Quartier du Commerce

From Paris Hotels Reviews

quartier du Commerce

The best way to get the flavor of the quartier du Commerce is to start walking down the avenue de la Motte-Picquet, where the Champ de Mars meets the Ecole Militaire. At the corner the brasseries throng with officers from the Ecole, and the hundred-odd antique shops in the snooty Village Suisse (all open Thurs – Mon; ⓦwww.theswissvillage.com) display endless chandeliers and gilt furnishings. At the boulevard de Grenelle, where the métro trundles above the street on iron piers, things relax a little. Rue du Commerce, which stretches to the south, preserves a distinctive and very pleasant village atmosphere, its prettily shuttered houses lined with small shops and cafés, this upscale respectability would have been a surprise to the working-class diners who once filled the three storey’s of the Café du Commerce (see p.321 and p.341), or to George Orwell, who worked on the street as a dishwasher, a gritty experience described in the Down and Out in Paris and London. Towards the street’s southern end, place du Commerce is distinguished by its late nineteenth-century bandstand, while, just beyond, the church of St-Jean Baptiste de Grenellle frames the end of the road handsomely.