111 Places in Paris That You Shouldn't Miss

111 Places in Paris That You Shouldn’t Miss

emons: Verlag

Imprint

© Emons Verlag GmbH // 2017

All rights reserved

© for photographs: Sybil Canac: ch. 1, 5, 12, 13, 16, 20, 21, 22, 25, 36, 43, 48, 55, 57, 80, 81, 88, 91, 105, 106 Renée Grimaud: ch. 6, 7, 15, 30, 33, 37, 40, 41 (top), 42, 51, 53 (top), 60, 61, 62, 65, 73, 83, 84, 87, 89, 94, 95, 96, 99, 100, 102, 107 Maogani/Sébastien Vallée: ch. 3, 14, 17 (bottom), 18, 19, 26, 31, 35, 41 (bottom), 44, 47, 49, 54, 58, 63, 74, 75, 86, 90, 93, 103

Additional Photo Credits: AntiCafé Beaubourg (ch. 4); Baguett’s Café (ch. 8); Bar à Bulles @DR (ch. 10); Baton Rouge (ch. 11); Mairie de Paris – Sheth /Art Azoï (ch. 13); Chemin des Vignes (ch. 23); Ciné 13 Theater (ch. 27); Cité du Cinéma (ch. 28); Ferrandi Paris (ch. 42); Michel Denancé – Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé Foundation Collection © 2014 – RPBW (ch. 56); Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery Paris Pantin – Charles Duprat (ch. 108); Gallerie Vuitton – Jean-Marc Cédile (ch. 45); Hôtel Chopin (ch. 50); The Travellers (ch. 52); Saint James Hotel – Antoine Baralhé (ch. 53 (bottom)); The Lady Barber of Paris (ch. 59); La Manufacture 111 DR (ch. 70); La REcyclerie – Alain Leroy (ch. 92); Le Balcon-Élodie Dupuis (ch. 9); The Owls – GdeLaubier (ch. 79); Jean-Baptiste Gurliat-Mairie de Paris (ch. 64); Pavillons de Bercy – Sébastien Siraudeau (ch. 66); La Maison Plisson © JP BALTEL (ch. 67); Maison Souquet –Éric Antoine (ch. 68); Le Manoir de Paris-Manoir H (ch. 69)/Marché sur l’eau (ch. 72); Peach Walls of Montreuil – Marie Bouillon (ch. 85); Vampires and Monsters Museum (ch. 110); L’Oasisd’Aboukir – Patrick Blanc (ch. 78); Skyline Bar Melia Hôtel International (ch. 101); «Spa dans le Noir ?» – Olivier Merzoug (ch. 104); Le Tiki Lounge (ch. 109); ZZZen – Nicolas Rose (ch. 111).

Adagp, Paris, 2016, Chen Zen Fountain (ch. 25); Fondation Foujita (ch. 44); Saint-Martin-des-Champs, Musée des Arts et Métiers (ch. 97); Ennery Museum – RMN Thierry Ollivier (ch. 39); Buttedu Chapeau-Rouge Park – Roger-Viollet Maurice-Louis Branger (ch. 17 (top)).

Hemis. fr: Rieger Bertrand (ch. 29, 34 top, 76); Blanchot Philippe (ch. 2); Sonnet Sylvain (ch. 98); Hughes Hervé (ch. 34 (bottom)); Harding Robert (ch. 63); MATTES René (ch. 77).

© Cover motif: iStockphoto.com/levkr

Design: Emons Verlag

Maps based on data by Openstreetmap, © Openstreet Map-participants, ODbL

ISBN 978-3-96041-306-6

eBook of the original print edition published by Emons Verlag

Did you enjoy it? Do you want more? Join us in uncovering new places around the world on: www.111places.com

Table of contents

Foreword

1_Adzak Museum-Workshop |

The home of an illusion artist

2_The Animal Cemetery |

A pet cemetery for the dearly departed

3_Anis Gras Cultural Center |

A liqueur with history

4_The AntiCafé Beaubourg |

Here’s to spending time together

5_Arcade Street |

The temple of old-school video games

6_The Armenian Cafeteria |

Armenian soul food

7_Arts et Métiers Station |

A dream bubble

8_Baguett’s Café |

A no-frills coffee shop

9_Le Balcon Restaurant |

Paris in all of its (phil)harmony

10_Le Bar à Bulles |

Daydream in peace

11_Baton Rouge |

Just like on the bayou...

