Article about the Paris passages

[Shannon]

Here's a cool article about the passages in Paris. My mom joined me for a few days in Paris last fall, and we had a very enjoyable afternoon in the passages with a itinerary that Americana in Parigi sent us.

Sample of Paris life at 19th century shopping arcades

 

[Heidi]

Perfect, Shannon! I've started a list of passages in Paris for my May trip. They absolutely fascinate me after stumbling upon Galerie Viviene last year. The article will be a good start. Did you have any favorites? Perhaps Parigi will see this and send along a few of her favorites?

 

[Shannon]

Heidi, they were all enjoyable, I really want to explore them further next time. And maybe have a glass of wine in one of them

 

[Ann]

Shannon, here's an older article about the passages from the NYT.

 

[Cameron]

I love the passages! Here is a good website (French) with info on the passages.

And this Paris.fr website includes a downloadable PDF with a map and description of the passages.

The covered passages developed in the capital over a period of only sixty years or so, between the late 18th century and the mid-19th century. Each passage has its own special character but they have one thing in common: they are all private roads.

Innovative in terms of their architectural shape as well as their social role, and systematically lined with shops, the passages were
places of great diversity. There were usually homes above the shops, and luxury boutiques, toyshops, performance venues, bookshops and restaurants stood side by side. Of the sixty or so covered passages that were built, fifteen or so remain, gathered together on the Right Bank. Most are either classified Historic Monuments, listed on the Historic Monuments register or protected by the Local Urbanism/Protection Plan for the city of Paris.

Each passage has its own special character but they have one thing in common: they are all private roads, some open to pedestrians, some not, and are all run by private owners.

Cameron

 

[Heidi]

What a resource, Cameron! This will keep me busy in Paris.....I'm still playing with PDF file and printing out some pages.

Merci beaucoup!!!

 

[Parigi]

I love them all. It is my walk from my home to the Louvre, through a series of passages couverts.
My faves ?
- Vérot-Dodat
- Grand Cerf
- Cité Berryer
- Passage Verdeau
- Passage Jouffroy
- Passage du Caire (very funky, run-down, with palm-tree motifs on the walls).

 

[Cameron]

What a resource, Cameron! This will keep me busy in Paris.....I'm still playing with PDF file and printing out some pages.

If you have an iPhone with iBooks (you can swap between "Books" and "PDFs" on the bookshelf), you can save that PDF in electronic form and read it on your phone. Easier to carry around Paris.

 

[Dana]

One of the best (if unfinished) books ever written about Paris was Walter Benjamin's Passegenwerk (in English it's usually called the Arcades Project) a culture critique about the Passages and invention of modernism in Paris in the 19th century.

Although both Jewish and leftist, Benjamin was so deep in his researches at the Bibiliothèque National that he refused to leave Paris until it was almost too late in 1940, and died of exhaustion (or committed suicide) just after managing to flee over the border into Spain, not knowing the Spanish government had just changed the laws on refugees and intended on sending him back to France.

Before leaving Paris, Benjamin left his notes and ms with a librarian, and after the war the Passegenwerk was rediscovered and has been published in various forms. The book we have is Susan Buck-Morss's excellent The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project (1995), definitely not a holiday read, but fascinating.

 

[Parigi]

Dana, I am joining your fan club.

 

[Ann]

I don't know if there's room, Parigi -- it's getting pretty crowded!

 

[Dana]

Actually I wish there were more of you—the owners of Cadogan might still be updating our guides!!

Michael and I are constantly quoting Walter Benjamin at each other, which goes to show how good he is (or perhaps how nerdy we are). One of our favourites, referring to Paris fashions and the city's 19th century crazy obsession with what's the newest and latest (the passages were originally the proud showcases of novelties in the very early days of window shopping) is 'Monotony is nourished by the new.' Hard to believe these days that things were ever different!

 

[Parigi]

Just took a walk along the passage and talked to a girlfriend who runs the sumptuous Wolff et Descourtis scarf and shawl shop on Galerie Vivienne, whose family had owned the shop, and much of the real estate of the building, since the start of the Galerie Vivienne.

The wool-weaver family hails from Alsace, who up and left for Normandy when Alsace changed hands once too many. Talking with Victoria is talking with history.

Another fun person to strike up a conversation with is the owner of the Librairie Verdeau, former art-book publisher. Get him to get out from the glass display outside and show you the limited edition Jazz lithographs by Matisse. The colors - "chaque couleur est un passage" are so intense that they make you step back, dazzled. The ultimate to get him to show you is his bureau upstairs, with the original shelves and original Art Nouveau stained glass windows.

Not all is brilliance in the passages, which I nickname Parisian Hutong.The beautiful photograph gallery Galerie Verdeau on 47 Passage Jouffroy just closed up shop for good overnight about 10 days ago, replaced by a souvenir geegaw shop, with various sizes of miniature Eiffel Towers replacing all those beautiful old black&white photos.

 

[Dana]

It's a shame, isn't it, that France doesn't consider shops like the Galerie Verdeau as part of the patrimoine worth preserving. In their way, they really are as irreplaceable as a Romanesque church.

 

[Parigi]

As much as I miss the Galerie Verdeau and can't abide the present eye-sore, I don't know about further government assistance to a private business whose exterior upkeep is already heavily subsidized since the passage IS a listed patrimoine. Should the French government take over all the private businesses in all the passages couverts, take over the hotels, the restaurants and cafés, the boutiques, plus maintain the building?

 

[Dana]

No, no, of course not (although I often wish they would!). There was a strange little old hotel in Sérignac, a village near here, that had been unused since the 1960s when the owner's wife left him—although rumour had it even Bridgette Bardot once stayed there. The owner (now dead) still kept the bar open downstairs, but we would always make sure we went upstairs to use les toilettes just to poke around; the place even smelled of old French cleaning products. Had I been minister of culture, I would stepped in and saved that too, just for the atmosphere!

 

[Parigi]

Delightful story.
(I immediately looked up Sérignac. I know the Célé-Lot side quite well, but "your" side, not so well, although I liked it very much too. I am an unabashed huge fan of the Lot. )
Reminds me of this haunting story about a Paris apartment kept in a time capsule.
http://www.messynessychic.com/2012/05/09/the-paris-time-capsule-apartment/

 

[Dana]

Thanks for that; what a great story! What fun it would be to be the first to wander into something like that. In the same vein (well, sort of) when we bought our first house—an old farmhouse— in the Lot in 1989, it hadn't been lived in 1974. We could tell because the picture of his resignation was on the front page of La Dépêche du Midi hanging on the nail of the outdoor toilette.

 

[Heidi]

If you have an iPhone with iBooks (you can swap between "Books" and "PDFs" on the bookshelf), you can save that PDF in electronic form and read it on your phone. Easier to carry around Paris.

Thanks Cameron, I knew that but had forgotten, as I use my iPad so infrequently... well, for travel and as an e-reader. Anyway, your Covered-Passages-in-Paris is now in in my PDF bookshelf in iBooks! Ready for travel!

 

[Heidi]

Earlier I tried to add a photo I took in Passage Vivienne last Spring. It wouldn't upload & now it has! It's not your software Pauline, it's just me

I've been trying to identify the shop that goes with this wonderful sign. Most of the shops were closed when I wandered through, & of course, I took no notes... This article, Sample of Paris life at 19th century shopping arcades, finally gave me the answer ~ Librairie Jousseaume! It's been in Passage Vivienne since 1826...