Meryon’s views of central Paris in the mid- nineteenth century combine a fascination with the city’s old monuments and the sense of an oppres- sive, densely overcrowded urban environment. This view of a bridge leading from the left bank to the Ile de la Cité centers on the towers of Notre Dame, but it is dominated by an apparently un- broken row of houses crowding the river’s edge.

According to his friend, the poet Baudelaire, Meryon “pointed out to me that the shadow cast by a portion of the stonework ... looked exactly like the profile of a sphinx;--that this was entirely coincidence on his part and that only later did he take notice of this peculiarity, recalling that this design had been made shortly before the coup d’etat” [by which Louis Napoleon seized power in 1851].