Paris: Path-Traced 3D City Map · Framed Matte Poster

Every building in this map is real. The footprints come from IGN's BD TOPO®, the French national topographic database, and every roof height was re-measured from IGN's LiDAR HD aerial survey rather than taken from a tag — the two agree to within 2.6 metres, which is how you know neither is guessing. They stand on RGE ALTI, IGN's national terrain model. The light is not a filter: the whole city was path traced, the same technique film studios use, with the shadows computed ray by ray from a sun standing 60° above the horizon.

Paris is the densest fabric in the series and the most disciplined. Nearly two roofs in five fall in the same 20–24 metre band — that is the Haussmann cornice line, written into the data, and at this sun angle you can watch it hold across whole arrondissements before the Seine breaks it. The river runs the width of the disc; Île de la Cité and Île Saint-Louis sit at the centre, the Louvre and the Tuileries open the north bank, the Jardin du Luxembourg the south. Every block casts the shadow its true height earns.

Printed on museum-quality matte paper in an Ayous wood frame.

Details

• 2 km radius around Île de la Cité · 48.8560° N, 2.3480° E · EPSG:32631
• Buildings: IGN BD TOPO® footprints, roof heights from IGN LiDAR HD (Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0)
• Terrain: RGE ALTI, IGN · Base map © OpenStreetMap contributors
• Path-traced global illumination — real computed shadows, not hillshade
• Museum-quality matte paper, Ayous wood frame