Published by Adolphe Block of Paris in 1871, this albumen-print stereoview documents the Ministry of Finance reduced to ruins following the fires of the Paris Commune. The view is drawn from the series titled "Ruines de Paris et Environs," produced in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune of 1870–1871, when several photographers documented the destruction caused by the Prussian siege and the fires set to official French buildings by the Communards. The orange card mount carries the publisher's imprint printed in black on both vertical borders.

The photograph presents the full facade of the gutted ministry: a long, multi-story building whose arched arcade at ground level survives intact beneath floors stripped to bare masonry piers and open sky. Upper-story window arches frame nothing, their interiors collapsed and blackened. A broad field of stone rubble fills the foreground, spilling from the building's base to the edge of an open roadway, conveying the scale of the structural devastation.

The building on the rue du Mont-Thabor, near the Tuileries and the Place Vendôme, which had housed the ministry since 1822, was destroyed by fire between May 22 and 25, 1871, during the events of the Commune. The ministry's archives and library were lost in the fire, though certain documents, including the registers of the Grand Livre of the public debt, and some furnishings were saved from the flames.

Inscribed in ink on the reverse: "Ministaire des finances" (Ministry of Finance).