network. Such a transportation network is a crucial ingredient in cities as it allows individuals to work, transport and exchange goods, etc., and the evolution of this network reflects the evolution of the population and activity densities [@Southworth; @Xie:2009]. These network aspects were first studied in the 1960s in quantitative geography [@Haggett:1969], and in the last decade, complex networks theory has provided significant contributions to the quantitative characterization of urban street patterns [@Jiang:2004; @Porta:2006; @Lammer:2006; @Crucitti:2006; @Marshall:2006; @Cardillo:2006; @Xie:2007; @Barthelemy:2008; @Courtat:2011; @Barthelemy:2011; @Strano:2012].

In this article, we will consider the case of the evolution of the street network of Paris over more than 200 years with a particular focus on the 19th century, period when Paris experienced large transformations under the guidance of Baron Haussmann [@Jordan]. It would be difficult to describe the social, political, and urbanistic importance and impact of Haussmann works in a few lines here and we refer the interested reader to the existing abundant literature on the subject (see [@Samuels:2012], and [@Jordan] and references therein). Essentially, until the middle of the 19th century, central Paris has a medieval structure composed of many small and crowded streets, creating congestion and, according to some contemporaries, probably health problems. 