To innocent ears the name Belleville may simply suggest a place of beauty, but to respectable Parisians it sent a shudder down the spine: "The lowest depths of wretchedness and of hate where ceaselessly seethe the ferments of envy, laziness and anger."

Honest housewives of eastern Paris, determined to safeguard their respectability, protested vehemently that they were not from Belleville but from Ménilmontant, which was just a little further south but less squalid in reputation. For Belleville was a troublesome neighbourhood which disturbed the peace of mind of the affluent and the secure: "We hope that tonight Belleville will be willing to let France sleep," wrote the Moniteur Universel following the defeat of the Commune. Fortunately, Belleville was tucked away at the easternmost end of the city, clinging to a steep hill 128.5 metres high, a world apart to the relief of bourgeois Paris.

And yet, in pre-industrial days this was a land of bliss, invigorated by fresh air, bathed in sunlight and watered by more rivulets and springs than the world-renowned hill of Montmartre, "a green dress crowned by lilacs", according to some poet. Neat strips of vineyards clung to its sunny slopes, alternating with fruit orchards and wild flowers. A windmill here and there completed the charming picture, which extended all the way south to the village of Charonne. Even the high and the mighty frequented or had footholds in Belleville, Henri IV, Richelieu, Mazarin among them. In the 17th century the Duchesse d'Orléans, Louis XIV's sister-in-law, was the landlady of the Château de Bagnolet, and in the 18th century, the legitimised daughter of Louis XIV and the Montespan and wife of the Regent was so fond of the estate that she was willing to pay three times their value for the adjoining grounds. In order to bypass the cumbersome high street of Bagnolet, full of bustling taverns and crammed with wine-laden carts, she opened a beautiful, broad avenue shaded on either side by two rows of trees, and named it l'Allée de Madame (now rue des Orteaux).

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