The east was never the fashionable part of the City of Light. Other Parisians showed little interest in visiting, while guidebooks steered tourists to the iconic monuments, grand boulevards and top-end hotels of the north, south and west.
The lack of monuments – and attention – allowed the east to survive as perhaps the least touristic part of the city, packed with affordable street markets aimed at locals, quirky restaurants run by young chefs who couldn't afford more glamorous environs and eccentric galleries in roughly adapted factories and warehouses once used by the garment and machining industries.
Outsiders began appreciating this shabby chic and, from about five years ago, the 11th arrondissement and its surrounds began bringing in a new type of visitor. Interesting boutique hotels sprang up and Airbnb options followed.
All that stopped stone cold on November 13, 2015, when co-ordinated terrorist attacks devastated the east. There were shootings in restaurants and cafes. Three men with assault rifles killed 90 concert-goers in the Bataclan Theatre; by the end of the day about 130 people were dead and almost as many seriously injured.
To listen to Si Hocine, proprietor of the Grand Hotel Francais near Place de la Nation, the terrorists chose the area specifically because it of its authenticity.
"It was a big disaster. We lost all our customers. People were scared. It happened in our neighbourhood because we were really representing an image of the French culture. [Now] people have to keep coming because they have to keep alive this example of the French culture."
'The real authenticity of Paris'
With this last point in mind, Hocine and some business partners met the mayor of Paris immediately after the attacks to discuss ways to bring life back to the area. The result is Paris East Village, a marketing campaign (and bilingual website) designed to highlight the "cool areas" of the district, its culture, attractions and sense of community.
The east includes the 11th, 19th, 12th and 20th arrondissements (because the districts of Paris coil clockwise around the centre, adjacent districts aren't always sequential).
"We wanted to show to the people that there is not only the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Champs Élysées and commercial areas," says Hocine. "We wanted to show the real authenticity of Paris, the real heart of life of the French people, the artisans … the really good markets, great bistros, restaurants [that are] very authentic, for good prices."
Hocine insists "real Parisian people" are very friendly and cosmopolitan. He compares the rejuvenation of the East Village to the Meat Packing District and High Line in Manhattan. In fact, the area has its own High Line: the Promenade Plantée near the Opera Bastille in the 12th arrondissement. This beautiful park, built along a disused raised railway, predates the New York equivalent by many years and is twice the length. Yet it is little known.
The spectre of the revolution and guillotine haunts places such as Bastille and Nation. There is the modern glass Opera House, theatres, music venues and churches.
Much of the area is once again buzzing, with big markets in the major squares, and crowded restaurants and parks. Recent events still leave a sombre mark. Along the park above the covered Canal St Martin I chanced upon two plaques to victims. At the simple and moving monument in the park opposite the Bataclan – with 90 names on a slab of white marble surrounded by fresh flowers and sashes from the President and the mayor – I watched a woman steal away in uncontrolled tears.
Cheap and cheerful, or fine dining
Not everyone is entirely happy with the area's rejuvenation, some deriding the area as "bobo". This denotes "bourgeois-bohemian", characterised by the sort of person who supposedly moans about inequality over Fairtrade coffee, while wearing a designer jacket and checking share prices on an iPad Pro.
Prices are certainly climbing. Rooms at Hôtel Fabric – an acclaimed new boutique hotel with a name that pays tribute to the garment district of old – start at €260 (about $370) a night.
Hocine says the focus is on "authentic not elitist food", but there are also now some very fine restaurants. I sampled both ends of the spectrum, starting with the tatty and charming Le Square Gardette, with its train crash of decor. It has a reading library, mismatched furniture and a cat.
A comparatively cheap and cheerful home-cooked style lunch (€23.50 including a glass of wine) included a "Sandwich Pain Burger" and a thoroughly artistic ensemble of coffee and tiny cakes. In the interim I enjoyed that feeling that everyone around me was discussing things that really mattered (it always sounds that way in French).
At the opposite end is the curiously named Qui Plume la Lune, with one Michelin hat. It is the project of Jacky Ribault, a French chef who is clearly influenced by another trend in the area: that of Japanese restaurateurs making Paris their home and producing new culinary fusions of the Orient and old Europe.
