Paris Revealed

by Stephen Clarke

Javel-André Citroën, because it takes you to the Parc André Citroën, where you can go up in a hot-air balloon and get a great view of Paris and the Eiffel Tower.

  Cluny-La Sorbonne, which is decorated with ceramic facsimiles of the signatures of legendary French writers like Moliere, Victor Hugo and Arthur Rimbaud. It’s also fun for a bad reason, namely that the signposts towards Lines B and C of the RER are so confusing that the station is almost permanently haunted by lost-looking tourists.

  Ligne 11: Châtelet–Mairie des Lilas

  A cross between a bouncy castle and a roller coaster, it will shake, rattle and roll you up the hill from Châtelet to Belleville and beyond. There’s no need to go to Disneyland Paris—this old, neglected line will give you all the thrills of the funfair. Its carriages are narrow and the seats so close together that if you travel any distance, you will soon be on knee-rubbing terms with the people sitting opposite and next to you. When entering this line at Châtelet, it’s best to go underground at the place du Châtelet itself, because the Line 11 terminus is about a kilometre from other lines and you will spend so long wandering through tunnels that you won’t need to visit the catacombs.

  FUN STATIONS

  Arts et Métiers, for its curved copper-plated walls, created in 1994 by Belgian artist François Schuiten to celebrate the bicentenary of the nearby engineering school of the same name. It feels like waiting inside a water pipe.

  Porte des Lilas, because it inspired the character in Serge Gainsbourg’s first hit, ‘Le Poinconneur des Lilas’ (the ticket-puncher), and because it is part of Paris’s cinema industry. If you see a movie scene filmed in a métro station, it will almost certainly be Porte des Lilas (even if the signs on the wall temporarily say something else). The station is regularly hired out to film producers, and has featured, for example, in Paris, Je t’aime and Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain. (See also Line 3bis below.)

  Ligne 12: Mairie d’Issy–Porte de la Chapelle

  A long, cosy line, apparently built so that the middle classes won’t have to mix with anyone else. It winds in from the 15th, through the 7th and the posher office districts of the 8th and 9th, undergoes a quick culture shock at Pigalle, then heads for the chic part of the 18th behind Montmartre.

  FUN STATIONS

  Concorde, where excerpts from the Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen (France’s 1789 declaration of human rights) are written on the curving walls, one blue letter per white tile. The ironic problem with this noble intention is that there is no punctuation, making it very hard to read what one’s rights are.

  Abbesses, which has one of the best examples of a Guimard Art Nouveau entrance. However, it was never meant to be there. It was moved from Hôtel de Ville station in 1974, even though the original managers of Line 12 had decided not to use any of Guimard’s designs.

  Porte de Versailles—during the Salon de l’Agriculture, Paris’s immensely popular agricultural show held at the end of February, Parisians go there to see the cows, taste the sausages and watch the President perform. The rule is, if he’s good with farmers, he’s a good head of state. Sarkozy’s first visit ended in a televised slanging match with a farmer. Chirac used to spend whole days out here discussing milk yields and techniques for force-feeding geese, and people still love him for it.

  Ligne 13: Châtillon–Montrouge–Gabriel Péri Asnières-Gennevilliers/Saint-Denis–Université

  Brings in commuters from the northern steppes of the 17th arrondissement and the well-off but not-too-snooty southern suburbs, and dumps them all in west central Paris. Some of the trains on this line have been fitted with an electronic list of stations that makes each name flash as you pull into the station, while a happy female voice tells you where you are. There’s more standing room on these trains, which is good because the line has regular sardine moments between Montparnasse and Saint-Lazare. At its northern end, the 13 forks in two (at the aptly named station La Fourche) so spectacularly that if you are planning to visit the beautiful royal church of the Basilique de Saint-Denis, and stay on the wrong train, you will end up halfway to Brittany.

  FUN STATIONS

  Montparnasse-Bienvenüe (see Ligne 4 above).

