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You are here: Home Leisure Travel & Tourism Around and about Paris - the 20th arr., Belleville

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25/07/2008Around and about Paris - the 20th arr., Belleville

Around and about Paris - the 20th arr., Belleville Thirza Vallois' historical and cultural tour of Paris continues in the 20th arrondissement, in 'a troublesome neighbourhood'.

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).

But although the Duchesse avoided the common herd, she could not altogether escape their indiscreet attention, and soon her headdress was doing the round of the village and became the latest fad among its maidens. In 1763 Philippe d'Orléans bought the adjoining property from his neighbour Pinseau, who himself had only recently purchased it from Jean-Baptiste de Sade, father of the more notorious Marquis. A few years later the same Philippe d'Orléans had his estate chopped up and sold off. Properties were acquired and dismantled lightheartedly in carefree 18th-century society, but the area was sought after by Parisians from all walks of life throughout the century.

Until it was jostled into the Industrial Age. If Charonne to the south was spared for a while and remained a wine-growing village for another generation, Belleville was doomed: destitution crept insidiously up its slopes, cleared them of their vineyards and gardens and turned the hill into a nauseating mire, its rivulets into a smelly gutter bordered by hovels, a nest of social unrest. Political militantism followed suit and while the National Guard of Belleville had supported the ultra-conservative Charles X in 1830 against the forces of the Revolution, by 1848 Belleville had shifted its loyalties and sided with the Revolution.

The final blow was dealt in 1860, when the villages of Charonne, a section of Bagnolet, Ménilmontant and Belleville were annexed to Paris as a new arrondissement. The Mayor of Charonne had sensed the disastrous outcome of the annexation act in 1859, and addressing his local councillors claimed that, "for the suburbs the era of primitive happiness was over... their balance will soon be upset." Indifferent to history and to human ties, the administrative machine sliced implacably into rue de Beleville, the village high street, splitting the village and dividing its 70,000 inhabitants, relegating the north with its church to the 19th arrondissement, the south with the Mairie to the 20th. And as the cost of living rose, due to the new taxes imposed on them as residents of Paris, ever-growing waves of hungry outsiders crammed into Belleville, trying to make a living in its workshops (mostly mechanics, but also leather and later clothing).

Unlike La Villette further north, which was taken over by full-scale factories, resuting in the enslavement of the workforce, most of the Bellevillois worked in family-size workshops, with an independent boss at the head of the tiny nucleus and at least the hypothetical prospect that the apprentice might become the boss himself. Thus was forged the free-spirited Bellevillois character, which embodied self-dignity, proletarian pride and solidarity. No wonder the First International opened up three sections in Belleville in the 1860s and the Communist party found a fertile field for new recruits here. In short, just as the Faubourg Saint Antoine had provided the fuel of the French Revolution, Belleville provided that of the insurrection of the 19th century, above all the Commune.

This is an excerpt from Thirza Vallois's Around and About Paris series (volume 3 - New Horizons: Haussmann's Annexation).    

Around and About Paris (volume 1, 2 and 3) is published by Iliad Books, UK
For more information, and to order Thirza Vallois's titles, go to Link: www.thirzavallois.com
 (expatica June 2008)

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