Marvelous Marais

[Times photo: Bill Serne] Waiting for buyers, one of the many vendors selling paintings around the Place des Vosges paces past his wares.

By DIANE ROBERTS
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 3, 2002

This funky but elegant piece of medieval Paris escaped the wrecking ball and is now the hippest part of town.

The best part of Paris is hidden in plain view. You may have walked past it as you crossed one of the bridges to the Ile de la Cite or on your way to look at the Matisses in the Pompidou Center. Neglected for the better part of 300 years but now revived and renewed, the Marais is Paris through the looking glass.

The Paris of the postcards, the Paris of the movies is a metropolis of broad boulevards, operatic vistas and mighty monuments -- the Champs Elysees and the Arc de Triomphe. Though there has been a settlement on the banks of the Seine since before Roman times, in the 1850s, Napoleon III's city planner, Baron Haussmann, tore down much of medieval Paris and cut wide avenues through labyrinthine neighborhoods to make the airy, elegant city of today.

[Times photo: Mike Pease]

But the Marais, in the 3rd and 4th arondissements (districts), once a rundown riverside maze of narrow streets, crumbling palaces and tiny squares, escaped Haussman's redesign. The Marais is now the coolest part of town, full of fashionistas in Prada gliding into art galleries and chic bars. It's like Manhattan's TriBeCa with high Renaissance architecture.

The word marais means marsh: The Seine and a now-covered tributary would flood, turning this low-lying ground into wetlands. The Marais still feels more humid than the rest of Paris, almost as if it has its own microclimate, the same way it has its own microcultures.

In the Middle Ages, the place was drained and fortified. Still standing, among the junk shops and antique sellers of the Village St. Paul off the rue Saint-Paul, there's a large section of the city wall that King Philip-Augustus built in the 12th century. It is as thick and crude as Notre Dame is lacy and refined.

Tour Paris like a native Leave other tourists to their itineraries and guides; hop aboard a city bus with real Parisians and make the rounds of all the famous sights.

Walking around the Marais' skinny, often dead-ending streets gives you a sense of how medieval Paris must have been: jostling, polyglot and (to put it delicately) aromatic.

The Marais retains its aggressive multiculturalism. Gay bars sit next to organic cosmetics shops and eccentric museums covering everything from the history of hunting to Picasso's personal art collection.

There is even the Musee de la Curiosite et de la Magie, located in a cellar in the rue Saint-Paul, where you can learn exactly how they do that trick of sawing a woman in half.

Sleek-headed young Francaises in Azzedine Alaia (who does have a shop in the Marais) stand in line with old Sephardic women to buy falafels and pastrami at Chez Jo Goldenberg or Sacha Finkelsztajn in the rue des Rosiers. The Marais was the old Jewish quarter of Paris, as well as a haunt of the mysterious Knights Templar.

It was also the focus of later wars between Catholics and Protestants. The streets, with their delicious names -- the rue des Francs-Bourgeois, the rue Vielle-du-Temple, the rue Elzevir -- are like novels in themselves.

In the early 17th century, the Marais became the center of royal and intellectual Paris. King Henri IV built a grand square on the site of a palace Catherine de Medici had taken a dislike to and had torn down.

The king wanted the square to be a Renaissance antidote to the dark, labyrinthine Louvre, where French monarchs had lived, schemed and poisoned each other for hundreds of years. So Henri decreed warm pavilions made of coral-colored brick, with tall windows and covered arcades, putting his stamp on it by naming it the Place Royale.

These days it is called the Place des Vosges, renamed in 1800 for the first departement to pay its taxes to Napoleon. It is credited with being the oldest -- and most beautiful -- square in Paris.

The Bourbons and the Bonapartes are gone; the Place des Vosges is now given over to the new nobility of style.

The Deborah Chock gallery at 24 Place des Vosges holds rotating exhibitions of paintings by Paris' trendier artists. The Issey Miyake boutique is nearby, with Azzedine Alaia around the corner in the rue de Moussy.

When you get tired of trying on geometrical designer frocks in pleated leather, you can visit Victor Hugo's house at 6 Place des Vosges. It contains literary relics and Hugo's own illustrations of his novels.

Much of the Marais was actually slated for demolition in the early 1960s but was saved by the intervention of the writer Andre Malraux and others who publicized its central place in France's cultural heritage:

After Henri IV established his court in the Marais, aristocrats followed, building hotels particuliers -- urban chateaux -- in the grand, classical style, with rose-draped courtyards, allegorical statues and huge salons where the philosopher Pascal talked religion with princesses.

