Paris Revealed Read online

  NB: Listings are in alphabetical order, and to make things simpler, I have ignored the le, la, l’ and les before names. I’ve also given the postcodes because they tell you which arrondissement the place is in, e.g. 75009 is the 9th arrondissement, 75020 is the 20th, etc.

  1 Parisians

  L’Antenne, 27 rue François Premier, 75008. Tel: 01 47 20 77 39. Métro: Franklin D. Roosevelt.

  L’Avenue, 41 avenue Montaigne, 75008. Tel: 01 40 70 14 91. Métro: Franklin D. Roosevelt.

  Bar Ourcq, 68 quai de la Loire, 75019. Tel: 01 42 40 12 26. Métros: Stalingrad, Laumiere.

  Le Bonaparte, 42 rue Bonaparte, 75006. Tel: 01 43 26 42 81. Métro: Saint-Germain des Prés.

  Café Charlot, 38 rue de Bretagne, 75003. Tel: 01 44 54 03 30. Métros: République, Filles du Calvaire.

  Le Concorde, 239 boulevard Saint-Germain, 75007. Tel: 01 45 51 43 71. Métro: Assemblée Nationale.

  La Coupole, 102 boulevard du Montparnasse, 75014. Tel: 01 43 20 14 20. Métro: Vavin.

  Les Éditeurs, 4 carrefour de l’Odéon, 75006. Tel: 01 43 26 67 76. Métro: Odéon.

  Enfants Rouges market, rue de Bretagne, 75003, entrances just opposite the Café Charlot (see above, in this chapter).

  La Flèche d’Or, 102bis rue de Bagnolet, 75020. Tel: 01 44 64 01 02. Métro: Gambetta.

  Les Gladines, 30 rue des Cinq Diamants, 75013. Tel: 01 45 80 70 10. Métros: Corvisart, Place d’ltalie.

  La Grande Épicerie, 24 rue de Sèvres, 75007. Tel: 01 44 39 81 00. Métro: Sèvres–Babylone.

  Mama Shelter Hotel, 109 rue de Bagnolet, 75020. Tel: 01 43 48 48 48. Métro: Gambetta.

  Musée Marmottan, 2 rue Louis Boilly, 75016. Tel: 01 44 96 50 33. Métro: Muette. Website: www.marmottan.com. Open every day except Monday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m., and Tuesdays till 9 p.m.

  Le Nemours, 2 place Colette, 75001. Tel: 01 42 61 42 16. Métro: Palais-Royal.

  Le Pause Café, 41 rue de Charonne, 75011. Tel: 01 48 06 80 33. Métro: Ledru-Rollin.

  2 Pavements

  Hôtel Meurice, 228 rue de Rivoli, 75001. Tel: 01 44 58 10 10. Métro: Concorde.

  Lycée Janson de Sailly, 106 rue de la Pompe, 75016. Métro: Rue de la Pompe.

  Vespasienne, outside Prison de la Santé, boulevard Arago, 75014 Paris. Métros: Saint-Jacques, Denfert-Rochereau. Tel: As far as I know, pissoirs don’t have phones.

  3 Water

  Canal de l’Ourcq: boats from the Bassin de la Villette and the Parc de la Villette go up the canal to northern suburbs like Pantin, Bondy and Aulnay-sous-Bois. Every weekend from the end of May to the end of August. Saturdays 1 euro, Sundays 2 euros. A chance to see old industrial sites (renovated and very much not) and, sadly, homeless people’s camps. A piece of advice—don’t decide to get off at the terminus and find a cosy restaurant. There’s almost nowhere to eat and only poor neighbourhoods to see. Come back with the boat.

  Chez Clément, 9 place Saint-André des Arts, 75006. Tel: 08 99 23 48 14. Métro: Saint-Michel.

  Pont de l’Alma, bridge at the exit of métro station Alma-Marceau. The Zouave is on the up-river (eastern) side.

