Between 1814 and 1852 Paris was a city of power and pleasure, a magnet for people of all nationalities that exerted an influence far beyond the borders of France. Paris was the stage where the great conflicts of the age, between nationalism and cosmopolitanism, revolution and royalism, socialism and capitalism, atheism and Catholicism, were fought out before the audience of Europe. As a contemporary proverb put it: when Paris sneezes, Europe catches cold. PARIS BETWEEN EMPIRES tells the story of this golden age, from the entry of the allies into Paris on 31 March 1814, after the defeat of Napoleon I, to the proclamation of another Bonaparte, his nephew Louis-Napoleon, as Napoleon III in the Hotel de Ville on 2 December 1852. During those years, Paris, the seat of a new parliamentary government, was a truly cosmopolitan capital, home to Rossini, Heine and Princess Lieven, as well as Berlioz, Chateaubriand and Madame Recamier.