For a glimpse into France's Golden Age, complete with an air of aristocratic shabbiness (the Marais is a neighborhood, not a theme park), wander the rue de Sevigne or the rue Pavee. This hints at pre-Revolution Paris -- the Paris of Voltaire and Descartes and the intellectual salons that made the city the center of the European Enlightenment.

[Times photo: Bill Serne] The Place des Vosges is considered one of Paris’ most beautiful squares.

The 16th century Hotel Carnavalet in the rue de Sevigne was the home of Madame de Sevigne, the wickedly witty observer of French society. The house is everyone's idea of elegant old Paris, with dainty gilded chairs and chandeliers sparkling like Marie Antoinette's diamonds.

[Times photo: Bill Serne] Street performers vie for donations in this arcade off the Place des Vosges.

It is now a museum of the history of Paris, full of such splendidly weird objects as a model of the Bastille, the chess set Louis XVI used to entertain himself while waiting to go to the guillotine and a famous portrait of the revolutionary Danton.

Over on the rue du Figier, you can visit the even older Hotel de Sens, a late medieval mansion where the scandalous Queen Margot (Henri IV's wife) once witnessed her new (younger) lover kill her old one. It is now a museum of graphic and applied arts.

The Hotel Sale on rue de Thorigny, built by a rich salt merchant, houses the Musee Picasso, with the artist's personal collection of paintings, sculptures and ceramics. This is a cool, graceful house, its classical symmetry cheerfully at odds with the master's Cubist pictures hanging on its walls.

There are many other mansions to visit: The Marais looks like a home for orphaned palaces. But when the Paris of the 17th and 18th centuries gets oppressive (all that rationality, all that gold leaf, all those decapitations), the Paris of the 21st century is just around the corner.

In fact, it's on every corner and every street, no matter how historical. For all its antique charm, the Marais is also cutting edge, a happening place with black-booted young hipsters buying Haitian paintings at Passage de Retz in the Rue Charlot or cous-cous to go in the Rue des Rosiers, while they wait for darkness to fall.

At night, the impossibly cool clubs come alive like a posse of vampires dressed by John Galliano.

The Marais has a big gay and lesbian scene, but most of the bars attract a mixed-orientation clientele.

Les Bains used to be a Turkish bathhouse and notorious hangout of Marcel Proust; now it's a gay/straight/runway-model bar of gum-numbing chic. Sanz-Sans, not far from the Bastille metro stop, is less frenetic, with jazz almost every night and complicated (very strong) cocktails.

If you stay out all night in the Marais (easy to do), detour back to the Place des Vosges before hitting your hotel to wash off the smell of Gauloises and tequila. The rose-pink dawn makes Henri's palace glow like rubies.

Even with the Afro-pop you've been dancing to still ringing in your ears, it is somehow easy to let the centuries slip away and almost see the Marais as it was in 1640, in its heyday, when France was the center of the western world.

Then go warm up with a cafe au lait while the city wakes itself back up in the year 2002.

[Times photo: Bill Serne] Inline skates work as well as a bike or a motorscooter on the Marais’ skinny streets.

- Former Times staff writer Diane Roberts now teaches at the University of Alabama.

If you go

GETTING THERE: The most convenient Metro stops are Bastille, Saint-Paul and Hotel-de-Ville.

STAYING THERE: The Pavillon de la Reine, 28 Place des Vosges (call 01-40-29-19-19), is small, luxurious and not cheap, running from $300 to $340 a night.

The Hotel des Chevaliers, 30 rue de Turenne (01-42-72-73-47), is located in a 17th century building near the Place des Vosges and is a bargain at around $135 for a double.

Saint-Paul le Marais, 8 rue de Sevigne (01-48-04-97-27), has an in-house spa and runs about $150 a night.

EATING THERE: Le Dome du Marais, 53 rue des Francs-Bourgeois (01- 42-74-54-17), excellent traditional French food in a vast, elegant building that was once the state-owned pawnbroker's.

Le Hangar, 12 impasse Berthaud (01-42-74-55-44), a popular place for classic French dishes, especially foie gras. Reservations essential.

Chez Jo Goldenberg, 7 Rue des Rosiers (01-48-97-20-16), kosher, Eastern European and Middle Eastern food, $17-$25.

Ma Bourgogne, 19 Place des Vosges (01-42-78-44-64), a cafe serving tea, wine, coffee, sandwiches and pastries.

CLUBBING THERE: Les Bains, 7 Rue du Bourg-l'Abbe (01-48-87-01-80), cover charge $20, 11:30 p.m-6 a.m.

Sanz-Sans, 49 Rue du Faubourg St-Antoine (01-44-75-78-78), no cover, opens about 10 p.m.

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright