Belleville
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Parc Belleville

East of the parc des Buttes-Chaumont, between rue de Crimée and place de Rhin-et-Danube, dozens of cobbled and gardened villas lead off from rue Miguel-Hidalgo, rue du Général-Brunet, rue de la Liberté, rue de l'Égalité and rue de Mouzaïa. It is so light and airy here, you wonder why places like Auteuil and Passy should ever have seemed so much more desirable. Heading south, you meet the main street rue de Belleville. Close to its highest point is the place des Fêtes, still with a market, though no longer so festive. Once the village green, it's now surrounded by concrete tower blocks and shopping parades, a terrible monument to the unimaginative redevelopment of the 1960s and 1970s. The little place is green nonetheless, containing a small park with a rotunda, lawns and trees, its benches filled with locals on a pleasant day. As you descend the steepening gradient of rue Belleville, round the church of St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Belleville, among the boulangeries and charcuteries, you could be in the busy main street of any French provincial town. Continuing down rue de Belleville past rue des Pyrénées, at the corner of rue Julien-Lacroix, you come to a square that has been created from an empty Lot. On the side of one of the exposed apartment building walls, there's a large mural of a detective and nearby the neo-realist artist Ben has sculpted a trompe-l'œil sculpture of a sign being erected which says "Il faut se méfier des mots" ("Words must be mistrusted").

Below rue des Pyrénées, bits of old Belleville remain – dilapidated – alongside the new. On the wall of no. 72 rue de Belleville, a plaque commemorates the birth of the legendary chanteuse, Édith Piaf, although she was in fact found abandoned as a baby on the steps here.

A little lower off rue de Belleville, the cobbled rue Piat climbs past the beautiful wrought-iron gate of the jungly Villa Otoz to the Parc de Belleville, created in the mid-1990s. From the terrace at the junction with rue des Envierges, there's a fantastic view across the city, especially at sunset. At your feet, the small park descends in a series of more terraces and waterfalls – a total success compared to the nondescript development of the previous decade. Inevitably, this has not been lost on restaurateurs and several upscale eateries have opened their doors in the area, a possible sign of change to come.

Continuing straight ahead, a path crosses the top of the park past a minuscule vineyard and turns into steps that drop down to rue des Couronnes. Some of the adjacent streets are worth a wander for a feel of the changing times – rue de la Mare, rue des Envierges, rue des Cascades – with two or three beautiful old houses in overgrown gardens, alongside new housing that follows the height and curves of the streets and passages between them.

Between the bottom of the park and boulevard de Belleville, original housing and a teeming street life have been all but erased, despite the concerted efforts of the local organization for the preservation of Belleville, who fought hard for restoration rather than demolition and for saving the little cafés, restaurants and shops that gave the quartier its life. Rue Ramponeau, running west from the Parc de Belleville, has a historic record of resistance: at the junction with rue de Tourtille, the very last barricade of the Commune was defended single-handedly for fifteen minutes by the last fighting Communard, before he melted away – to write a book about it all.

It's also in these streets and on the boulevard that the strong ethnic diversity of Belleville becomes apparent. Rue Ramponeau, for example, is still full of kosher shops, belonging to Sephardic Jews from Tunisia. Around the crossroads of rue du Faubourg-du-Temple and boulevard de Belleville, there are dozens of Chinese restaurants and a scattering of restaurants owned by Turks, Greeks and East Europeans. On the boulevard, especially during the Tuesday and Friday morning market, you see women from Mali, Gambia and Zaire, often wearing local dress, and men in burnouses. All this diversity is reflected in the produce on sale.

The boulevard is lined with dramatic new architecture, employing jutting triangles, curves, and the occasional reference to the roof lines of nineteenth-century Parisian blocks. The combination of old and new continues in Basse Belleville, in the large triangle of streets below boulevard de Belleville, bounded by rue du Faubourg-du-Temple (the most lively) and avenue de la République. The area retains a blend of French and immigrant workshops, small businesses, and traditional houses built with passages burrowing into courtyards. Here, La Java, at 105 rue du Faubourg-du-Temple, was a favourite hangout of Piaf's in its bal musette days; the original dance hall interior is still intact, but the dancing and music are now distinctly Latino. Zany high-tech metal and glass at no. 117 on the same street co-exists with small, unchanged business premises in the Cour des Bretons. Goods still cost around half the price as those in shops in the centre of the city, despite a number of increasingly fashionable restaurants.