Why Paris? First of all, because I was born there. I grew up there. In my youth, I studied there and even stayed to work for a few years. France in general, and Paris in particular, is a second home (or maybe a first?). I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve visited this city, but in recent years, I’ve been traveling more around France itself – renting a car at the airport and heading straight for the red “N” and yellow “D” highways – and it’s been a long time since I set foot on the cobblestones of the “City of Lights.”
I decided it was time to fill in the gaps and start crossing off the ever-growing list of places to visit. As a long-time and consistent viewer of culture and tourism programs on French television, I've been compiling a list of special sites, corners and places that no one visits, that tourists haven't heard of and, sometimes, even veteran Parisians don't know about.
A bit of urban history Le Paris Haussmannien (Haussmann's Paris)
Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, known as Napoleon III (Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, 1808-1873), the younger brother of Napoleon Bonaparte (the famous….), was elected as the new ruler of France in democratic elections held in December 1848, after the “Spring of the Peoples” that swept across Europe. In one of his first moves, which would leave its mark on the future, he gave a free hand to the governor of the Paris region , Baron Haussmann (Georges-Eugène Haussmann, 1809-1891), to renovate and build entire districts in the capital.
The Baron's extensive works forever changed the face of the city and gave it the image we all know today. To maintain a uniform appearance of the renewed city, Baron Haussmann determined what the city's houses would look like - how many floors, the width of the facade, windows and the distance between them, and more. He left a free hand to the architects in all the decorations of the building, railings, doors, windows and other decorative items. This is what makes the streets and buildings of Paris what they are, as we see them.
For decades, the French (known for being quite conservative) did not dare to change anything substantial in the “City of Lights”. The first swallow who dared to break through the contours that had already been established in the 19th century was President Georges Pompidou (1911-1974), after whom the cultural center he initiated – “Centre Georges Pompidou” – is named, an innovative and revolutionary project whose establishment was accompanied by long and poignant public struggles. After him, the one who continued with large and impressive construction projects in the capital was President François Mitterrand (1916-1996), to whose credit impressive cultural projects such as the new Opera (Opera Bastille) and the “National Library” (Bibliotheque Nationale) will be recorded. Somehow, the dam was breached in these construction projects and at the end of the 20th century, Paris has not stopped renewing and changing.
On this visit, the closest I got to the Champs Elysees or the Arc de Triomphe was by metro, underground… I completely ignored all the sites that appear in the tourist books – the Eiffel Tower, the Opera House (Garnier), the Louvre Museum and many others. I dedicated 10 days to tours and visits to streets, sites and places that even Parisians rarely go to, if at all. Rue Sainte-Marthe? Cité Leroy? Mouzaia? – who has heard of them and how many others are similar to them. This visit was entirely dedicated to the streets and alleys, the colors and markets, the houses and arcades, some of which are (very) well-known, but the vast majority of which are unknown. There are certainly more places and sites. I do not pretend to know, and to visit, them all.
God
The French Council of Churches counted 42,258 Catholic churches, of various classifications (cathedral, chapel, church, etc.) throughout France, as of the count that ended on September 12, 2016. There is disagreement – due to the classification into the various types – about their number within the city of Paris (that is, “within” the Peripherique boulevards, defined as the municipal urban boundary of the city, the 20 arrondissements). Some say 130 churches within Paris, and others count 229. Either way, the vast majority of the various churches have been standing since the Middle Ages – a little before or a little after. A fairly small number of churches were built in the 18th or 19th centuries. A small number of them were built in the 20th century, as a restoration and reconstruction of those destroyed in World Wars I and II.
A small number of churches have been built as completely new churches in the last few decades. Naturally (in my opinion, mistakenly), these are not considered tourist sites due to their young age. Traditionally, we only visit a church if it is already several hundred years old, has a long “record” and has accumulated some heroes and saints, or perhaps even holy objects (“Relique”, or “Relic” in English) that are several years old. Only a few – counted on the fingers of one hand – are the new churches that have been built in the last few years. For the most part, these are neighborhood churches, unknown, that do not receive publicity, an article in the newspaper, let alone foreign visitors and tourists.
I admit, I came across one of these by chance. I was walking down a long street in Paris (Rue de la Roquette) and on the way I “came across” a church that I didn’t recognize. The district is a residential area for ordinary workers, the poor of the people, and the neighborhood priest managed to convince the church institutions to build a church for them in 1930. Due to budget constraints, a small church was built on the street, of simple construction and very basic materials. Over the years, the concrete crumbled, the iron frame rusted, and in the 70s the building became dangerous for the faithful who crowded into it. The old church was dismantled and a new, modern building was inaugurated on the same site in 20.