12_Belushi’s Canal |

Rock’n’roll urinals

13_Belvedere of Willy Ronis |

When art rises up

14_The Bigot Building |

Façades of glazed ceramic

15_The Bois Dormoy |

A communal garden

16_Butte Bergeyre |

The village up on a perch

17_Butte du Chapeau-Rouge Park |

A call to peace

18_Café A |

For the uber-hip

19_Café des Chats |

The stress-relieving coffee break

20_The Canal House |

The bright life

21_The Chapal Factory |

A new skin for a former rabbit fur factory

22_Château Rothschild |

The poetry of ruins

23_Chemin des Vignes |

Issy, the place to be

24_Chemin du Montparnasse |

Chasing after les Années Folles

25_The Chen Zhen Fountain |

Water’s symbolic path

26_The Chocolate Museum |

The history of hot chocolate

27_Ciné 13 Theater |

A nice family history

28_Cité du Cinéma |

Hollywood-sur-Seine

29_Le Clown Bar |

Life’s a three-ring circus

30_Les Combattants de la Nueve Garden |

In honor of Spanish heroes

31_Cour des Bourguignons |

The glory days of carpentry

32_Coudurier Weapons Rooms |

A décor worthy of d’Artagnan the musketeer

33_The Curiosity Cabinet |

For the nature-curious

34_The Dejean Market |

Africa goes to the market

35_Delaville Café |

An atmosphere of tolerance

36_The Doubméa-Paris Factory |

Paris has its prince

37_L’Élysée Montmartre |

The show must go on

38_Émil’Or |

A secret atelier

39_Ennery Museum |

Chimeras from the Far East

40_The Ermitage House |

A Parisian folie in the Regency style

41_Evi Evane |

The best taramasalata in Paris

42_Ferrandi Paris |

Not your ordinary student restaurant

43_The Fountain of the Fellah |

A souvenir from Napoleonic Egypt

44_Foujita at the Japan House |

Hidden treasures

45_Galerie Vuitton |

The treasure chests

46_Les Grands Moulins de Pantin |

Untouched industrial heritage

47_La Grisette de 1830 |

Glory to the working girl

48_Halle Pajol |

A unique eco-neighborhood

49_The Hennebique Building |

A concrete system

50_Hôtel Chopin |

A hotel in a passageway

51_Hôtel des Grandes Écoles |

The countryside in a hotel

52_Hôtel Païva |

The splendor of a courtesan

53_Hôtel Saint-James Paris |

The first airfield in Paris

54_Indochinese Buddhist Temple |

A home for the gods

55_La Java |

A legendary ballroom

56_Jérome Seydoux-Pathé Foundation |

An atrium with a backstory

57_Jim Morrison’s Building |

Tracking down an idol

58_Kata |

A magical movie theater

59_The Lady Barber of Paris |

Making men look better

60_Léon the Lamppost |

A streetlight from the past

61_Liberté Ménilmontant |

The boulangerie that shows everything

62_Lisch Station |

A lost station

63_Little India |

Amid saris and cardamom

64_Le Louxor |

An Egyptian cinema

65_Les Magasins Crespin-Dufayel |

The glory days of commerce

66_Le Magic Mirror |

A magical marvel

67_Maison Plisson |

Gourmet groceries

68_Maison Souquet |

A brothel-turned-hotel

69_Le Manoir de Paris |

For nerves of steel

70_La Manufacture 111 |

The beat of the city

71_The Marais Dance Center |

From stagecoaches to dance classes

72_The Marché sur l’eau |

A market on a boat for the eco-minded

73_Marie Bashkirtseff’s Grave |

In honor of a short life

74_The Maubuée Fountain |

The oldest fountain in Paris

75_The Momboye Dance Center |

African rhythms

76_Notre-Dame de la Médaille Miraculeuse |

A pilgrimage to Paris

77_Notre-Dame-du-Travail |

The faith of the working class

78_L’Oasis d’Aboukir |

The plant man strikes again

79_The Owls |

Rise above

80_Paris-Gobelins Station |

A station disappears

81_Passage de la Sorcière |

The witch is in prison!

82_Passerelle d’Aubervilliers |

Paris towards the millenium!

