Batignolles to Clichy
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West of Montmartre cemetery, in a district bounded by the St-Lazare train lines, marshalling yards and avenue de Clichy, lies the "village" of Batignolles – sufficiently conscious of its uniqueness to have formed an association for the preservation of its caractère villageois. Its heart is rue des Batignolles. The poet Verlaine was brought up here, while Stéphane Mallarmé lived on boulevard des Batignolles, at the end of rue des Batignolles. At the northern end of the street, the attractive semicircular place du Dr F. Lobligeois frames the colonnaded church of Ste-Marie-des-Batignolles, its entrance modelled on the Madeleine; behind the church, the tired and trampled greenery of square Batignolles stretches back to the big rail marshalling yards. On the corner of the place, the modern bar L'Endroit attracts the bourgeois youth of the neighbourhood.From rue des Batignolles, rue Legendre and rue des Dames lead southeast across the train lines to rue de Lévis and one of the city's most flamboyant and appetizing food and clothes markets, held every day except Monday. To the northeast, the long rue des Moines leads towards Guy-Môquet, with a covered market on the corner of rue Lemercier. This is the working-class Paris of the movies: all small, animated, friendly shops, four- or five-storey houses in shades of peeling grey, and brown-stained bars, where locals stand and drink at the zinc. Across avenue de Clichy, round rue de la Jonquière, the quiet streets are redolent of petit-bourgeois North African respectability, interspersed with decidedly upper-crust enclaves. The latter are typified by the film-set perfection of the Cité des Fleurs, a residential lane of magnificent private houses and gardens.
Pages in section ‘Batignolles to Clichy’: Batignolles Cemetery and the Dog Cemetery.
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