Donna Wheeler - Paris Precincts: A Curated Guide to the City’s Best Shops, Eateries, Bars and Other Hangouts

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CONTENTS

Bienvenue to Paris Precincts! Welcome also to Paris, the worlds most fabled city, which draws more visitors than any other. This book is designed to inspire you to wander the citys boulevards and backstreets, to discover new neighbourhoods and explore with a fresh eye those that may already be familiar.

Just a decade or so ago, Paris was seen as stuck in its ways, tired, touristy and conservative. Not so today the city is exploding with a youthful, exuberant and irreverent energy. In some neighbourhoods it seems like a new caf, restaurant or cocktail bar opens every week; likewise shops selling the wares of young designers and artisans are popping up in streets once the preserve of butchers and bakers. Ive selected a snapshot of places that are part of this blossoming scene, along with a number of evergreens, eccentrics and surprises.

My Paris is always a mix of these sometimes opposing, sometimes complementary forces: I adore the thrill of the new, the cool, the now, but also long for the comfort and deep satisfaction of the traditional, the rough-around-the-edges and the true locals haunts. No book can be totally comprehensive, so I encourage you to use my suggestions to strike out, roam wide and dig deep, be it by arrondissement or street, or via chef, barista or designer, and claim Paris as your own.

Donna Wheeler

For many centuries the city of Paris was but a densely wound, walled settlement on the Seines le de la Cit, with marshlands to the north and fields and vineyards to the south. Its vaguely snail-shell-shaped blob is still remarkably compact home to a little over 2 million of greater Paris 12 million or so inhabitants although the map you navigate by today tells a story of rapid development from the medieval period onwards.

That snail shape, a volute if you will, has been divided into administrative areas called arrondissements since the French Revolution. From 1860, when Baron Haussmann razed and rebuilt much of old Paris, and pushed the city boundaries out to its former fortifications, there have been 20 numbered arrondissements spiraling out in a clockwise direction from the centres premier arrondissement or 1er.

That said, older Parisians can still recall a time when everyone thought of themselves as belonging to a quartier, or quarter, which either referred back to the pre-Revolution parish districts or sometimes the four smaller districts into which each arrondissement is divided. For hundreds of years these quartiers were where one was born, worked, shopped, socialised and often died. But in the years after WW II, as daily life moved beyond these tight village-like communities, each arrondissement took on its own broad identity as well.

Paris Precincts chapters are divided into these arrondissements, mostly a single one but sometimes two, and Ive used the French e suffix after each arrondissement number, which is the abbreviation of -eme (as in deuxime, troisime; i.e. second, third etc.). In the case of the 1st arrondissement, the abbreviation er is used, short for premier. Arrondissement numbers also appear as the last two digits in Parisian postcodes.

Each chapter is also headed up with a few neighbourhood names, a somewhat random collection of traditional quartiers, landmarks or major streets. These are not exhaustive there are many subdistricts in each arrondissement, not to mention landmarks but they are the most useful for travellers.

The citys other great geographical and social divider is the Seine, giving the city its rive gauche and rive droite the Left Bank and Right Bank. While these were once indicative of social status and mores the Left tending to bohemian, intellectual and, in parts, poor, while the Right was the centre of power and commerce these distinctions, always rather blurred, have, over time, come to mean very little. Current chroniclers of the city point out that a more obvious, if still rather reductive, division today runs east to west, with the eastern half being the playground of the young and fashionable, and home to significant immigrant communities, while the west is overwhelmingly where the wealthy and traditionally powerful reside.

Life in Paris contains many beautiful, fascinating contradictions. Its an undeniably modern, progressive world capital, one that in the last ten years has seen rapid gentrification along with an influx of globally aware, and not necessarily French, restaurateurs, shop owners, hoteliers and entrepreneurs. Its a city that feels like pure fantasy, a waking dream, for many visitors, but is, at the same time, a defiantly real, deeply complex and occasionally troubled place. It retains a profound, multilayered sense of self, and continues doggedly and delightfully in its traditional daily rhythms among the ghosts of history that live on, wherever you may turn.

THE FAMOUS FIVE

Eiffel Tower, 7e

Gustave Eiffels 1889 iron-latticed tower needs no introduction.

Notre-Dame de Paris, 4e

A French Gothic wonder of flying buttresses, gargoyles and sacred geometry, this 850-year-old cathedral is Paris enduring heart.

The Louvre, 1er

One of the worlds largest art museums, the Muse du Louvre is glorious, exhausting and absolutely unmissable.

Sacr-Cur, 18e

Built in a spirit of conservative piety (and questionable taste), this towering, white, late-19th-century basilica boasts Paris best views.

Cimetire du Pre-Lachaise, 20e

The leafy boulevards of this cemetery are lined with the graves and mausoleums of some of last centurys greatest thinkers, artists and musicians.

PARKS AND GARDENS

Jardin des Tuileries, 1er
Jardin du Luxembourg, 6e
Parc de Belleville, 20e
Parc des Buttes Chaumont, 19e
Bois de Boulogne, 16e
Parc de la Villette, 19e
Bois de Vincennes, 12e

MODERN ART

Centre Pompidou, 4e

Houses the Muse National dArt Moderne in a splendid, if controversial, 20th-century building.

Muse de lOrangerie, 1er

Home to eight of Monets luminous Water Lilies paintings, sublimely shimmering between abstraction and representation.

Muse dOrsay, 7e

The works of the Impressionists, post-Impressionists and much underrated Nabis occupy this former train station by the Seine.

Muse dArt Moderne, 16e

European and international art of the 20th century, as well as monographic contemporary shows usually no queues.

FASHION, DESIGN AND INTERIORS

Muse des Arts Dcoratifs, 1er

In a grand annexe of the Louvre, a fabulous collection of design and fashion.

Galerie-Muse Baccarat, 16e

A surreal Philippe Starck refit of a legendary maison particuliere (private house) filled with Baccarat crystal.

Fondation Pierre Berg Yves Saint Laurent, 16e

YSLs haute couture legacy lives on in this wonderful museum.

Palais Galliera, 16e

Great themed fashion exhibitions in a dramatic setting.

CULTURE AND HISTORY