Eastern Paris
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The Canal St-Martin, running from the Bastille in the south to the place de la Bataille de Stalingrad in the north, can be seen as marking the boundary between central and eastern Paris. The area east of the canal has traditionally been the home of the working classes, dating back to the establishment of the Faubourg St-Antoine as the workshop of the city in the fifteenth century. Later, during the Industrial Revolution in the mid-nineteenth century, the old villages of Belleville, Ménilmontant and Charonne were colonized by the French rural poor. These populations supplied the people-power for the insurrections of 1830, 1832, 1848 and 1851, and the short-lived Commune of 1871, which divided the city in two, with the centre and west battling to preserve the status quo against the oppressed and radical east. Indeed, for much of the nineteenth century, the establishment feared nothing more than the "descente de Belleville" – the descent from the heights of Belleville of the revolutionary mob. It was in order to contain this threat that so much of the Canal St-Martin, a natural line of defence, was covered over by Baron Haussmann in 1860.Today, only a few reminders of these turbulent times survive, such as the Mur des Fédérés in Père-Lachaise cemetery recording the death of 147 Communards, the Bastille column, and a few streets bearing the names of popular leaders. Some of the old working-class character of the district lives on in places: narrow streets and artisans' houses survive in Belleville, Ménilmontant and off the Canal St-Martin, while rue du Faubourg-St-Antoine is still full of cabinet-makers and joiners. Much of the area, however, has undergone redevelopment over the last few decades. Crumbling, dank and insanitary houses were replaced by shelving-unit apartment blocks in the 60s and 70s, giving way in recent years to more imaginative and attractive constructions. In places, redevelopment has inevitably shifted older populations further out into the suburbs; the Canal St-Martin for example has now been colonized by the new arty and media intelligentsia. Elsewhere, particularly in Ménilmontant and the Oberkampf area, rents remain relatively low, attracting significant numbers of students and artists who have created a thriving, alternative bar scene. Further east, Belleville has been settled by sizeable ethnic populations, especially North Africans, Malians, Turks and Chinese, making it one of the most diverse areas of the city and an excellent place for sampling exotic cuisine. As well as new housing development, Eastern Paris has also been the site of some of the city's most ambitious large-scale projects. North of Belleville, the old meat market area of La Villette is now a futuristic science museum and park, while down in the 12e much of the Bercy riverside area has been landscaped with a huge new park, and the old wine warehouses have been converted into shops and restaurants.
Pages in section ‘East’: Canal St-Martin and around, Parc de la Villette, Belleville, Ménilmontant and Charonne, Père-Lachaise cemetery, Down to the Faubourg St-Antoine, 12e, Vincennes.
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