January 10, 2026
Pan, zoom, and time-travel
1970 Paris, cut into a grid and photographed
1970 Paris snapped in tiny squares — fans swoon, debate retro Street View, and spot eerie emptiness
TLDR: Paris was shot in 1970, cut into 1,755 squares, and digitized for all to browse. The crowd swoons over retro detail, debates a “Street View of the past,” and jokes about eerily empty streets—plus one saga of a Montreal map lost to DNS (the internet’s address book) drama.
Paris, chopped into a giant grid back in 1970 and shot square-by-square, just dropped online like a vintage time capsule—and the comments are a full-on vibe. Nostalgia hit hard, with one user thanking the project for a browse down memory lane, while another gasped, “I’m struck by how empty the streets are.” Cue the memes: several joked that Paris was on a citywide coffee break.
The hottest thread? Whether this could become a retro Street View. One dreamer wondered if we could stitch old photos together to “walk” the 1920s, sparking both excitement and healthy skepticism. Fans also started comparing this grid to the legendary Turgot Map of Paris—a gorgeous 1730s bird’s-eye map—with one commenter insisting the full-res is worth the giant download.
There’s drama too: a Montreal mapper confessed their 1947 aerial project vanished thanks to DNS (the internet’s address book) chaos, triggering a chorus of “back up your backups!” Meanwhile, history nerds celebrated the sheer scope—15,000 people signed up, 2,800 delivered, and the city’s library digitized 30,225 photos across 250-meter squares—turning everyday sidewalks into a binge-scroll. Verdict from the crowd: it’s part museum, part time machine, and totally scrollable.
Key Points
- •In 1970, La Ville de Paris and FNAC ran an amateur photography contest to document Paris via a grid of 1,755 squares (250 m each).
- •15,000 candidates registered; 2,800 submitted complete dossiers.
- •The photographs were donated to the Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris (BHVP).
- •BHVP digitized the collection and made it available online, with high-definition versions on its website.
- •The archive includes 30,225 digitized photos from 6,918 candidates; only digitized items are accessible.