Rue des Francs-Bourgeois (1)

On your way from Place de Vosges to e.g. Centre Pompidou, you could take rue des Francs-Bourgeois, which is the central and a very ancient street in the “le Marais “ area. There is a lot to see also in the crossing and neighbouring streets, but today – and tomorrow – we will just follow this one.

The name of the street, which means “exempt citizens”, was given during the Revolution and because of the existence of a mansion in the street where in the 15th century some poor people who didn’t have to pay taxes to the city were given a place to live.

Along the street you will find a large number of mansions (“hôtels particuliers”), most of them several hundred years old. Many of them are closed to public – today mostly occupied by different administrations - and you can only with a bit of luck see what is behind the gates and the facades. One of the nicer mansions and open to public is Hôtel Carnavalet (see below), built in 1548, which used to be the home of Madame Sévigné (her birthplace was Place des Vosges, as I mentioned yesterday). It’s today the Museum of the History of Paris. It’s certainly worth a visit (free of charge), is magnificently decorated (to a great part with interiors from different epochs and often coming from other palaces) and shows a lot of interesting documentation. The street is full of boutiques – often old bakeries or butchers which, fortunately, in some cases have kept the old ensigns and part of the decoration. Here almost everything is open even on Sundays, so it’s a nice shopping street. ... and if you are hungry or thirsty, you will easily find a place. I always advise you to look to the right and the left, into the small side streets, alleys and inner yards (when they are open); this is what adds to the charm of many of these old streets. As an example, if you look on the lower left corner of the below patchwork, you can see an alley, called “Impasse des Arbalétriers” (arbalète = cross-bow) where in 1407 the brother of King Charles VI was killed, which led to about 15 years of civil war, or at least brutal struggle, between the “Armagnacs” and the “Burgundians”.

As usual, you can find these pictures "full size" on my photo blog.