Marais, Bastille & Oberkampf
The Colonne de Juillet is a column – upholding the golden, winged figure representing the ‘Spirit of Liberty’ – commemorating the uprising of 1830. It stands on the former site of the Bastille prison, stormed by angry mobs demanding freedom from the feudal state and precipitating the start of the 1789 French Revolution. But the giant, imposing glass building of the Opéra Bastille, which formed part of Mitterrand’s ‘grands travaux’, overshadows it.
This is traditionally the furniture-makers’ district, but these artisans are swiftly disappearing to be replaced by trendy street-wear shops and bars. The streets immediately surrounding the Opéra and column are congested and polluted, and feel like a thoroughfare – not the most salubrious place to be sipping a coffee on the pavement. Better bars and cafés are to be found just behind the Bastille, away from the grime of the traffic. Rue Charenton has the ever-cool restaurant-cum-bar the China Club, and around the corner is the vibrant North African market square of place d’Aligre and its surrounding wine bars. Don’t forget, either, the rue de Charonne where the long-established Pause Café still manages to draw in a cool crowd. Having said that, Bastille has not managed to retain the exclusively cool status it achieved in the 1990s: its hipness, although still present, has been diluted by the presence of more commercial ventures.
Rue Oberkampf, on the other hand, has now attained such heights of popularity that the area it dominates, between boulevard Voltaire and boulevard Ménilmontant and Belleville, is collectively referred to as ‘Oberkampf’. This rise has been attributed to the rediscovery of Café Charbon on rue Oberkampf itself, which first opened at the turn of the century but was revolutionized by a trendy crowd about 15 years ago. A club has now opened next door, and the prevalence of fantastic nightlife has spread to rue Saint-Maur and rue Jean Pierre Timbaud.
The area south of Bastille, towards Gare de Lyon, has been the subject of regeneration projects, such as the Viaduc des Arts belonging to the former Paris-Vincennes railway line along Avenue Daumesnil. The old railway lines above the viaduct have been landscaped into a green park walkway – a ‘planted promenade’. The red-brick arches and space underneath have been scrubbed and cleaned to the point of sterilization, to make room for the row of retail outlets, including antique shops and galleries, which have become rather soulless, overpriced and disappointing. The Bercy Village, known as Cour Saint-Emilion, is a lot better, and although it is reminiscent of a Club Med in terms of its artificiality, it has an excellent wine bar, Chai 33. The new Bibliothèque Nationale opposite, just across the Seine, was commissioned by François Mitterrand to look like four upstanding books and is impressive, especially at night.
