Pariswalks: Seven Intimate Walking Tours of Paris's Most Historic and Enchanting Quarters
320
Pariswalks: Seven Intimate Walking Tours of Paris's Most Historic and Enchanting Quarters
320eBookSixth Edition (Sixth Edition)
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Overview
The perfect walking guide to Paris and its history, now in a thoroughly updated sixth edition
Full of architectural detail, unique advice, and historical anecdotes, Pariswalks allows the reader to do as the Parisians do--take to the streets on foot to discover the secret splendors of one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Sonia, Alison, and Rebecca Landes lead the reader through the maze of Paris's hidden back streets and into the tiny shops, secluded courtyards, underground cellars, and serene interiors that tourists rarely see.
In this newly revised edition, readers will find completely updated walks covering the most interesting neighborhoods of central Paris, from the Place de la Bastille to the Boulevard St.-Germain, and an all new tour of the Place de la Concorde. Each walk is easily completed in a morning or afternoon and suggests shopping, dining, and cultural stops.
Featuring maps, more than forty black-and-white photographs, and a select list of restaurants and hotels, Pariswalks is the essential companion to the hidden wonders of the City of Lights.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466865938 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Holt, Henry & Company, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 03/11/2014 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 320 |
| File size: | 9 MB |
About the Author
Sonia, Alison, and Rebecca Landes own an apartment in the Marais for their frequent visits to Paris. Sonia is most often in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Alison, a freelance writer, and Rebecca, a doctoral student in clinical psychology, live near Philadelphia.
Alison Landes co-owns an apartment in the Marais for her frequent visits to Paris. Alison, a freelance writer, lives near Philadelphia.
Sonia Landes co-owns an apartment in the Marais for her frequent visits to Paris. Sonia is most often in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Rebecca Landes co-owns an apartment in the Marais for her frequent visits to Paris. Rebecca, a doctoral student in clinical psychology, lives near Philadelphia.
Read an Excerpt
Pariswalks
By Sonia Landes, Alison Landes, Rebecca Landes
Henry Holt and Company
Copyright © 2005 Sonia, Alison, and Rebecca LandesAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-6593-8
CHAPTER 1
Walk · 1
Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre
Shakespeare and Co. Kilometer Zero Paris.
— Bookstamp at Shakespeare and Company
Starting Point: The corner of the Petit Pont and the quai de Montebello, 5th arrondissement
Métro: Saint-Michel, RER
Buses: 24, 47 on the Petit Pont; 21, 27, 38, 85, 96 at place Saint-Michel
Here you are in the heart of Paris, looking at Notre-Dame on the Ile de la Cité, where the Parisii, the tribe for whom the city was named, originally settled long before Caesar came here in 52 B.C.E. (The Romans stayed four hundred years.) At that time there were eight or nine islands in this region of the Seine, but as the water receded, the number was reduced to only two — this one and, behind it, the Ile Saint-Louis.
Walk to the large square, the place du Parvis, and look at Notre-Dame, glowing after its recent cleaning. About twenty feet from the portals look on the ground for a brass octagonal marker. It says, POINT 0 DES ROUTES DE FRANCE. It is said that if you stand on it and turn three times, your wish will come true. This spot marks the official center of France; stone markers along the French roadside mark the number of kilometers to this spot. This walk will not take you beyond 0 KILOMETERS PARIS, but there is much to see.
The Seine in prehistoric times was a wide, slow-flowing river more than a hundred feet higher than it is today. The river meandered all over the area between Mont Sainte-Geneviève, to the south (take a look about five blocks down and you will see the hill), and Montmartre, one mile away to the north.
Even Parisians forget that the river was once so wide, but in 1910 an extraordinary flood in the month of January reminded them of the tributaries of the Seine still flowing underground. The subterranean waters welled to the surface and swept through the city. From the present course of the river to the place de l'Opéra and from the Gare Saint-Lazare to the suburbs of the north, the secret Seine emerged from hiding and took possession of the city once again.