  Guy Môquet (pronounced ‘mockay’ and not ‘mocker’—moquette means carpet)—it’s not exactly fun, but the station is noteworthy for the display case of photos and documents in honour of Guy Môquet, who was shot by the Nazis when he was only seventeen, one of forty-eight prisoners executed in reprisal for the killing of a German officer in 1941. Môquet is famous for the patriotic letter he wrote on the eve of his death, which is regularly read out in schools. The tragic irony is that he was only in prison because he had been arrested by French policemen for distributing Communist leaflets in the métro, at Gare de l’Est.

  Varenne, which is close to the Musée Rodin, and appropriately decorated with sculptures on the platforms. As well as Rodin’s famous Penseur (The Thinker), there is a cast of his wonderful sculpture of the writer Honoré de Balzac, who looks as though he regrets agreeing to be sculpted dressed only in his bathrobe.

  Ligne 14: Saint-Lazare–Olympiades

  The Parisians’ favourite, this new line rockets across the centre of Paris in what feels like milliseconds. Young execs don’t even have time to start a new game of phone Tetris between getting on at Saint-Lazare and shooting out into the squeaky-clean office district around the Bibliothèque Nationale. The stations are like glass tunnels, the trains are long and well ventilated and—best thing of all in Parisians’ eyes—there are no drivers. The line is automatic, so there’s no one to go on strike. The French like to say they’re in favour of workers’ rights, but if there was a referendum, everyone would vote to change the whole métro system over to driverless trains. Well, everyone except the transport workers, of course, who would go on strike in protest, therefore reinforcing the case for driverless trains.

  FUN STATIONS

  None, really. The trains are so frequent and fast that you never spend enough time in the stations to notice them. Oh, OK, Châtelet, because if you change from the old existing métro system on to Line 14, you have to go through what is quite obviously a narrow hole that was knocked through an old tunnel wall to connect the two networks.

  Lignes 3bis (Gambetta–Porte des Lilas) and 7bis (Louis Blanc–Pré Saint-Gervais)

  Dug so that people living in the centre of the 19th and 20th arrondissements wouldn’t feel left out, these two short, link-up lines feel very toy-like, even though the carriages are much the same as on the other lines. The 7bis basically collects passengers up and takes them for a picnic at the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont.

  FUN STATIONS

  Botzaris on the 7bis, a little hole in the ground by the Buttes’ metal fence from which you emerge with your picnic basket.

  Pelleport, Saint-Fargeau and Porte des Lilas on the 3bis, which all have ceramic-tiled entrances in a more sober, post-Guimard style of Art Nouveau, designed by the architect Charles Plumet.

  Singing the métro’s praises

  Architects aren’t the only artists to have been inspired by Paris’s underground system. The métro has been celebrated in some of the most Parisian of French chansons—Édith Piaf sang a song called ‘Le Métro de Paris’, in which she compared a train to ‘a gigantic glowworm spinning its silver thread across the rooftops of Paris’ (she seems to be confusing glow-worms with silkworms, but then she was an urban girl). Meanwhile, as mentioned above, Parisian crooner Serge Gainsbourg’s first hit was set on Line 11.

  The métro has also inspired some fascinating literature. Franz Kafka paid a brief visit to Paris in September 1911, and even though the network was only a decade or so old, he was perceptive enough to make some telling remarks in his diary. He talks about the ‘unnatural indifference of the passengers’, and notes that you can identify strangers to the city because they are the only people who stop at the exit to get their bearings rather than striding out and ‘losing themselves straight away in the street life’. He als
o says how spooky it is to see lone passengers getting off at stations outside the city centre. A shame Kafka didn’t stay longer in Paris—he could have written a great novel about feeling paranoid beneath the city, maybe having his hero turn into a giant Parisian cricket.

  One of the most Parisian novels in French literature, Raymond Queneau’s Zazie dans le Métro, uses the transport system as a central theme. The métro obsesses the young heroine, a provincial visitor to the city, as much as the Wizard of Oz enthrals Dorothy. Unlike Dorothy, though, Zazie doesn’t suffer the disappointment of discovering that her idol is a fraud, because the poor young provinciale gets so entangled in her uncle’s insane intrigues that she never actually sees the métro. According to literary critics, this is because Queneau is using the métro as a metaphor for an adult world that Zazie is not ready for (even though her uncle has just taken her to a gay cabaret club). Actually, the critics are right in a more literal sense, because anyone taking the Paris métro does need maturity to survive. It’s a place with its own rules of behaviour and coded language, and, even outside rush hours, it requires a high level of self-assertion, elbow-sharpness, breath control and spinal flexibility.

