Not your average swamp

Please excuse my blogging hiatus. The past month has been a total whirlwind between last goodbyes to friends leaving at the end of summer, welcoming returns and fresh arrivals in Paris of friends from the States, taking a trans-Atlantic trip for the wedding of a best friend from college, dealing with Valentin's unexpected hospitalization and surgery and the subsequent change in travel plans, fighting tooth and nail to renew my visa to live in France (success of the week!), and trying to stay on top of an ever-growing pile of lab work, it's been quite the month! 

I have a boatload of stories from the past month or so. To begin, I'd like to share a summary of an interesting tour I took of the Marais during the last week of August.


Marais
noun, masculine invariable
marsh, swamp

Handed down to me from my bible these days, the French-English translator in wordreference.com: marais means swamp. However, your Paris tourism guidebook undoubtedly has something else to say on the matter. Le Marais is also the name of a neighborhood in Paris, and a particularly chic one at that. The Marais is rich with history, from that of the wealthiest to your average medieval wooden-beamed houses that just so happened to be spared the Haussmanian razing.

As any proper tour of the Marais, we begin in the Place des Vosges. This square, the oldest in the city of Paris, designed by Henri IV. Beforehand, it had been the central courtyard of the royal residence, the Hôtel des Tournelles, until a royal jousting tournament gone wrong led to King Henri II's accidental death by eye injury. His wife, grief-ridden or at least using the excuse to get out of their old stuffy castle, moved the royal residence to Louvre where the court remained until Louis XIV packed up for Versailles.

Place des Vosges, a major historical site in the Marais

Our designer of the Place des Vosges (which, incidentally, was originally the Place Royale, later renamed Vosges in honor of the department of Vosges for being speedy taxpayers in the late 1700's), King Henri IV didn't have much more luck than his predecessor. On his way to his friend and trusted royal minister Sully's deathbed, the king was murdered in 1610.

Sully himself was an interesting character and another man who's left his mark in the Marais. A generally despised public figure, the Catholics hated him for being Protestant and the Protestants hated him for his fierce loyalty to the king. The royalty hated him for being rude, pushy, and tight-fisted. Nonetheless, the man was reputed to run a tight ship and peace, both on France's borders and within, was restored during his time in power. His purported deathbed to which King Henri IV had been rushing fell short of expectations: after a miraculous recovery, Sully lived (albeit no longer with such ruling power) for another 31 years. Somewhere mid-way through his stolen years, he had himself constructed his own hôtel de particulier. Clarifier: a hôtel de particulier is not a peculiar hotel. In fact, it's a private mansion, and many of these were constructed throughout the Marais for the nobility who lived there until Louis XIV forced his whole court to move in with him at Versailles. Sully's hôtel de particulier, pictured below, is a particularly beautiful private mansion which today is an historical monument and serves as the Central Office for National Monuments in France.

Two of the four elements, Air and Fire (Earth and Water not shown), as represented by four women each surrounded by symbols of their element, engraved on the walls of the courtyard of the Hôtel de Sully, one of the many hôtels de particulier scattered throughout the Marais

Speaking of monuments, another set of homes worth seeing are the houses at 11 and 13 rue François Miron. Though far less stunning, they deserve some respect in their own right: these houses have been standing since the 1500's and perhaps longer. Though a 1607 edict required the wood of these houses to be covered in plaster to reduce fire hazards, the original wood has been uncovered since the 1960's when these homes were restored during a general period of restoration in the neighborhood that lasted until the 1980's. A Paris lined with twisting rows of these guys paints a different image of the romantic city, doesn't it?

Typical 16th century medieval houses, few of which remain in Paris today, besides of course this pair at 11-13 rue François Miron. Fun fact: one of the few other medieval houses standing in Paris today belonged to none other than the alchemist Nicholas Flamel. You read correctly: J.K. Rowling didn't just make this guy up for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. He was a real, very wealthy individual who lived in the 1300's and 1400's and whose house (or rather, one of them) can be visited today at 51 rue de Montmorency 75003 Paris.

After the city's restoration, wealthy young people and a vibrant gay community moved into the Marais, but traditionally the neighborhood wasn't so fabulous. The Marais is home to the historic Jewish neighborhood, as can be noted today by many commemorative plaques on sides of buildings for those deported and the brave who defended them during World War II. Despite the frightening history, many French Jews did survive and France is now home to the largest population of Jews outside of Israel and the United States. You can still find a thriving Jewish community in some parts of the Marais.

What are those symbols under the boulangerie sign? That's right, Stars of David! The Marais is also home to the historical Jewish neighborhood in Paris.

Like any good neighborhood that's been home to a high density of people for hundreds of years, a number of scandals have taken place here. One that's inspired several works of fiction and even an opera was that of the Marquise de Brinvilliers. As typical for her time, she was married off to a man she didn't love and eventually found another lover. With his help, she poisoined her father and brothers, hoping to inherit their wealth. As rumor has it, she developed these poisons by testing them out on patients in the Hôtel Dieu, a hospital where she volunteered. After her crimes were discovered she fled the country but was ultimately returned to Paris, tortured into confession, and publicly executed. The Marquise de Sévigné, famous for her written accounts of life in the royal court, wrapped up the story of this execution with the description, “well, it’s all over and done with. Brinvilliers is in the air. Her poor little body was thrown after the execution into a very big fire, and the ashes to the winds, so that we shall breathe her, and through the communication of the subtle spirits, we shall develop some poisoning urge which will astonish us all..." Fortunately, history doesn't recall a series of poison-crazed serial killers on the loose, though it seems to have been trendy in the late 1600's for wealthy women to do in with their unwanted husbands in such a fashion.

A fair bit has changed in Paris since those days (that trend included, one has to hope). In few ways is that so striking as in the sight of the crumbling wall (frustratingly tough to visualize! It's standing below the upper two stories of windows in the left side of the image below) which once demarcated the Parisian borders in a neighborhood now pretty much smack-dab in the center of Paris, in the 3th and 4th of 20 Arrondissements which spiral out numerically from the city center.

Below the upper two stories of windows on the buildings in the left stands the remains of a 5km-long wall that once encompassed the (much smaller) city of Paris. Put in context, the  Marais is pretty darned central in what we now call Paris proper. How our city has grown!

And finally, no introduction to the Marais is complete without a look into the tastier side of this neighborhood, well known within the Jewish parts for its enticing falafel sandwiches. Keep it in mind next time you're in the city!

Not just a random food shot: Anyone "in the know" will tell you that the Marais is a hot spot for falafel. L'As du Falafel and its neighbor across the street, Mi-va-mi, are both great places to stop for a delicious and healthy bite on the run.