Postcards depicting the flood show men and women rowing around Paris at the level of street signs. A great many important historical records were lost, including those from some of the major libraries and banks. Deep cellars in this area are still cemented in mud from the flood, and excavations regularly unearth buried architecture and artifacts.
For ancient Paris, this sprawling river, whose waters were sweet and clean enough to drink, was a boon. Because of it, the Parisii felt safe from surprise attacks; an enemy would have to cross large stretches of swamp to reach the island. The river was also an excellent highway for trade, as it still is today. By Gallic times the Seine had already dug its present channel, but the banks to either side, especially the Right Bank, remained swampy and uninhabitable.
The first part of the mainland to be settled was the south, or Left Bank, where the ground rose more sharply than on the marshy Right Bank, called the Marais (marsh). (See Walk 4.) If you look up the rue du Petit Pont with your back to the bridge, you will see, about two hundred yards away and beyond what is now the rue des Ecoles, the Collège de France on the left side and the observatory tower of the Sorbonne on the right.
Two thousand years ago, Roman baths stood on these sites, for it was on this hill that the ancient residents finally got far enough above the water line to build important structures. The remains of the baths still exist under the Collège de France. Other ruins close by, unearthed as recently as 1946, can be seen in the garden of the Musée National du Moyen Age. The area between this high-water line and the river — the area you are visiting today — was settled much later.
The site of the present church of Saint-Séverin, the back of which you can see down the rue du Petit Pont on the right, was a small, dry hillock where a hermit chose to settle in the fifth century. Later, as the Seine continued to dig itself a deeper channel, the area between high ground and the river filled with houses and narrow paths.
Even as late as the Middle Ages, the street level was thirty feet (three stories) lower than it is today. This is why three levels of cellar still exist in the seventeenth-century buildings you see in the area. Until the middle of the nineteenth century the streets and alleys of the quartier ran steeply down to the river's edge.
The present ground-floor shops are on what was once the second floor of these buildings. Notice the thirty-foot embankment that rises from the Seine; where that stands, houses once stood.
The first bridge connecting the Ile de la Cité to the mainland, the present Petit Pont, was built here because at this point the island is closest to the Left Bank. A little fortress, the Petit Châtelet, which doubled as a tollhouse, stood at the end of the bridge on the spot where you are now. It was the custom then, as it is today on some bridges, to pay a toll in order to pass in and out of the city.
Another, larger, fortress, the Grand Châtelet, stood on the right bank of this part of the Seine, at the Pont Saint-Michel. Both these bastions were used as prisons during the French Revolution. With the help of underground passageways to many points in the vicinity, prison affairs could easily be carried on in secret.
The Petit Pont was not only a passageway; two- and three-story houses and shops lined either side of it, making it the busiest street in town. In the Middle Ages the picturesque aspect of this bridge — really a street thrown across the river — was enlivened by philosophers offering their intellectual wares and by jugglers, singers, and dog and bear trainers. During the day it was a paradise for cutpurses, at night for cutthroats. The bridge was rebuilt after fire, flood, and attack more times than the French care to count. Fire was the most common cause of its destruction until the eighteenth century, when the bridge was finally rebuilt in stone.
In the Middle Ages people believed that the bodies of those drowned in the Seine could be located by setting a votive candle on a wooden disc afloat in the river and noting where it stopped or went out. It was especially important to find drowned bodies before the authorities did, because a huge fee of 101 écus, the equivalent of a year's pay for a manual laborer, is said to have been charged for the delivery of a loved one from the morgue at the Châtelet.
One story about this bridge and its fires has it that a poor old widow whose son had drowned set a candle afloat in hopes of finding his body. The candle floated close to a straw-laden barge, setting it on fire. The barge touched the wooden scaffolding of a pillar of the bridge, and from there the flames spread to the bridge itself. In three days, the raging fire destroyed the bridge and the houses on it.
If you like, climb down the steps on the island side of the channel near the Petit Pont, or on the Left Bank toward the Pont au Double, and look at the Seine close up. You will be in the company of fishermen who catch live, though small, fish; of clochards (tramps) who find this spot slightly warmer and more private for sleeping than the streets; and of lovers of all ages expressing varying degrees of affection.
