Riverside
From Paris Hotels Reviews
The Riverside
Just east of rue St-Jacques, and back towards the river, the little patch of green that is square Viviani provides the most flattering of all views of Notre-Dame. The three-quarters-dead tree propped on a couple of concrete pillars is reputed to be Paris’s oldest, a false acacia brought over from Guyana in 1680. The mutilated and disfigured church behind is St-Julien-le-Pauvre (daily 9;30am-12:30pm & 3-6:30pm; M° St-Michel/Maubert-Mutualité). The same age as Notre-Dame, it used to be the venue for university assembiles until rumbustious students tore it apart in 1524. For the last hundred years it has belonged to a Greek Catholic sect, hence the unexpected iconostasis screening the sanctuary. The hefty slabs of stone by the well at the entrance are all that remain of the Roman thoroughfare now overlain by rue St-Jacques. It’s a quiet and intimate place, ideal for a moment’s pause.
A few steps from square Viviani, on the river bank, rue de la Bûcherie is the home of the historic American-run English-language bookshop Shakespeare and Co (daily noon-midnight; M° St-Michel). In fact, the original Shakespeare and Co, owned by the Amerian Sylvia Beach, long suffering publisher of James Joyce’s Ulysses, was on rue de L’Odeon, over in St-Germain. Under George Whitman, grandson of Walt, this "new" incarnation has played host to plenty of literati since it opened in 1951. In 1957, when Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Gregory Corso were living in the so-called Beat Hotel, over on rue Gït-le-Coeur, they’d read their poems on the street outside the store. These days, it’s staffed by young would-be Hemingways who sleep upstairs, borrow freely form the library and pay their rent by manning the tills, cleaning – and leaving a photo and a brief autobiography on departure. More books, postcards, prits and assorted goods are on sale from the bouquinistes, who display their wares in green padlocked boxes hooked onto the parapet of the riverside quais. If you can manage to ignore the traffic and dwell on images from the countless fils shot here instead, you’ll find the quais a romantic place for a stroll.
A little further upstream, the seventeenth-century Hôtel de Miramio, at 47 quai de la Tournelle, provides a handsome riverfront façade for the Musee de l’Assistance Publique-Hopitaux de Paris (Tues-Sun 10am-6pm:closed Aug; €4; M° (Maubert – Mutualité), a museum recounting the history of Paris’s hospitals through paintings, sculptures, pharmaceutical containers, surgical instruments and so on. It’s not a thrilling visit, though there are some beautiful old ceramic jars for recherché such as sang de dragon (dragon’s blood), and a number of curious sentimental paintings among the portraits of medical worthies.
Close by, the Pont de l’Archeveche – the archbishop’s bridge – leads across the Seine to the lovely green area behind Notre-Dame, offering fine views of the sunlit apartment buildings marshaled along the south-facing fringe of the Ile-St-Louis. One block south, place Maubert has a good food market on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday mornings, stocking anything from fine cheeses to basic salad vegetables. Just beyond the square, to the south, the ugly modern police building houses the Musee de la Prefecture de Police (Mon-Fri 9am-5pm, Sat 10am-5pm; free), at ibis rue des Carmes. The history of the Paris police force, as presented in this collection of uniforms, arms and papers, is dry stuff, but the murder weapons used by legendary criminals may titillate, and voluntarily walking into a working Paris police station has its own peculiar frisson.
