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    Pariswalks: Seven Intimate Walking Tours of Paris's Most Historic and Enchanting Quarters
    Pariswalks: Seven Intimate Walking Tours of Paris's Most Historic and Enchanting Quarters
    Pariswalks: Seven Intimate Walking Tours of Paris's Most Historic and Enchanting Quarters
    Ebook419 pages6 hours

    Pariswalks: Seven Intimate Walking Tours of Paris's Most Historic and Enchanting Quarters

    By Alison Landes, Sonia Landes and Rebecca Landes

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    About this ebook

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateMar 11, 2014
    ISBN9781466865938
    Pariswalks: Seven Intimate Walking Tours of Paris's Most Historic and Enchanting Quarters

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      Book preview

      Pariswalks - Alison Landes

      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

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