  Quai Saint-Bernard, near the Institut du Monde Arabe: dancing happens here every night in July and August, unless it’s raining. It’s all semi-improvised, and all free. Being a French event, it’s strictly categorized into rock’n’roll, tango, salsa, hip-hop, etc. Métro: Jussieu.

  Sewers (Égouts de Paris), opposite 93 quai d’Orsay, 75007. Tel: 01 53 68 27 81. Métro: Alma-Marceau. Open Saturday–Wednesday, 11 a.m.–4 p.m. from October to April; and 11 a.m.–5 p.m. May–September.

  Water-themed guided tours, Eau de Paris, see the website: www.eaudeparis.fr/page/pavillon/parcours-conferences?page_id=93

  4 The Métro

  Basilique de Saint-Denis, the ancient royal cathedral north of Paris. Saint-Denis is better known for the Stade de France and occasional rioting, but this cathedral was the first-ever gothic building, and the burial place of all French kings up to the Revolution. April-September 10 a.m.-6.15 p.m., Sundays 12 noon-6.15 p.m.; October-March 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Sundays 12 noon-5.15 p.m. Métro: Basilique de Saint-Denis.

  La Flèche d’Or, see Chapter 1 listings.

  Parc André Citroën, a large modern park in the 15th arrondissement, worth a visit to take a fixed-balloon ride 150 metres up to see the Paris skyline, including the nearby Eiffel Tower. Adults 12 euros at weekends, 10 euros weekdays, reductions for young people. Open every day from 9 a.m. until 30 minutes before the park closes (usually at dusk). To check that day’s opening times, tel: 01 44 26 20 00. Métros: Javel, Balard.

  5 History

  Arènes de Lutèce, hidden behind the walls at 51 rue Monge, 75005, or accessible via the garden in rue des Arènes. Métros: Place Monge, Cardinal Lemoine, Jussieu.

  Café de Flore, 172 boulevard Saint-Germain, 75006. Tel: 01 45 48 55 26. Métro: Saint-Germain des Prés.

  Chapelle Expiatoire, square Louis XVI, 29, rue Pasquier, 75008. Tel: 01 44 32 18 00. Métros: Saint-Lazare, Saint-Augustin, Havre-Caumartin. Open 1 p.m.–5 p.m., Thursday, Friday, Saturday, as well as on most bank holidays, and Bastille Day (14 July).

  Musée Carnavalet, 23 rue de Sévigné, 75004. Tel: 01 44 59 58 58. Métro: Saint-Paul. Open 10 a.m.–6 p.m., every day except Mondays and (to quote the museum) ‘Sundays from Easter to Pentecost’.

  Thermes de Cluny, part of the Musée du Moyen ge, 6 place Paul Painlevé, 75005. Tel: 01 53 73 78 16. Métros: Cluny–La Sorbonne, Saint-Michel. Open every day except Tuesday, 9.15 a.m.–5.45 p.m. Closed Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.

  6 Romance

  Amour, hotel and restaurant, 8 rue de Navarin, 75009. Tel: 01 48 78 31 80. Métros: Pigalle, Saint-Georges.

  Bassin de la Villette, large canal basin just northeast of Stalingrad métro station. Big, wet and greenish-brown. You can’t miss it.

  Café Restaurant Le Temple, 87 rue Turbigo, 75003. Tel: 01 42 72 30. Métros: Temple, République.

  The Champ-de-Mars gardens stretch between the Ecole Militaire and the Eiffel Tower, and are open all the time. Métros: École Militaire, Bir-Hakeim.

  La Coupole, see listings for Chapter 1.

  Hôtel des Grandes Écoles, 75 rue Cardinal Lemoine, 75005. Tel: 01 43 26 79 23. Métro: Cardinal Lemoine.

  MK2 Quai de Loire, MK2 Quai de Seine, cinemas on either side of the Bassin de la Villette (see above, in this chapter).

