Hard-Hearted

The Vivienne gallery was one of a number of covered passages that burrowed their way from one street to another through the centre of Paris in the course of the first half of the nineteenth century. They were paved with mosaics, lit by high-perched glass roofs, crammed with boutiques, and equipped with rotundas to facilitate the manoeuvring of the crowds which flocked to them. Over the subsequent years the tides of commerce shifted, moving to the city’s newly-minted boulevards but, almost alone amongst its peers, the passage Vivienne had retained its cachet.