Paris - Les Halles the Marais and the Bastille Travel Guides | Paris | Sub Regions | Paris - Les Halles the Marais and the Bastille

Trendy boutiques, hip hang-outs, historic squares, aristocratic- mansions-turned-museums, the Rive Droite is fashionable and, in parts, smart. In the eyes of Parisians it has its low points too – the eyesore Forum des Halles and brazenly drunken rue de Lappe – but the good far outweighs the questionable. Sandwiched between Les Halles and the Bastille is the Marais, everybody’s favourite place for aimless wandering thanks to its winding medieval streets, charming tea rooms and bars, and ultra-fashionable shops. Rue des Rosiers, a resolutely Jewish street, is packed with bakeries, kosher restaurants and falafel takeaway joints. The city's unabashedly gay centre is around rue Vieille-du-Temple and rue des Lombards. To the west is the Centre Pompidou, an architectural masterpiece of the late 1970s that brought a buzz to the surrounding area. The multicoloured fun continues with the funky fountains in neighbouring place Igor Stravinsky, and there are plenty of art and photography galleries along rue Beaubourg and rue Quincampoix. The winds of regeneration that the Pompidou Centre blew into Les Halles, the new Opéra Bastille opera house brought to the Bastille just over a decade later. Gritty, working-class Bastille quickly emerged as an after-dark hotspot and bastion of designer outlets, but it still clings resolutely to its revolutionary credentials. Raucous protests and demonstrations are a common sight on place de la Bastille. For a glimpse of the grittier side of life, away from the trendy shops and restaurants of rue de la Roquette and rue du Fauboug St Antoine, head to the Marché Aligre and the surrounding streets, where old-style bars decorated with sullen, red-faced locals and fag butts are still the norm.

Sights

75001. M Les Halles.

Les Halles has always been a commercial centre. However, the modern underground shopping mall (Forum des Halles) found here today bears no resemblance to the centuries-old fruit and vegetable market that was located here until 1969. It’s an overcomplicated warren, a confusion of floors and escalators, shoppers and travellers changing trains. When it was built bourgeois Parisians quickly disowned it, and teenagers just as quickly claimed it. The gardens surrounding it are actually surprisingly pretty, and there’s always a medley of buskers bashing out some tunes. Southeast of Forum des Halles is the small place Joachim du Bellay. The square lies on what was once part of the Cimetière des Innocents, the city’s main burial site until the catacombs were opened in 1785.

2 impasse Saint-Eustache, 75001, T 01 42 36 31 05. Mon-Sun 0900-1930. Free. M Les Halles.

One of the largest and most beautiful churches in Paris, built between 1532 and 1640, Saint-Eustache stands 33.5 m high, 100 m long and 43 m wide. As a result of the length of time it took to complete, the buttressed design of the church is Gothic, but the interior decoration is Renaissance in style. It is here that Louis XIV had his first communion, and here that Richelieu and Molière were baptized. Since the 17th century one of the side chapels has been dedicated to French charcutiers, and each year on the last Sunday in November the church holds a special mass for charcutiers, with tastings afterwards. Recently renovated, their chapel is now adorned with two paintings by Swiss artist John Armleder, with particles of glass in the paint that reflect the light. Some of the church’s stained-glass windows and damaged murals are currently being restored – hence the scaffolding – a job that could take years. There are regular organ concerts held here on Wednesday evenings, and free organ recitals every Sunday, 1730-1800.

Place Beaubourg, 75004, T 01 44 78 12 33, http://www.centrepompidou.fr Wed-Mon 1100-2100. Atelier Brancusi Wed-Sun 1300-1900. Musée National d’Art Moderne and Atelier Brancusi €5.50, concessions €3.50. Separate ticket for temporary exhibitions. Free admission to permanent exhibitions on the first Sunday of the month. M Rambuteau.

Reopened for the Milennium after a E70m refurbishment, the Pompidou Centre has regained its shine and now has increased exhibition space for the vast and impressive collection of the French National Museum of Modern Art, covering the defining art movements of the 20th century, from Fauvism and Cubism to Pop Art as well as design, architecture and photography.

In the late 1960s French President Georges Pompidou decided Paris needed a startling new museum, something that would make as much of an impact as a building as for the art it contained. The result was a riot of multicoloured pipes and tubes supported and contained by a complex steel skeleton. Architects Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers and Gianfranco Franchini took the building’s functional requirements and turned them into an 'expandable spatial diagram': yellow pipes for electricity, blue pipes for air conditioning, green pipes for water, red escalators for people, and white funnels as underground ventilation shafts. Temporary exhibitions of all disciplines are on Level 6, the library is on Levels 1-3, and the National Modern Art Museum is on Level 4-5. Level 5 holds the collections 1905-60, while Level 4 has works from 1960 to the present day. Highlights include works by Picasso, Matisse, Miró, Warhol, Beuys and Cartier-Bresson. Place George Pompidou in front of the centre – a favourite with street performers – is also the site of the reconstructed workshop of sculptor Constantin Brancusi.

