When PSG won the Champions League, Paris did not celebrate quietly. I went into the streets with my camera and documented what happened in the hours that followed. Some of it was beautiful. Some of it was genuinely frightening.

The first hours were pure joy. Hundreds of thousands of people flooded the Champs-Elysees, the boulevards around the Parc des Princes, and the major squares of the city. Car horns, flares, people dancing on bus shelters and fountains. The city had been waiting for this moment for decades and the release of that pressure was visible in every face.

As the night progressed, the atmosphere shifted. Fires were set in certain areas. Police in riot gear appeared on streets that had been peaceful an hour earlier. Tear gas was deployed in at least two locations I passed through. The celebration had broken into something more complicated, a mix of genuine joy, accumulated frustration, and the particular energy that comes when a large city loses control of itself for a few hours.

I have lived in Paris for ten years and I have covered PSG nights before. What struck me about this one was the scale. This was not a local neighborhood event. It was a city-wide rupture that touched every arrondissement simultaneously.

What I took from that night is a complicated feeling. The joy was real. The destruction was also real. Paris contains both of those things at the same time, and that is something you understand better after watching it happen live than after reading about it afterward.

If you are in Paris for a major PSG match, understand what the streets will look like if they win. Celebrate by all means. But know where you are and have a way home that does not depend on public transport.