  Palais-Royal gardens, 75001 Paris, main access points at 6 rue de Montpensier, or behind Le Nemours café (see Chapter 1 listings). Métro: Palais-Royal. Open at 7 a.m., and close at 8.30 p.m. between 31 March and 1 October; 9.30 p.m. in June and September; and 10.30 p.m. between 1 April and 31 May.

  Pont des Arts crosses the Seine just west of the Île de la Cité. Métro: Louvre-Rivoli. (It will probably need a phone number soon, so you can book a place at sunset.)

  Le Ritz, 15 place Vendôme, 75001. 01 43 16 30 30 (and ask to book a table in le bar or le jardin). Métro: you really want to go to the Ritz by métro? Why not—I always do. Opéra and Concorde are both handy.

  La Villa Royale, 2 rue Duperré, 75009. Tel: 01 55 31 78 78. Métro: Pigalle.

  7 Sex

  Le Chabanais brothel. It was closed in 1946, you naughty person.

  Le Crazy Horse, 12 avenue George V, 75008. Tel: 01 55 26 10 10. Métro: George V, Alma–Marceau.

  Musée de l’Érotisme, 72 boulevard de Clichy, 75018. Métro: Blanche. Open seven days a week, 10 a.m. to 2 a.m.

  8 Food

  Aligre market, place d’Aligre, 75012. Métro: Ledru-Rollin. Market hall open every day except Monday. Big food market and flea market on Sundays.

  Café Voisin, rue Saint-Honoré—closed in 1930, and stopped serving camel and elephant long before that.

  Le Grenier à Pain boulangerie, 38 rue des Abbesses, 75018. Tel: 01 42 23 85 36. Métro: Abbesses.

  Joinville outdoor food market, rue de Joinville, 75019. Métro: Crimée. Thursday and Sunday mornings.

  Musée Carnavalet, see Chapter 5 listings.

  9 Fashion


  Bandits Manchots, website: www.banditsmanchots.net.

  L’Éclaireur, bobo shop: for various branches, see www.leclaireur.com (the website is a Parisian experience in itself).

  10 Cinema

  Forum des Images, Porte Saint-Eustache, Les Halles, 75001. Tel: 01 44 76 62 00. Métro: Les Halles. For full opening times and prices, see: www.forumdesimages.fr.

  The paris.fr website offers downloads of bilingual Parcours Cinéma or Paris film trails, little guides listing the main locations of (at the time of writing) a dozen or so films. And they don’t stick to intellectual French productions—Rush Hour 3 has a Parcours (presumably because the producers spent a fortune filming at the Eiffel Tower, the Invalides and the Opéra). Even the cartoon Ratatouille has one, though the animators probably didn’t do any of their graphic wizardry down in the real sewers. According to Mission Cinéma, there will be more of these Parcours on line soon.

  11 Art

  Pierre Chandelier, painter, see www.chandelier.free.fr.

  Cité Fleurie, 65 boulevard Arago, 75013. Métro: Les Gobelins.

  Cité des Fusains, 22 rue Tourlaque, 75018. Métros: Place de Clichy, Blanche.

  Drouot auction house, 9 rue Drouot, 75009. Tel: 01 48 00 20 20. Métro: Richelieu-Drouot. Check www.drouot.com for sales dates. It is a French company, so there isn’t generally much activity in July, and none at all in August.

  Fondation Arp, 21 rue des Châtaigniers, 92140 Clamart. Tel: 01 45 34 22 63. Train station: Meudon-Val Fleury on Line C of the RER. Open Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, 2–6 p.m.

  La Forge de Belleville, 23–5 rue Ramponeau, 75020. Métro: Belleville. For events and art classes, check www.tracesbelleville.org. However, due to the dispute between the different groups of artists in the studios, the information might not be exhaustive.

  Guy Honore, ceramic artist, 14, rue Dénoyez, 75020. Métro: Belleville.

