4th arr

Okay, we've reached my favorite arr!  Hooray!  So, warning, this is going to be VERY long because 1) I love this arr and 2) it has a ton of stuff to talk about, although I still won't be able to show even half of the interesting things here.

I think this rather amusingly straightforward line from Wikipedia sums up the 4th pretty well: "It is desirable for those insisting on old buildings and multi-cultural exposure."

As I said in the last arr post, the 3rd and 4th share a lot of history, particularly in the medieval and Renaissance periods.  The 4th, however, has a longer (or at least more well-known) history from Antiquity as well, being that part of the Ile-de-la-Cite is in the 4th.

There are two tiny islands in the Seine: the Ile-de-la-Cite and the Ile-St-Louis.  The former is probably the very oldest place in the city that was inhabited.  In the square in front of Notre Dame cathedral there is an underground archeological museum (sadly, sort of neglected because it's overshadowed by the cathedral, but it's really very cool) where you can see the Roman and Gallic ruins.   All of the Ile-St-Louis and half (the Notre Dame, and therefore more popular, half) of the Ile-de-la-Cite are in the 4th.

Here is Notre Dame as seen from the Ile-St-Louis:

And the Ile-St-Louis from the Ile-de-la-Cite:

Both of the islands are largely unchanged from late medieval times.  A lot of this is because already by then there were a lot of historic buildings that people didn't want to lose, but also because even then the two tiny islands were built up as much as they could be.  There simply wasn't room to build more buildings or do much construction.  So if you want to walk around some of the most historically authentic areas of the city, go to these islands; Ile-St-Louis is better because it has far fewer tourist shops.  And a world-renowned ice cream store.  Yum.

Moving along to the Right Bank of the arr, the Marais, the 4th looks very much like the 3rd.  Very small streets and overall a very quaint look.

It has many more monuments and significant sites, though.  The Hotel de Ville (city hall) is in the 4th, just across the river from Notre Dame.  This is not the original structure, but it is exactly how the original looked.  The Hotel de Ville was destroyed during the Commune (1871) but all the plans and such were still available, and I believe they used the same materials to redo it.  Personally I think it's kind of a monstrosity but a lot of people who come are very taken with it.  (These are not my pictures, obviously!)

Those fountains were just replaced with the ice skating rink.

Close to the Hotel de Ville is the formerly very mysterious Tour St Jacques.  I had no clue what this tower was or why it existed until this summer when my Mom and I went exploring, although I frequently used it for navigational purposes.

It turns out that while St Jacques (James in English) of somewhere went on a pilgrimage he stopped in a number of places that built these towers to mark his progress.  It's not a church or anything, mostly just a memorial.

Just a few blocks north of that is the Centre Georges Pompidou, a very modern modern art museum.  Its construction caused quite a bit of controversy and it remains a significant landmark in modern architecture.  The museum is pretty cool - very big and it usually has completely off-the-wall exhibits.

And on the opposite side of the arr, right on the border with the 3rd and developed as a promenade for the aristocratic families that settled there during the Renaissance, is the Place des Vosges.  It's a perfectly square park surrounded on all sides by symmetrical buildings that were mostly residences at the time.  When you emerge into the place there is an overwhelming feeling of orderliness.  (My pictures here)

Each side of the square is a row of galleries like this.  Now they are mostly small art shops/galleries or cafes/restaurants.  They all tend to be pretty expensive.

At the north and south ends there are arches cut out so carriages could get back into the streets.  Other than those arches there are just two spots where you can enter or exit the square.  I have a special fondness for this place because Victor Hugo lived in the square towards the end of his life, and the building is now a museum dedicated to him.

So I basically just took you on a tour of the outskirts of the 4th arr; none of these monuments are in the heart of it.  At this point you might be wondering why this is my favorite arr, despite the cool monuments here.  The answer to that is mostly because the middle of the arr is just a fantastic place to hang out: it has some of the best food in Paris, it's my favorite place to shop, and its nightlife is awesome.

I'll get to most of that in a moment, but first I want to continue a little where I left off on the post on the 3rd arr.  If you recall, the Marais (consisting of the 3rd and 4th arrs together) became Paris' Jewish ghetto after the Jews were expelled from the city proper in medieval times.  Despite the influx of nobility into the 3rd arr during the Renaissance the interior of the 4th remained mostly populated by Jews.  By the late 19th century the community was almost entirely Orthodox, with lots of recent immigrants fleeing the persecutions in Eastern Europe at the time, although many residents were long-established Parisian families.  To this day the area is known (to some) through France as the Pletzl, Yiddish for "little place."

