La Forge de Belleville, 23–5 rue Ramponeau, 75020. Métro: Belleville. For events and art classes, check www.tracesbelleville.org. However, due to the dispute between the different groups of artists in the studios, the information might not be exhaustive.
Guy Honore, ceramic artist, 14, rue Dénoyez, 75020. Métro: Belleville.
Journées Portes Ouvertes (artists’ open days), see listings at:
www.parisgratuit.com/ateliers.html
www.ateliers-artistes-belleville.org
www.ateliersdemenilmontant.org
www.montmartre-aux-artistes.org
and others.
Musée Marmottan, 2 rue Louis Boilly, 75016. Tel: 01 44 96 50 33. Métro: Muette. Website: www.marmottan.com. Open every day except Monday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m., and Tuesdays till 9 p.m.
Paul Prouté, 74 rue de Seine, 75006. Tel: 01 43 26 89 80. Métros: Mabillon, Odéon.
Villa Mallebay, starts at 88 rue Didot, 75014. Métros: Pernety, Alésia.
12 Apartments
De Particulier à Particulier property sales magazine, commonly called Le Particulier for short, comes out every Thursday. All ads also appear on their website, www.pap.fr.
APPENDIX 2
FURTHER READING
THERE ARE A DIZZYING NUMBER of books about Paris, including my own. Here are some classics written by French authors. They’re mainly fictional works, but no less accurate for that.
Guy de Maupassant was a fun-loving civil servant who finally succumbed to syphilis. In short, an archetypal nineteenth-century Parisian gentleman. His Mademoiselle Fiji is a collection of short, easy-to-read stories published in 1882. One of these is ‘Une Aventure parisienne’, the tale of a provincial wife who comes to Paris to ‘try vice’. She samples absinthe, artists, theatres and casual sex. Another of the stories, ‘Nuit de Noël’, is about a young man who decides to go out and find a prostitute to share his Christmas dinner. And to act as dessert, of course. He finds a pretty, plump girl, takes her home and gets a surprise when they go to bed.
Emile Zola’s Le Ventre de Paris (1873) and Au Bonheur des Dames (1883) are two portraits of Paris by a man who would have been making social documentaries if TV had been invented. Le Ventre de Paris is all about the food markets at Les Halles and the way that the well-fed Parisians allow both their tummies and their political convictions to go flabby. Au Bonheur des Dames is a kind of antidote to the Shopaholic novels—Zola describes the working conditions in Paris’s first department store.
J.-K. Huysmans (who clearly inspired Harry Potter’s creator when she was looking for a nom de plume) was a Parisian writer who dabbled in Satanism and general decadence before settling down to become an author. His Croquis parisiens (1880) are, as their name suggests, short sketches of the racy Paris he knew, including the Folies-Bergère.
Raymond Queneau’s novel Zazie dans le Métro is a book that really should be read in French, and read aloud. Queneau plays constant games with phonetic transcriptions of the way working-class Parisians spoke at the end of the 1950s. It’s the story of a brattish provincial twelve-year-old, Zazie, who comes to Paris to see the métro, and gets swept away by the surreal nocturnal activities of her uncle Gabriel, a heterosexual man who is forced to make a living as a cross-dressing cabaret artist. The novel is so much fun that it is almost impossible to believe Queneau was a mathematician and an associate of the elitist, humourless Jean-Paul Sartre.
Photo Acknowledgements
xiv: © Bettman/Corbis; 23: SaverioTruglia/Getty Images; 28: Roger-Viollet/Getty Images; 44: Frank Huster/Getty Images; 47: David Allan Brandt/Getty Images; 52: © John Kellerman/Alamy; 60: Getty Images; 63: Getty Images; 68: Roger-Viollet/Getty Images; 80: author’s photo; 98: Roger-Viollet/Getty Images; 120: Roger-Viollet/Getty Images; 124: Owen Franken/Corbis; 129: AFP/Getty Images; 133: Keenpress/Getty Images; 154: Benaroch/Rex Features; 167: Roger-Viollet/Rex Features; 174: Getty Images; 184: Jacques Pavlovsky/Sygma/Corbis; 195: Bob Peterson/Getty Images; 198: Getty Images; 206: © Photos 12/Alamy; 216: AFP/Getty Images; 228: © Iain Masterton/Alamy; 243: Getty Images; 258: Clément Guillaume/Getty Images; 270: Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.
