History: It's often said that Paris these days is little more than a theme-park, its lovely edifices over-run with tourists, its vaunted gastronomy in decline.
Which illustrates yet again the truism plus ça change because back in the century before last Edmond de Goncourt said more or less the same thing. "Paris", he lamented, "is no longer the city of old, but an open city to which all the robbers in the world, after making their fortune in business, come to eat poor food and rub against flesh which calls itself Parisian." Of course Paris can always disappoint and disenchant - like a lover, it's tempting to say, in the hoary Paris-speak it reduces us all to. But then could it be the draw it is if it were only perfect?
The Paris Alistair Horne describes was always ruthless, crowded, smelly and deeply attractive. He begins with the Romans who took to - and took - the Île de France and in the first century martyred Saint Denis on the street that still bears his name. Horne gallops through ensuring misty centuries at a slightly off-putting pace in which Parisians tend to disappear in his accounts of kings. But arriving at the age of Louis XIV, he slows to a canter and Paris begins to come into its complex recognizable self.
The pace continues to be brisk but there is a story to be told. More compendious than scholarly, Horne is at his best in his asides, often glancing or gossipy. The outwardly glorious Palace of Versailles for instance was austere and ramshackle, its rooms "chopped up into tiny units, giving on to dismal little interior wells". And the Sun King, busily turning his city of brick into a city of marble, may have presided over one of the largest and most civilized nations but he was still at the centre of witchcraft, black masses and poisonings when the Royal mistress, Madame de Montespan, was intriguing to keep her place in his bed.
Even then, for a Frenchman or woman, if not for everybody else, Paris was the centre of the world. The succeeding mistress, Madame de Maintenon, prim though she was, pined for the city in the remoteness of Versailles. The French malady, ennui, that only the teeming, filthy streets of Paris could assuage, is a recurring theme. To a nobleman, a punishment considered far worse than incarceration in the Bastille was banishment to his provincial estate, to die of boredom. Its population was always swollen with refugees from the country though their accommodation, deliberately confined within the walls, was cramped. For years after it was raised, the Arc de Triomphe still stood in a forest glade.
Another implicit theme is the idea of Paris as a resort, an escape, a place to freely flaunt and express desires and the Parisians' confidence that the point of life is its pleasures. Catering to every class, there were always theatres - Napoleon watched the play supine on a sofa - dances, and a demi-monde that went gaily and insouciantly on through the frequent revolutions, wars and times of public disorder. From the career courtesans to the women under the Directorie who damped their already diaphanous dresses so they would cling better, right down to the girls in the Occupation who could not understand why they should not sleep with German soldiers since they would be just as happy to sleep with the Americans when they arrived, the Parisienne has been a law unto herself. The filles from the provinces were more likely to rise to the top of the profession, however, as foreigners especially found that the Parisiennes had "a mocking, ironical side to them which irritates the customer".
The rise of the restaurant as an essential aspect of Paris began after the Revolution when the chefs of beheaded or displaced nobles were obliged to become entrepreneurs. And Paris was lucky to have them during the siege of 1870 when rat could be superlatively sauced and a newspaper correspondent wrote "Today I had a slice of spaniel", though he did not say what sauce the poor dog was served with.
All human life was to be found in Paris and all the well-known names are here: the novelists such as Scott Fitzgerald, who blamed Paris for his drinking and his ruin; the innumerable artists; pivotal people like Hausmann - self-confessed "demolition artist" who designed the Paris we know today. There are also the lesser-known like Louis Bonnier, who opposed the innovation of the skyscraper à la New York when it was threatened, and the German General Choltitz who, harassed by the demand from Hitler, "Is Paris burning?" hesitated just long enough for the Americans to arrive. You could say it was a question rather than an order and that even Hitler dithered at the prospect of that desecration. Why Paris is so peculiarly seductive Alistair Horne implies more than explains but what he does he does splendidly. And who could explain the mysterious ability of Paris to seduce? For him the architecture is its glory. For me it's the evocative glow of the Paris light and the acrid whiff of the metro. Probably we all have a different Paris in our hearts.
Seven Ages of Paris: Portrait of a City. By Alistair Horne.
Macmillan,520pp. £25
Anne Haverty's most recent novel is The Far Side Of a Kiss (Vintage)