The church, with a modern and clean design without frills, without colored windows and without images of saints. The structure is much more in line with the modern principles of our time and faithfully reflects (in my opinion, I am not a great “expert” in matters of religion) a free religion of faith between man and his God, without the symbols of the religion of the Middle Ages or even of the later centuries. During my visit to the place – on a weekday morning, I was alone in the compound – a young, black priest came out from behind the scenes. When asked if he could help me, I replied that I was just visiting. His answer can be translated completely freely: “Have fun. Enjoy yourself” (“Au plaisir. Amusez vous bien”).
Notre-Dame l'Esperance (“Our Lady of Hope”)
The Catholic religion, with its branches and derivatives, does not particularly support the naming of saints to protect a particular place (perhaps out of the belief that God is everywhere), but rather on feast days and feast days dedicated to each saint and saint. Still, almost every country in the Christian world has “its” saint who protects the country, as a whole entity. There are a few sites and cities in the Christian world that have a saint who protects and guards them, regardless of the saint’s protection over the entire country. One such is Saint Isidore, the saint of Madrid, Spain. Saint Sebastian also protects and protects the city of that name in southern France, and more. Paris also has a saint who protects it, namely Sainte Genevieve.
During the severe floods of 1910 that caused heavy damage in Paris, the Pont de la Tournelle, the wooden bridge in the east of the city, was destroyed and in the design of the new bridge, a statue of the saint, the protector of the city, by Paul Landowski, a relatively unknown sculptor, was commissioned. Following this statue, another statue was commissioned from him that brought him world fame – a statue of Christ spreading his hands over Rio de Janeiro (“Cristo Redentor”). The statue of Saint Genevieve stands above the bridge, on the riverbank, looking at the entrance to the river, and greeting all who enter the city. How many people exactly enter Paris by the river?! But symbolism has no limits. How many Parisians and tourists know about the statue, in its location? How many of them stop on their daily route to look at it? I have no answers, but I enjoyed looking at the white, tall, imposing statue.
Stone decoration
As I mentioned at the beginning of the article (Urban History), Baron Haussmann established many regulations, laws, and standards – but he left them, the architects, freedom to decorate their works. And they did decorate…. It is well known that in Paris, you have to look up and look at the walls of the houses, especially on the “old” streets, those built and designed in the 19th century. And although the houses are similar to each other, they are not similar to each other. In many buildings, you can see architectural design elements – “decorative”, if you will – that you would not see in modern buildings. Mask heads in various shapes, curtains “pouring” around the windows and balconies, delicate niches like female organs, unique support columns, large and small sculptures that blend into the walls of the building – all in the good hands of the stonemasons (“Tailleur de Pierre”) and the architects.
But Paris is not only Haussman, not only the 19th century and as they have already said, the world does not stand still (“On n'arrete pas le progres”) and new buildings are also being built in Paris. And in the range between the industrial construction in exposed concrete (Le Corbusier) of the mid-20th century to the steel and glass towers of “La Defense”, there are also those (please, someone check if Baron Haussman is turning in his grave….).
And another little story about buildings in Paris
Volta Street is a narrow street in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris, not far from the Place de la Republique, named after the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta (1745-1827), inventor of the electric battery. House number 3 on the street is built as it was once built – a mixture of cement, plaster, straw and gravel (“Torchis”), with the walls combined with wooden beams – a look typical of other regions (Alsace, Normandie, etc.), but quite unusual in Paris. Like several other “islands” within the city limits, this building escaped the hands of Baron Haussmann). For decades, many thought that this house was built at the end of the 12th century, which made it the oldest house in the city and a tourist site in its own right – it was even listed on the list of historical sites of Paris. In 1979, documents were discovered in the archives that indicated that the house was built by a wealthy merchant “only” in 1644 (17th century) as a copy of the neighboring building, which is now gone, and the title of the oldest house in the city was transferred to a different address (Auberge Nicolas Flamel – 51, rue de Montmorency).
America, Mouzaia
Few people know, but in the 19th arrondissement, in the northeast of Paris, there is a neighborhood called “America” (“Quartier d'Amerique”), whose name is based on an urban legend. Back when this area was outside the city, blocks of gypsum stone were quarried there and used to build Parisian houses. The gypsum shone in our hearts and legend has it that the whitest blocks were sent to America at the end of the 17th century to build the “White House” in Washington, which was built in 1800. There is also another urban legend associated with it, which claims that its name comes from being painted with a layer of white paint to hide damage caused by a major fire in the city of Washington.
