Jacopozzi, the Italian who made Paris the City of Light

(by Paolo Levi) It is the Italian who made Paris the 'City of Light': today marks exactly 100 years since the first illumination of the Eiffel Tower, July 4, 1925, by the forgotten genius of Fernando Jacopozzi, the Florentine who transformed Paris into the City of Lights. Born in Florence on September 12, 1877 and emigrated to France very young, in 1900, at the dawn of the Belle Epoque, the engineer and entrepreneur known as the 'wizard of light' was the first to have the idea of ​​lighting up the monuments of the capital of France. Before that, in 1918, he was chosen by the then Prime Minister Georges Clémenceau to create a fake Paris, in the east of the country (Somme), to protect that true from enemy bombings, a sort of 'Trompe-l'œil' for confuse the flight plans of the German pilots. The success of the project, classified as 'top secret', earned Jacopozzi the Legion of Honor. In 1925, the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs asked Jacopozzi to illuminate the Iron Lady. In 2 months, his company specialized in decorations and illuminations, he assembled over 250,000 light bulbs on the most famous monument in France, a challenge amazing technique and logistics, with suspended 'acrobat' workers in the void to bring the work to completion. The show with as many as 9 different light pictures could thus begin. The exploit It was financed by another genius of the time, André Citroën, who saw the opportunity to have publicity worthy of his name. On July 4, 2025, at 10 p.m., the name of the car manufacturer founded by him a few years earlier will stand at 300 metres height of the Tower, seven twenty-meter luminescent letters, in Art Deco style, among the most brilliant inventions in history advertising, with global image repercussions. Advertising Citroën towered over the Iron Lady for nearly a decade. Even today, it remains unmatched and the only form of 'advertising panel' never granted by the Parisian municipality on Tower, inscribed in the collective imagination of generations of French and immortalised by great photographers such as Brassai or Man Ray. In 1927, it is the Citroën lettering that guides Charles Lindbergh at the end of his transatlantic flight to Paris. The American aviator, welcomed as a hero along the banks of the Seine, greets André Citroën at a reception in the establishments of the Quai de Javel. The outcry is such that in Jacopozzi is entrusted with other projects. It dates back to 1928 the lighting of other symbolic monuments of Paris, such as the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, at the top of Montmartre, the column Vendome, the Hotel National des Invalides, but also the Arc of Triumph, the Opéra Garnier, Place de la Concorde, l'Eglise de la Madeleine and the Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral. For the period Christmas will always be him to illuminate the great with a thousand colors Parisian department stores, such as the Galeries Lafayette, the Bazaar de the Hotel de Ville (BHV), or La Samaritaine. The eldest of seven brothers who remained in Italy, Fernando - then became 'Fernand' (on 22 December 1920 he married a French, Jeanne Emma Vivien, with whom he had an only daughter, Donatella), made both adults and children dream, with animated scenes, true light shows sometimes over thirty metres high, which crowds of people came to admire from the province and not alone. A century after that first illumination of the Tour Eiffel, who has practically never stopped since then shine, the figure of Jacopozzi will be remembered today, in opening day of the Dolce Vita sur Seine Festival, the Festival of the twinning between Rome and Paris scheduled until July 8th at the Arènes de Lutèce and simultaneously at the Casa del Cinema in Rome with the twin festival 'Nouvelle Vague sul Tevere'.