  The following section may help readers prepare for the experience that Zazie never knew …

  The rules of life underground

  Here are some dos and don’ts to avoid getting into a Parisian verbal wrestling match on the métro.******

  The first is, as in any city, to avoid certain lines during rush hour—that is, between about 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., and 5.30 p.m. to 7 p.m. The worst claustrophobia experiences are to be had on Lines 1, 2, 3, 4 … no, it’s just better to try and avoid taking the métro at all between those times, or at least to be prepared for shovers, grumblers, sneezers, gropers and pickpockets if you do so.

  When trains are crowded and airless, especially in summer, I find it best to get on at the rear of the carriage. This way, with the windows open, you stand at least a small chance of gaining access to some oxygen. Further up the carriage towards the front, you might notice people passing out or frying eggs on bald men’s heads. This is proof that the ventilation systems on Paris métro trains rarely work. The exceptions are Lines 1 and 14, which, as mentioned before, don’t have separate carriages—they’re long, metal snakes—and are therefore better ventilated.

  If you are standing on a crowded train, crushed up against the doors, and it arrives at a large junction, people are going to want to get off. They will probably start saying, ‘Pardon, je descends,’ even before the train has stopped. As soon as the doors open, you have to get out of the train, step to one side, and wait while hordes of impatient Parisians stream out of the carriage. Failure to do this can result in ruptured kidneys.

  In the standing areas of most métro carriages, there are so-called strapontins, fold-up seats. These are subject to fairly strict rules of etiquette. They are only to be used when there is enough room for everyone to stand comfortably. At the slightest crush, the strapontin sitters are expected to get up. Some people play stupid and stay sitting, which can get them either moaned at or stomped on, and at the very least glowered at menacingly.

  Sometimes, a person who seems to be completely ignoring métro etiquette—sitting on a strapontin despite the crowds, listening to tinny music on a phone, smoking even—will not be admonished by affronted passengers. This is because they know that the person is trying to choquer les bourgeois and is best left well alone.

  If you get into a métro carriage and see that it is crowded except for one section of seating that is magically empty, it is usually not because a large group of friends have got off and no one has spotted the free seats. A more likely explanation is that the drunk sitting in the corner of the unoccupied area has just pooped himself.

  On fairly crowded trains, it is common for one place in the main seating areas of a carriage—the sets of eight seats—to be free. The problem is that there are two ways into these areas, so you might find yourself in direct competition with someone coming in from the other direction. The etiquette in these cases is to avoid eye contact and dash for the seat. If you get there first, it is only because you have won one of the many races for survival in Parisian everyday life. Of course, once you are seated, if you look up and see that the other person was old, pregnant, frail or beautiful, you can stand up again and make a great show of offering them your hard-won seat.

  The managers of the Parisian métro have obviously decided that passengers don’t need to be warned to mind the gap when they get off a train. There can be a gap wide enough to fit half a baguette lengthways and they won’t tell you. For example, at Cité, if you get off the rear carriage of a Line 4 train heading south towards Porte d’Orléans, there’s a chasm between the métro door and the platform that could swallow up a slim Parisienne, but no warning. It really is necessary to keep your eyes on your feet when you get off a métro train, especially on to a curved station platform.

  And when your métro journey is at an end and you want to leave the station, your troubles are not over. If you’re exiting a station that has glass doors that you have to push open (rather than turnstiles or guillotine-like rubber gates), it is vital to push exactly where it says Poussez, or, if there’s only a diagram, press right on the white hand on a green background. This pressure unlocks the door. Pushing anywhere else is pointless, and will have Parisians puffing down your neck within seconds, groaning at your stupidity.

