Paris_ City Guide (Lonely Planet, 7th Edition) - Lonely Planet [72]
Peer long and hard (and long and hard again) at the touristy restaurants and cafés around the unfortunate 1960s Gare Montparnasse complex and glimmers of the area’s bohemian past occasionally emerge: after WWI writers, poets and artists of the avant-garde abandoned Montmartre on the Right Bank and crossed the Seine, shifting the centre of Paris’ artistic ferment to the area around blvd du Montparnasse. Chagall, Modigliani, Léger, Soutine, Miró, Kandinsky, Stravinsky, Hemingway, Ezra Pound and Cocteau, as well as such political exiles as Lenin and Trotsky, all hung out here, talking endlessly in the cafés and restaurants for which the quarter became famous. It remained a creative hub until the mid-1930s.
Drift south, away from the energising hubbub of the train station area and its neon-lit nightlife, and green spaces unfold in the shape of delightful Parc Montsouris and Cité Universitaire, a lush oasis for students, wedged between parkland and the din of Parisian traffic belting along the ring road encircling Paris.
CATACOMBES Map
01 43 22 47 63; www.catacombes.paris.fr in French; 1 av Colonel Henri Roi-Tanguy, 14e; adult/14-26yr/under 14yr €7/3.50/free; 10am-5pm Tue-Sun; Denfert Rochereau
Paris’ most gruesome and macabre sight: in 1785 it was decided to solve the hygiene and aesthetic problems posed by Paris’ overflowing cemeteries by exhuming the bones and storing them in the tunnels of three disused quarries. The Catacombes is one such ossuary, created in 1810. After descending 20m (130 steps) from street level, visitors follow 1.7km of underground corridors in which a mind-boggling amount of bones and skulls of millions of Parisians are neatly packed along each and every wall. During WWII these tunnels were used as a headquarters by the Resistance; so-called cataphiles looking for cheap thrills are often caught roaming the tunnels at night (there’s a fine of €60).
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STEVE’S TOP PARIS DAY
After an evening of merrymaking at my bon vivant friend’s belle époque apartment near place de la République, as far as I care to/can move my carcass the following morning (usually a Sunday) is to the wonderful Marché Bastille, to stock up on fortifying oysters and foie gras. But I’ll need more of a cure than that after all the mousseux (sparkling wine) of the previous evening, so I’ve now set my Navsat for the Spa Harnn & Thann for a soak and a rubdown. Then I’ll slip-slide toward the Musée du Quai Branly for both its startling Oceanic art and Les Ombres restaurant in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, or the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine and the adjoining Café de l’Homme, with its arresting views of said madame. Still a bit cobwebby, I’ll cross the Seine to Ladurée for a sugar fix (pastel-coloured macaroons will do the trick) and the Champs-Élysées Click here. Some say the broad boulevard is now the height of tack, but I’ve loved it ever since I was a student and my Moroccan kinda-sorta boyfriend and I stood beneath the Arc de Triomphe one New Year’s Eve shouting ‘C’est pour nous! C’est pour nous!’ (It’s for us! It’s for us!) at the top of our lungs as the cars raced around, blowing their horns and flashing their headlights. Season be damned. I might just do that again right now.
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The route through the Catacombes begins at a small, dark-green belle époque–style building in the centre of a grassy area of av Colonel Henri Roi-Tanguy. The exit is at the end of 83 steps on rue Remy Dumoncel (metro Mouton Duvernet), 700m southwest of av Colonel Henri Roi-Tanguy.
CIMETIÈRE DU MONTPARNASSE Map
01 44 10 86 50; 3 blvd Edgar Quinet, 14e; 8 or 8.30am-6pm Mon-Sat, 9am-6pm Sun mid-Mar–Oct, 8am or 8.30am-5.30pm Mon-Sat, 9am-5.30pm Sun Nov–mid-Mar; Edgar Quinet or Raspail
Montparnasse Cemetery received its first ‘lodger’ in 1824. It contains the tombs of illustrious personages such as poet Charles Baudelaire, writer Guy de Maupassant,