The 2nd
Until about fifteen years ago, this was an area of fascinating contrasts. The Sentier was still full of clothes workshops, while the newly pedestrianized area around the rue Montorgueil was attracting all sorts of intellectuals and their families, just metres away from the rue Saint-Denis, where prostitutes stood in every doorway. Now gentrification is almost complete—the Sentier is getting lofted up, rue Montorgueil has changed from a street market into a hipsters’ food court where you can get mango sushi, and the prostitutes are being squeezed out. The only time you can see residents en masse is on a Sunday morning, when the buggy brigade come out to buy their baguette and grab a coffee before the sushi fans arrive. Local-watching is best outside any café on the rue Montorgueil at eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning.
The 3rd
This comprises the northern half of the Marais, gentrified long enough ago to have achieved maturity. Its remarkably quiet medieval streets house art galleries (thanks to the Picasso Museum run-off effect), tasteful estate agencies, clothes shops and ultra-trendy restaurants, peopled by exactly the kind of staff—young and slightly snooty—that you’d expect. However, the shops and cafés in the rue de Bretagne are surprisingly down-to-earth, and mainly cater to the arty young things who can afford to live nearby. Spotting spot: the Café Charlot on the corner of rue Charlot and rue de Bretagne. The interior is a bit of an ‘Old Paris’ theme park, but locals don’t care because the terrace is so sunny. It’s packed every lunchtime with fashionistas from the area’s showrooms. The same goes for the lunchtime foodstalls in the nearby hyper-hip Enfants Rouges market.
The 4th
Forty years ago the heart of the Marais was a gloomy dump inhabited by people who had been there forever. The hôtels particuliers (urban mansions) were soot-blackened and falling down. This was why the city felt free to unleash the wave of destruction that gave us Les Halles (in the 1st), the Centre Pompidou (known by Parisians as Beaubourg) and the hideous modern Quartier de l’Horloge.* These days, post-gentrification, the Marais’ surviving buildings are all spruced up and it’s almost impossible to identify any residents, except perhaps for the second-home Americans on café terraces on a Sunday morning and the parents watching their toddlers play in the small public gardens. The area does attract some easily spotted Parisian groups, though—gays (along the rue des Archives, where I once heard a little girl ask her dad, ‘Papa, why does that princess have a moustache?’), Jews (shabat in the rue des Rosiers is a veritable falafel-fest) and shoppers. Neither the Jews nor the gays follow the old-fashioned French Tuesday-to-Saturday shopping timetable, so the area buzzes all week long. Spotting spot: the falafel bars and bakeries on the rue des Rosiers, or Les Marronniers, the gay and straight brunch place at the bottom of the rue des Archives.
The 5th
A large but subtly disguised proportion of Paris’s old money is concentrated here. The Latin Quarter used to provide shelter for penniless writers like James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, but these days they couldn’t afford to live there, except maybe above a crêperie in the rue Mouffetard. The residents of all but the tiny chambres de bonne (top-floor garrets) dress down so the taxman won’t ask how much their apartment is worth, and these people’s kids try to look sloppy so they won’t get mugged by the youths who come into the area on phone-hunting trips. You see that dowdy-looking middle-aged woman with a baguette and a sprig of parsley poking out of the top of her beaten-up shopping bag? She’s a property millionairess, and one day she’ll leave her fortune to those schoolkids who are huddling around a café table making a coffee last for hours and smoking their cigarette as though it cost them all their pocket money (which it will do if Papa finds out they’ve been smoking). The locals shop for food in the rue Mouffetard, despite the heavy presence of tourists, and some of them sit in the sun at the place de la Contrescarpe, though they all retreat to their country houses in high tourist season.
The 6th
A lot like the 5th, except that the people here are more ostentatious, and the youngsters feel freer to show off their Lacoste polo shirts, Rolexes and vintage Vespas. Look out for ’80s throwbacks with knotted pullovers around their shoulders, and girls with the kind of free-flowing hair and perfect teeth you see only on billboards. This is also home to the most intellectual publishing houses, so cafés attract a concentration of loud pontificators, old guys sharing a drink with their pile of manuscript paper, and sophisticated smokers on the lookout for a woman who’ll be impressed to know that she’s meeting a part-time poet. Spotting spots: Les Éditeurs, the book-lined café at Odéon, where writers and publishers gather to talk loudly about book prizes. Also the café Bonaparte, on the corner of the rue Bonaparte and the place Saint-Germain des Prés. Here you can sit amongst lunching locals and watch the hyper-trendy and those with limitless expense accounts heading for La Société, the hot restaurant behind the discreet door diagonally right as you look out from the Bonaparte’s façade.
The 7th
Saying that you’re moving to the 7th is a bit like admitting, “Well, I’ve thought it over and I now realize that I do deserve that Rolls-Royce I’ve always wanted.’ Either that or ‘I’ve been made director of the Musée d’Orsay.’ The people there are posh and they know it. To spot the poshest of the lot, go to La Grande Épicerie, the grocer’s shop next to the Bon Marche department store, and look out for the kind of
