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Before it became the ‘City of Love’, Paris was long known as ‘La Ville Lumiere’ – ‘The City of Light’. The name dates from its role in the age of enlightenment, and - somewhat more prosaically - because it was one of the first European cities to adopt gas street lighting. Anyone who has been to Paris recently can testify to the city’s love of lights, especially during the festive period. Joanna Robertson says with the grey winter skies and the city’s frequent problems with dangerous pollution levels, Paris needs its magical fairytale lights like never before.

First broadcast on From Our Own Correspondent, 24 December 2016.