The northern part of the Marais is ethnic, local, old-fashioned and working-class. As you get beyond the cluster of art galleries and brasseries that have sprung up around the Picasso museum, or, over to the west, across rue Michel-le-Comte, the aristocratic stone facades of the southern Marais give way to the more humble, though no less attractive, stucco, paint and thick-slatted shutters of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century streets. Some bear the names of old rural French provinces: Beauce, Perche, Saintonge, Picardie. Ordinary cafés and shops occupy the ground floors, while rag-trade leather workshops and printers – though these are getting fewer – operate in the interior of the cobbled courtyards.Robespierre lived in the rue de Saintonge, at no. 64, demolished in 1834. In the adjacent rue Charlot, at no. 9, yet another Marais mansion, the Hôtel de Retz, has been colonized by artists. It now houses the Passage de Retz (daily except Mon 10am–7pm; 6; M° Filles-du-Calvaire), with changing exhibitions of fine art and design from young artists; there's also a bookshop and café. Opposite, in the dead-end ruelle de Sourdis, one section of street has remained unchanged since its construction in 1626. Further along, on the corner of rue du Perche, a little classical facade on a leafy courtyard hides the Armenian church of Ste-Croix, testimony to the many Armenians who sought refuge here from the Turkish pogroms of World War I. Further still, on the left and almost to the busy rue de Bretagne, is the easily missed entrance to the Marché des Enfants-Rouges, one of the smallest and least-known food markets in Paris. Across rue de Bretagne, rue de Picardie leads up to the Carreau du Temple. Nothing remains of the Knights Templar's installations beyond the name of "Temple". The Carreau itself, which is a fine halles-like structure, shelters a clothes market (Tues–Sun mornings) with a heavy preponderance of leather gear. Rue de la Corderie, a pretty little street on the north side, opening into an otherworldly place, has a couple of pleasant cafés under the trees. These streets have a genteel and somewhat provincial air about them, but a couple of blocks to the west it's a different story. Rue du Temple, itself lined with many beautiful houses dating back to the seventeenth century (no. 41, for instance, the Hôtel Aigle d'Or, is the last surviving coaching inn of the period), is the dividing line, full of fascinating little businesses trading in fashion accessories: chains, bangles, beads – everything you can think of. Further along is the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme.
Pages in section ‘Quartier du Temple’: Knights Templar, Louis XVI, Chinatown, Arts et Métiers, Jewish Museum.
|
