Rue de Lappe and rue de Charonne
From Paris Hotels Reviews
rue de Lappe and rue de Charonne
Northeast of place de la Bastille, off' rue de la Roquette, narrow, cobbled rue de Lappe is a lively nightspot, crammed with bars drawing a largely teen crowd. At number 32, Balajo is one remnant of a very Parisian tradition: the bals musettes, or music halls of 1930s gai Paris, established by the area's large Auvergant population and frequented between the wars by Piaf Jean Gabin and Rita Hayworth. It was founded by one Jo de France, who introduced glitter and spectacle into what were then seedy gangster dives, enticing Parisians from the other side of the city to drink absinthe and savour the rue de Lappe lowlife. Parsians are still dranwn here and to the bars on neighbouring streets, such as rue Daval to the north.
Off rue Daval, on the left as you walk up from rue de la Lappe, is charming little pedestrianzied cours Damoye, a narrow cobbled street formerly lined with furniture workshops and now mostly inhabited art galleris, design shops and the fragrant Brûlerie Daval coffee merchant's. Other streets worth exploring are the nearby section of rue de Charonne, home to fashion boutiques and wacky interior designers; and rue Charonne, home to fashion boutiques and wacky interior designers; and rue Keller, clusterred with alternative, hippy outfits, indie record stores and young fashion designers such as Anne Willi at no. 13.
You might make a detour south of rue de Charonne, between rue St-Bernard and impasse Charrière, to visti the rustic-looking church of Ste-Marguerite (Mon-Sat 8am-noon & 3-7.30pm, Sun 8.30am-noon & 5-7.30pm; Mº Charonne), with a garden beside it dedicated to the memory of Raoul Nordling, the Swedish consul who persuaded the retreating Germans not to blow up Paris in 1944. The church itself was built in 1624 to accommodate the growing parish priest. The inside of the church is wide-bodied, low and quiet, with a distinctly rural feel. The stained-glass windows record a very local history: the visit in 1802 of Pope Pius VII, who was in Paris for Napoleon's coronation; he miracolous cure of a Madame Delafosse in the rue de Charonne in 1725; the fatal wounding of Monseigneur Affre, the archbishop of Paris, in the course of a street battle in the faubourg in 1848; the murder of sixteen Carmelite nuns at the Barrière du Trồne in 1794; and the quartiers's dead of World War I. In the now disused cemetery of Ste-Marguerite lies the body of Louis XVII, the ten-year-old heir of the guillotined Louis XVI, who died in the Temple prison (see Temple and Louis XVI). The cemetery also received the dead from the Bastille prison.
Running parallel to rue de Charonne is rue de la Roquette, home to cheap and cheerful shops, Turkish restaurants and local bars. Towards its eastern end is square de la Roquette, the site of an old prison, where four thousand members of the Resistance were incarcerated in 1944. The low, forbidding gateway on rue de la Roquette has been preserved in their memory.
