Ever since 1847, when the first complete register of house numbers was made, Paris has had its standard blue enamel street plaques, but it wasn’t until 1938 that a city regulation defined the size, colour, design and positioning of the nameplates once and for all.
The rule is still in force today, and stipulates that ‘public street names must be inscribed on a rectangular sign of at least 35 centimetres by 40 centimetres and at most 50 centimetres by one metre … The number of the arrondissement may be written on a semi-circular plate of 17 centimetres in radius situated above the street name.’ The names too must be written in white letters on an azure background, ‘within a bronze-green border decorated with shadow effects in black and white’. That last clause includes the instruction for four little dimples, one in each corner, trompe-l’oeil circles made to look as if they were the nails holding the sign up.
The rule says that these signs must be placed ‘at the angle of two public streets, less than 2 metres away from the corner’ and ‘between 2 metres and 2.5 metres above the pavement’, although they can be placed higher if they would otherwise disappear behind a shop or café awning. Many of the signs are exactly 2.3 metres up, hence the defacement of some old stone signs, like the one in the rue des Petits Champs in the 1st arrondissement, where a carved plaque has been partially destroyed by someone screwing on a more modern-looking blue nameplate at the designated height. The old sign now reads ‘RUE DES PETITS PS’, which is a cute idea—to today’s Parisians that would read ‘street of the small Socialist Parties’—but one that is the result of vandalism by a workman blindly sticking to the rules.
This French obsession with regulations can have bizarre consequences—for example, at the northern entrance to the rue du Prévôt in the Marais, a tiny alley too narrow for anyone wider than an average-sized American, there are two identical name plaques, one on either side of the street—so close together they could almost be a pair of earphones.
And in the rue du Parc Royal, the nameplates on either side of the road are at the standard height … the only problem being that they are therefore completely hidden by the pedestrian-crossing lights in front of them.
The multi-sign junctions survive quite simply because of municipal laissez-faire. Why bother to remove an old blue sign just because you’re putting a new one up at a different height? And there’s no need to chisel away an old stone street name because any fool knows that you’re meant to believe the new blue sign.
There is flexibility in the system, however. These days, if a new building has, say, a glass facade that might explode into a million dangerous pieces if a workman started drilling holes in it prior to hanging up a heavy enamel street sign, the owners can use a lighter, adhesive plaque or even obtain permission to design their own. One of the most beautiful of these is the Art Deco mosaic in the rue Paul Séjourné (who was a railway-viaduct builder, by the way) in the 6th. There are many more, and if you come across one, it’s worth taking time to admire it, because you can be sure that the people who put it there devoted quite a few hours to form-filling. My favourite Parisian street nameplate, though, is one that has been hijacked as a playground for the city’s acerbic wit. In the rue des Prêcheurs (‘Preachers’ Street’) in the 1st arrondissement, some wag with a marker pen has crossed out the first R and changed the accent over the E to make it read Pécheurs, or sinners. And as if to rub in the anti-clericalism, someone at City Hall has ordered a sign to be placed just below the defaced word Prêcheurs declaring Défense de déposer des ordures, or ‘no rubbish here’.
Writing on the wall
Quite often, I stop to read a plaque on a building that reveals a painful detail about its past. Scattered around the city, there are some 1,060 signs commemorating victims of the Second World War. There are signs indicating that people who had lived, worked or studied in that building were taken away by the Nazis. Schools are often marked with a plaque saying how many Jewish children were removed, and the sign will usually specify that it was French policemen or militia men doing the dirty work. All over the city, small plaques next to ordinary street doors will bear the name of a man or woman who was arrested, deported or shot—or all three—and the date when it happened. And on the anniversary of that date, the arrondissement will often arrange for a small bouquet of fresh flowers to be hung from a brass ring in the plaque.
Almost half of these plaques pay homage to people killed during the Liberation of Paris at the end of August 1944. In the centre of the city, and especially in the Latin Quarter, around the Hôtel de Ville and along the rue de Rivoli, there are beige marble plaques marking pretty well every spot where a Resistance fighter fell. At 1 rue Robert Esnault-Pelterie there’s even a memorial to the only French tank destroyed in the street-fighting—yes, compared to most occupied towns and cities, Paris didn’t see much heavy combat.
This in part was thanks to one of the most important figures in recent Parisian history: Raoul Nordling, the Swedish Ambassador who can be said to have saved the city by persuading the Nazi Kommandant, General von Choltitz, not to blow it up before surrendering. Nordling has a well-deserved plaque at the Lycée Janson de Sailly in the 16th.
Those buildings that did suffer in the fighting wear their battle scars with pride. If you look at the façade of the ultra-chic Hôtel Meurice, the old Kommandatur headquarters in the rue de Rivoli,
