Paris: The City of Lights

Discovering the city through the magic of Marsilio's pop-up series

Children’s book author and illustrator extraordinaire Dario Cestaro (born 1971) presents the beauty of Paris through the spectacular paper architecture of a pop-up book.

Cestaro takes young—and young at heart—readers through a fascinating journey through Paris’ most famous buildings: the Eiffel Tower, the Bourse de Commerce, the Louvre, the cathedral of Notre-Dame, the Centre Pompidou and the Arc de Triomphe. This lively tour through Cestaro’s colorful pages is enlivened by short texts and sweet anecdotes that tell a history of the city through its most iconic buildings. Readers will learn about the construction of the Eiffel Tower for the 1889 World’s Fair, designed by the well-known “architect of iron” after whom it is named; the pre- and post-Revolutionary histories of the Louvre and the Jardin des Tuileries, given first to princes and then to the people; Tadao Ando’s painstaking restoration of the 18th-century Bourse de Commerce to turn it into a contemporary art gallery, and much more.

Cestaro’s tour through Paris follows the publication of similar volumes on other great European cities: Venice, Florence, Milan and Rome. Cestaro’s captivating drawings will help even the youngest readers to recognize the main features of the city, and offer a special glimpse of the city’s landscape and history.