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Running from the Madeleine to the Bastille, the Grands Boulevards comprise boulevards de la Madeleine, des Capucines, des Italiens, Montmartre, Poissonniere, Bonne-Nouvelle, St-Denis, St-Martin, du Temple, des Filles du Calvaire and Beaumarchais. The western section, from the Madeleine to Porte St-Denis, follows the old defensive rampart built by Charles V. When its purpose became redundant with the aggressive foreign policy of Louis XIV, the walls were pulled down and the ditches filled in, leaving a wide promenade. This was given the name boulevard after the military term for the level part of a rampart. In the mid-eighteenth century, the boulevard became a fashionable place to be seen on horseback or in one's carriage, and gradually a desirable thoroughfare on which to reside. The western end attracted a more bourgeois habitue, while the eastern end, known as the boulevard du Crime , developed a more colourful reputation, with street theatre, mime, juggling, puppets, waxworks and cafes of ill repute. By the early half of the nineteenth century, the Grands Boulevards had been cobbled and Paris's first horse-drawn omnibus rattled from the Bastille to the Madeleine. The petit peuple from the east rubbed shoulders with the bourgeois intellectuals from the west, and the cafe clientele of the boulevard des Italiens set the trend for all of Paris, in terms of manners, dress and topics of conversation. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, however, the boulevard du Crime was largely erased by Baron Haussmann and replaced by a huge crossroads, the place de la Republique. Today, dotted among the burger bars, there are still remnants of the fun-loving times - theatres and cinemas, including the splendid early twentieth-century Max Linder and Rex cinemas, and numerous brasseries and cafes, which, though not the city's hippest or most innovative, still belong to the tradition of the Grands Boulevards, immortalized in the film Les Enfants du Paradis. Another leftover from these days is the waxworks museum, the Musee Grevin (daily: April-Aug 1-7pm, school hols 10am-7pm; Sept-March 1.30-6.30pm, school hols 10am-6.30pm; ?8.84), on boulevard Montmartre, though its replicas of famous people and scenes from French history are unlikely to enthral a modern audience. Children, however, might enjoy the light and mirrors show in the "Palais des Mirages". Boulevard des Capucines is associated with two notable historical firsts. At no. 14, in 1895, the first film (or animated photography, as the Lumiere brothers' invention was called) was shown. Some years earlier, another artistic revolution had taken place at no. 35, the studio of the photographer Nadar: this was the venue for the first ever Impressionist exhibition, which was greeted with outrage by the art world. As one critic said of Monet's Impression: Soleil Levant , "it was worse than anyone had hitherto dared to paint."
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