It was originally called the “President's House” and the name “White House” was first applied to it by the public in 1811, simply because it was… white. When the quarries north of Paris were closed, with the expansion of the city in the 19th century, some of them were turned into a large green park (Parc de la Butte Chaumont, which is another story). The unstable structure of the soil prevented high-rise construction – and so at the end of the 19th century this neighborhood was left with about 250 low private houses along small dead-end alleys, built like a fish pond around the main street, Rue de la Mouzaia, named after an area in Algeria where heavy fighting took place between the French army and Berber tribes (1830).
Have you ever wandered through the small villages of Tuscany, Provence or Andalusia? Stone-paved alleys, vegetation everywhere, live fences and small steps leading to a wooden door covered in a layer of cracked paint, with a rusty metal decoration around a huge keyhole…. A chubby cat lies on a white wooden chair, its tail hanging under it, its head resting on its front paws and its eyes staring at the birds chirping around it, among green branches laden with colorful flowers. The residents of this area, the vast majority of whom are elderly (very….), do not give up on their neighborhood despite the difficulties and work involved in maintaining old buildings. Houses where the next generation has already moved in are undergoing renovation and updating for the 21st century (intercom, electric shutters, underground parking and more) but even these recognize the value of the property – and not just the emotional family value – and do not easily give up on living in the area. It is unbelievable that we are in a big city, only hundreds of meters from busy international tourist and commercial centers.
Garden in the city
Villa de l'Adour
This is a small, dead-end alley in the 19th arrondissement of Paris. The alley is blocked at the far end by a brick wall, while its entrance is through a barred metal gate and is defined as a “private road” (“Voie Privee”) reserved for its residents only. The alley was opened in 1817 under the name “villa Barthélémy” and its name was changed to its current name, like the name of a river in southern France, in 1877. The alley has 19 houses and since it is defined as a private alley, the municipality has no right to decide on the area.
When extensive renovation and restoration work was carried out in the 70s in the Belleville district – which until then was a neglected and poor district, home to hard-working workers and immigrants – the residents resisted any interference with their private space. Villa de l'Adour, 104 meters long and 2.50 meters wide, remained as it was, at the mercy of its 19 residents – and they worked wonders. The small alley is lined with trees, potted plants, roses, flower beds and well-kept white houses on both sides of a cobblestone alley, with a rainwater drainage channel in the middle, as it used to be…. Building number 3 in the alley used to house an industrial laundry pond that has since been renovated and converted into a residence, but the chimney towering above the building is a testament to its past.
Laundry pool – Lavoir
An enclosed pool that was used by residents of the neighborhood, or village, for hand washing in the era before washing machines.
Cité Leroy
It's hard to believe, but 2 meters behind me, the photographer, is "Rue des Pyrenees", one of the avenues in the district.
The 20th. The area, the Belleville neighborhood, was a large village adjacent to the city wall, outside it, in the 19th century. Baron Haussmann's great works did not reach this part of the city, which is far from the center and somewhat problematic in terms of the soil structure, which does not allow for development and new construction.
The dead-end alley – 4 meters wide and 60 meters long – was opened here in 1869 and is defined as a “private road”, reserved for its residents only. Adjacent to it is another alley, also “private” – Villa de l'Ermitage. In 1992, the Paris municipality published a tender for the construction of a high-rise residential building on the site. Residents of the district, and not only the residents of the alley, organized themselves against the project and the municipality changed the layout in 2000 to propose a wider and lower structure, taking into account the soft soil structure that does not allow for high construction.
This project was also rejected by the residents, with the unexpected help of the district municipality, which acted as a buffer against the Paris municipality. After more than 10 years of public struggle that went far beyond the boundaries of the district, a compromise was found – the alley will remain and the area will become a shared green garden for the benefit of the city’s residents – a “garden in the city” (“Jardin en Ville”) where the local residents grow their own flowers and vegetables for their own use. 60 meters of small houses, a small village in a big city, a memory of a disappearing city.
More on the subject
Lovely article. I'll save it for a visit to Paris.
Thank you!. Very interesting!
Very nice, I especially like the theme of the alleys, the villages, the lost ones throughout the city.
A charming guide to the unknown Paris.