Georges-Eugène Haussmann

Georges-Eugène Haussmann moved through three prefectures - Var, Yonne, Gironde - before Napoleon III appointed him to Paris in 1853, where his administrative precision met imperial ambition. He rebuilt the capital above and below ground: miles of new sewers ran beside gas pipes feeding thousands of streetlights, while Charles Garnier's Paris Opera, the largest theatre in the world, rose as the signature landmark. With Adolphe Alphand he laid out four major parks at the compass points - Bois de Boulogne west, Bois de Vincennes east, Parc des Buttes Chaumont north, Parc Montsouris south - an immediate success with every class of Parisian. Critics forced his dismissal in 1870, the year his own estimate put one in five central streets as his creation. He became a senator in 1857, a grand cross of the Legion of Honour in 1862, and the city still carries his vision and his name on a boulevard and a station.