Alysa Salzberg's blog

Soon after the Siege of Paris ended on January 28, 1871, many enterprising souls started selling souvenirs.   Most of these were things you’d expect: memoirs, photo albums of ruins, postcards, commemorative medallions and such.   In fact, even during the Siege itself, a number of people sold what they claimed were souvenirs from the battlefields, including Prussian helmets. Some of these helmets may have been real, but in his amazing book, La vie à Paris pendant le siège 1870-1871 , Victor Debuchy includes an account of a secret manufacturer of fake ones. Fragments of shells from bombed buildings were also a commonly sold souvenir. Many of these  seem to have been real, since they rained down on Paris for about a month at the end of the Siege (causing miraculously few casualties, all things considered).   The idea of souvenirs might appear shockingly modern, but they actually have a long history. For instance, in the Middle Ages, pilgrims would wear medallions from the holy sites they’