Spring 2024

Paris’ legendary
zinc rooftops
Paris’ legendary zinc
rooftops
Have you ever looked at a photo of Paris and
wondered why so many of the rooftops look so
good despite the age of the buildings? It’s all
down to zinc, a humble metal that was chosen
as the roof topping of the ‘modern’ buildings
of 19 th century Paris says Sue Aran.
Much that we love and hold dear about the
City of Light today, we owe to the singular
brilliance of Georges Eugène “Baron”
Haussmann. In 1853, when he began the
renovation of Paris at the command of
Emperor Napoleon III, he was unaware of the
enormous cultural impact his reconfiguration
of the city would have. As a former architect, I
find his vision inspiring and extraordinary. Not
only was he prescient about humanizing the
scale of the city, but he also knew instinctively
that in a grand, large-scale design, rhythm
and harmony of materials were essential.
The beautiful, iconic zinc rooftops of Paris,
which practically all Haussmann buildings are
covered by — and the workers who create
them — were even considered for UNESCO’s
list of French Intangible Cultural Heritage.
Paris’s zinc roofs are thanks to the work of
cleric Jean-Jacques Dony (1759-1819) of
Liège, a part of France at that time though
now it is part of Belgium. Dony was fascinated
by chemistry and by his early 20s, he had
his own laboratory. He spent 25 years
researching the smelting of zinc which is
present in the earth, air and water. It is nontoxic,
a trace element that is indispensable
for all living organisms, a fundamental part
of the metabolic processes of plants, animals
and humans. In the human body, over 300
enzymes require zinc for proper functioning.
Although zinc compounds had been used
for at least 2,500 years in the production
of brass, zinc wasn’t recognized as a
distinct element until 1668, when a Flemish
metallurgist, P. Moras de Respour, pioneered
the extraction of metallic zinc from zinc oxide.
As far as Europe was concerned however,
Paris © Shayna Stillman
View from the Arc de Triomphe © Grace Marshall
zinc was discovered by the German chemist
Andreas Marggraf in 1746, who was the first to
distinguish it as a new metal.
While chemists tried to handle zinc (formerly
known as Indian Tin) it was Dony who
discovered and patented a procedure for
processing and refining sheet zinc, today
50 Romain | The Gandré, Good Life Instagram: France@ rom_buff)
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