Rue St-Denis

From Paris Hotels Reviews

Running north from the rue Etienne Marcel, rue St-Denis is the city's centuries-old red-light area, where weary women wait in doorways between peepshows, striptease joints and sex shops. The area is changing, however, and some of the older outlets are closing down, partly because sex megastores have taken some of their business and partly because the 2° arrondissement mairie is attempting to clean up the area by encouraging new businesses to move in. Many of the independent streetwalkers – the native Parisians "traditionelles" - have also left, forced out by steep fines introduced by Sarkozy in his capacity as interior minister in 2002. Reactions to these changes have been mixed, with many locals lamenting that the street is being over-sanitized and in danger of losing its character, while Le Parisien newspaper has argued that the traditionelles are as Parisian as steak-frites and Gaulloises and that their disappearance from the city centre is a great loss to traditional Paris life.