Paris_ City Guide (Lonely Planet, 7th Edition) - Lonely Planet [85]
This large waxworks museum inside the passage Jouffroy boasts an impressive 300 wax figures. They largely look more like caricatures than characters, but where else do you get to see Marilyn Monroe, Charles de Gaulle and Spider Man face to face, or the original death masks of some of the French Revolution leaders? The recently renovated Palais des Mirages (Hall of Mirrors), created for the 1889 Exposition Universelle, dazzles, but the admission fee is positively outrageous and just won’t stop a-growin’ each year.
MUSÉE DE LA FRANC-MAÇONNERIE Map
01 45 23 74 07; 16 rue Cadet, 9e; admission €2; 2-6pm Tue-Sat; Cadet or Peletier
This museum, housed in the colossal and quite impressive Grande Orient de France building, provides a brief introduction to the secretive world of Freemasonry, which grew out of medieval stonemasons’ guilds of the 16th century. A visit to the museum with a guided tour of the building (in French) at 10.30am Wednesday or 2.30pm Saturday costs €6.
MUSÉE NATIONAL GUSTAVE MOREAU Map
01 48 74 38 50; www.musee-moreau.fr; 14 rue de La Rochefoucauld, 9e; adult/18-25yr & everyone on Sun €7/5, under 18yr free, 1st Sun of the month free; 10am-12.45pm & 2-5.15pm Wed-Mon; Trinité
The Gustave Moreau Museum is dedicated to the eponymous symbolist painter’s work. Housed in what was once Moreau’s studio, the two-storey museum is crammed with 4800 of his paintings, drawings and sketches. Some of Moreau’s paintings are fantastic – in both senses of the word. We particularly like La Licorne (The Unicorn), inspired by La Dame à la Licorne (The Lady with the Unicorn) cycle of tapestries in the Musée National du Moyen Age.
* * *
TRANSPORT: OPÉRA & GRANDS BOULEVARDS
Bus Opéra for 20 to République, Bastille & Gare de Lyon, for 22 to Charles de Gaulle-Étoile, for 29 to place des Victoires, Marais & Bastille, and for 39 to Palais Royal and St-Germain des Prés
Metro Cadet, Grands Boulevards, Opéra, Chaussée d’Antin, Richelieu Drouot
* * *
Return to beginning of chapter
GARE DU NORD, GARE DE L’EST & RÉPUBLIQUE
Drinking; Eating; Shopping; Sleeping
Two sorts of foot traffic give the 10e arrondissement its distinctive feel. The banks of the Canal St-Martin draw leisurely strollers, while travellers part (and are reunited) on the platforms of the Gare du Nord and Gare de l’Est. Outside, the cafés and brasseries do a brisk trade, catering to travellers and locals. Nearby, the blvd de Magenta rushes like a swollen river, the noisy, impatient crowd spreading through the adjoining streets and pouring out onto the place de la République.
The buzzy, working-class area around blvd de Strasbourg and rue du Faubourg St-Denis, especially south of blvd de Magenta, is home to large communities of Indians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, West Indians, Africans, Turks and Kurds. Indeed, strolling through passage Brady is almost like stepping into a back alley in Mumbai or Dhaka.
Canal St-Martin – especially the quai de Jemmapes and the quai de Valmy, with their rows of plane and chestnut trees – seems a world away. Barges appear, pass silently, then vanish behind a lock. Little iron bridges and walkways span the still water. Rundown not so long ago, the canal has a new lease on life, helped in large part by the upmarket restaurants and bistros lining it.
CANAL ST-MARTIN Map
République, Jaurès, Jacques Bonsergent
The tranquil, 4.5km-long St-Martin Canal links the 10e with Parc de la Villette (Map) in the 19e via the Bassin de la Villette and Canal de l’Ourcq, and the canal makes its famous dogleg turn in this arrondissement. Its shaded towpaths are a wonderful place for a romantic stroll or a bike ride and take you past nine locks, metal bridges and ordinary Parisian neighbourhoods. Parts of the waterway – built between 1806 and 1825 to link the Seine with the 108km-long Canal de l’Ourcq – are higher than the surrounding land. The best way to see the