The restaurant is very narrow, maybe three metres wide, with rough concrete floors, exposed rock and distressed surfaces. It is crowded and very friendly, modern yet in many ways traditional.
Qui Plume la Lune's degustation lunch menu (€85 four courses and dessert, and another €70 for matched wines) began with foi gras mousse and quinoa with cod in black rice chips and parsley sauce, along with sourdough bread with yuzu butter. Then it was smoked bonito with moscato, veal and clams (a sort of super upmarket surf and turf), finishing with red bean macaroon on lemon foam and a separate dish of rice milk, mangoes and coconut.
It was a lot, yet light and delicate and served leisurely, allowing this writer to walk back to the Metro feeling satisfied and not the slightest bit bloated.
Vibrant and quirky
According to Australian Sarah Pank, a long-time resident of Paris who runs Apartments Actually, an upmarket property rental business in the adjacent (and pricier) Marais district, the 11th arrondissement is becoming an increasingly interesting and quirky little pocket.
"Every arrondissement has its own special character," she tells me, "and this is a vibrant, local and slightly offbeat area, with young people, creative types, galleries, and innovative cafes and restaurants. There is a real little community and network and, perhaps because the attacks were right on that doorstep, I guess there is a feeling of people wanting to support each other.
"The community feeling and spirit have only been enhanced from those attacks. People want to see the area succeed."
Edith Piaf museum
It is perhaps the smallest museum in Paris and the sole one that is by appointment only. It is a matter of ringing first, being allocated a time (Monday to Thursday, afternoons only), then pushing a four-digit code at the front of a nondescript building in the 11th arrondissement near the end of the bustling, cafe-filled Rue Oberkampf.
There on the fourth floor is Le Musée d'Edith Piaf, entirely dedicated to the "little sparrow", the tiny woman with a voice that could shake a whole city.
How tiny? Next to the entrance is an apparently life-sized photo. At 147 centimetres in her shiny black shoes, the cardboard-backed, black-and-white Piaf scarcely rises above the chair backs in this crowded apartment. How such a voice came from a package that compact is hard to fathom.
The keeper of the flame is the elderly Bernard Marchois, on behalf of an organisation called Les Amis d'Edith Piaf. Marchois escorts all guests while giving a commentary and answering any questions. He speaks no English and explains – I think – that Piaf lived alone in these two rooms when she was 18. Within 12 months she was famous and out of there, living the high life.
Marchois first met Piaf in 1958 and stood backstage at many of her concerts at the renowned Olympia in Paris. How this came about (something to do with his parents) is not clear. He now curates the museum while living in the adjacent apartment (the two are connected), playing Piaf songs all day and researching her life.
The museum admits two or three people at once, and is funded by participation, which is to say a donation from each visitor. Marchois, an author, does a pretty good sales job on his Piaf book too. It has won various awards, it should be said.
The streets around here were where La Môme Piaf ("the kid sparrow") originally busked. She was buried at the nearby Père Lachaise cemetery in 1963 surrounded by tens of thousands of fans.
The eclectic contents of the museum include her furniture, her teddy bear (which was nearly as big as she was), several of her dresses and pairs of shoes, and the leather gloves of her great love, boxing champion Marcel Cerdan. Tragedy was never far from Piaf's life; he was killed in a plane crash en route to a liaison with her.
There are signed photos, letters to and from people of note (Jean Marais, Maurice Chevalier et al), and original paintings that many will find familiar, including a melancholy portrait by American artist Doug Davis that has graced a hundred CD compilations. Every mood of the singer is captured in the many photos, paintings and sketches. Some artefacts, such as her handbags, are paired with photos showing them in Piaf's use back in the day.
You aren't going to fill an afternoon in this midget museum, no matter how keen you are. But on the way to Père Lachaise or any other East Village attraction, it's a quirky pit-stop.
NEED TO KNOW
Qui Plume la Lune 50 Rue Amelot. Tel: (01) 4807 4548
Le Square Gardette 24 Rue Saint-Ambroise. Tel: (01) 4355 6307
Hôtel Fabric 31 Rue de la Folie Méricourt. Tel: (01) 4357 2700
Grand Hotel Francais 223 Boulevard Voltaire. Tel: (01) 4371 2757
Le Musée Edith Piaf 5 rue Crespin du Gast. Tel: (01) 4355 5272
For more on Paris East Village see
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