When Walter Benjamin attempted an analysis of the state of culture in the early 20th century, he did it not by visiting art galleries and monuments but through an intricate and poetic study of a dying architectural form, the Parisian arcades.

The arcades were originally conceived around the beginning of the 19th century as a device for turning the courtyards of big urban blocks, which had always been rentable only to poorly-paying tenants and craftsmen, into profitable concerns. Instead of dingy courtyards, these glass-roofed, privatised internal shopping streets attracted the most fashionable selection of boutiques and emporiums supplying fancy goods to the emergent bourgeoisie – themselves a product of the industrialisation that had made such fashions affordable.