The community more or less was left in peace by Parisians and the government, excepting the Dreyfus Affair at the turn of the 20th century, which brought out a lot of anti-Semitism.  But having such a tight-knit, visible, and comfortable Jewish community in Paris was major liability during WWII, as you might imagine.  The Vichy government, which kind-of-but-not-officially had a policy of collaboration with Germany, had a super easy target and rounded up people from the Marais by the thousands to be deported (deportation meant sometimes going to German-run concentration camps but more often meant going to Vichy-run work or internment camps).  It was by far the hardest hit of any area of Paris.

A few years ago the French government went around putting up plaques on pretty much every school that lost students to the deportation and while I would say the majority of schools in Paris have a plaque, unfortunately probably every single one in the Marais has one.  I took a picture of one in the 2nd arr:

"To the memory of the students of this school who were deported between 1942 and 1944 because they were born Jewish, innocent victims of Nazi barbarism with the complicity of the Vichy government.  They were killed in the death camps, 140 children living in the 2nd arrondissement.  Never forget them."

This particular sign is dedicated to all the children who were deported who lived in the 2nd; in the Marais each school commemorates only its own students, but the numbers are still very high.

Despite the enormous blow to the Marais community, the Jewish population made it through the war and today this area still retains its Orthodox, very religious identity.  Tons of signs in the Pletzl area - not just for the religious-oriented places, but for everyday things like bakeries, bookstores, and pizza places - are written in Hebrew and/or Yiddish (I can't tell the difference) and it has the only reliably kosher food in the city.  Although later years saw a huge influx of Ashkenazi (culturally Eastern European Jews) the older Sephardic (Jews culturally closer to Spain/Portugal/North Africa) community has also survived and makes the best falafel anywhere.  Seriously, anywhere!  On any given day you can find lines wrapping around the block to get falafel from the two or three great take-away places in the 4th.  The 4th is also the only place I can find my beloved matzo ball soup and pastrami sandwiches.

In the 90s the Marais, specifically the 4th arr, took a whole new turn: it became the center of gay social life in Paris.  I have absolutely no clue how this came about, but now it's the undisputed gay neighborhood.  Here it is after the pride parade in June.  There are a ton of gay bars and bookstores in the area, and it's become the fashionable place for upper class gay couples to live. 

Besides that, though, it's definitely one of the top two going-out places for any young Parisian - there are lots of bars/pubs/clubs for any taste, many great restaurants, etc.  It's a bit more expensive than the other good nightlife area, around the Bastille, but much less expensive than going out other places.

So you have the two major populations of the 4th arr: the Orthodox Jews and the bourgeois gay community.  I'm not quite sure how it works but it seems to be a live-and-let-live attitude (hey, I guess it works in NYC too).  On the Rue des Ecouffes, for example, towards the south end of the street are the two most popular lesbian bars in Paris; in the middle of the street is one of the Orthodox synagogues and at the end is a chic, popular Yiddish bakery that has been around forever.  Just because it's fun, here is the bakery in 1978 and a picture of it today.

Everything looks virtually the same today except the buildings are somewhat fixed up since the 4th has become such a popular area.

I think I've been over everything I can get through quickly so here are a few random pictures I got in my last wandering there.

The 4th also has the distinction of having my favorite street name in Paris.  The city is full of funny and/or odd street names but I just love this one:

Street of Bad/Naughty Boys.  Really, this name came from the gangs of rogue young men ("brigands" in French but more akin to "thugs" maybe in English) who used to wander small towns stealing crops, robbing people, things like that.  They called these groups "mauvais garcons," bad boys.  But I like to imagine that this is where all the little boys on Santa's naughty list are sent.

I used to pass this store and be grossed out because I assumed it sold horse meat.  Usually the red horse sign means that.  However when I took this picture I realized this shop is no longer a horse butcher, it sells sock and tights and such.  The mosaic is still kind of nice.

 This is the Reform Church of the Marais.  It's very large.

Only a few people will be interested in this, but I believe this is where the old song "Le temps des cerises" was written - or at least they want you to think that.  It's a song that is heavily tied to the Commune of Paris, and it's still sung by groups who protest in the city.

Things not to miss in the 4th: Notre Dame cathedral; archeological museum outside Notre Dame; wandering around Ile-St-Louis; Place des Vosges; Pompidou museum; L'As des Falafels; Schwartz's Deli or the above boulangerie on Rue des Ecouffes