Hôtel de Saint-Aignan, 71 rue du Temple, 75003, T 01 53 01 86 60. Mon-Fri 1100-1800, Sun 1000-1800. €6.10, under 26s €3.80, under 18s free. M Rambuteau. Labels only in French, but audioguides in different languages included in the ticket price.

Covering the history and art of the Jewish community in France and elsewhere in the diaspora from the Middle Ages onwards, the museum has textiles, religious artefacts, paintings, sketches and scale models of synagogues. A restored and converted mansion in Le Marais, built in 1650 for the Comte d’Avaux, the building was used as town hall during the French Revolution. Among the first exhibits are wedding rings from the 16th and 17th centuries, and beautiful framed ketoubbahs, or marriage contracts, from the 18th and 19th centuries. One of the highlights is a late 19th-century Sukkah, a religious wooden booth from Southern Germany, decorated with naïve paintings, including a panoramic view of Jerusalem showing the Wailing Wall.

4 place de l’Hôtel de Ville, 75004, T 01 42 76 50 49. Telephone to enquire about tours, groups only. Free. M Hôtel de Ville.

The Mayor of Paris conducts local government from here, the town hall. A fanciful turreted building, it was erected in the 19th century, on the same spot and in the same style as the original town hall, which burnt to the ground thanks to the Paris Commune in 1871. The square was once a site of public execution. Nowadays it has a carousel ride in summer and an ice-skating rink in winter .

5-7 rue de Fourcy, 75004, T 01 44 78 75 00. Wed-Sun 1100-1930. €5, concessions €2.50, under 8s free. M St Paul, Pont Marie.

There is no shortage of museums and public and private galleries that intermittently, if not consistently, showcase photography exhibitions, but this is probably the leader of the pack. It hosts only temporary exhibitions – often two running concurrently – and there is also a library and bookshop. Exhibitions are spread across a former mansion and its more modern extension. This is the venue that coordinates the biannual Mois de la Photo, an extravaganza of photo shows held throughout the city.

75004. M St Paul.

The centre of the Jewish community in Paris since medieval times is now a vibrant mix of falafel takeaways, cafés, bakeries and orthodox Jews. It heaves with strolling crowds on Sundays.

60 rue des Francs-Bourgeois, 75003, T 01 40 27 61 78. Mon, Wed-Fri 1000-1230, 1400-1730. Sat-Sun 1400-1730. €3, concessions/ children €2.30. M Rambuteau, St Paul.

Much of the furnishings and decoration in this early 18th-century mansion were sold or destroyed during the Revolution, but the Princesses’ apartments in particular give a sense of life as a noble in pre-Revolutionary France. The Assembly Room has its original decorated ceiling, with a continent symbolized in each of the four corners: Europe with a horse, Africa with a lion, Asia with a camel and America with an alligator. The bedchamber and oval salon are highly ornate, with gilded carved wood panels and many paintings. Half the national archives are kept here, the other half being in the Hôtel de Rohan. Both mansions were built by the same architect – Alexis Delamair – for the Rohan family.

Hôtel Donon, 8 rue Elzévir, 75003, T 01 40 27 07 21. Tue-Sun 1000-1740. Temporary exhibitions €3.30, concessions €2.20, 14-26 years €1.60. Permanent exhibition free. M St Paul.

The museum represents the unflagging enthusiasm for 18th- century art and furniture shared by Ernest Cognacq (founder of department store La Samaritaine) and his wife Louise Jay. Their interests included paintings, tapestries, porcelain figurines and sculptures. Presentation in reconstructed rooms gives a detailed impression of French aristocratic living. Room XIV is the most downright luxurious, from its sumptuous embroidered suite to its bronze nymph candelabra. To complete the picture, the cabinets in Room XVI glitter with life’s little luxuries: cigar boxes, pocket watches and cosmetic boxes. The plain, even austere, Hôtel Donon takes its name from Médéric de Donon, for whom it was built at the end of the 16th century. After his death and a further 40 years in his family, the house changed hands, was subsequently abandoned and finally restored by the City of Paris as a museum.

23 rue de Sévigné, 75003, T 01 44 59 58 58. Tue-Sun 1000-1740. Free. M St Paul, Chemin Vert.