83_Passerelle Debilly |

The crime scene

84_The Passy Reservoir |

To the water of Paris

85_Peach Walls of Montreuil |

Where the peaches are just peachy

86_Le Père Magloire |

Cemetery prankster

87_Le Pharamond Restaurant |

Tripes à la mode de Caen

88_Les Piaules |

For backpackers in the know

89_Pierre Emmanuel Garden |

Nature in all its liberty

90_The Pontoise Pool |

An almost-midnight swim

91_The Public Baths |

Showers for all at this bastion of public hygiene

92_La REcyclerie |

An urban farmhouse

93_La Route du Tibet |

The only Tibetan bookstore in Paris

94_Rue des Immeubles Industriels |

Hot water on every floor!

95_Rue Pavée Synagogue |

An art-nouveau challenge, taken on by Guimard

96_Rue Réaumur |

An ode to iron and glass

97_Saint-Martin-des-Champs |

The birth of the Gothic style in Paris

98_Saint-Séraphin-de-Sarov Orthodox Church |

The smallest church in Paris

99_Le Salon du Panthéon |

Catherine Deneuve, decorator extraordinaire

100_The Sèvres Door |

Sandstone in full force

101_Skyline Bar and Lounge |

Cocktails with a view

102_Solar Hôtel |

The world is organic

103_Sorbonne Astronomy Tour |

Stargazing in the city

104_Le Spa Dans le Noir? |

A spa in the dark

105_Square de la Roquette |

The doors of the penitentiary

106_The Street Art of Montreuil |

An open-air art gallery

107_The Suresnes Vineyards |

The little white wine of the west

108_Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery |

The artsy suburbs

109_The Tiki Lounge |

Half-man, half-god

110_Vampires and Monsters Museum |

I wasn’t scared, I swear!

111_ZZZen Nap Bar |

Bubbles of well-being

Gallery

Maps

Foreword

It is called the most beautiful city in the world, and the more than thirty million tourists that visit it each year seem to agree. When they first discover the City of Lights, they come armed with a list of monuments – the ones that make Paris, Paris. Accordingly, they march from the Champs-Élysées to the Eiffel Tower; they wander through the Louvre; they hike up Montmartre to Sacré-Cœur Cathedral.

The tourists of Paris, won over by the enchanting atmosphere of the capital, just cannot stop coming back. Finally, they realize that the magic of Paris is not just these symbolic sites. It is stumbling upon a little-known garden one morning before anyone else; it is looking up to notice the quirky façades that peek out from venerable Haussmann buildings; it is having a coffee in a historical place that has been touched up by a trendy architect. Make the same trip a year or two later and you can bet you will realize just how much the neighborhood has changed since your last visit.

To conjure up a list of the most amazing places in Paris is an exhilarating exercise – because it is never finished! In constantly pacing the streets of the city, in keeping up with everything that keeps evolving, it becomes clear that this is a city that reveals itself with enormous generosity – especially in places off the beaten track. Even when you have lived there for decades, there is always some detail you have never noticed.

The tourists who really fall in love with Paris find themselves in the exact same situation: as their visits start to rack up, their interest sharpens, and their perception too. And the more idiosyncrasies they discover, the more they hone their science of the City of Lights, until it appears in all its intimacy and richness, from its origins until this century that keeps transforming its contours. Perhaps on their next visit, Paris will no longer be a chimera, but a reality.

Renée Grimaud

View full image

1_Adzak Museum-Workshop

The home of an illusion artist

The fate of Royston Wright, otherwise known as Roy Adzak, was a strange one. Born in England in 1928, he was an engineer, sculptor, painter, photographer, and globetrotter. During archaeological digs in Afghanistan, he noticed that when the sun hit the concave curves of pottery, it gave the illusion of convex reliefs. Adzak spent the rest of his life trying to recreate this optical illusion. In 1962, not far from Montparnasse, he moved into an old house with a garden and a garage that would be his atelier. Twenty years later, he built it up into a building of four floors. At the top of the façade, he put the casting of his head and on the ground, the imprint of his hands.

Since 1955, Adzak worked on prints, fossilizations, and other negative objects – concave designs in anthropomorphic or otherwise nature-inspired forms. He also plastered living models. His atelier contains his own mummified body, wrapped in medical bandages and plaster, along with other astonishing works: columns supporting silhouettes in relief and counter-relief, prints of human body parts, animal and vegetable dehydrations, a pyramid containing the cadaver of a raven.