INDEX
A | B | C | D | E
F | G | H | I | J
K | L | M | N | O
P | Q | R | S | T
U | V | W | Z
A Bout de Souffle (film about smoking in bed) 223
Abbesses métro station, Guimard entrance 91
accommodation
not worth complaining about 24
see also apartments; hotels
AD&MCF (fashion designers) 209–10
African community 15–16, 82
hairdressers’ touts 12
aggression, perfectly good reasons for 3–4
air-conditioning, unromantic 141
Aligre market 13, 180, 285
Allen, Woody (filmmaker)
with Carla Bruni 216
sexiness in Parisians’ eyes 218
Alma, see Pont
Alma-Marceau 88
Alsatian cuisine (nothing to do with dogs) 190
American rap culture, influence on French art 236–7
American Revolution 87
Americans
reading newspapers in the 6th arrondissement 263
with second homes in the Marais 8
Amicale Bouliste des Arènes de Lutèce 105
Amour, Hôtel 144, 283
Anderson, Pamela (actress), at Crazy Horse club 170
Annaud, Jean-Jacques (filmmaker) 217
annoying, how not to be 19–27
anti-social behaviour, Parisian, pride in 1–2
Anvers métro station 82
apartment buildings, value 260–2
apartments
buying 259, 262–78
direct from owners 267–77
renting 259–62
après vous, usage 26
Arago boulevard
artists’ studios 239
last surviving pissoir 41
arbres d’alignement 45-6
Archives, rue des, gay area 8
Arènes de Lutèce 103–5, 283
Arletty, actress 223
Arp, Jean (Hans) (artist) 242–6
artworks prices 249, 252
arrondissements 3, 5, 6–17
1st 7, 34, 35
2nd 7
3rd 8
4th 8–9
5th 9, 140
6th 9–10
7th 5, 10
8th 11, 200, 213
9th 11–12
10th 12
11th 5, 12–13
12th 13
13th 13–14
14th 14
15th 14, 86
16th 5, 14–15, 89
17th 15, 91
18th 15–16, 90
19th 5, 16
20th 5, 16–17
posh, affordable apartments 262–3
art 229–57
auctions, Drouot sales rooms 253–7
galleries, small 250–2
museums 241–6
Art Deco murals, La Coupole 149
Art Nouveau 75–6
boudoir 118–19
glass 117
see also Guimard
artists’ studios 238–41
purpose-built 238
subsidized 240–41
Arts et Métiers métro station 90
artworks prices 249–57
Assemblée Nationale 10
August, Paris empty in 224
Aujourd’hui (newspaper) 1
Austerlitz, see Gare
Australian hairdressing 212
Auvergnat cuisine 190
Avenue, L’ (restaurant) 11
bacteria, everyday exchange of 182–3
bad driving 17, 147, 224
Bagnolet, rue de 17
baguettes
and bacteria 183, 188–9
in literature 186
testing 183–9
see also Grand Prix de la Baguette
Balard - Créteil Préfecture: métro line 8 87–8
balloon rides, Parc André Citroën 89, 282
ballooning
and Eiffel Tower 117
early 141
Olympic event 72n
Balzac, Honoré de (writer), in dressing gown on métro platform 92
bandes dessinées (BD) 235
Bandits Manchots (fashion label) 209–10, 285
banlieusards, grudging respect for 5–6
Bar Ourcq 16, 132
Barbès 15–16
métro station, see Barbès–Rochechouart
Barbès–Rochechouart métro station 76–7, 82
bar, in café, etiquette for drinking at 19
Basilique de Saint-Denis 91, 282
Basque cuisine 14
Bassin de la Villette 16, 41, 58, 130–2, 283
Bastille 12–13
flood preparations 62
métro station 68, 76, 82, 85
bateaux-mouches 57, 58
invention of 137
Batobus river shuttles 57
Baudelaire, Charles (poet, pioneer flâneur) 30
beaches, artificial 57–8
Beaubourg (Centre Pompidou) 8, 54,