  Journées Portes Ouvertes (artists’ open days), see listings at:

  www.parisgratuit.com/ateliers.html

  www.ateliers-artistes-belleville.org

  www.ateliersdemenilmontant.org

  www.montmartre-aux-artistes.org

  and others.

  Musée Marmottan, 2 rue Louis Boilly, 75016. Tel: 01 44 96 50 33. Métro: Muette. Website: www.marmottan.com. Open every day except Monday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m., and Tuesdays till 9 p.m.

  Paul Prouté, 74 rue de Seine, 75006. Tel: 01 43 26 89 80. Métros: Mabillon, Odéon.

  Villa Mallebay, starts at 88 rue Didot, 75014. Métros: Pernety, Alésia.

  12 Apartments

  De Particulier à Particulier property sales magazine, commonly called Le Particulier for short, comes out every Thursday. All ads also appear on their website, www.pap.fr.

  APPENDIX 2

  FURTHER READING

  THERE ARE A DIZZYING NUMBER of books about Paris, including my own. Here are some classics written by French authors. They’re mainly fictional works, but no less accurate for that.

  Guy de Maupassant was a fun-loving civil servant who finally succumbed to syphilis. In short, an archetypal nineteenth-century Parisian gentleman. His Mademoiselle Fiji is a collection of short, easy-to-read stories published in 1882. One of these is ‘Une Aventure parisienne’, the tale of a provincial wife who comes to Paris to ‘try vice’. She samples absinthe, artists, theatres and casual sex. Another of the stories, ‘Nuit de Noël’, is about a young man who decides to go out and find a prostitute to share his Christmas dinner. And to act as dessert, of course. He finds a pretty, plump girl, takes her home and gets a surprise when they go to bed.

  Emile Zola’s Le Ventre de Paris (1873) and Au Bonheur des Dames (1883) are two portraits of Paris by a man who would have been making social documentaries if TV had been invented. Le Ventre de Paris is all about the food markets at Les Halles and the way that the well-fed Parisians allow both their tummies and their political convictions to go flabby. Au Bonheur des Dames is a kind of antidote to the Shopaholic novels—Zola describes the working conditions in Paris’s first department store.

  J.-K. Huysmans (who clearly inspired Harry Potter’s creator when she was looking for a nom de plume) was a Parisian writer who dabbled in Satanism and general decadence before settling down to become an author. His Croquis parisiens (1880) are, as their name suggests, short sketches of the racy Paris he knew, including the Folies-Bergère.

  Raymond Queneau’s novel Zazie dans le Métro is a book that really should be read in French, and read aloud. Queneau plays constant games with phonetic transcriptions of the way working-class Parisians spoke at the end of the 1950s. It’s the story of a brattish provincial twelve-year-old, Zazie, who comes to Paris to see the métro, and gets swept away by the surreal nocturnal activities of her uncle Gabriel, a heterosexual man who is forced to make a living as a cross-dressing cabaret artist. The novel is so much fun that it is almost impossible to believe Queneau was a mathematician and an associate of the elitist, humourless Jean-Paul Sartre.

  Photo Acknowledgements

  xiv: © Bettman/Corbis; 23: SaverioTruglia/Getty Images; 28: Roger-Viollet/Getty Images; 44: Frank Huster/Getty Images; 47: David Allan Brandt/Getty Images; 52: © John Kellerman/Alamy; 60: Getty Images; 63: Getty Images; 68: Roger-Viollet/Getty Images; 80: author’s photo; 98: Roger-Viollet/Getty Images; 120: Roger-Viollet/Getty Images; 124: Owen Franken/Corbis; 129: AFP/Getty Images; 133: Keenpress/Getty Images; 154: Benaroch/Rex Features; 167: Roger-Viollet/Rex Features; 174: Getty Images; 184: Jacques Pavlovsky/Sygma/Corbis; 195: Bob Peterson/Getty Images; 198: Getty Images; 206: © Photos 12/Alamy; 216: AFP/Getty Images; 228: © Iain Masterton/Alamy; 243: Getty Images; 258: Clément Guillaume/Getty Images; 270: Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.

