To the tight-knit community who lived in the crowded, rat-ridden and ramshackle slums around rue Nationale in the postwar years, Paris was another place, rarely ventured into. Come the 1950s and 1960s, however, the city planners, here as elsewhere, came up with their usual solution to the housing problem – getting rid of the slums to make way for tower blocks. The architectural gloom of the southeastern half of the arrondissement is only alleviated by the culinary delights of the Chinese quarter and one or two clever new buildings. West of avenue d'Italie and avenue des Gobelins – site of the famous tapestry works – there remains the almost untouched quartier of the Butte-aux-Cailles, and little streets and cul-de-sacs of prewar houses and studios. The eastern edge of the 13e, meanwhile, along the riverfront, is in the throes of mammoth development centred around the new Bibliothèque Nationale.
Pages in section ‘13e’: Butte-aux-Cailles, Gobelins, Chinatown and Tolbiac, Bibliothèque Nationale.
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