Goutte d'Or
From Paris Hotels Reviews
Goutte d'Or
The wide, grotty boulevard de la Chapelle forms the Northern boundary of the 10e arrondissement, its only beacon the gloriously dilapidated Théatre des Bouffes du Nord energetically run by British director Peter Brook since 1974. Immediately north of the boulevard, the poetically named quartier of the Goutte d'Or stretches between boulevard Barbés and the Gare du Nord rail lines. The setting for Zola’s classic novel of gritty realism, L'Assonunoir , its name – "the Drop of Gold" – comes form a vineyard which stood here in medieval times. After World War I, when large numbers of North Africans were imported to restock the trenches, it gradually became an immigrant ghetto.
For years, the streets languished in a lamentable state of decay, but a major renovation programme has dramatically changed the area’s character. While the quartier remains poor, it is a home to ahost of vibrant mini-communities, now predominantly – and colourfully – West African and Congolese, rather than North African, but with pockets of South Asian, Haitian, Turkish and other ethnicities as well.
On the rue de la Goutte d’ Or itself, you could seek out one of the city’s Wallace Fountains, on the corner with the rue de Chartres, but the main sight is a few steps north on rue Dejean, where the Marché Dejean (daily except Sun afternoon & Mon; Mo Château-Rouge) heaves with African groceries and thums with shoppers, including lots of women in technicolour African dress. You can pick up imported African beers and drinks and, if you’re self catering, vegetable and plantains, yams and taro roots, or packets of bamboo-leaf-wrapped manioc called coangas, as well as warm-water fish from barracuda to the delicious tilapia. Another, more general to the market takes place in the mornings twice weekly (Wed & Sat) underneath the metro viaduct on the boulevard de la Chapelle.
Most of the quarter’s cafés and bars tend to be very local in flavour and may not appeal to outsiders, but the Olympic Cafe, a bar, café-théâtre and world music venue, is splendidly welcoming.