  INDEX

  A | B | C | D | E

  F | G | H | I | J

  K | L | M | N | O

  P | Q | R | S | T

  U | V | W | Z

  A Bout de Souffle (film about smoking in bed) 223

  Abbesses métro station, Guimard entrance 91

  accommodation

  not worth complaining about 24

  see also apartments; hotels

  AD&MCF (fashion designers) 209–10

  African community 15–16, 82

  hairdressers’ touts 12

  aggression, perfectly good reasons for 3–4

  air-conditioning, unromantic 141

  Aligre market 13, 180, 285

  Allen, Woody (filmmaker)

  with Carla Bruni 216

  sexiness in Parisians’ eyes 218

  Alma, see Pont

  Alma-Marceau 88

  Alsatian cuisine (nothing to do with dogs) 190

  American rap culture, influence on French art 236–7

  American Revolution 87

  Americans

  reading newspapers in the 6th arrondissement 263

  with second homes in the Marais 8

  Amicale Bouliste des Arènes de Lutèce 105

  Amour, Hôtel 144, 283

  Anderson, Pamela (actress), at Crazy Horse club 170

  Annaud, Jean-Jacques (filmmaker) 217

  annoying, how not to be 19–27

  anti-social behaviour, Parisian, pride in 1–2

  Anvers métro station 82

  apartment buildings, value 260–2

  apartments

  buying 259, 262–78

  direct from owners 267–77

  renting 259–62

  après vous, usage 26

  Arago boulevard

  artists’ studios 239

  last surviving pissoir 41

  arbres d’alignement 45-6

  Archives, rue des, gay area 8

  Arènes de Lutèce 103–5, 283

  Arletty, actress 223

  Arp, Jean (Hans) (artist) 242–6

  artworks prices 249, 252

  arrondissements 3, 5, 6–17

  1st 7, 34, 35

  2nd 7

  3rd 8

  4th 8–9

  5th 9, 140

  6
th 9–10

  7th 5, 10

  8th 11, 200, 213

  9th 11–12

  10th 12

  11th 5, 12–13

  12th 13

  13th 13–14

  14th 14

  15th 14, 86

  16th 5, 14–15, 89

  17th 15, 91

  18th 15–16, 90

  19th 5, 16

  20th 5, 16–17

  posh, affordable apartments 262–3

  art 229–57

  auctions, Drouot sales rooms 253–7

  galleries, small 250–2

  museums 241–6

  Art Deco murals, La Coupole 149

  Art Nouveau 75–6

  boudoir 118–19

  glass 117

  see also Guimard

  artists’ studios 238–41

  purpose-built 238

  subsidized 240–41

  Arts et Métiers métro station 90

  artworks prices 249–57

  Assemblée Nationale 10

  August, Paris empty in 224

  Aujourd’hui (newspaper) 1

  Austerlitz, see Gare

  Australian hairdressing 212

  Auvergnat cuisine 190

  Avenue, L’ (restaurant) 11

  bacteria, everyday exchange of 182–3

  bad driving 17, 147, 224

  Bagnolet, rue de 17

  baguettes

  and bacteria 183, 188–9

  in literature 186

  testing 183–9

  see also Grand Prix de la Baguette

  Balard - Créteil Préfecture: métro line 8 87–8

  balloon rides, Parc André Citroën 89, 282

  ballooning

  and Eiffel Tower 117

  early 141

  Olympic event 72n

  Balzac, Honoré de (writer), in dressing gown on métro platform 92

  bandes dessinées (BD) 235

  Bandits Manchots (fashion label) 209–10, 285

  banlieusards, grudging respect for 5–6

  Bar Ourcq 16, 132

  Barbès 15–16

  métro station, see Barbès–Rochechouart