Rue des Francs-Bourgeois (2)

Before we are leaving rue des Francs-Bourgeois, there are two other buildings to which I would like to draw some attention.

One of them is the Crédit Municipal de Paris (no. 55). This is one of the oldest financial institutions in France, created in 1777, which among other things acts as a pawnshop – it will (possibly) lend you money in exchange for a deposit of some more or less valuable merchandise, and when you (possibly) can pay back, they will return your belongings. This kind of institution has several nick names, like “Mont-de-Piété” (after a charitable Italian institution, “Monte-de-Pietà”). Another name for it is “Chez ma Tante” (“At my Auntie”); normally you would not too openly admit that you had to borrow from this institution, you would more easily pretend that you got some money from your auntie. Another version for this expression is that one of the royal princes did not want his mother to find out that he had pawned his watch, so he just said that he had forgotten it at his aunt’s house. The place has still 600 visitors per day and a lot of famous personalities have passed the gate – in the past even Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, Claude Monet... When the not reclaimed belongings are later auctioned, you can make some good business here.

An additional interesting thing can be found in the court yard: The trace of the 13th century Philippe-Auguste city wall (which we have already followed in a number of posts). The other building I wanted to mention is the “Hôtel de Soubise” (no. 60), built in the beginning of the 18th century (top picture). It replaced another mansion built during the 13th century and which during the 15th century became the residence of the Guise family, fervent Catholics, and this was where e.g. the Saint Bartholomew”s Day massacre was planned (1572), leading to the death of thousands of Huguenots. You can still see the old entrance to the previous building on the back side (bottom right picture on the below patchwork). The present building was in 1808 (Napoleon again) taken over by the French state and is since the place for (today, part of) the National Archives and also a museum. Only here – and in adjacent buildings - are today stored some 100 km (60 miles) of documents, the oldest form the 7th century. When walking along this street at lunch time together with a friend on our way from Place des Vosges, we made a small deviation, turned to the left at rue Vieille du Temple and found (at no. 30) a small restaurant, "Au Petit Fer à Cheval" (the Small Horse Shoe). The menu and the place looked nice, so we decided to give it a try. I can now say that it was nice. The restaurant dates from 1903, the marble-topped bar in the entrance has the shape of a horse shoe and behind the bar there is room for maybe twenty guests. The restaurant has obviously at a certain moment been restored with some type of 1925 decoration, but it all gives a very authentic impression, the waiters look like the waiters used to look like, the place got full and I believe only with more or less regular guests! Traditional dishes, nice atmosphere and reasonable prices! Some of these pictures can be found on my photo blog.

Before “closing” for the weekend, I wished to show some more details from the Paris spring development (photos from yesterday). Have a nice weekend!