Clifton-Mogg - Hidden Paris

Hidden
Paris

Discovering and exploring Parisian interiors

Caroline Clifton-Mogg

In association with
Vivre CtParis

Hidden Paris

Discovering and exploring Parisian interiors

Digital Edition 1.0

Text 2017 Caroline Clifton-Mogg

Photographs 2017 as noted throughout.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except brief portions quoted for purpose of review.

Gibbs Smith

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ISBN: 978-1-4236-4731-7

There is a house in which a family writes a journal of its daily life on every floor; there is a garret where a couple are at the start of their story; there is a cabin-apartment, home to a traveler and his suitcases between flights; there is a studio in which an artist derives inspiration; and there is an architect-designed duplex, a space both intimate and convivial...

To reunite all the different facets of Parisian life and present them to our readers is the mission of Ct Paris, and one that we are happy to share in Hidden Paris, a book that has brought together the best of our collection of snapshots of Parisian lives. For almost ten years, the magazine has continued to refine its editorial line, always pushing beyond the clichs, the obvious and the conventional, moving away from the beaten track.

Paris has its secrets, the city has its mysteries. One has to know how to win her over, how to discover the enigma. In making Paris our landscape as well as our playground we have endeavored to look at the city through the eyes of someone who is unfamiliar with it, paying attention to the other, the different. We are always drawn to the unusual, the original, the inventive, the creativeand all those who stimulate a creativity that makes the difference. Driven by this desire and with the passing of time, Ct Paris has become the true documenter of the unknown, the invisible, the unexpected. It takes all sorts to make a world, and a city, too. This kaleidoscope of places, of lives and scenes, this careful alchemy is our backdrop. In this city, surprises are everywhere: look up and discover ornate balconies; push open street doors to discover garden courtyards; uncover hidden passages; cross the bridges to straddle both banks. Paris is every style, every hour, and every mood.

To make our pages a dedicated rendezvous not only for Parisians but also all lovers of the City of Light, we have observed the city even more closelyfrom outside at twilight, when life can be glimpsed through the windows, and above all, from inside, where lives are revealed more intimately. This life behind the scenes, this view of the unusual, we share in Hidden Paris. Building on our photographs, the book continues, in words and images, the idea of our very secret and very confidential Paris.

Martine Duteil

Editor in Chief, Ct Paris

The Sacr-Coeur Basilica is built on top of la butte Montmartre, the highest point in the city. Although the foundation stone of the church was not laid until 1884 (and the building not completed until 1914), it quickly became an instantly recognizable symbol of the city of Paris and remains so to this day.

Photographer: Benoit Linero. Stylist: Martine Duteil. Architect: Antoine Ricardou.

Surrounded by greenery, including Fatsia japonica and an Aime Vibert climbing rose, this terrace becomes an extra living space furnished with an osier willow seat and an outdoor rug, and offering an unrivaled view over Sacr-Coeur.

Photographer: Bruno Suet. Stylist: Amandine Schira. Landscape gardener: David Jeannerot.

Photographer: Nicolas Millet. Stylist: Alix de Dives.

Photographer: Yann Monel. Stylist: Nomie Barr. Landscape gardener: Hugues Peuvergne.

Photographer: Nathalie Baetens. Stylist: Nomie Barr.

Photographer: Vronique Mati. Stylist: Nomie Barr.

One of the pleasures of living in central London, as I do, is to walk along a street in the early evening at that short-lived moment when the indoor lights have been switched on, but the drapes and shades have not yet been closed. Through some windows can be seen interiors that look like stage setspropped ready for action but tantalizingly still, as if they were waiting for the cast to come on. Other windows already have the oblivious actors in position: children eking out the last drops of their day, and adultssome pensive, some almost knowingly theatricalpouring a drink, reading a paper, speaking to someone out of view, all of them stage-lit by the lamps behind them.

But Paris is not like that. In the equivalent residential areas of that mysterious and alluring city, such real-life tableaux can rarely be savored, for much of Paris is built inside out, as it were. Many of the buildings in the center of the city are fronted by faades that sit directly at pavement level, with the ground floor represented by either an aloof blank wall or, perhaps, a shop front. (This is not so in those parts of Paris that once were outlying villages, such as Montmartre and Belleville, where winding, cobbled streets and village houses can still be found.)

Further along the faade, there will be a single or double, and usually imposing, wooden door. There seems little evidence of daily life, unless, that is, the door has been uncharacteristically left open. For then the curious passer-by can see into a passage with a courtyard beyondsometimes large, more often small, possibly classically formal or, more usually, something more akin to a corner of a village square. Doors open onto the yard, a staircase leads up to higher floors, and there can often be various assorted greenery and other more tangible evidence of family life.

There are, as is so often the case, historical reasons or precedents for much of this: in the 17th and 18th centuries, the large, grand hotels that were being built in Paris, both on the right and left banks of the city, were deliberately designed to be exclusive rather than inclusive. They had high walls and doors that opened through an inner hall onto a formal courtyard, at one end of which stood the house, invisible from the street. This pattern was continued by 19th-century developers, including those putting up residential buildings in the new Paris of Baron Haussmann, with imposing apartment blocks backed by large courtyardsa front exterior facing the public zone of the street, a back exterior facing the private zone of the courtyard.