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Le Marais: A Tale of Two Heydays – the Grand Siècle and Today
Tour Duration: 3 Hours
Price: $175 per person
Location: Right Bank-Place des Vosges, Ile Saint-Louis, Saint Paul
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Join Terrance Gelenter founder/director of Paris Through Expatriate Eyes, author John Baxter and other expatriates Entertaining week of culture and shopping.
Built on former marshlands – that’s what “marais” means – its patchwork of storied streets spreads between Beaubourg, the Bastille, Temple and the Seine’s Right Bank in the 3rd and 4th arrondissements. This is the Paris of the Grand Siècle, the apogee of French glory, and its centerpiece Place des Vosges completed in 1610 may just be the city’s most alluring square.
The atmospheric Ile-Saint-Louis midstream in the Seine is an honorary part of the Marais: it blossomed with mansions and was linked to the Right Bank by the five-arched Pont Marie in the 1630s, when the district lived its first heyday.
Restored Baroque or Rococo townhouses from the reigns of Henri IV, Louis XIII and Louis XIV showcase the Picasso, Carnavalet (History of Paris), and Jewish museums, plus the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, Archives Nationales, and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie. Woven between these and other landmarks are over 400 gay businesses, including cheek-by-jowl designer boutiques and restaurants, the city’s best ice cream maker, and Paris’ small but vibrant Jewish community.
About Your Guide
Author and journalist David Downie LINK TO INTERVIEW has lived in the Marais for 20 years. As an adolescent he read in the crime novels of Georges Simenon about this formerly dark, sinister place of dilapidated townhouses, where prostitutes plied their trade and murderers lurked in the shadows.
The Marais was still rough-edged when he first visited in the mid-Seventies, and he has witnessed the neighborhood’s transformation, writing about it for newspapers, magazines and in his critically acclaimed essay collection Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light.
Downie’s Marais is for insiders. It takes in the medieval world of monks and bastion-building kings Philippe Auguste and Charles V, the hôtels particuliers and Place des Vosges of the Grand Siècle, and the secret life of courtyards, alleys and atmospheric streets that make the Marais today.
Get a head start by reading David’s collection of Paris memories, Paris.
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