  After which, it only remains for me to say bon voyage …

  * The 1900 Paris Olympics, the second modern Olympiad after the 1896 Athens Games, included the official sports of golf, ballooning, croquet, Basque pelota, polo, tug of war and cricket. The cricket gold was played for by only two teams—England and France—and the French team consisted almost entirely of British ex-pats. The match was played in Vincennes on 19 and 20 August, and won by England.

  ** Not personally—Bienvenüe had lost an arm during a security inspection on one of his railways.

  *** Bénard later commissioned a dining room from Guimard, which is now on display at the Musée d’Orsay.

  **** For the full story see my book 1,000 Years of Annoying the French.

  ***** Which it isn’t. The golden flame near the Pont de l’Alma is a life-size replica of the torch held by the Statue of Liberty that was presented to Paris by New York in 1989. The statue herself was of course given to America by France in 1886 to mark the centenary of the American Revolution. Yes, the French were ten years late, but it’s the thought that counts.

  ****** See also Chapter 1, ‘Parisians’, for a section on how not to annoy Parisians in other contexts.

  Paris, a well-preserved historical city? Between the 1850s and 1870s, it was one huge building site as much of the medieval centre was demolished to make way for the boulevards.

  5

  HISTORY

  La nostalgie, c’est le désir d’on ne sait quoi.

  (Nostalgia is the desire for we know not what.)

  ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY,

  AUTHOR OF LE PETIT PRINCE

  MANY PEOPLE COME to Paris to feel nostalgic. Often, this nostalgie is related to something they haven’t experienced themselves—the glory days when everyone dressed like dandies or can-can dancers, the smoky café nights listening to Sartre explain how absurd everything is (except him, of course), the sound of jazz filtering up from basement bars, the sunlit summers when all you needed to fall in endless passionate love was a camp-bed in a Montmartre garret and a litre of cheap red wine.

  Paris seems to be an ideal backdrop for reliving the perfect past. It still has the medieval Marais, the student-filled Sorbonne, the timeless waiters at the Café de Flore, the eternal banks of the Île de la Cité. It is so well-preserved that its nineteenth-century grands boulevards are almost banal.

  Well, that is the cliché, anyway. In fact, Paris has suffered several waves of almost cataclysmic destruction. It’s a miracle that the famous monuments survive. Even the Eiffel Tower came very clos
e to being toppled—and not by invading enemies. It may come as some surprise to learn that throughout history, Paris has devoted a great deal of its energy to destroying its own architectural gems.

  Most of this energy was expended during infighting by political and religious factions, who made a habit of knocking down each other’s favourite buildings. But some of the most widespread damage was done coldly and calmly by the city’s planners simply building over the past. And as we will see, if the modernizers’ ardour hadn’t been cooled in the late-twentieth century, tourists might now be nipping into the Louvre during a motorway coffee-stop, and taking monster-truck mouches instead of bateaux …

  A carnival of history

  Although Paris’s past has been almost constantly violent, its history museum, the Musée Carnavalet, is a peaceful, intimate place, despite the fact that it is at the heart of the Marais, and its main entrance is just inches from the rue des Francs Bourgeois, a shopping superhighway for both Parisians and tourists.

  The museum gets its name from its venue, the Hôtel Carnavalet. This is the former home of one of Paris’s most celebrated writers, the Marquise de Sévigné. She wasn’t an impoverished aristocrat who was forced to move into a motel—in its original sense, hôtel, or hôtel particulier, meant an urban mansion. And Carnavalet is just that, a sixteenth-century city château, which the Marquise rented from the 1670s until her death in 1696. While there, she wrote her famous letters to friends and family, describing Parisian life and discussing the moral and religious issues of the day. The museum has a room dedicated to its former tenant, with three voluptuous portraits showing off her cleavage and coquettish curls. Some of her letters might be slightly prudish, but she was obviously a fun-loving lady.

  Her old home was bought by the city in 1866 to be used as a history museum, and was renovated and enlarged using architectural gems salvaged from the vandalism then being inflicted on Vieux Paris by the city’s greatest modernizer, Baron Haussmann (of whom much more in a moment).