The most visible manifestation of this world was a series of grand projects that were begun by Napoleon the 3rd, mainly in Paris. Soon after he came to power in the 1850s. He said I want to be a second Augustus, making reference to the Emperor Augustus's claim that he found Rome a city of brick and left it one of marble. In the case of Napoleon the 3rd, he found Paris in 1851, a city of cobblestones and twisting medieval streets. And he left at 1:00 of asphalt and macadam. Because what he began doing was bulldozing old Paris, the ancient medieval part of Paris, and replacing it with wide new boulevards, 85 miles of them that he lit with some 20,000 gas lamps, which took out all the old 18th century oil lamps, replaced them with gas, which gave a much cleaner, brighter regular light. Also 50,000 trees are planted alongside them, many of them the chestnut trees that we now think of as synonymous with Paris. And he drained the street, the streets, with 200 miles of sewers, these new famous Parisian sewers beneath the streets, thereby making the city a much more safer, pleasant place to wander, to stroll to people watch, to have coffee or absinthe in the cafes.