It would be easy to spend an entire afternoon in the 140 rooms of this vast museum dedicated to the city’s history. The museum opened in 1880, at the instigation of Baron Haussmann, and exhibits include archaeological finds, medals, paintings, sculptures and numerous works of art. There are some wonderful recreations of Paris’s past. Room 142 is the Boutique Fouquet, an art deco jewellery shop built by Alphonse Mucha in 1901 and dismantled in 1923 as already out of fashion. Room 146 is the shimmering 1920s ballroom of the Hôtel Wendel, which was painted first with a layer of white gold and then finished with colour. The museum courtyards have beautifully intricate box-tree hedges.

Hôtel Salé, 5 rue de Thorigny, 75003, T 01 42 71 25 21. Wed-Mon 0930-1800 (until 1730 in winter). €5.5, concessions €4. under 18s free. Sun €4. Free first Sun of month. M Saint Paul, Chemin Vert, St Sébastien-Froissart.

A chronological journey through the artist’s life, from childhood drawings right up to his death in 1973, the museum begins with works from the dawn of the 20th century, including a gem from the blue period, Self-portrait (1901). The Cubist rooms reveal the ground-breaking perspective devised by Picasso and Georges Braque, whereby different aspects of a subject, its different realities, were visualized on the canvas simultaneously. From here the tour continues through Picasso’s ‘classical’ phase to the works inspired by time spent at the French seaside, including The Bathers (1928). There are pieces from the Boisgeloup output of 1931, where Picasso produced scores of monumental heads of women. The basement covers the war years and the sculptures from his time at Vallauris in the early 1950s. The final pieces include Seated Old Man (1970-71). There are excellent explanatory notes about Picasso’s life and works at the beginning of each room, and for once these are not just in French. The Hôtel Salé (salty mansion), acquired its name in the 17th century from the trade of its first owner, Aubert de Fontenay, who was a salt tax collector.

75004. M St Paul.

This beautiful square of arcaded red-brick and stone buildings around a well-kept lawn is a target for strolling tourists throughout the year, and for sunbathers in summer. If the grass is full, head for one of the pavement cafés, squeezed between the art galleries and busking musicians under the arcades. The square as it stands today was laid out by Henri IV in the early 17th century and inaugurated by his successor Louis XIII in 1612. At that time it was called place Royale, thanks to the royal palace along one side of the square (lettings to speculators accounted for the other three sides). Henri IV was not the first royal to take a liking to the site. Charles V had relocated the Parisian royal residence here from Île de la Cité in the 14th century, but Catherine de Medici had demolished it and replaced it with a horse market. In 1800 the place Royale became place des Vosges, in recognition of the Vosges département, the first in France to pay taxes.

Hôtel de Rohan-Guéménée, 6 place des Vosges, 75004, T 01 42 72 10 16. Tue-Sun 1000-1740. €5.50, concessions €4. children €2.50. Permanent exhibition free. M Saint Paul, Chemin Vert.

From 1832 until he was forced into exile by the 1848 Revolution, the writer Victor Hugo lived with his family in a second-floor apartment overlooking the delightful place des Voges. It is said that, amongst other works, he wrote at least part of Les Misérables here. Since 1903 the apartment has been open as a museum.

75011. M Bastille.

Carlos Ott’s Opéra Bastille, a stepped glass building, opened here in 1989 in recognition of the bicentenary of the 1789 Revolution. One of Mitterand's Grand Projets, the new opera house has been dogged by controversy about its stark architectural style, its acoustics and its location in a staunchly working-class area.

In the 14th century the fortress of the Bastille was built to protect the eastern part of the city against invasion. Later it was converted into a prison where the king detained subjects who had displeased him. Nothing remains of the fortress-prison in today’s place de la Bastille – the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789 is well documented as the start of the French Revolution, and the structure did not last long as eager revolutionaries carted away stones as souvenirs. The Colonne de Juillet in the middle of the square is a column dedicated to the memory of those who died in the revolution of 1830, and is traditionally the focus of contemporary demonstrations.

75010. M Château d’Eau, Strasbourg St Denis.

This is not picturesque Paris in the traditional sense, this is the real deal. No romantic buildings, just hard-working immigrant communities. At the Château d’Eau end, the rue du Faubourg St Denis brims with Indian grocers and sari shops. Detour to Passage Brady for the highest concentration of Indian restaurants in the city. Towards the southern end of the street, around Strasbourg St Denis, you’re more likely to find your appetite whetted by Turkish pizzas and kebabs. Further still, into seedy rue St Denis, prostitutes, sex shops and fast-food joints line the road as far as Les Halles.

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