The 5th Arrondissement

By Thirza Vallois

Paris Kiosque - May 1998 - Volume 5, Number 5
Copyright (c) 1998 Thirza Vallois - used with permission
Excerpted from "Around and About Paris"

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Dear Reader - This month of May the Latin Quarter is celebrating the 30th anniversay of the Evénements de mai. Younger readers may have no reference to those days, but their parents definitely will. I myself was a student at the Sorbonne at the time. Barricades along the Boulvard Saint-Michel, cobblestones hurled at alignments of CRS (riot police), cars being turned over and set fire to, all this is as clear as yesterday. This is how I grasped that moment and its aftermath in "Around and About Paris".

In 1968, a wind of revolt blew across the planet, from the Latin Quarter to Prague, from Berkeley in California, to China. There was no premeditated political motivation on the part of the students when, during the month of May, they transformed the Latin Quarter into a battlefield. Rather it was a vague discontent with an amalgamation of capitalism, imperialism (including the Vietnam War, or course), budding consumerism, the rigidity of bourgeois values and hidebound tradition. L'imagination au pouvoir ('let imagination rule'), one of their favourite slogans, was scribbled on many a wall. Barricades were erected on all the main arteries to fend off the forces of the riot police, advancing in close order, and cobblestones were dug out of ancient streets and hurled at them. The trees along the boulevards were not spared, and those who had foolishly left their cars in the Latin Quarter overnight retrieved burnt-out wrecks the following day.

By the end of June, the summer holidays had begun, always a period od hibernation in the Latin Quarter, and by the following autumn the students' riots had died out like a flash in the pan. But the State had drawn its lessons from the riots and proceeded to 'dismantle' and decentralize the University. The great actor Jean-Louis Barrault, who had supported the students, was banished from the Odéon theatre (in the 6th arrondissement). The main victim of the événements de mai, however, was the mutilated arrondissement itself, which lost its old cobbled streets (too threatening to an authoritarian state, which replaced them with dull asphalt) and the better part of its student population, exiled and scattered all over the Paris area, packed into ugly, ramshackle premises, often in seedy neighbourhoods. To crown it all, these new rootless compounds were given numbers instead of names - Paris I, Paris II, Paris III ... up to XIII, all in the name of modernity. The participants in the événements grew either into disillusioned bourgeois known as ex-soixante-huitards or into frustrated misfits known as soixante-huitards attardés. Fortunately the excellent Lycées Henri IV, and Louis-le-Grand and the Saint-Louis are still there, as is the Ecole Normale Supérieure on rue d'Ulm. But eh University has suffered beyond repair and its students have often become second class citizens, superseded by the élite who have been creamed off by the Grandes Ecoles.

The arrondissement has meanwhile been 'cleaned up' and gentrified like many other parts of Paris and is not disdained by top academics, writers and politicians. Even President Mitterand took up residence on rue de Bièvre off the once seedy Place Maubert. This bourgeoisie lives in discreet seclusion away from the beaten track of Boulevard Saint-Michel, where a junk bazaar has replaced most of the bookshops that went the way of the students. Today the Boulevard Sain-Michel stands for what the students of spring 1968 vaguely sensed, rejected and desperately resisted - the inexorable triumph of the consumer age.

If you wish to commemorate that moment in your own way, and recapture those days, what better time to take a walk through the Latin Quarter? Here is the first part of one of the two walks I have designed for you in Around and About Paris.

Energy permitting, the 5th arrondissement can be visited at a push in one intensive day, but a couple of leisurely days would be preferable, if you wish to take in the atmosphere of its different neighbourhoods. Place Saint-Michel by the Seine is a convenient arrival spot and is at its best in the morning when it is less crowded. As you walk east along the quai Saint-Michel, you will see Notre-Dame across the river in all her stunning beauty, washed by the rays of a morning sun. Turn right into rue Xavier-Privas, part of a medieval enclave but now proliferating with cheap Greek and North African restaurants and catering to tourists predominantly from the northern hemisphere; only the odd French native wanders around here. Most of the houses date from the 17th century, when the street was erroneously named rue Zacharie (street signs indicating the name Zacharie could still be seen recently at numbers 9 and 13), a distortion of its medieval name, Sachalie, from sacs-à-lie ('bag of dregs'); dregs of wine were dried up and burnt to cinders here before being used to dress cloth and leather. Turn right into rue de la Huchette, already famous in the 17th century for its roasts and for its cutpurses, as witnesses Berthod in 1652:

Vers la rue de la Huchette
Mais prends bien garde à tes pochettes!
(Round rue de la Huchette / Watch out for your purse)

The street remained disreputable into the 20th century and in the 1920s boasted three brothels, the most famous of which, Le Panier Fleuri, was on the south-eastern corner of rue Xavier-Privas. A laundry on the opposite corner served as a clandestine annexe, where a client could choose from among the three laundresses without jeopardizing his reputation. Rue de la Huchette also has a famous jazz club, le Caveau de la Huchette, at number 5. It was once a meeting-;lace of the Templars of the Rose Croix, then taken over in 1772 by the Freemasons, who turned it into a secret lodge, complete with an underground passage to the Châtelet and another one running under the cloister of Saint-Séverin. During the Revolution the building was requisitioned by the Convention and used as a court of justice and prison. The most prominent players in the Revolution were brought here for trial - Marat, Danton, Robespierre - and their effigies still decorate the walls. In the late 1940s and 50s the Caveau de la Huchette was a mecca of jazz, which, after the Nazi repression, became the musical expression of the avant-garde, with Coleman Hawkins, Art Blakey, Lionel Hampton and Memphis Slim among the performers. The 50s were also a time of literary turmoil and avant-garde theatre productions. In the Théâtre de la Huchette at number 23, Ionesco's Cantatrice Chauve and La Leçon have been showing since 1957, the longest run recorded in Paris.

Retrace your steps, turn right and continue along rue Xavier-Privas, then turn right into rue Saint-Séverin and left into rue de la Harpe, an important artery of Roman Lutetia, the secondary route that ran parallel to the cardo (now rue Saint-Jacques). In medieval times it continued as far as the city gate, where Boulevard Saint-Michel and rue Monsier-le-Prince now meet. The Boulevard Saint-Michel supplanted it at the time of Haussmann, in 1855. The harp of the name is said to come from a 13th century street sign that showed King David playing the harp; this indeed used to be a Jewish enclave with its own synagogue (on the corner of the present rue Monsieur-le-Prince) and cemetery (round the south-western corner of Boulevard Saint-Michel, in the 6th arrondissement). In the course of its history rue de la Harpe was named several times after its Jewish population: Vetus Juderia, Vicus Judeorum, rue de la Juiverie, rue de la Vieille-Juiverie and, indeed, Vicus Reginaldi dicti le Harpeur, King David, of course.

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Thirza Vallois brings Paris to life in a way that enthralls her readers and provides them with a detailed knowledge of the city which exceeds that of most Parisians, while her fast moving style disguises a depth of historical fact that is normally only found in academic tomes. Writer William Boyd wrote in The Spectator: "I think we can safely toss all other Paris guidebooks aside....There can be no higher praise than when I say they come close to the world's greatest guidebook, J. Link's "Venice for Pleasure" and they should soon achieve similar legendary status." The French Ambassador to the UK wrote: "I am convinced that this guide will constitute from now on, for the British lovers of Paris, a reference book which will have the success it deserves." Around and About Paris may be ordered here.

A long time resident of Paris, she currently lives just three hours outside of Paris in London, and may be contacted via thirzavallois@iliadbooks.demon.co.uk.