a demolished city wall: the Grands Boulevards on the ramparts of Charles V and Louis XIII, pulled down by a decree of 1670; the outer boulevards along the Farmers-General wall of 1784; the Boulevards des Maréchaux on the Thiers fortifications, dismantled after 1919.
1852 to 1869A ring of iron under the city
A circular railway of thirty-two kilometres, the Petite Ceinture, runs around Paris inside the Boulevards des Maréchaux. Opened in sections, closed to passengers in 1934, it is still legible on a plan as an almost continuous ring.
1912An erased river
The Bièvre, the second river of Paris, has vanished entirely from the surface: its last open stretches were covered over in 1912. On a map today, its bed can only be guessed from the winding line of certain streets.
The four questions people ask
Can I choose any place, any date?
Yes. The search covers the whole world, from a capital to a hamlet. For the Sky collection, any date works, past or future: the sky is calculated.
What sizes do you offer?
From 21 × 29.7 cm to 84.1 × 118.9 cm, that is A4 to A0, portrait or landscape depending on the material. Every size is shown with its price in the editor.
What materials do you offer?
Four, from the barest to the most dressed.
- Matte fine art paperA 200 gsm art paper with a deep matte finish: the bare print, to frame as you please.
- Wooden hangersThe print suspended between two wooden hangers, ready to hang, in the spirit of studio posters.
- The classic frameThe print mounted under acrylic glass in a slim frame, assembled by hand, delivered ready to hang.
- Framed canvasThe piece printed on canvas, stretched over a wooden stretcher bar and set in a frame: a gallery presence.
How long does it take?
Allow 1 to 4 working days for making, up to 7 for hand-assembled frames and canvases, then 1 to 6 working days in transit with standard delivery.
Digital editions are available immediately: the file of your piece is emailed to you as soon as you order.
Your Paris, not everyone’s
The neighbourhood you lived in, the address of a first flat, the bridge you crossed every morning. The map is the same for everyone; the framing and the caption are not.
Compose my Paris poster