Between 1895 and 1905, people queued on the quay by Paris's Hôtel de Ville for a Bateau-Mouche excursion boat. The Musée Carnavalet catalogue identifies the place and date range and describes several people in the line looking back at the camera.
Excursion boats turned movement on the Seine into urban leisure, but capacity was limited and pleasure still needed an order of entry. The Paris these passengers saw differed from the city visited today. The small experience before the view—waiting at the landing for a place aboard—remains strikingly familiar across a century.