These spectacular colorized photochroms show what life was like living in France in the late 19th century. From Notre Dame to beautiful Avenue Nicholas II, these photographs show France in the process of transforming into the tourist attractions that we love today. It was an age of industrialization scientific and artistic advancement before it was devastated by the two world wars.

These photos were colorized using the photochrom process. This process was invented in 1880s by a Swiss printer. A series of dyed limestones tablets were used to create a colorized version of a black and white negative image. This technique was widely used to produce some of earliest colorized pictures.