The quai de Montebello, the street that runs along the riverside in front of you and is packed with cars (we say this with absolute confidence after having watched the street over an entire year at all hours of the day and night), was built by Baron Georges Haussmann. He was the famous city planner of Napoléon III who, in the 1850s and 1860s, built most of the avenues and boulevards that have fortunately and unfortunately saved Paris for the automobile.
Cross the quai with the light (watch for turning cars). The small strip of park before you was once covered by the Petit Châtelet. Later, an annex of the Hôtel Dieu hospital was located here. The park was finally cleared in the early 1920s. This little park with benches and the park of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, to your left (with your back to the river), are the only pieces of green along the Seine, the only spots in Paris as far downstream as the Eiffel Tower that the French have allowed to lie fallow. This pocket-size park, which once belonged to vagrants and boule (bocce) players, has now been redesigned and discourages lingering.
Place du Petit Pont
The street that leads out from the bridge is called the place du Petit Pont. At the next crossing its name changes to the rue du Petit Pont. In both places, the street is the same width. If you look closely at the buildings on either side of the rue du Petit Pont, you will probably be able to work out why the rue is as wide as the place.
The apartment houses on the left side of the street were built in the seventeenth century. They are straight buildings with slim, rectangular windows free of ornamentation except for iron grillwork on the windows. On the right side of the street are nineteenth-century buildings heavy with curves, carvings, protuberances, and balconies. They stand on ground cleared when the street was widened and rebuilt in 1857.
The rue du Petit Pont lasts one short block, then becomes the rue Saint-Jacques. From prehistoric times this road, which climbs straight up the gentle hill in front of you, was the main road from Paris to the south.
When the Romans first came to Lutetia, which was what Paris was then called, they came this way. Soon after, they transformed the dirt road into a paved road nine meters (twenty-nine feet) wide. Two huge stones from this construction were found below the road's surface in 1926; you will see them later in the parvis of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre. Elephant remains have also turned up, which will give you an appreciation of how the Romans thought big and built big, and why we still speak with admiration and awe of Roman roads.
As early as 1230 the rue Saint-Jacques was given its present name because the famous pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Jacques (Saint James) of Compostela traveled south along it. The route to Santiago (Spanish for Saint James) de Compostela followed the north Spanish coast before turning inland, and the pilgrims were quick to gather and bring back scallop shells (coquilles) as proof of their voyage and their devotion. The pilgrims displayed the shells whenever and wherever possible, and as a result the shells have come to be a common symbol even to this day. Shell Oil uses its name to signify its role as a refueling stop for us on our modern pilgrimages; we eat coquilles Saint Jacques; and shell designs are common as a decoration on buildings and churches, and in wood on furniture.
Rue de la Bûcherie
Turn left into the rue de la Bûcherie, the street facing the small park, and pass the café, Le Petit Pont, a good place for a light lunch and a most pleasant spot on a sunny day. A bûcherie is a storehouse for wood. It was on this street that barges loaded with logs for heating deposited their goods. There used to be a restaurant here called La Bûcherie, which remembered its past not only in its name but with a wood fire, which burned on a hearth in the center of the room. Regrettably, today there is a tourist-oriented café in this spot.
The house next door, no. 39, is very special. The houses we have been looking at are mostly seventeenth-century; this one was built in the early sixteenth. It is a small two-story wooden structure, the kind that was typical five hundred years ago and can still be seen in towns like Riquewihr, in Alsace, or Conques, in southern France, but that has almost vanished from most European cities. The building once served as an inn and was hidden from sight for most of its long history. Le Petit Châtelet, as the inn was called — after the fortress it stood behind and to whose employees it gave meat and drink over the centuries — was tucked away until 1909, when the ground was cleared between the rue de la Bûcherie and the river. It is again a very small, intimate restaurant with a fireplace to cook brochettes.
