Around Sevres-Babylone
From Paris Hotels Reviews
Around Sevres-Babylone
The area around Sèvres-Babylone metro station, at the western end of the 6e arrondissement and the eastern fringe of the 7e, is one of Paris’s most promising for shopping. You might not find the most exclusive Right Bank boutiques, but rues Bonaparte, Madame, de Serves, de Grenelle, du Vieux-Colombier, du Dragon, du Four and des Saints-Pères are lined with designer and high-street names, from Agnès B on rue du Vieux-Columbier to Zara on rue de Rennes.
It’s hard to imagine now, but smack in the middle of all this, at the Carrefour de la Croix Rouge, there was a major barricade in 1871, fiercely defended by Eugene Varlin, one of the leading lights of the Commune (see box,p.197). He was later betrayed by a priest, half-beaten to death and shot by government troops on Montmartre hill. These days you’re more likely to be suffering from till-shock than shell-shock, though Cesar’s four-metre statue of a Centaure, cast in homage to Picasso in 1983, is disticnly alarming. It surveys the cross-roads with ferocity, and two sets of genitals. If you need to retreat, make for the small, friendly American bookstore, The Village Voice (see p. 395), where you can browse through the latest literature and journals.
On Sunday mornings, the elaborated Marche Bio, or organic food market, lines the boulevard Raspail between the Sèvres-Babylone and Rennes metro stations. Attracting both out-of-town farmers and chic shoppers, it offers plenty of opportunities for people-watching, even if you don’t plan to buy any of the colourful, excellent produce.
Just over the boundary with the 7e arrondissement, at the far side of the green square Boucicaut, stands the city’s oldest department store, Le Bon Marché (see p.386). The name means “inexpensive” in French, but these days it’s one of Paris’s best and most upmarket department stores. The original shop was a simple drapery emporium on rue du Bac, but exploded in size under the entrepreneurial and socially conscientious Aristide Boucicaut, becoming one of the great Parisian institutions of the era and the setting for Zola’s novel Au Bonheur des dames. The building itself is palatial, the star beam of Gustave Eiffel and Louis-Auguste Boileau responsible for the 1879 extension on rue de Babylone. With a canny sense of commercialism, the architects wanted to show off the goods to best advantage by making the interior spaces, in their own words, "as gay, resonant and well-furnished as if they were in the pure daylight of the outside". An annex, added on the west side of rue du Bac by Boileau’s son in 1923, now houses the luxurious Grande Epicerie, or "big grocer’s", on the ground floor.
If you stand outside the Bon Marché, especially on a Sunday, you’ll notice that a surprisingly large proportion of people among the crowds isn’t here for the shopping. The reason lies down an alley hidden behind 140 rue du Bac, just north of the aerial bridge joining the two wings of the Bon Marché. Tucked away at its end is a little chapel with the unwieldy name of Notre-Dame de la Médaille Miraculeuse. It was here, in 1830, that a 24-year-old nun called Catherine Laboure had visions of the Virgin Mary dressed in silk, with her feet resting on a globe. A voice told Catherine to “have a medal struck like this – those who wear it will receive great graces”. The nuns duly obeyed, and have been quiet literally coining it ever since. You can buy a souvenir medal and visit the chapel, which was rebuilt to accommodate huge pilgrim congregations in 1930.
If you’re heading southwest towards the stylish, Art Deco Vaneau metro station, check out the bizarre Fontaine du Fellah, adjacent. Built in 1807, with two jets of water spouting from a statue of an ancient Egyptian-style water-carrier, it’s a product of the fad for all things Egyptian that swept France in the wake of Napoleon’s campaign of 1798-99.
