Ane Cornelia Pade: The Parisian Pleasure Gardens 1795-1815: Architectural appropriation and social negotiation in early postrevolutionary Paris

Supervisor: Prof Caroline van Eck

Research overview:

In the early years after the French Revolution, private Parisian hôtels particuliers and pleasure retreats, once the residences of the Ancien Régime elite, were transformed into public pleasure gardens. The PhD project studies the public pleasure gardens of Paris during the tumultuous period 1795 to 1815. The project situates the entertainment venues within the topography of Paris and reconstructs their architecture, interiors, and garden designs to understand the appropriation of private architecture for public entertainment in the years following the Terror. The PhD examines Parisians' use of the public pleasure gardens, focusing on their use as spaces of social negotiation between Parisians and tourists of diverse social, economic, and political backgrounds. The project’s emphasis on popular and visual culture brings the perspectives of often excluded groups to the foreground. The PhD aims to uncover the history of Paris’ long-forgotten public pleasure gardens, shed light on early post-revolutionary social dynamics, and provide nuanced insight into important aspects of Parisian visual culture in the early post-revolutionary era. The PhD project is supervised by Prof. Caroline van Eck.

Biography:

Ane Cornelia Pade is a PhD-candidate in History of Art at the University of Cambridge. In 2020, she obtained an MPhil in History of Art and Architecture from Cambridge with distinction and ranked first in her cohort. Ane Cornelia holds a bachelor’s degree in History of Art from the University of Copenhagen (2019). During her bachelor’s degree, she spent time at the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU) Sustainable Preservation of Cultural heritage program at Yale University (2017) and Barnard College at Columbia University (2018).