The little building is architecturally interesting for several reasons. Almost no wooden structures in Paris have survived; the big enemy has been fire, as evidenced by the history of the Petit Pont. Note the large dormer windows that jut out from the steep roofline and the smaller windows on the attic floor above. Step back and look at the exposed side of the building on its right, and you will see, coming out from the exterior wall, the ends of the framing beams used in its construction hundreds of years ago. These are the wooden joists, half of which one sometimes sees as exposed rafters in a ceiling.
Now look at the exposed side of the half-timbered remains on the left of the building. There you will see one of only three open staircases (escaliers à claire voie) left in Paris. This was the typical staircase of the sixteenth century; it was replaced in the seventeenth by the closed escalier à vis (corkscrew staircase).
Immediately to the left is Shakespeare and Company. You will get a hint of the store's uniqueness from the amusing announcements on the notice board outside. George Whitman and his lovely daughter, Sylvia, like to sell especially to people who like to read. The ground floor is devoted mainly to books-for-sale of all kinds — old and new, almost all in English. Whitman owns the house next door and keeps his own library and an antiquarian bookshop there. The walls are covered with books he does not sell, including a first edition of James Joyce's Ulysses. This is where one gets a feeling of Whitman's unusual personality.
The shop itself is a treasure trove of books and people, and if you nose around long enough and look interested, Whitman might invite you to tea. The front room was once a stone courtyard; into it Whitman has set fragments of marble friezes, tiled borders, and brass plaques. The narrow, one-person-at-a-time staircase at the very back of the store leads to a maze of book-lined rooms filled with chairs, couches, and beds. You can read the books in these rooms, meet people, even take a nap if you wish, and go to Whitman's famous tea parties, on Sundays at 4 P.M.
More than a bookseller, Whitman takes in travelers, especially serious writers — a vanishing breed, he feels. If an author notifies him ahead of time, he or she may stay in one of Whitman's rooms free or in exchange for working in the shop for a week or so, until other quarters are found.
Shakespeare and Company has always promoted the literary avant-garde. When the publishing house of the same name was originally founded by Sylvia Beach (the source of Whitman's daughter's name), it was the only house that would publish James Joyce's Ulysses. Now Whitman gives young writers a chance to be published in his review and to be heard at poetry readings in his library, every Monday night at eight.
Give this store some browsing time. It is generally open from noon to midnight, or one to one. If you want a souvenir of Paris, buy a book and get it stamped here. The inscription around the head of William reads SHAKESPEARE AND CO. KILOMETER ZERO PARIS.
Outside the shop, notice the small green fountain consisting of a base and four women holding a crown from which a stream of water flows down. In 1842, a British gentleman named Sir Richard Wallace visited Paris and was unable to obtain a glass of water from a local restaurant. On his return to England, he purchased more than one hundred of these water fountains and had them installed all over Paris, where they became a main source of drinking water. Drinking cups were suspended from the hooks below the women's feet. In love with Paris, Wallace also offered his collection of paintings to the city, which turned him down. It became instead the famous Wallace collection in London.
After World War II, most of the Wallace fountains were stolen and modern copies were made. The original fountains had four different women; in the copies the women all have the same face, the same eyes and lips. Other differences are the positioning of their feet, the ruffles on the bodices of their dresses, and the way the folds of their dresses fall. This one is not an original, but look for other Wallace fountains as you walk around the city.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Pariswalks by Sonia Landes, Alison Landes, Rebecca Landes. Copyright © 2005 Sonia, Alison, and Rebecca Landes. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Map,
Preface,
Introduction,
Brief Chronology of Paris,
Tips,
Walk 1: Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre,
Walk 2: La Huchette,
Walk 3: Saint-Germain-des-Prés,
Walk 4: Place des Vosges,
Walk 5: Rue des Francs-Bourgeois,
Walk 6: Bastille to Eglise Saint-Gervais,
Walk 7: Les Grandes Trois: Concorde, Madeleine, Vendôme,
Note,
Cafés, Restaurants, and Hotels,
Acknowledgments,
Index,
About the Authors,
Copyright,