Faubourgs
From Paris Hotels Reviews
Faubourgs
The southern end of the 10e arrondissement is its liveliest, a poor but vibrant quarter that has become home to Indian, black African, and Near Eastern communities as well as, in recent years, a small vanguard of young, trendy Parisians. The two main thoroughfares, the rue du Faubourg-St-Denis and rue du Fauburg-St-Martin, bear the names of the faubourgs, or suburbs, that once stood just outside the town walls. For once, you can still get a vivid sense of the old city limits, as two triumphal arches stand at either end of the boulevard St-Denis, now looking oddly out of place in the midst of motor traffic and shop hoarding. The Porte St-Denis was erected in 1672 to celebrate Louis XIV’s victories on the Rhine – below the giant letters spelling out Ludovico Magno, or "Louis the Great" are the bas-reliefs The Crossing of the Rhine (on the south side) and The Capture of Maastricht (on the North). With France’s northern frontier secured, Louis ordered Charles V’s city walls to be demolished and replaced by leafy promenades; they became known as the boulevards after the Germanic word for an earth rampart, a bulwark. Two hundred meters east, the more graceful Porte St-Martin was built two years after it sibling, in celebration of further victories in Limburg and Besancon. Louis planned a veritable parade of these arches, but the military adventures of the latter part of his reign, the Wars of the League of Augsburg and Spanish Succession, proved much less successful for France.
Halfway between the two arches, the Musée de l’Eventail, at 2 boulevard de Strasbourg (Mon-Wed 2-6pm; closed Aug; €6; Mo Strasbourg-St-Denis), is a cuirious port of call. In a workshop and showroom dating from the end of the nineteenth century, Anne Hoguet continues the family tradition of lace fan-making, almost exclusively for customers from the worlds of haute couture or theatre. There are frequent exhibitions and displays drawing on a selection of the museum’s nine hundred-strong collection of fans.
As its lower end, the rue du Faubourg-St-Denis is full of charcuteries, butchers, greengrocers and ethnic delicatessens, as well as a number of restaurants, including the historic brasseries Julien and Flo (see p.345). the latter is tucked away in an attractive old stableyard, the cour des Petites-Ecuries, one of a number of hidden lanes and covered passages that riddle this corner of the city. Probably the best known, if not the easiest to find, is the glazed-over Passage Brady, the hub of Paris’s “Little India”, lined with identikit curry houses and Indian barbers’ and grocers’ shops. The passage runs through to rue du Fauburg-St-Martin, crossing the busy boulevard de Strasbourg and coming out just south of the impressive neo-Gothic town hall of the 10e arrondissement.
To the west of rue du Faubourg-St-Denis, rues d’Enhien and de l’ Echiquier are quieter but have several restaurants, cafes and shops serving the area’s Turkish community. Rue des Petites Ecuries is known for the jazz and world music nightclub, the New Morning, while on the next street, at 18 rue de Paradis, is the magnificent mosaic and tiled façade of Monsieur Boulanger’s Choisy-le-Roi tileworks shop; it’s closed to the general public but you can peer through the gate and admire more exuberant ceramics featuring peacock tails and flamingos on the stairs and floors.
