This project examines the creative assimilation of the city of Paris into the music, film and literature of the French Third Republic (1870-1939). This study fits within a larger study focusing on singers, composers, authors and filmmakers to understand how they used the city and its sounds as creative force and political metaphor. The study of overlooked, or totally ignored, archival sources and cultural artefacts will enlighten our knowledge of how street culture and city life intersected with art. The project allows us to re-evaluate the politics of the city soundscape and its role in defining French identity. It also reassesses established notions of modernity and its interaction with the urban context though the study of everyday sounds and music. By embracing novel ecomusicological methodologies, this project timely joins current debates within musicology and cultural geography on the capacities of sound to produce a sense of space and place.