Info

Address 3 Rue Jonquoy, 75014 Paris, +33 (0)1 45 43 01 98 or +33 (0)9 61 23 20 91 | Public Transport Metro to Plaisance (Line 13) | Hours Sun 3pm–9pm and by appointment. Free entry. | Tip In the Plaisance neighborhood, at number 19bis Rue Jonquoy, you can also find the home and atelier of the artist Zao Wou-Ki. The great Chinese painter, who died in 2013 at the age of 93, lived there from 1960 to 2011.

During his lifetime, his work was shown by well-known gallerists such as Iris Clert. But the artist who’d worked on the traces of time was its first victim. Adzak often practiced complicated medical techniques on himself – which is how he died in 1987 at the age of 59. Buried in the Montparnasse cemetery, his grave is crowned with a little pyramid where you can see his reflection. His atelier and his house have remained intact. The little garden is home to ceramic chickens, owls, and cats by his nephew Nicholas Wright. His house is occupied by artists in residence.

Adzak’s friend and fellow Brit Margaret Crowther created the museum thirty years ago, and today organizes art shows and poetry readings in the space.

Nearby

Notre-Dame-du-Travail (0.41 mi)

Léon the Lamppost (0.652 mi)

Solar Hôtel (0.708 mi)

The Bigot Building (0.951 mi)

To the online map

To the beginning of the chapter

View full image

2_The Animal Cemetery

A pet cemetery for the dearly departed

Back

Seeing the number of people who come to pay homage to their departed pets, leaving a bouquet of flowers or a little souvenir, you may be surprised to find yourself moved to the point of forgetting that you are not in a human cemetery. Besides dogs, which take up most of the plots, many other creatures have lucked into this chic final resting place: cats, birds, rabbits, hamsters, fish, horses, and even a monkey.

The names on the epitaphs attest to the affection that their owners felt for them: Bibi, Fury, Tendresse, B.b., Veinard, Pupuce, Sultan, Mouchette, etc. There’s even one headstone expressing the love of a mother for her dog Loulou, who saved her child from drowning in the Garonne River in 1985.

Info

Address 4 Pont de Clichy, 92600 Asnières-sur-Seine, +33 (0)1 40 86 21 11 | Public Transport Metro to Gabriel Péri (Line 13) or RER to Gare d’Asnières-sur-Seine | Hours Every day but Mon, Mar 16–Oct 15, 10am–6pm; off-season 10am–4:30pm. Closed for all holidays except November 1. | Tip On the platform at the foot of the cemetery you can hop on a boat that will take you down the Seine – with music! – all the way to Saint-Cloud and back. It is a great way to discover the banks of the river and Île de la Jatte and its Temple of Love (Temple de l’Amour, www.tourisme92.com).

There are also some animal celebrities here: Rintintin, the valiant young hero of the TV series of the same name; Prince of Wales, who appeared 406 times on stage at the Théâtre du Gymnase in 1905 and 1906 (as you can read on his epitaph). Then there is Barry, who belonged to the monks of the Hospice du Grand-Saint-Bernard. On the monument erected at the entrance of the cemetery, the inscription references the legend according to which after saving the lives of 40 people, [Barry] was killed by the 41st.

The cemetery came into being at the end of the 19th century thanks to two animal-lovers: Georges Harmois, a publicist, and Marguerite Durand, the founder of the newspaper La Fronde. Until then, the bodies of departed pets were tossed in the trash or in the Seine. On June 21, 1898, a law was passed allowing pets to be buried in a grave situated as often as possible one hundred meters from the dwellings of their masters and in such a way that the cadaver would be covered by a layer of earth having at least one meter of thickness. The only condition was that the tombs not resemble human graves. Since then, we may have forgotten this rule a bit!

Nearby

Galerie Vuitton (0.634 mi)

Lisch Station (1.156 mi)

Cité du Cinéma (1.939 mi)

La REcyclerie (2.262 mi)

To the online map

To the beginning of the chapter

View full image

3_Anis Gras Cultural Center

A liqueur with history

Back

For those who’ve tried it, Anis Gras is a Proustian liqueur evocative of nostalgic memories, because it is no longer made in the red brick factory whose long wall borders one of the main streets of Arcueil. Remaining almost perfectly intact, the