Celebrating the City takes readers behind the scenes of early modern urban festivities. Ranging from magnificent coronations to modest courtyard bonfires, it offers the first comparative, interdisciplinary study of festivals in London and Paris. Departing from existing scholarship, it draws on an exceptionally broad array of textual, visual and material sources to show that designing, making and organising were central to how festivals acquired meaning. By foregrounding the processes through which events were created, the book argues that urban festival politics cannot be understood without attention to their material worlds. Its innovative methodology—combining design history with political history—sheds new light on the formation of political publics in early modern European cities. Demonstrating how cities made festivals, and festivals helped make cities, this study significantly advances histories of festivals, political culture and urban life.
